The A-10 was a ridiculously simple fighter aircraft in its 1999 configuration, as well as the one used in OAF. When measured by twenty-first-century standards, its avionics suite lacked the gadgets that are standard in most modern fighters. There is a long list of what it did not have: GPS for precision navigation; a targeting pod for target identification or laser designation; a data link for receiving or passing target coordinates; a high-speed data bus for a moving map display; precision survival-radio-finding equipment for CSAR; and radar to provide precise target elevations for medium-altitude attacks or to find a tanker at night or in the weather. Its engines, not having been updated, continued to limit the Hog’s maximum airspeed to less than 225 knots at 20,000 feet. Even with this long list of have-nots, the A-10 retained some distinct advantages.
The Hog had abundant cockpit space for stacks of maps, mission materials, and gyrostabilized binoculars. It also had a big canopy on which to write, with grease pencil, the target area and striker information. We had a great mix of weapons, particularly the 30 mm gun and the Maverick missile, both optimized for our targets. We had great logisticians and maintainers to keep the jets in top shape and fully loaded. We had pilots who trained daily in a European environment and learned to capitalize on the A-10’s strengths, compensate for its shortcomings, and skillfully evaluate the ground situation. Notwithstanding these strengths, we still had to refine and develop a few new tactics and techniques during the course of our OAF operations.
Efficient cockpit organization was critical to expeditious target identification and attack. Each pilot had his own techniques and habits that worked best for him. These evolved as we compared and adopted each other’s tricks. For example, we needed a faster method to determine and pass target information critical to incoming fighters. After an A-10 AFAC located a lucrative target, he had to develop the data necessary for the FAC-to-fighter brief. To do so, while flying the aircraft, he would have to use a sequence similar to the following:
1. Find the general target area on a large-scale map (1:250) that had markings for each of the smaller-scale maps (1:50).
2. Determine which 1:50 to use.
3. Find the correct 1:50 among the stack of 16 such maps.
4. Study the terrain, roads, forests, power lines, and houses marked on the map to match the target area on the ground.
5. Read the coordinates, in Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) format, from the scale on the map.
6. Write these coordinates on the inside of the A-10’s canopy in grease pencil.
7. Go back to the 1:50, follow the contour lines to determine the target elevation in meters, and write that on the canopy.
8. Use the Inertial Navigation System to convert the UTM coordinates to latitude and longitude, and write those on the canopy.
9. Use the HUD to convert the elevation from meters to feet, and write that on the canopy.
10. Finally, read the target information to the incoming fighters over the radio.
By contrast, F-16CG and F-14 FACs with targeting pods could simply point their laser designators at a target to determine its relative range, direction, and elevation. The aircraft’s avionics automatically integrate that information with its GPS information and instantly display target coordinates and elevation in the desired format. If the incoming fighters are equipped with a compatible data link, they could pass the information without even using the radio.
We could often get around the need to “pull” coordinates off the map by directing strikers to rendezvous at a known point and then talking the striker’s eyes onto the target, usually with the aid of a mark. Generally, the striker would still need the target elevation.
Several of our Allied Force innovations were genuine “Air Force firsts.” For instance, Lt Col Coke Koechle described the first cooperative employment of an A-10 with a USAF Predator drone. When we understood what had happened and what was possible, we asked for more interactive targeting. Sometimes it seemed rather comical when CAOC personnel, without FAC expertise, tried to use the Predator’s camera feed to describe a tank hiding in the woods. The Predator camera has a very narrow field of view (FOV), similar to looking through a soda straw. The discrepancy between that narrow FOV and the wide FOV an AFAC has when looking out of an A-10 canopy flying at 20,000 feet often resulted in lengthy and frustrating talk-ons. The CAOC transmission would sound something like “the tank is in the woods near a dirt road,” reflecting the only tank, woods, and dirt road the Predator feed displayed. However, the AFAC saw dozens of woods and dirt roads from 20,000 feet and was still no closer to finding the tank. The problem was amplified further when the target descriptions were passed through the ABCCC to the AFAC.
The CAOC recognized the problem, and talk-ons improved when it tasked a pilot with FAC experience to man the microphone. In an attempt to further improve the speed and accuracy of passing target locations, the CAOC directed that a Predator be modified to carry a laser designator. Late in the campaign Capt Larry “LD” Card, one of our weapons officers, flew a test sortie on the Albanian coast to validate the concept. The Predator marked a simulated target using its onboard laser. That spot was visible to LD using his Hog’s laser-spottracking pod, which proved that Predators and Hogs could operate efficiently together. The Predator’s laser could nail down a target location very quickly and avoid the lengthy talk-ons. We were eager to use this new tactic to locate and schwack hidden Serb tanks. However, we were never able to record a successful combat mission with Laser Predator due to the combination of poor target-area weather, limited Laser Predator availability, and—thankfully—the end of the conflict.
Hog success in CSAR included leading two immediate night rescues—the first in US combat history. Our CSAR experts were visionaries and had laid the right foundation to prepare us, and our allies, for this particularly tough mission. Our success reflected those efforts, the participants’ stupendous seat-of-the-pants flying, and their ingenuity. Goldie exemplified that ingenuity when he shut down Serb radars by making “Magnum” calls—those that normally accompany the launch of a high-speed antiradiation missile (HARM)—during rescue of the pilot of Vega 31.
We also put tactical deception to good use. During the first week of KEZ operations, ABCCC announced in the clear over strike frequency, “The KEZ will close in 10 minutes,” followed later by, “The KEZ is closed. All aircraft must depart the AOR.” We understood that the CAOC had directed ABCCC to make those calls. We suggested to the CAOC that code words should normally be used for “KEZ open” and “KEZ closed,” particularly when they were used in the clear. We then worked through our CAOC rep to set up a “head fake”—that is, announce that the KEZ would close and then go back in to look for any targets that might think it was safe to move and had broken cover. Capt Michael J. “Hook” Shenk Jr. describes that mission well.
Capt Ripley E. “Rip” Woodard’s story has nothing to do with employing ordnance, but is simply a feat of courageous airmanship that saved an aircraft with a dual-engine flameout under particularly harrowing circumstances. It is a must-read—twice—that makes it easy to understand why he won the Koren Kerrigan Safety Award in 1999.
One tactical innovation that had enormous potential and just didn’t work out was the employment of a joint A-10 and Apache helicopter team. The US Army had based Apaches in Albania. We had worked with these helicopters before and had some joint tactical-employment doctrine, but some tactical concepts needed to be adapted to reflect the Serbs’ 360-degree, ground-based threat to aircraft. Because the CAOC’s Apache and A-10 reps assumed we would operate together, they worked out a few “practice” sorties during the last week of April. We also looked for additional opportunities to further our orientation. Without compromising our planned KEZ missions, we attempted radio or visual contact with the Apaches as they progressively flew more ambitious training sorties in northern Albania.
To form an effective team, we needed to discuss several issues in detail: CSAR procedures, target identification, and responses to particular threats. We looked forward to the Tirana conference to hammer out those tactical details. As it turned out, Tirana was an operational-level decision meeting between general officers and not one where worker bees could engage in stubby-pencil work. Regrettably, the Apache briefers were not familiar with our KEZ operations and briefed employment concepts and tactics that had been developed during the Cold War. General Short was understandably uncomfortable; he and General Hendrix decided, at that time, not to go forward with Apache operations.
The A-10s and Apaches didn’t fly together in combat; therefore, their potential for success in the KEZ remains pure speculation. Our opinions differed significantly on whether we could have developed workable tactics, but most of us thought it would have been worth the try. The level of military pressure necessary to force a Serbian capitulation was eventually applied to the Serb army by the KLA during a two-week period in early June. Perhaps that same level of pressure could have been applied by the Apaches within days or hours in early May.
Some people may consider the A-10 a Stone Age jet, but its very limitations may have been the catalyst that led to our success. When human ingenuity, born out of necessity, is combined with a cultural desire to find creative solutions to difficult tactical problems, tremendous feats can be accomplished. Such feats accounted for a lot of destroyed enemy armor in the KEZ, and the Hog community should never forget the human traits that led to those results.
Day 4: 27 March 1999. So far so good, if flying an A-10 for seven hours behind a KC-135 in a holding pattern over the Adriatic, while NATO’s air armada wreaked havoc over Serbia, is “good.” The really sad part was that flying nighttime airborne alert was a great mission compared to what most of my squadron mates were doing. They were either sitting ground alert or just watching the war go by from the sidelines at Aviano. We had only been tasked to provide CSAR support as Sandys. Our job was to respond to a jet being shot down and to be overhead in the A-10—one of the most lethal war machines ever created—to orchestrate the pilot’s rescue. So far no one had been shot down, which was a very good thing, and, as a consequence, our operational involvement had been limited.
That night I was scheduled to fly during the graveyard shift. My wingman, Capt Joe Bro Brosious, and I were to take off at midnight. As we traveled from the hotel to the squadron, NATO cancelled its strikes for the night because of bad weather. The CAOC then cancelled our first airborne-alert CSAR two-ship and placed the squadron on ground alert. Capts Buster Cherrey and John “Slobee” O’Brien had been scheduled to fly first and were now pulling ground alert as Sandy 30 and 31.
I turned my attention to more interesting work. In two days our squadron would begin leading daytime attacks on the Serbian army deployed in Kosovo. I was in charge of planning those attacks, so I drove over to wing intelligence, on the other side of the Aviano runway, to review its information. I had just started looking at some Kosovo imagery when an airman in the room yelled, “An F-117 has been shot down!”
That couldn’t be right! The strikes had been called off for tonight. We didn’t even have Buster and Slobee airborne. Later I would learn that, although the NATO strikes had been cancelled, the F-117 was part of a US-only strike.
Someone handed me a set of coordinates and the pilot’s name and rank scribbled on a yellow sticky. I raced back to the squadron and pulled up as Buster and Slobee were stepping to their jets. I gave them the information I had and talked strategy with Buster for about 30 seconds. We decided to have the MH-53J Pave Low helicopters launch when Sandy 41, our second set of A-10s flown by Capts Meegs Meger and Scrape Johnson, were refueling on the tanker. Sandy 41’s job would be to contact the helicopters, update them on the rescue plan, and then escort them to the survivor.
