[427TJ]

Back in 1993 I was an aircraft commander in the KC-135R Stratotanker. We were enroute to Saudi from England with four F-15C Eagles based at Bitburg AB, Germany. Radio communications were always spotty in the Mediterranean--the Italians won't talk to you, the Greeks won't talk to you, the Egyptians won't, etc., etc. BUT, we had to make periodic position reports so we'd transmit our call sign and wait for a reply which often never came. If we didn't transmit "in the blind" and at least try then 'whoever' would come up on frequency and ball us out for not trying to get "clearance" to transit their airspace. Yeah, a real pain in the rear and it was even worse if your tanker was a UHF-only airplane (VHF worked a lot better--no one was ever on UHF). Anyway, this day in '93 we're getting ready to coast-in near Cairo, Egypt and the Egyptians won't talk to us. My copilot, Steve, a real pro and one who made my job very easy, was getting antsy because the Egyptians would not reply. Okay, I said, let's press on and just keep trying. It's probaly prayer time or something. More tries, more silence. Finally I said f-it, stop trying, we'll be over the Red Sea pretty soon and if they don't want to talk to us then f-them. (Lots of f-this and f-that in military flying. Commercial flying too, come to think of it.) After several more minutes an Egyptian air traffic controller, and I use that term loosely, starts screaming at us because we had "no clarance" to transit his airspace and blah, blah, blah, and he said we would be intercepted if we do not immediately turn back and blah, blah, blah. I looked at Steve and just gave him that f-it shrug and said don't answer him. More Egyptian hollering followed and Steve fnally said our flight plan clearance number (international flight clearance worked out in advance--standard ops) but the "controller" would have none of it. The F-15s we were "dragging" also monitor the frequencies as we fly along and the F-15 flight leader chimed-in on our interplane frequecy (a discreet separate frequency used just by our formation) and he said, "Let them try and intercept us. We'll light them up with our radar and they'll run home to momma." I had kind of forgotten that I had four F-15Cs with me so I laughed and said, "Okay, we're not going to talk to him (the Egyptian) any more and we'll see what happenes." Pretty soon we were over the Red Sea headed toward Jeddah and we never heard another word or saw any attempt at interception. Nice to have our "big stick" F-15s with us that day!