Talk:4477th Test and Evaluation Squadron

Have programs

Should Have Blue be included in this list? Or is it unrelated? Mike McGregor (Can) (talk) 01:58, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Disputed

I have previously edited the reference on this page to General Robert Bond's fatal mishap. That edit appears to have been overridden.

As written, the Bond mishap can only be read as having some connection with the 4477th TES. It has no connection whatsoever - Bond was flying with the Red Hat squadron based at Groom Lake.

If you read the main source for this page, the book 'Red Eagles: America's Secret MiGs', you will see that the 4477th TES squadron had no idea what Bond was doing and that his sortie originated out of Groom Lake, not Tonopah. Further, there is first-hand reporting about the actions of the Red Hats squadron in the days that followed, specifically their very odd visit to Tonopah to ask Red Eagle pilots questions about the high-speed characteristics of the MiG-23.

That the mishap happened is referenced on this page in accordance with Wiki good practise. However, there is not a single reference next to this highly-misleading paragraph that actually connects this mishap with the topic of the page - the Red Eagles. So, where is the reference that says Bond was flying with the Red Eagles or even from their home field at Tonopah? If there is none, this paragraph needs to go.

Please can someone look into this and make an independent assessment about removing this text. FJPhotography (talk) 09:00, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

I can confirm that Bond's MiG-23 accident had nothing to do with operations at Tonapah Test Range or the 4477th. Bond's plane went in at Jackass Flats, much closer to the airfield at Groom Lake than the Tonapah Test Range. Bond was the Vice Commander of Air Force Systems Command, which oversaw many activities at Groom Lake, and was on a fairwell tour flying many of AFSC's black aircraft, including the F-117 and the MiG-23. 107.134.22.11 (talk) 20:34, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Citations and references

I highly suggest that you create a Citations section where you list the citations and make this separate from the References section. It appears from your most used reference that everything came off the same page. Is that true?

If not, then you should redo the citations so that they read, (for example)

Davies 2008, p. 147.
Davies 2008, pp. 214-215.
etc.

I say this because I recently had to spend a lot of time finding the page numbers for scores of citations I used in two articles to get them rated higher. This was at the suggestions of long time editors. Thomas R. Fasulo (talk) 14:41, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

request edit

On this page about the 4477 TES Red Eagles, you show a patch with a black star marked as "Enlisted". As a former member of the 4477 TES, I wish for you to remove the word "Enlisted" under the patch with the black star and replace that with "Subdued or camouflaged". The Air Force has never designed or designated a squadron patch in an officer/enlisted version. That is why rank is always displayed on one's uniform. The Air force does however usually have two versions of a squadron patch. One is shown with all the colors the squadron patch is designed in for use on special uniforms, letterhead as well as squadron buildings and offices. The second version of the squadron patch is a subdued version in which the bright colors of the original squadron patch are replaced with a darker color. In the instance of the 4477th patch the white star is made black. These subdued patches, no matter which branch of the military, are worn on camouflaged fatigues or BDU's (Basic Duty Uniform) which might be worn in a hostile environment or war zone to diminish a serviceman's visibility by the enemy.

Thank you for your time, Ben Galloway

Although no source was provided, the current article does not have a source either and I'm not really sure how one could be found, so I went ahead and changed it for now. CorporateM (Talk) 01:39, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Images

The MiG 17 images are credited to a book by Curtis Peables (Dark Eagles, Revised Edition), but the image file says the are in the public domain, as Is this legit? Attack Ramon (talk) 01:57, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Related Organization

12th Air Force Electronic Warfare Testing Range, Gila Bend AF Auxiliary Field, Arizona. I am posting this in case anyone knows anything about what happened to this organization, which I helped create in 1973 and which moved to Mountain Home AFB, Idaho in about 1982. We were 12th Air Force's equivalent of what became Red Flag. We were supposed to have brand new replicas of Soviet radar systems, but the company building them in Florida went bankrupt so we became exceptionally skilled in using other things to do our mission, which was to train pilots using the Luke Air Force Range how to detect, recognize and evade North Vietnamese anti-aircraft radar and missile tracking systems. We went operational when a C-130 flew in to take our team with a refurbished transmitter we had dug out of the George AFB bone yard mounted on a 1 1/4 ton truck I had borrowed from the Arizona Air National Guard to a joint forces exercise in Louisiana where we co-located with a Marine Corps HAWK battery. Our call sign was Gila Monster and we caught a gila monster in the desert and one of the airmen fed it grasshoppers while stroking its belly. We released the Gila Monster when the State of Arizona Fish & Game responded to my request to keep it by sending me a "zoo license application". I did not think that the Colonel wanted to run a zoo since he already had us. Look forward to someone maybe seeing this and contacting me. dustory dash owner at yahoo groups dot com.2600:1700:9750:AC50:D40C:5C6B:517C:9737 (talk) 10:42, 15 November 2018 (UTC)