I craved more information. The F-117 had to be a Black Sheep from the 8th FS, the only F-117s deployed at Aviano at the time. I grabbed Lt Glib Gibson and sent him to the 8th to get as much information as possible. Glib quickly procured copies of the pilot’s (call sign Vega 31) route of flight and, most importantly, his ISOPREP card, which contains personal data that only the pilot knows and won’t forget even under a lot of pressure. A pilot reviews that information prior to each combat sortie. Glib, acting on his own initiative, made the important decision to drive out on the flight line to give the ISOPREP-card information to Buster right before takeoff.
Meanwhile I was performing my cat-juggling act at the squadron. I had intelligence pull maps and plot the survivor’s coordinates. I was relieved when I saw that he was within 20 miles of the Croat-Serb border and well clear of major threats. CAOC personnel were on the phone wanting to know our plan. I told them the time we wanted the helicopters to launch and that they should muster as many air-refueling tankers as possible. Gas equals time in operations such as this, and there was no way to know how long it would take us to complete this mission. The F-16CG (Block 40) and F-16CJ (Block 50) squadrons had volunteered an additional six jets apiece for the mission. Thirty minutes after first notification of the shoot down, I was giving the most important briefing of my life, informing the F-16s on their roles in what proved to be the largest CSAR since Vietnam.
The F-16CGs carried targeting pods and could drop laserguided bombs. My intention was to slow down the Serbian army’s search for Vega. I selected the intersections of major lines of communication, near where I believed the survivor to be located, as potential strike targets. Still, I was concerned about the availability of gas on the tankers and didn’t know when we would need the strikes, so I decided to keep the F-16CGs on ground alert until we needed them. From Aviano they could hit those targets within an hour. As it turned out, we never launched the F-16CGs because low-level clouds over Serbia would have made it impossible for them to see their targets and the initial survivor coordinates proved to be in error by more than 40 miles.
The F-16CJs carried the HARM and had the “Wild Weasel” defense-suppression mission. It was their job to keep the radar-guided SAMs in the belt around Belgrade from shooting us down. I wanted the F-16CJs to launch ASAP. Those six jets would join the eight F-16CJs already airborne that had been a part of the strike package when Vega 31 was shot down.
I concluded the briefing in 20 minutes. Joe Bro and I then powwowed and updated our information before we stepped to our jets. Our job was to support Sandy 30. My individual call sign and, since I was the flight lead, our flight call sign was Sandy 51; Joe Bro’s individual call sign was Sandy 52. Joe Bro and I planned to come off the tanker with a full load of fuel just as Sandy 30 flight would be reaching its bingo fuel and required departure for the tanker. We had no idea how long the rescue would take. Using this strategy, Buster and I could swap out being the on-scene commander and ensure that a Sandy flight would always be with the survivor.
Joe Bro and I stepped just as Buster and Slobee, Sandy 30, were taking off. I thought that the timing should work well. Meegs and Scrape’s two-ship, Sandy 41, would get airborne in another 30 minutes. I performed the preflight inspection on my A-10. The jet was configured with two IIR Maverick air-to-surface missiles, seven white-phosphorous (also known as Willy Pete) rockets, seven night-illumination rockets, and 1,000 30 mm rounds for the gun. We were not carrying any bombs, but Meegs and Scrape had CBU-87 cluster bombs if we needed them. I climbed into the jet, and, while performing my cockpit checks prior to takeoff, I heard Meegs relay on the victor radio that Buster had contacted the survivor and had an updated position for him. When I pulled out my map and plotted this new set of coordinates, my heart sank. Vega was south of Novisad and just west of the suburbs of Belgrade—in the heart of Serbia.
My heart was pounding a mile a minute as I took off from Aviano AB. This base in northern Italy, located at the foot of the Dolomite Mountains, provided a spectacular view at night, particularly when I put on my NVGs. The weather was clear, with a big full moon overhead. Unfortunately, the weather did not remain clear for long. Twenty miles south of the field I entered very thick clouds as I continued my climb to altitude. Looking at my wing, I could see that I was picking up some light rime ice. Though not dangerous to flight, the ice was degrading my weapons as it covered the seekers on my Mavericks and AIM-9 air-to-air missiles. I continued my climb to flight level (FL) 290 to get above the clouds and start subliming the ice off my missiles.
Magic, the call sign used by the crew of the NAEW, gave me a vector to the air-refueling track. I sent Joe Bro over to a separate frequency to contact Moonbeam for an update. Moonbeam was the ABCCC EC-130 aircraft that also served as the airborne mission coordinator during CSARs. It had responsibility for coordinating with the CAOC and Magic to ensure the timely flow of all the resources the CSAR operation needed.
Except for the icing and the survivor being in the suburbs of Belgrade, things were going pretty well. However, I was in for a shock when I keyed the mike to transmit on my UHF (uniform) radio—it was dead. I desperately tried to reset it by switching it off and on. Nothing. This was not good since the UHF was my primary radio and the survivor had only a UHF radio. In frustration I beat on the radio trying to pound it into life. Nothing.
I was over Bosnia—cruising at 300 knots in silence. I turned my radio off, raised my eyes up to the stars above, and prayed, “Lord, I’ve never prayed to you like this before, but I need your help like I’ve never needed it before. There is a man on the ground out there who needs me, and I can’t help him if this radio won’t work. Lord, I need you to fix this radio, because I can’t do it by myself.” I gently turned the radio back on and heard the angelic voice of Magic, wanting to know why I hadn’t responded to his radio calls.
Under my breath I said, “Thank you, Lord,” and keyed the mike to respond. Once again the UHF radio went dead. The A-10 carried three radios: UHF, VHF-AM, and FM. The UHF and VHF radios have good range, but the FM was good for only a few miles and useful only between jets in the same flight. I called Joe Bro on our interflight Fox Mike: “Two, my UHF is dead. I need you to talk to Magic.” I left my UHF off for a couple of minutes and then turned it back on. I could hear Joe Bro talking to Magic. At least I could monitor UHF. This was going to be painful but workable. I could hear what was being said on the radio, but I had to call Joe Bro on Fox Mike and have him relay my calls on UHF. This just proved what the Rolling Stones said: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you’ll get what you need.”
We continued to the tanker track located over the center of Bosnia. The A-10 was not designed for high-altitude flight. Loaded with munitions, we could not refuel above 20,000 feet. Fortunately the KC-135, Franc 74, was at FL 200. Descending out of FL 290, I picked up Franc going in and out of a broken cloud deck. We pulled in behind him just as he reentered the clouds. My refueling went without a hitch, but Joe Bro had trouble opening his air-refueling door. He had some icing around it and couldn’t get the handle to move. I still don’t know how he did it. We were flying at night, in the weather, and he was on the wing of that KC-135. While still flying the aircraft, Joe Bro unstrapped from his ejection seat to get better leverage on the handle and somehow forced the air-refueling door open.
Coming off the tanker, we climbed out of the weather, leveled off at FL 270, and turned east towards Serbia. I contacted Sandy 41 (Meegs) on victor, and he told us to continue to the Bosnia-Serbian border. Meanwhile Sandy 30 (Buster) had located Vega 31 and had everything ready for the rescue—everything, that is, except the helicopters. We were still waiting on the two MH-53 Pave Lows and, as I learned later, an MH-60 Pave Hawk. Initially Meegs had not been able to get hold of them, and when he finally raised them he discovered that the helos, call sign Moccasin, did not have the fuel on board to execute. The helicopters had been airborne about as long as Buster had been. Instead of launching at the time I had passed through the CAOC, they launched 90 minutes earlier and had been holding in Croatia, just east of the Serbian border near the first set of wrong coordinates. Later I learned that the time passed by the CAOC had been given in local time instead of Zulu time (Greenwich mean time). Local, or Central European, time is two hours ahead of Zulu time in March, so Moccasin thought he was already half an hour late and requested permission to launch immediately. This simple mistake, by someone not familiar enough with combat operations to know that all times in combat are expressed in Zulu, turned the rescue into an all-night affair and nearly cost the survivor his freedom.
Buster aborted the pickup and sent everyone to his respective tanker—everyone but Joe Bro and me. The survivor, Vega 31, was concerned with the life of his radio’s battery and turned it off for 45 minutes while the helicopters refueled. Joe Bro and I were the only ones with gas, so our job was to monitor the survivor’s frequency in case he needed to talk to us. I set up a north-south holding pattern just west of the Serbian border, where we listened and waited. We were in dangerous territory, near the place where an F-15A had shot down a Serbian MiG-29 Fulcrum just two nights before. I focused my attention to the east, where the MiG bases were located. Although the weather over Bosnia was bad, I could see into Serbia and make out the lights from the villages and towns all the way to Belgrade. A thunderstorm was building over Belgrade, which prevented me from making out the lights of that city. As the minutes ticked away, I watched the weather rapidly deteriorate. It appeared that the clouds over Bosnia were now pouring into Serbia. A very low cloud deck was moving east, and I could see town after town disappear beneath a blanket of clouds. Why did Moccasin have to launch early? We’d have had Vega 31 out of there by now. There was no way an A-10 Sandy could fly beneath that cloud deck—nor was I sure that even Moccasin could still make it.
While I was contemplating such negative thoughts, Joe Bro added a new thought: “Hey, what’s that to the west?” I looked up to see two contrails heading our way. They had to be a set of friendly NATO fighters from the Bosnian CAP. We watched as they began to perform a classic pincer maneuver. I thought they must have been committing on some MiGs, although I hadn’t heard any warnings from Magic. It soon became apparent that they were really interested in us, as my radarwarning receiver screamed at me, and the lead aircraft began a descent and turned our way.
