Helion is a UK-based company that produces books on many aspects of Military History from the Late Medieval period through to the present day. Helion was established in 1996, and since then they have published over 1,200 books, with 100 or more new titles coming out every year, for readers around the world.

Tom Cooper is an Austrian aerial warfare analyst and historian. Following a career in the worldwide transportation business - during which he established a network of contacts in the Middle East and Africa - he moved into narrow-focus analysis and writing on small, little-known air forces and conflicts, about which he has collected extensive archives. This has resulted in specialization in such Middle Eastern air forces as those of Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and various African and Asian air forces. In addition to authoring and co-authoring more than 50 books - including an in-depth analysis of major Arab air forces during the wars with Israel in 1955-1973 - and over 1,000 articles, Cooper is a co-editor of Helion’s @War book series.

Sirous Ebrahimi is a captain in the Iranian merchant navy and a marine pilot. Born in Iran into a military family, he became interested in the history of aviation and the air forces as a child. In his youth, he participated in the Iran – Iraq War and participated in the battles of East Basra and Shalamcheh. Post-war, Sirous engaged in commercial shipping and obtained valuable, firsthand experience in the field of defense. He has authored several books summarizing his war memoirs and numerous articles published in the specialized press in Iran.

E.R. (Ted) Hooton is a retired defense journalist who worked for Moench and Jane’s before establishing his own successful newsletter.A member of the Royal United Services Institute and the British Commission for Military History since retirement he has focused upon military history and has produced some 20 works on subjects as diverse as the Iran-Iraq Tanker War, the Luftwaffe, the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars, the Spanish Civil War as well as air operations over the Western Front and the Eastern Front in 1941-1945. With Tom Cooper he wrote a four-volume history for Helion’s @War series on the Iran-Iraq ground war and Operation Desert Storm.

Helion’s latest volume in the Middle East @ War series is a square back soft cover that includes 80 glossy paper pages [excluding covers] in their standard portrait A4 [8.25” x 11.75”] format. The front cover’s painting is by Pablo Albornoz and features an Iraqi Air Force Sukhoi Su-22 [2077 of No. 44 Squadron]. Armed with six FAB-500M-62 bombs, she is passing over a merchant ship convoy headed for Bandar-e Khomeini in the northern Persian Gulf. The rear cover features a colored side profile by Ivan Zajac of the IRIS Kahnamuie corvette / frigate. The four Bayandor Class patrol frigates [Bayandor, Milanian, Kahnamuie, and Admiral Naghdi] were built for Iran by the Levingston Shipbuilding Company in Orange, Texas, under the American Military Assistance Program. The IRIS Kahnamuie [Hull Number 84] and IRIS Milanian [Hull Number 83] were both lost in 1980 by Iraqi Exocet air-to-sea missiles. IRIS Bayandor [Hull Number 81] and IRIS Admiral Naghdi [Hull Number 82] remain in active service with Iran. I counted 49 color photographs and 26 black and white photographs. Anderson Subtil contributes five of the seven color maps, 1 black and white map, and two color diagrams. Tom Cooper provides ten aircraft color side profiles with Anderson Subtil represented with two aircraft side profiles and three naval color side profiles. Ivan Zajac contributes three naval color side profiles.

Volume 1 of the Iran-Iraq Naval War by Tom Cooper, Sirous Ebrahimi, and E.R. Hooton was released on May 16, 2023, as part of the Middle East @ War series. Volume 1 set the stage of the Iran-Iraq conflict with the aerial and naval capabilities of both sides that would take the next eight years. Volume 2 by the same authors was released on May 18, 2024, and focuses on the Iran-Iraq naval war from 1981 to early 1984. This saw Iran’s Grumman F-14A Tomcat firing air-to-air Phoenix missiles while Iraq was firing France’s Exocet anti-ship missile at Iranian targets from Dassault-Breguet Super Étendards before the Exocet was utilized in the Falklands War. Volume 3 is promised as a future release.

