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The helicopter dogfights of the Iran-Iraq war.
During the early years of the Iran-Iraq war, Iran, while under an arms embargo since the 1979 revolution, still enjoyed great numbers of available western aircraft bought by the Sha, and as such could use them en force against the attacking Iraqi armies.
Among these aircraft, there were 202 AH-1J “International” Cobra attack helicopters, which found themselves helping stop the massive Iraqi armored force time and again, and due to the chaotic nature of the first years of the war, there began to be instances where both sides, neither enjoying full air supremacy over the battlefield, found themselves flying attack helicopters during their offensives, the Iraqis in the part using a recently-bought fleet of Mil Mi-24 Hind gunship helicopters.
This lead to varios instances in which Cobra pilots broke off their air support missions to engage the Iraqi helicopters, leading to air battles, dogfights, in which no fixed wing aircraft was involved nor missile was fired, the only exchange between the two aircraft being cannon and machine gun fire, and since the Cobra was slower, less armored but far lighter and agile than the Mi-24, it could use its M197 electric cannon 20 mm Gatling-style gun, with a stabilized sight and even a stabilized seat for the gunner, to easily engage the clumsier Hinds, leading to a disputed kill ratio of 10:1, with no recorded loss of any Iranian Cobras to Hind fire.
Surprisingly enough, not only Hinds (and other, lesser transport helicopters) fell to the Persian snakes, as there was confirmation of 3 Iraqi MiG-21 supersonic fighter jets shot down, probably during low-level attack runs, with a further Su-20 and MiG-23 swing-wing fighter-bombers claimed but unconfirmed.
As the war progresses these dogfights became rarer and rarer, as the lack of spare parts grounded most of the Iranian Cobra fleet, the remaining machines kept flying through cannibalization and black market deals, but the fact remains that while they flew, they gave hell to both enemies on the ground and in the air, and as of 2018 the surviving units still serve proudly in the current Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force, almost 40 years after their baptism of fire.
The often forgotten Iran-Iraq war was as a clash of new technologies with old tactics, and no other story of this war better encompass this fact that having two types of attack helicopters, brand-new weapons in the world’s battlefield, having been introduced just 15 years earlier during the Vietnam war, fighting like WW2-era piston jet fighters, with just machine guns, cannons, and a bit of luck.
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