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"On 17 May 1987, an Iraqi Mirage F1 fired a pair of Exocet missiles at the United States Navy (USN) warship USS Stark as it patrolled the Persian Gulf,"

It was not done by an F1 according to Stark's wiki /info/en/?search=USS_Stark_(FFG-31)

Also, the F1 version the IRAQis operated would not be able to do that kind of flight with two exocets.

Remove? Sijambo ( talk) 19:58, 25 April 2020 (UTC) reply

Quite frankly, I find it unbelievable that a business aircraft would be capable of carrying out such a strike. Besides, we report what reliable sources say, and the majority support the Mirage F1 as the strike aircraft. - BilCat ( talk) 22:43, 13 August 2020 (UTC) reply

Dassault certainly sold Exocet-equipped versions of the smaller Falcon-200, with two sold to Chile - the 1988 Jane's All the World's aircraft has a photo of a demonstrator Falcon 200 with two Exocets + ECM pods underwing, so its not impossible that the larger Falcon 50 could carry Exocets as well. We should reflect sources however, and the most we can say is that sources differ about the launch aircraft - the source given in the USS Stark article is based on an article in what looks like a self published blog, which was later picked up by the National Interest, which might be a reliable source, but there do seem to be plenty of RS's that refer to a Mirage F-1 carrying out the attack. Nigel Ish ( talk) 23:46, 13 August 2020 (UTC) reply

Then how did the Mirage fire two exocet if it was only capable of being armed with one? Fire one, flew back to base, re-armed and refuled and fired the second? Since it is impossible for the F1 to have done the attack, and the main article about the attack names a different plane, it should not be claimed differently here. Otherwise we might as well claim it to be capable of going to the moon. Yes, the exocet armed business jets were at the time secret so Iraq at the time claimed it was F1's, but now we know it is not true and have known for quite many years. Sijambo ( talk) 21:14, 20 July 2021 (UTC) reply

Why wasn't the F1 capable of carrying 2 Exocets at a time? It's warload was several times the weight of the Exocet. It's less incredible to me to believe they figured out a way to add a second Exocet to the F1 than that they used a business jet. Again, the claims that it was a Falcon 50 originate with a self-published blog. Have any credible reliable sources investigated these claims and determined that they are true? BilCat ( talk) 21:56, 20 July 2021 (UTC) reply

Regarding the USS Stark attack, I think that I do have some reliable material shedding light on which aircraft was actually involved. First of all, as it has already been said, it couldn't have been a lone Mirage F1, because two Exocets were fired by the attacker. Indeed, according to the book "Iraqi Mirages", by Tom Cooper and Milos Sipos (published in 2019 by Helion & Company), the first Exocet-capable F1s, delivered to Iraq starting in 1984, were of the EQ-5 variant, which could only carry a single Exocet "due to the limitations imposed by its internal power supply". Only the F1EQ-6 could carry two Exocets at once, but it entered service only in 1988. So the hypothesis of a single Mirage F1 carrying out the attack can be ruled out.

Instead, their thesis is that a single modified Falcon 50 was involved in the attack on USS Stark. It could use the Exocet because it had been modified in France with a complete F1EQ-5 cockpit on the right side of its own cockpit, as well as "the typical pointed nose of the Mirage F1 containing the Cyrano radar - and one launcher for AM39 Exocet missiles under each wing". On the 17th of October 1987, the Falcon took off from Wahda AB (near Basra), armed with two Exocets, and flew down the Persian Gulf until reaching a position north of Bahrain. It then launched its two missiles, from 35 and 24 kilometers away respectively. Both of them hit the USS Stark. BilletsMauves ( talk) 19:26, 15 December 2021 (UTC) reply

Note that Tom Cooper isn't the greatest source out there, although in many cases there is very little alternative. In particular, in some cases he seems to have difficulty in distinguishing when people are telling him a tall tale - and there are definitely occurrences of him passing on exagerrations or incorrect information when he is writing about the Iran-Iraq war. And statements like "a complete F1EQ-5 cockpit on the right side of its own cockpit" -is misleading and sloppy writing at best and downright rubbish at worst. - The most we can do is to neutrally present the two competing accounts (i.e. Mirage F-1 according to these sources and Falcon 50 according to these other sources. Nigel Ish ( talk) 12:55, 24 December 2021 (UTC) reply

Verifiability not Truth is wikipedia policy. GraemeLeggett ( talk) 14:30, 24 December 2021 (UTC) reply

Nice picture of YI-ALE with the radar nose cone at https://www.pprune.org/aviation-history-nostalgia/634355-iraqi-falcon-50s.html but no underwing stores. MilborneOne ( talk) 16:52, 24 December 2021 (UTC) reply

Just to note that the official report identifies the aircraft as a Mirage F1 so that should be the what we report. https://www.jag.navy.mil/library/investigations/USS%20STARK%20BASIC.pdf MilborneOne ( talk) 08:45, 25 December 2021 (UTC) reply

Understood, I reverted the edit and put back what was there beforehand. Although to be fair, the "complete Mirage F1 cockpit" story is actually plausible, since a similar modification of a Falcon 20 was done with a Mirage IIIE cockpit in France. Cheers BilletsMauves ( talk) 15:22, 26 December 2021 (UTC) reply