The last time I watched a documentary about dogfights, two stories about the gulf war ends in the Iraqi pilots losing situational awareness, and consequently dying by crashing into the ground.
It makes me wonder a little bit if their skills are vastly overestimated.
In the same Dogfights documentary, they also mentioned Iraqi MiG-25 pilots evading several AIM-7 radar guided missiles fired at the same jet. In other references, there were a few cases of MiG-25s evading USAF F-15 firing missiles at them, and making it back to base.
Experienced USAF pilots have hit the ground during combat operations. That doesn't mean they were not skilled pilots, just that they made a deadly mistake.
It makes me wonder a little bit if their skills are vastly overestimated.