German Pilots Claim 2012 F-22 Kills in Alaska — Eurofighter Typhoon
Two German eurofighter typhoon pilots claimed notional kills against U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors in Alaska in 2012. The exercise took place at Eielson Air Force Base during Red Flag, and the F-22s were carrying external fuel tanks that reduced their stealth. The encounter turned on rigid close-range dogfighting rules, not a full combat comparison.
Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska
The reported kill marks came from within-visual-range engagements at Red Flag, the aerial combat exercise that places allied aircrews in simulated wartime missions. Two German Typhoons scored the notional hits there in 2012, and the pilots later wore Raptor kill decals on their jets. That made the result easy to photograph and easy to misread.
Marco Gumbrecht, a German major and Typhoon pilot, said the Germans had “Raptor salad for lunch.” He also admitted afterward that his Typhoons “couldn’t get within 20 miles of an F-22 in realistic combat parameters.” That gap between the exercise scorecard and real-world performance sits at the center of the story.
F-22 missions and limits
The F-22 unit at the same event completed 80 missions with what the Air Force described as a very high mission success rate. Col. Andreas Pfeiffer described the F-22’s long-range capabilities as “overwhelming.” The result was a training event in which a few close-range notional kills coexisted with a much broader record of F-22 performance across the exercise.
Red Flag has produced similar headline-grabbing results before. The article says the F-22 has been notionally shot down by F-16s in the past, and an EA-18G Growler also reportedly notionaly shot down an F-22 during training; photographic evidence appeared in 2009 showing a Growler with an F-22 kill mark. Those examples show how tightly drawn exercise rules can shape the scoreboard.
Red Flag exercise context
Red Flag is a premier aerial combat training exercise held multiple times a year at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. The exercise is designed to prepare aircrews from the U.S. and allied nations for combat by simulating dangerous missions of modern warfare. In Alaska in 2012, the close-range rules gave the German Typhoons a result that did not translate into a realistic long-range matchup with the F-22.
The practical takeaway for readers is simple: the 2012 Alaska scorecard was a training outcome shaped by exercise limits, not a claim that the F-22 lost its edge in actual combat. The clearest next reference point in the record is the later comparison to how the F-22 performed across 80 missions at the same event, and to the German pilots’ own description of the aircraft’s range advantage.
