The Brief But Controversial Battle Of The Aegean, 1974

At about two in the afternoon of the 22nd of July 1974 an unusual dogfight took place over the northern Aegean Sea. A pair of Greek F-5 Freedom Fighters engaged two Turkish F-102 Delta Daggers.

Missiles were fired by both sides. At least one aircraft crashed. Even fifty years on, the exact outcome is the subject of endless debate and no little acrimony. This video gathers the evidence from both sides and attempts to conclude on what happened.

A polite reminder that this is an aviation history channel, not a political one. Please endeavour to keep your comments civil and on the topic.

As you would imagine, this is an extraordinarily polarising incident, with a great deal of vitriol on hearsay on both sides. With that in mind, some sources:

This forum post has the most complete version of the original Greek account of the incident: https://forum.milavia.net/military-ai...

A very old, but nonetheless well researched view on all the events of 1974. Note that at this stage it wasn't clear to people that there was only one engagement between F-5s and F-102s because of the date error in the original Skamparthonis accounts: https://archive.ph/BPj3I

The book "F-102 Delta Dagger in Turkish Air Force" by Levent Başara was hard to get hold of but does recount elements of the Turkish version of events. No references are provided. It is, however, an overall interesting read if you're extremely committed to learning about the Turkish Air Force!

Reference to the Greek F-4 crew that overheard the dogfight: http://www.fotodigimarco.eu/Aerei/And...