I was in no way interested in being a part of a friendly fire incident, so I turned to put the fighter on the beam and kept turning to keep him in sight as he converged within a mile. As the fighter continued to converge, I saw a bright flash coming from his jet. Thinking the worst, I immediately started putting out chaff and flares as fast as I could push them out. Joe Bro was behind me doing the same thing. I was relieved when I realized the fighter had only ejected a flare and had not launched a missile at us. When he came alongside me, I saw that it was an F-16CG. The pilot had on NVGs and had pulled up to identify us. Satisfied, he climbed and departed to the west, leaving Joe Bro and me to clean out our flight suits and refocus on the task at hand.
Meanwhile Sandy 30 had refueled and was heading our way. Buster saw the flares and wanted to know what was up. I calmly said that all was well, passed on-scene command back to him, and turned towards the tanker for my second refueling of the night.
I gave the lead to Joe Bro since I couldn’t talk on the UHF radio. I slid back to a position about three miles behind his jet and let him work for a while. Magic’s crew members were in over their heads on this one. It seemed that they had no idea how many jets were out here, and they could not provide us any help in locating our tanker. This was going to be sporty since the A-10 has no radar. Fortunately our tanker, Franc 74, was awesome and held in a sucker hole for us. I was running really low on gas. I saw the tanker first and called his position to Joe Bro. The tanker was below me going in the opposite direction, so I executed a descending turn and joined on the boom. Joe Bro finally spotted the tanker and informed me that some jet was already on the tanker. That jet, I told him, was mine. He then joined on the tanker.
I salute the bravery of that night’s tanker crews. Unarmed and unafraid they brought us fuel well within the range of Serb MiGs. We completed the refueling without a hitch. Joe Bro’s refueling door worked fine, and within 20 minutes we were on our way. Unfortunately, things were not going so well for Buster.
Buster had finished his coordination and had everyone ready for the pickup. Meegs had Moccasin in position and everything looked good except for one thing. The survivor, Vega 31, had not checked in on the radio, and it was now nearly 10 minutes after the time we expected him to reestablish contact. Moonbeam then relayed a message from our intelligence folks that the Serbs were claiming to have picked him up—not exactly the news we wanted to hear. It was time to start worrying. This was by far the low point on the emotional roller coaster that I had been riding all night. We sat in silence for what felt like an eternity and listened. Every minute or so Buster called for Vega—no response.
This couldn’t happen. We had worked too hard to lose him now. For over six months, we had trained over Bosnia, developing and refining our skills at CSAR in preparation for this moment. There was no way we are going to leave Vega to the Serbs.
Just when I couldn’t take it anymore, Buster made another call, “Vega Three-One, Sandy Three-Zero.”
In response was the weak but extremely calm reply, “Sandy Three-Zero, this is Vega Three-One.” The roller coaster was on its way back up.
Buster’s next concern was the possibility that Vega 31 had been captured and the Serbs were now luring us into an ambush. Buster asked Vega another question from Vega’s ISOPREP card, and there was a pause.
“If you do not authenticate, we’ll have to wait a little while.” Buster was trying to give Vega 31 the option of calling off the pickup. If Vega came back with the wrong answer, we would know the Serbs had him. Vega, however, quickly answered the question and told us it still looked good for the pickup.
“All players, all players, execute, execute, execute.” This was the call we had been waiting for Buster to make all night. It was time to move the helos forward and get on with the pickup. Buster prepared Vega for exactly what he was to do when the helos approached.
“Sandy, Vega Three-One, you want me to stay up?”
“Affirm, affirm,” Buster replied. Vega was a bit confused about what was going on. He wanted to know if he should continue monitoring his radio or not. I considered this a good sign. If Vega didn’t have an idea of when we were planning the pickup, the Serbs should also have trouble figuring it out.
Buster then called us: “Sandy Five-One and Five-Two, I want you to come in and anchor 10 miles southwest of objective and provide mutual support until Sandy Three-Zero, Three-One bingo.”
“Copy, en route to 10 miles southwest objective now,” I answered. Joe Bro and I were holding on the border, and Buster wanted us to move forward and hold southwest of Vega. Buster and Slobee were running low on gas and would soon have to go searching for another tanker.
“With your eyeball out and your raw up. Confirm your raw is up,” I transmitted to Joe Bro.
He replied, “That is affirmative. Raw is up, chaff flare and pod is on.” Before we entered Serbia we double-checked our jet’s self-protection equipment. The radar warning receiver (RWR, pronounced raw), chaff, flares, and the ECM pod are the systems we would use to defeat any SAMs the Serbs might launch.
“Sandy Three-Zero, SAM reported active BRA, north 10.” Magic was reporting that a nearby SAM was trying to track Buster and Slobee.
“Five-One, Four-One and Four-Two are in trail on you. We’re about 700 pounds above bingo before tanker.” Meegs and Scrape, Sandy 41 flight, had joined in behind Joe Bro and me and were following us into the heart of Serbia. They had enough gas to hang around for another 15 minutes.
“Five-One, Three-Zero; we’re going to have to bug out for gas. The signal is standard; confirm you have the information to give that signal.” Buster was flying on fumes and had to return to the tanker. He was making sure that I had all the info to get Vega to signal the helos at the right time.
“OK, you got the helos up SAR bravo?” I hadn’t heard the helicopters on “bravo” frequency yet. I was trying to act like I was in charge now.
“They’re coming up SAR bravo now.” Meegs interjected.
“Sandy, Moccasin Six-Zero on PLS bravo.” The helos were finally up on the bravo frequency associated with the personnel-locator system.
“Magic, Three-Zero is going to have to RTB for gas. Moccasin, Sandy Five-One now OSC.” Buster had finally turned west. He informed Magic that he was returning to base (RTB) due to low fuel. In reality, Buster was so low on fuel that he had to find a tanker or divert to Tuzla, Bosnia. He also informed Moccasin that I was the OSC.
“Sandy Five-One, Moccasin is up—can you hear that on uniform?” I hadn’t responded to Moccasin’s first radio call. Meegs knew I had been having uniform-radio problems and was asking on victor to make sure I could hear him.
“That’s affirmative, Five-Two is going to have to answer, I’m UHF receive only.” I responded to Meegs using victor. This is where it was going to get hard. Up until now, I had been able to make most of my radio calls on victor. Moccasin and Vega had only uniform radios, and I would have to relay the info through Joe Bro.
“Two, One, Fox plain. I want you to call when you hear Moccasin call two miles out. That is when I want you to call the number.” I began briefing Joe Bro on when Vega should turn on his signal.
“Let’s go secure.” Joe Bro transmitted; he wanted to talk on our Fox-Mike secure radio.
“OK, have you got me secure?” I replied.
“I’ve got you loud and clear. Confirm the number.” Joe Bro was on another frequency when Buster told Vega that he would use a number off Vega’s ISOPREP card as the sign for Vega to begin signaling the helos.
“The number is three, how do you copy? Number three?” I asked. The response from Joe Bro was nothing but static.
“One, Two, fox in the plain I’m not getting you secure now. We’re going to have to find some way to pass that because I don’t [have it].” Joe Bro was saying that the secure function on his radio had failed. I had to figure out how to get him the number three without compromising it on a nonsecure frequency.
“Ok, I’ve got it. If I’m pulling supervisor what am I called?” One of my additional duties back at the squadron was pulling supervisor duty during flying operations. The Air Force calls this job “top three,” because, by regulation, only the top-three positions in the squadron are permitted to be supervisor.
“OK, gotcha,” Joe Bro responded, indicating he understood.
“OK,” I directed, “check Moccasin in on this freq.” We had not yet spoken to the helos, and I wanted to make sure they recognized Joe Bro’s voice and knew who the OSC was.
“Moccasin, Sandy Five-Two, SAR bravo.”
“Sandy, this is Moccasin. Go ahead, sir.”
“OK. Like a two-mile out call.”
“Moccasin copies, two miles out.”
“Two, One. I want you to check in Vega. Make sure he is still there.” Now that we had coordinated with the helos, I realized that we hadn’t heard from Vega in quite a while. I wanted to make sure nothing had happened to him.
“Vega, Sandy Five-Two.”
“Sandy Five-Two, Vega Three-One.”
“OK, got you loud and clear. Stand by for my number.” Everything was going great. Maybe this wouldn’t be that hard after all. Before I could even crack a smile, Moccasin broke in.
“Climb! Climb! Climb!” Moccasin was flying low-level at night across unfamiliar enemy territory. Electrical lines suddenly appeared and one of the helos had directed they climb immediately to avoid them.
Joe Bro broke in, “I’ve got a weird looking smoke trail to the west.” I looked to the west and saw it as well. Having never seen anything like that before, I assumed it was a SAM the Serbs had snuck in to the west of us.
“Copy, we might have to fight our way out.” Even as I was saying these words, the smoke trail continued overhead and into Belgrade. We had seen our first night HARM shot from the F-16CJs. Whew, that made me feel much better.
“OK, Two is spike—Mud SAM 150.” Joe Bro informed me that his RWR showed him being tracked by a SAM.
“One, same, … Five-One defending SAM south.” The SAM was tracking me now. I passed the information to Magic on victor. I hoped he would pass it to the F-16CJs on a separate frequency.
Now we were in the hornets’ nest. We had made it to Vega’s position on the outskirts of Belgrade. The Serbs had been waiting for us to come in with the helos, and now our RWR showed that their SAMs were lighting us up. What was worse, the thunderstorm building over Belgrade was just south of our position. We would not be able to see any SAMs launched from that direction until they broke out of that weather and were right on top of us.
“SAM active BAT 320/32.” Magic informed us that another SAM was active. It was just northeast of our position.
“Sandy Five-One defending SAM east, 280/14 bull.” I was being tracked by the northeast SAM. I put out chaff, checked to see that my pod was working, and turned to put the new threat on my beam.
“SAM BAT 195/25 now reported as active.” The Serbs were turning on their whole SAM belt for us.
“Sandy Five-Two is defending SAM north.”
“Sandy Five-One is Magnum SAM north.” Magnum was the call the F-16CJs used when they fired a HARM. I remembered hearing that, during the first three nights of the war, the Serbs had shut down their SAMs when they heard Magnum. I didn’t have any HARMs on board, but that didn’t prevent me from making the radio call.