The authors open with a short Introduction before jumping into Chapter One as the combatants prepare for the battle in Chapter Two. Iran employed six Lockheed P-3F Orions, including the one shown at the bottom of Page 9, serial number 5-8702 that had been modified to fire AGM-84A Harpoon anti-ship missiles. All six P-3F Orion's were delivered in 1975 and 1976, of which three remain in service. The Orion's were manufactured in the standard gray and white US Navy paint scheme but were re-painted to the three-tone blue paint scheme in the United States while Iranian crews were undergoing training. The P-3F was based on the P-3C, but without the P-3C mission computer or ASW suite. Most of the displays and computers of the P-3F were adapted from the older P-3A and P-3B variants. The Iranian Orion's primary role was to escort the naval caravans, providing surveillance ahead of the oil tankers and cargo ships.

The End of the Idyll [Chapter Two] describes the escalation at sea and in the air. Iran believed they had air superiority with their Grumman F-14A Tomcats. The Iranian confidence was betrayed in November 1981 over the Iranian Khuzestan Province when three Iranian Tomcats got suckered into action and were shot down. The action started on November 15^th when a pair of Iranian Tomcats took out an Iraqi fighter-bomber. One of the two Tomcats retreated to refuel while an Iranian F-4E Phantom II paired up with the remaining F-14A. The Phantom II ended up withdrawing to refuel prior to the second Tomcat returning and the Iraqi Air Force struck. Two MiG-23s from 79 Squadron scrambled and succeeded in gaining the lone F-14A’s attention as the Tomcat wheeled to attack. A pair of Mirage F.1EQs came in from behind and fired two Super 530F missiles, forcing the Tomcat crew to eject. The Iraqi Air Force repeated this feat twice on November 24^th, taking out another solo F-14A Tomcat. The Iranian Air Force was in shock but quickly responded. A change in Tomcat tactics saw two Iraqi MiG-23MFs shot down by a single Phoenix, followed by five more Iraqi jets. The top of Page 26 depicts an AGM-54A Phoenix being loaded under the fuselage of an IRIAF F-14A Tomcat. A color photograph of one of the 86 Iraqi Dassault Mirage F.1EQ single-seaters of Number 79 Squadron is shown at the bottom of the page.

A standard feature for Helion’s @War series as seen on Page 36 iii. These color side profiles on this page are rendered by Tom Cooper and include three Iraqi Air Force aircraft. The top color profile is a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23MF in Iraqi standard camouflage pattern. The center color profile is of a Sukhoi Su-22M-2K [2632] bomber, a sub-variant of the Su-22M that was modified in Iraq. The lower color profile is of a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 [s/n 2511] used in the reconnaissance role. MiG-25Rs regularly overflew Khark until an Iranian Grumman F-14A Tomcat took one down with an AIM-54 Phoenix missile.

The Year of the Caravans [Chapter 3] continues the air and sea battles between Iran and Iraq for the year 1982. The top of Page 43 depicts the launch of a P-15 [Termit] anti-ship cruise missile which is a naval version of the Chinese HY-2 Silkworm anti-ship cruise missile. The Iraqi Navy received their first batch of the HY-2 Silkworms in August 1982 and went operational on November 4, 1982 [Note, while being land launched and sea launched they are often referred to as Silkworms, according to NATO standards, Silkworms are land based while Termits are ship based]. The color photograph of the F-14A Tomcat in the middle of the page features Captain Fazlullah Javid-Nia and 1^st Lieutenant Hosseini. They were in the air with their Tomcat wingman engaging and shooting down a MiG-23MF of 67 Squadron when they witnessed the first HY-2 Silkworm flying by before hitting the merchant ship Iran Hojjat. Twenty minutes later a second Silkworm hit and destroyed an Iranian tugboat, Daleer, that had come to the assistance of the Iran Hojjat.

