One of the true classics of modern military combat aircraft, the F-15, already looks great and an Air National Guard unit just turned up the volume. 

The California-based 144th Fighter Wing traces its lineage to 1943 and since 2013 has been flying F-15C Eagles out of the Fresno Air National Guard Base on an air defense mission. To mark the occasion of one of its Eagles, Tail Flash #113, logging an amazing 10,000 flight hours on its airframe, the unit applied a special Stars & Stripes paint scheme. Along with the flag motif, the fighter also carries a stylized eagle with its talons out and an emblem emblazoned with "Peace Through Air Dominance." 

The flash on #113 denotes the plane as a 1985-vintage F-15C-40-MC type aircraft. Of the 21 Eagles in #113’s production block, no less than seven downed Iraqi fighters during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. As noted by the Air Force, F-15C fighters accounted for 34 of the 37 air-to-air victories in the first Gulf War. Little reason why the Eagle is (interchangeably with the F-4 Phantom of the Vietnam era) sometimes described as "The World's Largest Distributor of MiG Parts."