Great stories sir.
I agree that protecting the buff was your best mission
(I'm a buff nav if you didn't catch that earlier).
No matter how many times I hear about these missions I can't believe how f'ing crazy you guys were. Waiting for an SA2 to launch on you, visually looking for that flying telephone pole flying at you, and then pulling a 6g maneuver to get away.
What type of missile was it that "hit" your aircraft? Was it a 2 also?
I know this is nothing like what you did, but back at undergrad nav school we had some sims where we had RWR gear and did our normal TOT missions but had to call out maneuvers for threats. It was fun doing a lot of the mission on the fly cause you were off the black-line and then all the other stuff that came with this new challenge along with all the other ones. Now I have an EWO that does as the EA/EP and makes the calls.
Sir, I can't tell you how much I respect the job you did at the time you did it