“One is naked.” I announced, to which Joe Bro added, “Two is naked.” Naked meant we were no longer being tracked. The SAMs had shut down almost instantaneously. We could then put our focus back on the helos. At least we knew that the Serbs were looking at us and, so far, they had not been able to see or track the helos at low altitude.
“Two, let’s start heading west,” I transmitted to Joe Bro; I wanted to get a little more distance between us and the SAMs.
“Sandy, Moccasin is two miles out.”
“Vega, Sandy Five-Two, three.” Joe Bro called for the signal. We waited in silence for Moccasin to call visual with Vega.
“Moccasin Six-Zero flight is overhead.” Moccasin had made it to Vega’s position but still couldn’t see him.
“Five-One, Four-One, recommend you get Vega up if he sees the Moccasins.” Meegs made a good suggestion: Since Moccasin couldn’t see Vega, maybe Vega could see the helicopters and could help out.
“Vega, Sandy Five-Two. Confirm you see the helos.”
“I believe so,” Vega replied.
“Give them a vector if you can,” Joe Bro added.
“It looks like they need to come a bit right… confirm they have a light on?” Vega questioned and then said to Moccasin, “Need to come south.”
“Copy, call when we’re overhead,” Moccasin answered.
“Five-One, we’ve got to depart. We’re westbound. Be advised CJs working, observed HARM shot.” Meegs and Scrape had finally bingoed. They had stayed much longer than I had expected, so I knew they must have been riding on fumes.
“Sandy, Sandy, Vega Three-One, do they have my strobe?” Vega was rightly concerned that the pickup was taking way too long.
“At this time we’re looking for his strobe, we’ve got two small lights on the ground, but no strobe.”
“Yeah, for Vega Three-One, that was a car; I thought it was you guys.” Vega misidentified the sound of a car nearby for that of the helicopters.
“Moccasin copies. Are you up strobe, sir?”
“That is affirmative,” Vega replied.
“Hold it up in the air. Point it at the helicopter if you can.”
“Roger, I’m not sure where you are now.”
The tension was thick enough to cut with a knife. The helos had been circling around Vega’s position for over five minutes now. Not only was this risky to the helos and Vega, but also we would have to call off the search due to low fuel if we didn’t find him soon.
“Stand by for Vega Three-One, I think my strobe is inop.”
“Copy, have we flown over you yet?” Moccasin asked.
“No, I think you are more north, northwest of me for a mile or two,” Vega replied.
Meegs had continued to monitor the radio during his departure and suggested to me that Vega use his pen-gun flare. It shoots a signal flare up a couple of hundred feet. It was designed to penetrate the jungle canopy of Vietnam. However, it was also an overt signal that the Serbs would be able to see.
“OK, we need you to get out a pen-gun flare.” Joe Bro passed on the suggestion.
“Vega, if we’re this close, make an overt signal and we’ll get you,” Moccasin added in agreement.
“How about a regular flare?” Vega said, when he came across an alternative while searching through his survival kit for his pen gun.
“Moccasin Six-Zero, sounds good… and we’re good vis on Vega Three-One,” Moccasin said seeing the flare as soon as Vega set it off.
“Vega and Moccasin, if you are tally each other, kill the flare.” Joe Bro wanted to make sure that the flare was put out as soon as possible.
“We are bingo, bingo, bingo. Kill the flare,” Moccasin then transmitted. The meaning of that radio call puzzled us until we later found out that in the special operations community “bingo” means that the side gunner’s machine gun has reached the aft stop. In our fixed-wing world, bingo means you are out of gas.
“Overhead, you visual me? For Vega Three-One, you got me?” Vega was concerned about the bingo call as well.
“And Vega give them a vector if you need to,” Joe Bro suggested.
“Yeah, they got me right just about overhead.”
The SAMs had been quiet for the last 10 minutes but suddenly came back up. Joe Bro called being tracked by one to the south. He put out chaff and beamed the threat.
“Sandy Five-One is Magnum that position.” I made the Magnum radio call again, hoping the Serb SAMs were listening and thinking I was shooting a HARM at them.
“Sandy Five-Two is naked,” Joe Bro called. It worked again—the SAMs shut down, expecting a HARM to be heading their way.
“Moccasin, say your status.” While reacting to the SAMs, we had lost track of the pickup.
“We are outbound at this time… about 20 miles from good-guy land.” That was the best radio call I had ever heard in my life. Vega was aboard the helos, and they were headed back to Bosnia.
“Sandy, you are being tracked with eyes by SAM,” Moonbeam transmitted, relaying some intel to us as we turned west.
“Survivor authenticated, no injuries,” Moccasin called, informing us of Vega’s remarkably good physical condition.
“All stations SAM launch.” This call from Magic jolted us back to reality. The Serbs, seeing us turn west, launched a SAM at Joe Bro and me. Fortunately, we were out of their range, and neither of us even saw the missile.
Joe Bro and I continued west to the border, and then our waiting began. Moccasin’s flight to the border would take another 10 minutes, and it seemed forever before he called to let us know he had made it out.
I relayed this information on victor by transmitting the most rewarding call I have ever made: “Miller time!”
Joe Bro and I turned towards home. I calculated my gas and had just enough to make it back to Aviano. We landed at Aviano exhausted but extremely happy after our six-hour mission. I quickly shut down my A-10, got out to join the celebration on the ramp, and began hugging everyone I met. I had trained all my life for this moment, and I simply could not contain the joy that came from what we had just accomplished.
We eventually made it to the squadron and were trying to debrief when we heard that Vega had made it back to Aviano. We all piled into cars and drove onto the ramp where a C-130 had just parked. A large group clustered around Vega, hugging everyone in sight. I looked down at Vega’s boots and saw that they were still covered in Serbian mud. I reached down and scraped off a bit for a souvenir. Vega was then taken to the hospital to have his slightly burned hand treated.
It was now morning, and most of us were starving. The bowling alley was the only place open for breakfast. Over pancakes and omelets, the six of us Sandys, along with Capt Rip Woodard and some of the F-16CJ pilots, reveled in our accomplishments. We couldn’t celebrate too long; we were in need of crew rest before another night of strikes. C’est la guerre.
I did not go with the 81st EFS in March of 1999 when it deployed to Aviano to participate in air operations over the former Yugoslavia. I was scheduled to separate from the active Air Force in April and by regulation could not be sent off station. I remained behind to help run what was left of the squadron at Spangdahlem and prepare for my upcoming separation. At that time I was a flight commander and had just completed my checkout as an AFAC.
I had mixed emotions about not going to Aviano and missing the action. I really wanted to be there, but since I was not a CSAR-qualified pilot, and that was our mission, I figured I would have little chance to participate. On the other hand, I was happy to finally have some time to spend with my wife, Christine, and our two children, Michael and Megan.
On Sunday, 28 March, Maj Greg “V Neck” Vanderneck called me at home from squadron ops. He told me I was to pack and leave ASAP on a short trip to Headquarters USAFE at Ramstein AB, Germany. He said he couldn’t tell me much but that USAFE leadership wanted an 81st FS rep around to answer A-10 questions. I packed my A-3 bag for a three-day trip, an assumption I would soon regret; I then hit the road.
At Ramstein I met with Lt Col Greg “Snoopy” Schulze. Only a few months before, he had been the commander of the 81st FS. Snoopy filled me in on the plan to use our Hogs as AFACs and strikers against the Serb forces in Kosovo. He further explained that he was going to be briefing this plan to Maj Gen William T. Hobbins, USAFE’s director of air and space operations, and Gen John Jumper, commander of USAFE and NATO’s Allied Air Forces Central Europe (AIRCENT). I would be expected to answer questions about tactics and capabilities. Snoopy was current and qualified in the Hog and could have easily fielded these questions. However, they also planned to be in Brussels the next morning to brief Gen Wesley Clark, USA, NATO’s SACEUR and commander of EUCOM. The USAFE leadership thought having a line pilot around would add credibility to the plan and their briefing. The trip to Brussels was subsequently scrubbed because of weather. I assumed that at some point the USAFE planners briefed General Clark over the phone.
I returned to Spangdahlem, and the next day I went to squadron operations, where V Neck had another tasker for me. He said I was to take our last flyable jet to Aviano; that was my first indication the plan had been approved. Aviano had been crammed with jets, so there had to be a good reason for them to allow us to park another A-10 on the ramp. V Neck added that if I left soon, I might be able to catch a scheduled C-130 back to Spangdahlem that evening but cautioned that it might be an overnight trip. Fortunately, I still had my A-3 bag in the trunk of my car from my trip to Ramstein; I was airborne en route to Aviano an hour and a half later.
It was a quick trip to Aviano. As soon as I arrived, I looked into the availability of transportation back to Spangdahlem and was told to expect a flight in two or three days. So I checked into the Hotel Antares and ran into Capt Buster Cherrey, who was scheduled to command one of the packages that Snoopy had briefed me on earlier. I was surprised at how quickly the CAOC (affectionately and accurately tagged CHAOS by those who have worked there) had put the plan into action. I guessed that our squadron leadership and weapons gurus had been working on it for a while.
I ran into Maj Goldie Haun at the hotel bar. He was on his way back to his room but required little encouragement to stay and tell me what he could about the Vega 31 pickup. As he told me about the intensity and heroics of the rescue, I felt a great deal of pride to be a member of a squadron that had performed so well in the face of adversity.
Before we left the bar, Goldie asked me if I was interested in staying at Aviano; the squadron was shorthanded and in need of AFAC-qualified pilots and top-three squadron supervisors. He said that if I was interested, the squadron commander could probably arrange an extension on my separation date.
The next day I was plugged into the top-three spot on the schedule. There was no transportation to Spangdahlem, and the schedulers had already learned not to let anyone go home without being tasked. I decided to stay and talk to our commander, Lt Col Kimos Haave. He started work on getting my separation date extended, and I wished that I had packed for more than three days. What follows is my recollection of a few of the more memorable missions I flew during OAF.
