This is a well-known pic of an Israeli Mirage being shot down over the Suez front in 1973. Lacking effective air to air missiles, an Egyptian MIG-21 had to close from behind and blast the Mirage with its cannon. Arab air to air successes were relatively rare but more numerous than Israel has admitted. Dupuy for example wrote that Israel lost 21 aircraft in air battles whereas Herzog admitted only five. Tom Cooper concluded that arab fighters killed 25-30 Israeli jets.
This photo, appearing
in 1973, depicts the result of "a swirling dogfight" over the Golan heights. After being hit by Israeli fire, "a Soviet made Syrian jet crashed in a ball of flame," and the Israelis led off a captured Syrian pilot.
In fact, the jet wasn't a Syrian MIG or an SU. Note the tapering of the nose--quite unlike MIGs or Sukhois. Those aircraft had a blunt nose, with a small protruding cone for their radar.
The jet was in fact an Israeli F-4 Phantom, set ablaze and going down after an engagement with Syrian warplanes, probably MIG-21s. The original claim was typical of media bias favoring the Israeli version of events.
It is true, however, that Israelis scored most of the kills in '73. There is confirmation of this. Below, a Syrian MIG-21 exploding after it was hit. The bottom pic shows an Egyptian MIG-21 going down late in the war, west of the canal. The arrow points to the pilot after ejection. After the loss of much of its SAM network, Egypt had to sacrifice many fighters to provide air cover for its forces.
References
No Victor No Vanquished by Dupuy
ARAB MIGs Vol. 6 by Cooper et al.
