On the afternoon of 22 September 1980, Iraqi jets swept across the border and bombed Iranian air bases, including Tehran's Mehrabad airport. The aim was to destroy Iran's air force on the ground. It did not work. Iranian hardened shelters absorbed much of the damage, and the next morning the Iranian Air Force hit back with a massive air strike of its own.

Iranians call it Operation Kaman 99. "Kaman" means bow, a reference to Arash the Archer of Persian legend. It was launched on 23 September 1980, the second day of the Iran-Iraq War, by an air force that had just been gutted by revolution, and it still put well over a hundred combat jets over Iraq.

The day before

Iraq opened the war with a noon-time wave of strikes on Iranian air bases and military installations. Accounts put the attacking force at between roughly 166 and 192 aircraft. The results were thin. Iranian aircraft sat in hardened shelters, and only a handful were destroyed.

Iran's air force should not have been able to answer. Purges after the 1979 revolution had roughly halved its manpower between February 1979 and July 1980. Yet it still had American-built F-4 Phantoms, F-5E Tiger IIs et F-14 Tomcats, and enough aircrew who knew how to fly them.

Over a hundred jets at dawn

The numbers are disputed, and the accessible sources do not settle them. The most widely cited figure, used by the Atlantic Council's 2020 history and other accounts, is about 140 strike aircraft, F-4s and F-5Es; one Iranian general's book on the raid is titled 140+8 Aircraft. Counting F-14s flying defensive patrols and tankers, Iranian veterans say more than 200 aircraft were airborne. No reliable sortie total has been published in the sources we could check.

According to the account by French historian Pierre Razoux cited in reference works, 40 Phantoms from Hamadan, carrying Mk 82, Mk 83 and Mk 84 bombs and Maverick missiles, refuelled from Iranian tankers and struck air bases around Baghdad, including al-Rashid, Habbaniyah and Kut, while eight more F-4s from Tehran made a second attack on al-Rashid. F-5Es went for bases in the north and south, including Mosul and Nasiriyah, and other targets included Shaiba near Basra.

Real Time History's documentary on the Iran-Iraq War, for the wider context of the 1980 air battles.

What it achieved

Iranian accounts describe Kaman 99 as a turning point: Iraqi air bases near the border were reportedly out of action for weeks, and the Iranian air force held the advantage in the air during the opening phase of the war, while Iraqi ground forces pushed into Khuzestan. Iran's claim that Iraqi air efficiency fell by 55 percent has never been independently confirmed. The Atlantic Council calls the raid one of the biggest air strikes in military history.

It was not free. Kash Ryan, writing for War Is Boring, reports that the outbound force lost no aircraft to enemy fire but that Iranian ground forces shot down at least four of their own F-5Es on the way home, a sign of how chaotic coordination was in the first days of the war. Loss figures for the operation as a whole remain contested.

Kaman 99 did not end the war; it lasted eight years. But it showed that Iran's air force, written off after the revolution, could still plan and fly a large, tanker-supported deep strike within 24 hours of being attacked.

A tribute to Operation Kaman 99 compiled by journalist Paul Iddon.

An account of Operation Kaman 99, also known as Operation Alborz.

Sources: Atlantic Council IranSource, War Is Boring / Warrior Maven, Iran Oral History, Smithsonian Air & Space, Wikipedia (citing Pierre Razoux, The Iran-Iraq War)