On 7 April I was scheduled to fly an AFAC mission as number two in a two-ship using the call sign Bear 11. Buster would be my flight lead and the mission commander (MC) for the entire KEZ package. I was looking forward to going up with him in hopes of getting some pointers from one of the best in the business. Our brief was scheduled for 0200, and it looked like it could be a long, wicked day; our mission was scheduled for three 45-minute periods in the AOR and four air refuelings, for a total mission time of about seven hours. The initial trip to the tanker would take an hour and 40 minutes.
It sounded like a pretty simple mission: fly the airplane to the right country, find targets, and destroy them. In actuality it was much more demanding—particularly for the MC. Although I would expect Buster to say it was no big deal, I am quite sure that he was very busy for most of the mission.
As the campaign progressed, the missions became more routine and the MC job a little easier. However, those early missions required diligent oversight by a very capable MC to ensure that the packages were effective and to minimize the chance of an allied loss. The MC had to fly his own airplane, be a good flight lead, and do the target search and AFAC thing while also being responsible for a myriad of other duties. Those duties included, but were not limited to, coordinating SEAD, CAP, and jammer coverage; deconflicting the airspace used by dozens of aircraft; and adjusting the plan in real time for any contingency. Even with perfectly clear communication, that would be a challenge. Throw in comm jamming, accents from 28 different languages, and failure of half of the aircraft’s Have Quick radios to work in the secure and antijam modes, and it starts to look like a very bad dream. Only MCs know the disappointment of locating a target in their binoculars and at the same time learning that the SEAD aircraft are bingo. They will be distracted for several valuable minutes to handle this problem—just one of many they will work during their vul period—while the target is escaping.
Kosovo had been split in half to help deconflict friendly aircraft. We were working in the eastern half of the country and had been alternating vuls with Meegs Meger and his wingman, Johnny “CBU” Hamilton. I covered Buster as he searched for targets during the first vul period without much luck. We headed south, got some gas over Macedonia and Albania and headed back over Kosovo to continue our search for Serb military assets. Our efforts to find valid targets continued to be stymied by disciplined Serb ground forces. They were aware of our presence and were careful not to move on the ground and draw attention to themselves. The fact that we had to remain above 10,000 feet AGL during our search made finding Serb forces that much harder.
During our second vul period, ABCCC personnel (using the call sign Bookshelf) passed the CAOC’s direction to find and identify a Straight Flush radar. They said it was located in a valley west of Pec, in the far western part of the country. A Straight Flush is the short-range acquisition and fire-control radar associated with the SA-6 Gainful SAM system. Our vulnerability to this system prompted the establishment of a policy that prohibited us from entering a region without SEAD. We found it ironic that now we were being directed to virtually fly over a suspected SA-6 site. Buster called to confirm that they really wanted our A-10s to locate a Straight Flush. When the answer came back “yes,” we spent some time searching over the mountainous region of western Kosovo, where tops were up to 8,700 feet above mean sea level (MSL). We searched from an altitude of 19,000 feet MSL to maintain our minimum altitude of 10,000 feet AGL, which made it even more difficult to locate targets on the valley floor—often more than 2,000 feet below the peaks.
We searched for about 20 to 30 minutes and then told Bookshelf that we could not establish contact with the Straight Flush—we couldn’t see it, and it didn’t shoot at us. Since we had been briefed that the destruction of enemy air defenses was not our mission, I’m not sure that we would have been allowed to kill the SA-6 even if we had found it.
It was while we were looking for the Straight Flush that I realized how much trust flight leads place in their wingmen during combat. Target search was a tricky thing. We had great binoculars, but using them meant having to fly left-handed and having a field of view limited to only what can be seen through the binoculars. I found it disconcerting to know that, when I was using those binos, I would probably not see a threat until it was too late. AFACs could concentrate on target search and not worry (too much) about threats if their wingmen diligently cleared for threats to the formation. Buster showed a great deal of faith in my ability to compensate for his vulnerability when he searched for that SA-6 with his binoculars over the mountains of western Kosovo. Most of my remaining OAF missions were flown over Kosovo as a flight-lead AFAC, and I relied on my wingmen to cover me. They never let me down, and I owe them my life.
After nearly completing the last of our three planned vul periods in the KEZ, we got a call from Bookshelf on an “unsecure” radio announcing that the KEZ would be closing early for the day. We headed south for the tanker, curious about the reason for the early closure. As we rendezvoused with the tanker, the Bookshelf crew asked us to contact them on our secure radio. Buster went off frequency to talk to Bookshelf and left me to handle the tanker coordination. We had refueled, departed the tanker, and headed north by the time Buster filled me in on the plan.
Serbian ground forces had been very disciplined, curtailing their movements when they knew we were overhead. Our intelligence people had determined that, as soon as we departed the AOR, they would resume their rampage across the country. Someone convinced the CAOC to run an unannounced KEZ vul period with the hope of catching the Serbs off guard. Buster had been off frequency to coordinate the unscheduled vul and to ensure we had all the necessary support: SEAD, tankers, and counterair (whose details no one had yet planned).
We went back into the KEZ and found Meegs already working a target area with reports of medium AAA in the area. We offered to come in above them to provide some mutual support. But after another 20 minutes, I began to lose faith in this plan. I had been in the cockpit for about seven hours, my rear hurt, and I was out of water bottles and piddle packs. It was becoming a survival situation for me, and I hadn’t even been shot at yet. It’s a good thing we didn’t throw in the towel because our luck changed in a hurry.
Buster’s radio call, as Meegs reminded us later, was “I got a whole schmit-load of movers!” Before he could finish the sentence, I picked up the convoy he was talking about—eight or so vehicles southbound on a dirt road. I could tell they were really hauling because, even from 16,000 feet, I could see the vehicles moving in three dimensions as they pounded through the terrain. I remember seeing the front end of one APC coming up and then crashing back down—spewing up dirt and dust. Buster quickly rolled in, locked up a vehicle with a Maverick, and fired.
That one attack not only destroyed the vehicle it hit, but also furthered our efforts by splitting the convoy into north and south elements, providing a mark for other fighters. Splitting the convoy was important because it allowed us to attack three or four of the vehicles and to hand off the remaining ones to Meegs and his CBUs. Using a Maverick missile or a 500 lb Mk-82 bomb to mark a target was a technique we quickly embraced. These larger munitions had the potential to destroy a target element, their visual effects lasted longer, and they were easier to see from the extreme altitudes at which we worked. They had proven to be better marks than the more traditional, and much smaller, white-phosphorous rockets.
Buster attacked the northern target element again with two Mk-82s. Before we had a chance to evaluate his damage, he found another convoy about a mile northeast of the first and attacked it by dropping his last two Mk-82s and strafing with his 30 mm cannon. Meegs was still working fighters on the southern element of the first convoy. A flight of two F-16CGs arrived to strike for Buster but missed with their first LGB attack and then lost sight of the target. Buster told me to hit the target with my Mk-82s and directed the F-16s to watch the target area for my bombs. I rolled in—north to south—and strung four bombs along the convoy. It was a good pass, and the bombs were effective as more than just a mark. Buster’s call as I came off target was, “Oh, that’s beautiful. Hit my wingman’s smoke.” The F-16s then ran a successful LGB attack and destroyed the southern-most vehicle before having to depart for fuel. We then attempted a couple of IIR Maverick passes but could not lock on to the targets because the many fires on the ground washed out the IR contrast. Even so, the convoy had been pretty well destroyed.
Buster and I worked south to look for more targets. Buster, again trusting my ability to cover him, looked through his binoculars and thought he saw some muzzle flashes on the ground. We were constantly getting jammed on at least one of our three radios—and occasionally on all of them. Other friendly aircraft were using one of our two partially clear radios, and Buster was transmitting on the remaining radio, trying to talk my eyes onto the target area, when I saw two groups of large, dark smoke clouds appear between our jets. I started to jink and called out the threat. As I finished my call, I could still hear Buster transmitting on the same frequency and realized that he had not heard my threat call. We had stepped on each other’s transmissions. That meant Buster and I were simultaneously transmitting to each other, and since a radio’s receiver is disabled during its transmissions, neither of us heard the other’s call. I again tried to alert him, but my warning was either jammed or stepped on. I don’t remember being too concerned about my own safety—probably because it looked as though they were shooting at him and not me. I do remember the incredible feeling of helplessness—watching my friend and flight lead getting shot at and not being able to communicate with him. I thought he was going to take a hit because the AAA airbursts looked huge compared to the size of his aircraft. I eventually got ahold of him and we beat feet out of the area.
After we regrouped and headed back into the target area, I started to think about them shooting at me. Although I definitely felt some fear, I was hoping that they would shoot at us again so we could see where it came from and retaliate. Again—as Buster searched for targets—I saw more airbursts. We had returned at a little higher altitude than the first time, so the clouds of flak were now below us. I called the threat to Buster, and he searched for their position on the ground. While these gunners were apparently having no trouble finding us, we were having no luck finding them. Fortunately our high altitude and constant maneuvering kept them from being able to hit us.
While we were in the area looking for the shooters, Buster found yet another convoy. We were too low on gas to set up an attack, so we headed for the tanker and passed that target off to another set of fighters. On the way out we heard Meegs call, “I think I took a hit.” During a rocket pass he had noticed AAA muzzle flashes, and then his caution panel lit up as he pulled off target. He quickly realized his aircraft was losing hydraulic fluid, and, even though he was able to stop the leak, he eventually lost one of his two hydraulic systems. On the ground, his crew chief determined that he had not taken a hit but had just suffered from a noncombat-related hydraulic failure. What a coincidence!
On 14 May I was scheduled to fly a mission check ride with Capt Scrape Johnson. I would fly as an AFAC, work the eastern half of Kosovo, and use Snoopy 61 as our call sign. Scrape would evaluate me while flying my wing. I was pumped about the mission—the weather was great, and we had some good target information from our squadron intelligence. We were passed new target coordinates over the radio as we entered the AOR, and I commenced what I would now describe as a wild-goose chase. Such chases were not uncommon since targets passed in this fashion were considered high priority, and we were required to search for them. We learned from experience that these precise coordinates seldom resulted in actually finding a viable military target—I had much better luck just looking for targets in the main areas of interest. We, nevertheless, spent a good half hour plotting coordinates and searching those areas.
