The Northrop F-5E found a home with both the USAF and USN as a dissimilar air combat training aircraft, more commonly known as an Aggressor or Top Gun Adversary aircraft. A former brother-in-law of mine was kind enough to invite me to Nellis AFB in the late 1980’s as he was going through his Aggressor pilot training before being posted to Bentwaters, UK. Getting a chance to see a group of “cheap” F-5E’s “shoot down” a flight of F-15’s was quite an impressive achievement, but then that was the purpose of these highly trained adversary pilots, to teach tactics used by Eastern Bloc pilots and their satellite air forces. I previously was a big fan of the uniquely painted aircraft and getting to see them in person and watch them in action just solidified my interest in them. (Yes, I know that the 527th patch is USAFE based, but I didn’t have a 26th AS patch in my collection).
