Hobby Master Archive

The first American casualty of Operation Desert Storm came on the night of January 17, 1991. LCDR Scott “Spike” Speicher was piloting an F/A-18C Hornet from VFA-81 “Sunliners” when his aircraft crashed. According to a fellow pilot on the same mission the F/A-18C was at 28,000 feet and hit by an R-40 missile fired from an Iraqi MiG-25PDS believed to be flown by Lt. Zuhair Dawood of the IrAF 84th Squadron. LCDR Speicher was listed as MIA but later changed to KIA.