I found a large tunnel south of Urosevac with fresh tank tracks leading to its entrance. I could just make something out at the opening but was unable to identify it with the binoculars because of the shadows. I set up for a Maverick pass, thinking I might be able to use the IR seeker to confirm that the object was a valid target. If so, I planned to launch the Maverick, destroy the target, and seal off the tunnel and all its equipment.
Unfortunately, I was still unable to ID the object and began my slow climb back to altitude. While my Hog, with its grossly underpowered engines, strained to get me back to altitude, I rolled into an easy right turn and started using the binos to try to ID the object again. It was then that I heard Scrape’s excited voice call, “BREAK!”
I had been flying with my knees; my left hand was on the throttles, and the binos were in my right. I was not in a good position to execute the break turn. I dropped the binos, rolled right, honked back on the stick, and put out a string of flares. As I checked six I saw the smoke trail of a SAM behind my aircraft. The smoke trail went all the way down to the ground and ended in a burned-out house on the north end of a small town. I felt as though I was looking down a 15,000-foot kite string. I was not at all happy with the guy flying the kite. I asked Scrape if he could tell exactly where the missile had come from, thinking that he was in a better position to attack, since he had more altitude and airspeed than I. He said, “No,” so I replied, “One will be in with the gun; Two cover.”
I checked my airspeed and altitude, and then cursed my engines for not having more thrust. I wanted to roll in right away and shoot, but I needed more altitude to minimize the chance of getting hit by another missile. I checked my gas and realized that this was going to be our only pass on this target before we had to head for the tanker. I set up for a 60-degree strafe pass and checked that the gun-ready light was on. As I rolled in, I thought about the gravity of this situation; I was looking death in the face. I put the pipper on the target and let fly with 150 rounds or so and started my recovery. I couldn’t tell for sure whether the rounds had hit their mark—but I didn’t receive any return fire.
We headed south for gas and passed to ABCCC the information about the SAM launch and our subsequent attack. We had just pulled up behind the tanker when a two-ship of Turkish TF-16s pulled up, declared emergency fuel, and jumped on the tanker in front of me during my scheduled air-refueling time. I was angry because I was really in a hurry to get back and look for whatever had shot at me. We refueled, and as we were about to go back in country, Scrape noticed that he had expended all of his chaff. We couldn’t go in country without it, so we had to head home early. As I recalled this sortie and put the details down on paper, I realized that I had never said thanks for that “break” call—thanks, Scrape!
I was again flying as an AFAC on another unusual mission, but this time with Col Alan Thompson, the 40th EOG commander, on my wing. This is not the most exciting story, but for me it is representative of the entire conflict; it was always interesting, if seldom extraordinary.
On this day the weather was fairly poor. An F-14 was working the western half of the country, coordinating through-theweather deliveries for strike aircraft with compatible capabilities. Most of the other strikers had been sent home, but ABCCC was kind enough to let us stay and look for holes in the weather. We were using call sign Cobra 41 and working the eastern half of the KEZ. We were operating above a low undercast and had spent a great deal of time just looking for holes. I set up an east-west, zigzag search pattern starting in the south and working north. We had little success; every hole I found would close up before I could get the binos up to look through it. We worked further north, and I found a larger hole over Serbia proper, about 15 miles north of the Kosovo border. It was nicely aligned and situated directly over our fixed target—an ammunition-storage facility. As I positioned our flight for an attack, I thought it would be great not to have to land with our Mk-82s, especially since I had dragged us so deep into bad-guy land.
I set up an attack from the west with the sun and wind at our back. I rolled in, pickled my bombs, pulled off, and started working south so I could monitor the boss’s attack. He rolled in; as he dove down the chute, I saw what looked like flashbulbs at the Super Bowl. The entire side of a large hill lit up with muzzle flashes for what seemed to be 30 to 40 seconds.
I called, “Cobra Four-Two, work south, jink! Triple-A north!”
I saw his aircraft roll and turn south as the muzzle flashes continued. Shortly after his bombs hit, the muzzle flashes stopped, but I had a great bead on their position. Once we were back together I rolled in with the Maverick. I planned on locking up any hot spot on the side of that hill and firing. When I found a hot spot, I cross-checked my HUD to confirm that the Maverick was looking at the hill and not the town just to the south. The Maverick symbology indicated that the hot spot was on the border of the hill and the town. I thought for a second and came off dry. In the time it took to reposition and take another look, the clouds had covered the target area, and we were low on fuel.
Like I said, this was not the most exciting story but one that best reflects my experiences during OAF. Most of my tactical decisions erred on the conservative side. Late at night I sometimes second-guess myself when I think about the conflict. I wonder if I should have been more aggressive, shot more rounds, or dropped more bombs. Then I remember three things: (1) We all made it home alive, (2) I did my best to avoid civilian losses, and (3)—well, I guess there were only two things. Nevertheless, those two were important because, as Stanley Kubrick wrote in Full Metal Jacket, “The dead know only one thing—that it is better to be alive.”
I initially expected the air war over Kosovo to be similar to the one in Desert Storm, and that it would have similar results. As a veteran of 43 of the latter’s actual combat sorties—which involved dropping bombs and getting shot at—I could see some similarities. However, it was much more difficult to find targets in Kosovo; often the ones we did find were given sanctuary by our restrictive ROEs. The political constraints were much more stringent in and around the villages of Kosovo than they had been in the Iraqi and Kuwaiti desert. The Serbs used the media at every opportunity to discredit the NATO coalition by claiming that our allied pilots committed war crimes. Such claims, if substantiated, could have easily turned world opinion against the coalition and forced NATO to halt its air campaign against fielded Serbian forces. That would have allowed the Serbs to continue their genocide and atrocities against the Kosovar Albanians. Strict ROEs, the (not-so) real-time target-approval process, and the denials for strikes on valid targets caused our pilots to become disgruntled with the whole command and control process—often causing us to wonder whose side the guy making those decisions was actually on. The 81st FS Panthers had adopted the tactic of having all AFACs fly with a wingman, which we dubbed a “tethered fighter.” Capt Slobee O’Brien and I had been paired during that portion of the war and had flown several very successful missions together. None was more unusual than the sortie on 11 May, during which Slobee was the AFAC and flight lead of Uzi 11, and I was his tethered fighter and overall KEZ mission commander. The AFAC’s job was to find valid targets and then control the fighters while they attacked those targets. The wingman’s responsibilities were to provide visual lookout for the flight, communication backup, and firepower support, as well as assist the AFAC in any other way necessary. The tethered fighter could immediately attack targets if the planned strikers were either not available or too far away.
We flew an uneventful 45-minute vul period over Kosovo and then headed southwest for the tanker orbiting in Albania. After topping off, Moonbeam (ABCCC) told us to head to a certain village north of Pristina to search for targets that had been reported earlier. Once in the area, Moonbeam gave us a talk-on to a specific L-shaped building that had a bus parked alongside it and directed us to strike the building. This was highly unusual, since most ROEs prohibited us from hitting permanent structures for fear of harming innocent people and causing collateral damage. The idea of a talk-on from Moonbeam was also unusual, but I didn’t think much about it since other fighters could have passed on the target description earlier in the day. We surveyed the area with our binoculars and, while we saw no movement, we were convinced that this was the correct target. We each dropped three Mk-82 500 lb bombs on, or in the immediate vicinity of, the building and saw it and the bus begin to smolder. We reported the effects of our attack to Moonbeam and moved on to look for other valid targets in the area.
I had been near this area several days earlier and wanted to check some potential targets that I had seen, so we proceeded about 15 miles north of the smoking building. We found what looked like tracked vehicles in a tree line and mortar pits along a road, and were just about to employ our remaining ordnance when Moonbeam called again.
“Uzi One-One, do you still have contact with the L-shaped building?”
“No,” Slobee replied, “We have another potential target and are just about to strike it.”
“Well, we’d like you to go back to the L-shaped building. There are enemy soldiers walking around outside of it now, and we want you to strike it again.”
After several seconds of silence, Slobee said “Uzi copies.”
I don’t know what was going through my flight lead’s mind, but it was plainly obvious to me that someone had that building in sight and was providing real-time intelligence to the CAOC. I had an eerie feeling and pictured special forces on the ground near the target, or a Mr. Clark type from a Tom Clancy book. Then I thought that maybe it could be some KLA/UCK ground troops with a satellite-communications link to our forces. It really bothered me that, potentially, there were good guys down there and we didn’t know where they were.
We flew back to the building, which was just barely burning, and each dropped our last Mk-82 and fired a Maverick missile into it. It quickly erupted into a raging inferno, and the bus was completely destroyed.
Moonbeam then said, “That looks like it’ll do the trick. Now we want you to proceed northeast by about 10 miles to these coordinates [UTM coordinates provided], and there should be at least 20 pieces of armor in a field.”
By this time we were sure there was someone on the ground directing our attacks, but for some reason we weren’t talking directly to him. Incompatible radios? Fear of compromise? We didn’t know.
We flew directly to the coordinates and spent 10 minutes looking for armor. All we could see were open fields with some barns located in and around them. We asked Moonbeam to repeat the coordinates, and when it did so, they confirmed that we were in the right place. Then Moonbeam said that there should be a large, U-shaped pole barn at the end of an eastwest dirt road. We already had that in sight—since it was the largest reference in the area.
Moonbeam then said, “The tanks and APCs are inside that barn; you are cleared to strike it.”
Well, thanks for telling us. We now had to rush the attack because gas was getting low and becoming a factor. We each shot our remaining Maverick into separate corners of the “U,” made three high-angle strafe passes using two to three trigger pulls per pass. I shot about 700 rounds into the barn, and Slobee shot about 400. We did not see any large explosions as the barn began to burn, but I did see what appeared to be smaller secondary explosions from inside and yellow-green smoke rising from the burning barn. Moonbeam told us that we had direct hits and had destroyed many of the armored vehicles; we still couldn’t figure out how he knew that. We then egressed the target area for the tanker air-refueling track about 100 NM to the south. All in all, it had been a very successful day—much more satisfying than others, since we had found and destroyed or damaged tasked targets. We cautiously discussed our information “source,” vaguely speculating about who or what it could be and hoping that it wouldn’t be compromised. We did not learn the real story until later that evening.
