Muammar Gaddafi was influenced and inspired by the Egyptian and Arab hero Gamal abdel Nasser he followed the footsteps of Nasser in supporting Arab nationalism
Influenced by all of that he made his decision to support Nasser and Egypt after the defeat of 1967 his move was in 1969 when he lead an army coup and removed the monarchy system in Libya.

After being in power he wanted to build the strong army which Libya was in need for he looked to Nasser asking for help from Egypt and to give Egypt aid too, the each sides agreed to help each other and Egypt offered to help Libya in building Libya's army using western weapons, in addition to that Libya will buy French Mirage 5 fighter jets and give it to the Egyptian Air Forces to support its Military effort against Israel.

Gaddafi quickly signed the contract with France Egypt sent its pilots to Libya so that they can have Libyan passports as Libyan air force pilots and fly to France to start training on their new Mirages all the selected Egyptian pilots were aces of Mig 17 and Su 7 with over 1500 flying hour and even with compact experience, this selection was fit for the Mirage Fighter Bomber which they will fly, however they have been order to say that they have less than 300 flying hour in order not to blow there cover as Libyan pilots because the Libyans weren't had any will trained pilots specially as fighter bombers

The French quickly astonished by the high experience and quick learning of the so called Libyan pilots

according to Major Mohamed Kasha ( Now Major General retired , and one of the trained pilots on the Mirages as Libyan pilot ) the French had translator to improve their talks with the us to make sure everything is clear and well understood, one day that translator spayed some words in Russian then two of the pilots laughed, the fresh know very well that the Libyans till that time hadn't any cooperation with the Soviet Union, then the French had no doubt that we were Egyptian.

The French were very helpful and accommodate with us ( Capitan Kasha saying ), they gave us advices ,books and there experience and very good tactics once one of them told one of our pilots that the standard bombs that comes with the Mirage 5 can’t destroy the Israeli air base run ways, he knowed that we were going to war and the air bases always are the first to be attacked
after 10 months of training in France
the pilots with their Mirage 5's arrived back to Libya to start Phase 2 of training which was against them self as Mirage and later training with Pakistani Mirages, Egyptian Mig 21 and mig 17.

The pilots were completely able to do their missions in the war, the Mirage 5 was more capable than the Mig 17 and Su 7, It have more maneuverability , acceleration , better range of view for the pilot , bigger payload and longer range of flight ( which Egypt was missing it very much in the soviet aircrafts )

In Mid 1973 the Mirage was in Egypt serving in its Air Force
code named Independent Wing 69
the trained pilots were
Colonel \\ Ali Zine El Abidine abdel Gawad
Lieutenant colonels \\ Ahmad Hashem , Mohamed Dawood Mkarem , Mohamed abdel Monaem , Zaki Okash
Majors \\ Haydar Dabos , Moheb SHehab ElDen , Hamdy Abdel Hamed Aql , Hussain Ezzat , Abdel Hady Hussain , Mohamed Amen IbraHem
Pilots \\ Magd El Den , Mohamed Refat Mebarez , Mohamed Reda Mosharaf , KHaled Ahmed Mahmoud Omar , Tariq Farahat , Mohamed Fath Allah , Essam Ahmed MoHamed Sayed and theirs
Reconnaissance pilots \\ Lieutenant colonel SHerif Abbas Alshafee , Major Ahmad Ramzy


The Independent Wing 69 participated in the 6th of October war of 1973 and did special air attacks , having just 4 loses of 19 Mirage5's the wing had in the start of the war, 3 of them were lost over the Mediterranean Sea , 2 because of error in flying system and the third was shoot by a missile in 19th of October , and the final one lost in the war was in air battle in 22nd of October.

Translated by \ Mahmoud Ali Ramez

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