Gulf War Battle Damage

F-16C Fighting Falcon 88-0488 (Repaired)

F-16C, 88-0488, 4th TFS Hill AFB Utah was hit by a SA3 on 21 Jan 1991, which exploded behind his tailpipe peppering the aircraft.  Fragments impacted:

• Lower left side of the intake, puncturing all the way thru in several areas damaging the inside of the Intake
• Lower left wing, puncturing that wings fuel cell with a 2"x 3" hole
• Lower left wing root, puncturing the wing root panel and damaging some of the Cat 5 wing attachment structure
• Left and right stabilator trailing edges, and put a hole thru the right stab about mid section
• Engine exhaust tail feathers

Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of as much damage as I wanted, but here are a few

The F-16's didn't see much damage.  Those that did couldn't make it all the way back to where the F-16 CLSS teams were located so they came to us, because we were extremely close to the front line.  A few of us had prior F-16 experience, which helped in getting this one back together.  It flew back to it's home base, somewhere in Bahrain I think.

Another F-16, tail number unknown at this time, was damaged and came into KKMC.  It was so badly damaged it was disassembled and shipped back to the depot at Hill AFB.  Our CLSS team worked with the F-16 CLSS team that came in to work it.  I have no photos of that aircraft, or any other information for that matter.