The final chapter, The Search For New Solutions, covers the 1983 and early 1981 aerial and naval Iran-Iraq war engagements. The color photograph on the bottom of Page 59 shows off the Greek bulk carrier, Antigoni, which ran aground trying to avoid an Exocet anti-ship missile on November 21, 1983. The black and white photograph in the middle of the page is of the IRIS Zoubin (Javelin) that engaged two Iraqi Osas on September 28, 1983. The Zoubin [P222] was manufactured by Constructions de Mécaniques, Cherbourg, France, and was commissioned on September 12, 1977. Still in service, she is a Kaman Class fast attack craft. Her sister ships Paykan [P224] and Joshan [P225] of the Sina Class were also active in actions against Iraqi Osa missile boats. Zoubin stopped one of the Iraqi Osas after it was hit with Zoubin’s 76mm gun. This Osa was finally sunk after two missiles [AIM-9J Sidewinder and AIM-7E2 Sparrow] from an Iranian F-4E Phantom II. The contents include:

• Index
• Introduction

1. The Silence Before The Storm
   • Iranian Oil Industry
   • Fortress Khark
   • Operation Crocodile
   • Organization of Caravans
   • Integration of Air Defenses
   • FASHA and Crypto-Bats
   • Orions [Page 09]
   • Problems with Discharging
   • Idyll of Early 1981
   • No News in the West
   • Traffic Jam
   • Basu’s Lonesome Outpost
   • Directives Azhdar-2 and Temsah
   • First Tomcat Loss
2. The End of the Idyll
   • Sea Tigers and Super Frelons
   • Iraqi COMINT and SIG-INT Assets
   • First Iraqi Exocet
   • Fire-and-Forget
   • The Loss of Milanian
   • New Tools of Trade
   • Appearance and Reality: 10 September 1981
   • First Big Air Strike on BIK
   • Scuds Versus Khark
   • The Game of Cat-and-Mouse
   • The Issue of Air Superiority [Page 26]
   • All-e-Agha’s Response
   • Sudden Calm
3. The Year of the Caravans
   • Goreh and Genaveh
   • Loss of Setareh
   • Operation Order Tophan
   • Supporting the Push Into Iraq
   • Troubles in Baghdad
   • Air-Sea Battle of 6 June 1982
   • Bloody Monday
   • Saddam’s Threats and IRIN’s Problem
   • IRIN Statistics for March 1981 – September 1982
   • Cheating Owners
   • Color Illustrations [Page 36 iii]
   • Kabi in Place of Janabi
   • Reinforcements for IRIN
   • Loss of Kahnamule
   • Iraqi Hornets and the Secret of Their Success
   • The Crisis of October 1982
   • First Silkworms
   • Attack on IRIS Shariati
   • Chaos in the Dark
   • Bad Weather
   • PMO On Strike
   • IRIN Statistics for 1981, 1982, and Early 1983
   • Cobras and Missile Decoys
   • Exhaustion
   • Fishing Exocets
   • The Loss of Iran Janan
   • TF.421’s New Rules
4. The Search For New Solutions
   • Learning Lessons
   • All For One, One For All
   • Bitter Blow
   • Tabatabai’s Networks and Peace Log
   • Air Defense Ships
   • New-Model Caravans
   • Foxbats Over Khark
   • Operation Shabahang: The Biggest Caravan
   • Phoenix vs Silkworm, and Sidewinders and Sparrows vs Osas
   • Sha’ban’s Comeback
   • An Inauspicious Pod
   • Air Battles of December 1983
   • Silkworms and MiGs
   • Malekzadeh’s Spoiled Ambush
   • Claims and Counterclaims
   • SH Down
   • First Super Etendard Strike

• Sources and Bibliography
• Notes
• About The Authors

I really enjoyed this book as it adds a lot of information not readily available in English before. It is an easy read and I enjoyed it for over four days.I am looking forward to Volume 3 in this series, and in the meantime, I need to go back and get Volume 1 for my reading list. If you own one of the previous releases in the Middle East @ War series, you know what you are getting. If this is your initial entry into this series, you will be quite pleased.

My thanks to Helion & Company, Casemate Publishing, and IPMS/USA for the chance to review this great book.

Highly recommended!