Part I: "I have always been in love with flying"

Georges was the sort of person who was born to fly. "As far back as I can remember," he informs us, "I have always been in love with flying."

His father flew in the air force under the British flag and Georges, as he describes it, spent many summer days "hanging around the flight line making a nuisance of myself." By the age of 12, he was an expert. He had mastered the air force jargon he overheard at the base and knew a host of technical details, such as the difference between high speed and low speed landings.

Later, after Iraq had undergone a series of revolutions that culminated in the establishment of the Ba'athist regime, Georges first made a name for himself as one of the country's finest pilots. In 1963, the year of the Ba'athist revolution, the air force went through a tumultuous transition. Russia had sent its air force technicians to Iraq to help assemble a new line of airfighters, the MiG-21s, and help train Iraqi pilots to fly them. When the Ba'athists-who, believe it or not, were fiercely anti-communist-took over, they kicked the Soviets out of the country. But, of course, they kept the expensive new planes. The only problem was that not a single person in Iraq knew how to fly them.

But, in what would turn out to be a pattern for the new regime, the higher-ups had no qualms about demanding the impossible. Iraq's two finest pilots were brought to the Al Rashid Air Force Base in Baghdad-Georges Sada and first Lieutenant Hamid al-Dhahi. The air force commander told them simply "By Saturday I want to see this plane in the sky. And I expect one of you boys to be flying it." After the commander left, Lieutenant Hamid al-Dhahi announced that he was "not an MiG pilot" and would not take part in a suicide mission, adding, "Sorry, but Georges can do it." Georges accepted the challenge.

Georges had flown MiG-15s in Soviet Russia, where he had been trained as a pilot. But the MiG-21s operated on a completely different set of principals.

"Compared to the planes I'd been flying, it looked like a rocket ship". Hamid and I walked around the plane and looked it over, inside and out, but we didn't have any idea where to begin."

Georges spent the next few days studying the plane with a team of technicians. When it finally came time to fly, he failed to build up enough speed to take off. He hit the brakes, launching the plane's drag chute to prevent himself from colliding with the end of the run way. He was able to take off on his second attempt but made four false landings before finally bringing the MiG-21 safely back to the base. He continued test flights for the next couple of days. Later Georges would learn that no one was ever supposed to take off in an MiG-21 without using their afterburner. In fact, it was extremely dangerous to do so.

But it didn't matter. Georges had survived. It was announced that an Iraqi had mastered the MiG-21 without any help from the Soviets.

For many Western readers it will be a strange sensation to read about the heroics of a pilot in the Iraqi military. We are not accustomed to admiring men who served in the armed forces of a country which we once considered an enemy. Generally, we either felt rage against Iraqis, as enemies of the "free world," or pity, as the victims of a totalitarian regime (or perhaps as the victims of war and poverty). But Georges, and many other Iraqis, deserve neither our rage nor our pity. They deserve our respect.

In Iraq, Georges was a hero. "Because of that [flight] everybody in Iraq knew my name. I'm sure much of my later success was inspired by that event, and I was able to continue flying throughout my career, from lieutenant all the way to major general."