That day Col Alan Thompson, 40th EOG commander, and two of our fellow Panthers had been in CAOC’s battle-staff room when our strikes occurred. The battle-staff room resembles a Dr. Strangelove movie set—a “room with the big boards.” They said that a USAF Predator drone had been orbiting in our area and had picked out, fixed, and identified potential targets. The CAOC then passed coordinates, instructions, and attack clearance to us through Moonbeam.
Through Predator, and possibly other intelligence sources, the CAOC had identified the L-shaped building as a makeshift Serb army command post. Our first attack had seriously damaged the building, but the Predator operators had still seen activity in and around the building, so we were directed to strike it again. During the second strike, the Predator had been in position to allow its operator to witness the impacts and assess the damage. The operator passed the BDA to the CAOC, who in turn immediately passed it to us. The Predator operators had also determined that armored vehicles were stored in the U-shaped barn. So as soon as the CAOC was convinced the command post had been destroyed, we were directed to find and strike that barn. Our pilots at the CAOC watched real-time transmissions from the Predator as Slobee and I attacked the barn. They said the Maverick impacts were devastating but were really surprised to see CBU bomblets exploding on and very near the buildings. We were also confused by what they had seen—we not only had not dropped any CBUs, but we weren’t even carrying CBUs. We finally figured out from the sequence of attacks that they had actually seen our high-explosive incendiary 30 mm cannon rounds exploding on impact. While we were strafing the building, they watched as one whole side of the barn was blown away, exposing many burning hulks.
The evolution of airpower has brought our tactics a long way—from the days of flying bailing-wire and fabric airplanes and hand-dropping 10 lb bombs into enemy trenches to using UAVs to provide air-strike coordination to a pair of fighters. While this concept had been discussed on many occasions, to the best of my knowledge this was the first time that it was actually attempted in combat. On this occasion it was unplanned “pickup CAS,” which probably contributed to its success and made the results seem even more impressive. From that day forward, we tasked our squadron intel to brief when and where Predator would be flying. We were unable to repeat that real-time coordination but still tried to use its information to find fielded forces on future sorties. Unfortunately, information was usually hours old, and it often turned out that the targets had moved or had inaccurate coordinates. None of the Predator’s efforts during the rest of our OAF missions were as successful as that first “trial mission.” With some dedicated work, the concept of using UAVs for target search and talk-ons could become a viable tactic in future conflicts in which AFAC assets are too limited to cover all required areas. Even so, there is no substitute for putting a set of Mk-1 eyeballs on a potential target before unleashing lethal airpower against it.
The operation had entered its third week, but having to wake up in the middle of the night had not yet become routine. Today’s operation would be our third in daylight, and everyone was optimistic because yesterday afternoon’s forecast had projected good weather. Weather in the KEZ had frustrated our attempts during the first two days, preventing us from finding any targets. We hoped that today we would finally get to do our job.
At a 6,000-foot elevation in the mountains north of Aviano, we found that our hotel was covered with a wet snow that continued to fall as we stepped out the hotel door in the middle of the night. We looked at each other with a sinking feeling as our expectation for good weather evaporated. We had driven halfway down the mountain before the snow turned to rain and fog. During the past two months, determining the weather while driving down the road had evolved into a “fighter-pilot science.” Noting the elevation on the mountain at which we could see Aviano AB gave us a better estimate of ceiling and visibility than the weatherman could. Today seemed to be the worst yet—since we didn’t see the base until we drove through the gate.
We went through the standard preflight planning and briefings hoping that conditions would improve. I was scheduled to fly with Buster, a squadron flight commander and a no-nonsense pilot who had total concentration on the job at hand. He was especially focused this morning since the latest weather brief said the weather in Kosovo was breaking up. We were briefed and ready to go an hour before sunrise, but the weather still had not lifted. Low ceilings forced the whole package at Aviano to sit on the ground and remain on standby. The weather was the same down the whole length of the Italian coast—everyone was on standby.
About 30 minutes after our scheduled takeoff time, the weather finally improved to the required 500-foot ceiling and one-mile visibility; we then got approval to launch. Taking off in poor weather puts additional demands on Hog drivers. Most fighters use their air-to-air radar to maintain positive separation between members of their formation when taking off and flying into the weather. Since we did not have air-to-air radar, we had to fly with our instruments and perform a procedural trail departure to ensure that we had safe separation between our aircraft. We took off 20 seconds apart, flew set airspeeds, maintained the same ground track, and climbed at a specific power setting. We kept the variables constant and relied on the differences between our departure times to keep us safely separated during the climb out. As Two, I waited 20 seconds after Buster started his roll before I released my brakes. I watched Buster disappear into the weather, and 20 seconds later so did I. If the instrument departure were executed properly, I would break out on top of the clouds with Buster slightly above and about a mile and a half in front of me—the distance he would cover in 20 seconds at climb speed. That was the theory but not what happened. I did not realize it at the time, but the moment Buster entered the weather would be the last I would see of him until we were both back on the ground at Aviano—almost two hours later.
Our two-ship was the third A-10 flight to launch that morning. We monitored the common VHF radio frequency and could hear the members of other flights describe the weather they were experiencing. Those descriptions became the best forecast of what lay ahead of us. The weather had become a real problem. Passing 6,000 feet, I noticed that ice had formed on the nose of the Maverick missiles, the rocket pods, and the leading edge of the wings. I told Buster, and he acknowledged having the same problem. We continued to climb in an attempt to find an altitude where the icing would stop, but it only seemed to get worse until we passed 17,000 feet. The A-10 flights ahead of us had also reported icing, and all aircraft were still in the weather when they leveled off at 25,000 feet, our final altitude for the track down south. Fortunately, a flight of two F-16s, which had taken off behind us and had climbed steeper and flown above us on departure, had just broken out at 30,000 feet and said that the weather above was clear. We decided to continue our climb to find clear weather and help the ice sublime. Unfortunately, our Hogs were loaded for combat with four Mk-82 bombs, two Maverick missiles, two rocket pods, an ALQ-131 jamming pod, and two AIM-9 missiles. That load made us extremely heavy, increased our drag, and precluded a quick climb.
We remained in the weather during our climb and flight down the Adriatic. After about 45 minutes, we finally reached 30,000 feet and could see sunlight above us. Leveling off approximately two miles in trail behind Buster, I was still in the weather and unable to see him. While doing an ops check to see how much fuel was remaining, I saw the master caution light begin to flash and looked to investigate. The right-generator caution light was illuminated, and the number-two (right) engine tachometer was wildly fluctuating between 30 and 90 percent. At this point, I was flying the aircraft about five degrees nose high to maintain level flight at 170 knots indicated airspeed (KIAS).
I immediately radioed Buster to let him know I had a problem and pulled the throttle back on number two in an attempt to recover the engine. When I moved the throttle, the engine immediately spooled back and flamed out. The right engine nacelle now generated drag rather than thrust. That and the combination of high altitude, low airspeed, and a dirty configuration caused the aircraft to yaw right and begin a descent. I immediately pushed the nose five to 10 degrees nose low, attempting to gain airspeed. As the aircraft yawed to the right, a chopped tone came over the headset indicating a stalled condition, which was immediately followed by a loud pop and buzzing sound as the number-one (left) engine compressor stalled. Things were getting serious in a hurry. I tried to stay calm and inform Buster what was happening.
While making the radio call, I saw the main attitude direction indicator (ADI) freeze in the centered position, both steering bars came into view, and all my caution-warning lights illuminated—and the bottom dropped out of my stomach. Those indications told me that I had lost all alternating current (AC) electrical power and that the aircraft had just reverted to direct current (DC) battery power. Not wanting to believe what I saw, I looked at the number-one engine as it rolled back below 30 percent, approximately 12 percent below what was needed for the generators to provide the much-needed AC electrical power. With virtually no thrust, the aircraft began to descend rapidly into the weather, and I soon lost what little sunlight I had been able to see through the clouds. I knew that the only way to clear a compressor stall was to completely shut down the engine, but the idea was still not one I wanted to entertain.
I then checked the DC-powered standby ADI, which showed the aircraft 15 degrees nose high and 20 degrees of right bank—the same attitude it indicated when I had leveled off. My confidence in this old piece of equipment was shot. With the main attitude indicator frozen, the standby attitude indicator unreliable, and no visual references due to the weather, I was forced to use the “needle and ball” of the turn-and-slip indicator to keep the aircraft in coordinated flight. My voice jumped about 10 octaves as I tried to tell Buster that I had just experienced a “double-engine flameout.”
This situation calls for a “boldface emergency procedure.” I had long ago been required to commit to memory the steps I now needed to take—but I had never dreamed of actually using them. My initial A-10 training instructor had even made jokes about this emergency, swearing it could never happen in the A-10 because the engines were too reliable. Some guys in the squadron even joked in our monthly emergency-procedures training that if it ever happened they would just jump out using the ejection procedure. With that in mind, I had to decide and act in a hurry.
The five boldface steps that I had long before committed to memory:
1. THROTTLES – OFF
2. APU [auxiliary power unit] – START
3. FLIGHT CONTROLS – MAN [manual] REVERSION
4. LEFT ENGINE – MOTOR
5. LEFT ENGINE – START
Thinking that I still had a little time before needing to make an ejection decision, I started to rapidly repeat these steps in my mind. We had decided to fly without antiexposure suits because they would have made our eight-hour missions miserable. However, now the thought of ejecting at high altitude, in the weather, over the Adriatic, and without an antiexposure suit was not very appealing either. I knew that I had to attempt the restart—I did not know that the procedure, which had not yet been successfully used, was intended for use in good weather and at lower altitudes.
Passing 29,000 feet, I executed the first step, pulling the throttles back, forcing them over the hump, and into the cutoff position. I knew that I was now committed, and it was not a heart-warming feeling. As soon as the throttles were in the off position, the cockpit rapidly depressurized, and frost began forming on the inside of the canopy. Unfortunately, I was still far above the normal operating envelope for starting APU. I remembered that the aircraft flight manual (Dash-1) guaranteed that the APU would start only at or below 15,000 feet, but it might start as high as 20,000 feet. I waited for the aircraft to descend at least 9,000 more feet.
With both engines shut down, there was no hydraulic pressure to power the normal operation of the flight controls. The control stick locked, so I had no ability to roll or turn the aircraft. I bypassed the next boldface step and selected flight controls manual reversion.
The manual system is designed to give the A-10 a limited flight-control capability to improve its combat survivability in the event the aircraft is shot up and loses hydraulic pressure. It uses a cable-and-pulley system to move small electrical trim tabs which act as flight controls. The amount of control that these tabs can provide is a function of airspeed. Since the control surfaces are only a few inches wide, greater airspeed allows the tabs to provide more control. The Dash-1 gives numerous warnings when using this system. It warns against low power settings and directs that airspeed be maintained between 200 and 300 KIAS so that the trim tabs will develop enough control authority to control large pitch changes. It now dawned on me that it was impossible to keep the power above idle during a double-engine flameout. I also realized that the aircraft was already slower than recommended, due to its having no thrust, high altitude, and a heavy combat load. Nevertheless, I had no choice other than putting the aircraft into manual reversion to regain even limited control.
As I executed manual reversion, I experienced the meaning of the words contained in the fine print of another Dash-1 warning, which said that when transitioning to manual reversion, the aircraft may pitch up or down with excessive positive or negative G forces. As I flipped the switch, the aircraft pitched violently down, threw me up, and pinned me on the canopy—“Mr. Toad’s wild ride” had begun. The standby ADI now indicated a banked, nose-low attitude, and the vertical velocity indicator (VVI) was pegged at 6,000 feet-per-minute down. I pulled myself back into the seat with the stick and then continued to pull back on it for all I was worth in an attempt to break the dive. Unable to stop the descent, I slid to the front of the ejection seat and hooked my feet on the brake pedals to get better leverage. Pulling with both arms and trimming the elevator tab to its limit failed to break the dive—I began to panic.
The altimeter was now unwinding extremely fast, and panic crept into my voice as I let Buster know what was happening. He responded with an irritatingly relaxed voice, telling me to just calm down and go through the boldface. He declared an emergency with Magic, the NAEW, and let them know I was looking for a place to make an emergency landing. For the time being, all I could do was try to gain and maintain aircraft control, and avoid entering an unusual attitude. I attempted to keep my wings level by staring at the turn-and-slip indicator. I tried to keep the DC-powered turn needle and the slip indicator’s ball centered. That ball—suspended in a curved, liquidfilled tube below the turn-needle—measures aerodynamic slip and is very reliable because it’s powered only by physics. I flew the aircraft with reference only to the turn-and-slip, airspeed, and VVIs—and waited until I reached an altitude where I would be able to start the APU.
I do not know how long the descent really took, but I seemed to pass through 20,000 feet in the blink of an eye. Hoping to improve my chances, I waited until I passed 17,000 feet before I attempted to start the APU. When I flipped the switch, the start initially looked good. However, the APU’s operating temperature then appeared to drop rapidly. I stared at the indications for some time with the sickening thought that the APU had failed. I finally realized that the APU really had started, was operating normally, and indicated cooler-than-normal operating temperature only because of the altitude and ambient conditions. I continued to modify the boldface procedure. Instead of completing the next step to start engines, I turned on the APU generator to get AC electrical power and warm up the main attitude indicator.
Passing 15,000 feet I motored the number-one engine until its temperature dropped to below 100 degrees and then brought the throttle over the hump to idle. By the time I had reached 12,500 feet, the engine had stabilized in idle, and I immediately shoved it to max. With it running at full power, I was finally able to slow my descent rate to about 4,000 feet per minute on the VVI. Now—for the first time since my engines’ compressors stalled—I realized that I might be able to fly out of this situation. The boldface ends at this point, and it would normally be time to pull out the checklist and go through the cleanup items. However, I was still in a descent and not really ready to take my hands off the controls to get out a checklist. I thought that if I could start the number-two engine I would have enough power to break the descent completely. So passing 8,000 feet I motored down the temperature and attempted a start. The second engine started and stabilized. With both engines operating normally, I bottomed out at about 6,500 feet—and, finally, the plane felt controllable.
I did not realize how pumped up I had been on adrenaline. The aircraft appeared to be flying normally now that I had both engines and could control the pitch. I failed to remember the 23–30 pounds of pressure I had to exert to move the control stick when I had tested the manual reversion system on functional check flights. After this experience, and while still using the reversion system, the stick felt light as a feather.
With the aircraft level at 6,500 feet, I told Buster I had the plane under control. He had been descending and getting emergency vectors from NAEW in an attempt to stay near and in radio contact with me. Since I was still concentrating on flying, Buster started going through the checklist to help me clean up the unfinished items. He reminded me to put the flight controls back to normal. That step reconnects the hydraulic actuators to the flight-control system. The Dash-1 gives the same warning about rapid pitch changes when returning to the normal flight-control system. As I switched the flight controls back to normal, the aircraft violently pitched up—this time forcing me heavily into the seat. I grabbed the stick and started fighting for control. I was wildly going from stop to stop on the controls, trying to find neutral. The controls were so light, it initially felt like the stick had broken off in my hand.
After thinking for a few seconds that I was going to depart controlled flight, I let go of the stick to see if the aircraft would settle down. It did. I gently took hold of the stick and focused all my attention on maintaining level flight. I was experiencing the “leans”—a condition in which my brain and my instruments disagreed on the attitude for level flight. Since I was still in the weather, there were no outside visual references to confirm which was correct. Normally the right way to fight this condition is to believe the instruments. However, knowing that they had experienced a power interruption and had been brought back on-line in other than straight and level, unaccelerated flight, I knew that their gyros might have precessed. I had less-than-full confidence that they were correct. Buster started telling me to head to steer-point alpha, a point along the Italian coast from where we could reach a divert base. Unfortunately, when the aircraft lost AC power, the INS had dumped and was useless. I had no idea where I was, or even if the aircraft-heading system was usable.
Buster started asking Magic for directions to get the two of us together and headed towards Cervia AB, our divert base located on the east coast of Italy. Magic was unable to help us; its personnel did not have me on radar, but they were able to tell us that Cervia currently had a 300-foot ceiling and one-mile visibility. I told Buster I didn’t like that option because it meant that I would have to take my eyes off the instruments to study the instrument-approach plates for a bunch of strange fields. I had the approach and radio frequencies around Aviano memorized and really wanted to go there. Magic again stated that it did not have me on radar but said Primo might.
Primo was the call sign for the 606th Expeditionary Air Control Squadron out of Spangdahlem. I had not known that the squadron was in place because it had not been operational during the first few days of the war. The Primo controller came over guard frequency loud and clear, telling Buster and me to reset our transponders so he could find us. Within seconds, he had us both identified and had started giving me vectors back towards Aviano. He did an awesome job of giving me snap headings to all the closest bases and letting me know the weather at each so I could make the decision. He also started giving vectors to Buster to get our flight, now about 20 miles apart, back together. Primo also coordinated with all the agencies along the coast so that I had to talk with him only. He got me all the way to Aviano before handing me off to the approach controller.
While flying home, I noticed that the number-two engine was running hotter than number one. I still did not know what had caused the original problem, so I set the right throttle at 85 percent and planned on flying a simulated, single-engine approach. I still had doubts about the instruments’ accuracy, and since there was a mountain range just north of the base, Aviano approach gave me no-gyro vectors to landing. During the approach, the controller said, “Turn right” or “Turn left,” when needed. I then rolled into a half-standard rate turn; he timed my turn, monitored my position on radar, and then said, “Stop turn” to control my heading and eliminate any chance that a heading error in my navigation system would cause an accident. I followed his instructions and finally broke out of the weather 500 feet above and two miles from the approach end of the runway. We had been flying for one hour and 45 minutes, and this was the first time (without depending on the instruments) that I had a reference by which I could determine my attitude.
The crash vehicles were waiting to meet me as I landed and rolled out on the runway. I taxied clear of the active and waited to shut down. The rescue crews looked at me with some confusion, not knowing what needed to be done. I was exhausted and still sweating like a pig although it was cold and rainy outside. I told them I needed to shut down and have the plane impounded. But first, I wanted a minute to talk to the squadron and get my thoughts together.
Sitting there on the taxiway—getting my stuff together—I listened as the FM radio came to life. It was Buster saying that the weather was clearing in Kosovo and we needed to hurry and get down there. He had already contacted squadron ops, located a spare aircraft for me on spot 18, and arranged for ops to warm it up. He had also coordinated for his aircraft to be hotrefueled while I moved to the spare. Still dazed and confused, I acknowledged, shut down, and got a ride to the spare.
After briefing maintenance on what had happened to aircraft 956, I moved to the spare and started getting it ready to go. Running through the after-start checklist, I saw the squadron commander pull up. He jumped out of his car and got on the maintainer’s headset to talk with me. After asking me what had happened, he told me, “Good job” and “Go ahead and shut down.” I was relieved; there was no way we could make the tanker times, and I did not feel the need to push my luck twice in one day. Fortunately for me, nobody had been able to attack any targets that morning. I only had to take grief from Buster for about 24 hours for ruining his day.
About eight months later, I was attending a safety ceremony at the Pentagon. Maj Gen Francis C. Gideon Jr., chief of Air Force Safety, was one of the generals in attendance. Coincidentally, he was the test pilot who had ejected from an A-10 after both engines flamed out while test-firing the gun. We sat and talked for a few minutes about what had happened and then discussed a few shortcomings in the boldface procedures. He asked what had helped me work through the emergency. I thought the things that contributed most to my getting through that experience were fear, luck, and divine intervention.