The successful around-the-clock attack of the enemy would not have been possible without an enormous and meticulously coordinated effort by a host of highly qualified professionals. The 81st EFS was supported and sustained by personnel of the 31st EOG at Aviano and the 40th EOG at Gioia del Colle. This chapter tells the story of the dedicated airmen in maintenance, logistics, munitions, personnel, services, civil engineering, contracting, communications, air traffic control, weather, photography, security forces, and the chaplaincy who made the A-10’s success possible.
In October 1998, Headquarters USAFE ordered the 81st to send six A-10s to Aviano to stand up a CSAR alert posture. That crisis ended after just one month and allowed the A-10s to return to Spangdahlem. Even though the crisis was brief, the 81st still missed its once-a-year deployment to Nellis AFB, Nevada, and lost its chance to participate in Red Flag, Air Warrior, and the Gunsmoke gunnery competition. Little did the personnel of the 81st and other supporting units realize that they would soon have the most intensive large-force employment and gunnery experience of their careers.
In chapter 1, I stated that the 81st started its six-month-long deployment to Italy at Aviano and that it was hosted by the Buzzards of the 510th FS. However, I failed to mention that the two squadrons shared a common heritage. The 510th had been an A-10 squadron at RAF Bentwaters until October 1992 when it moved to Spangdahlem AB, where it remained until it was inactivated in February 1994. In fact, the first time Warthogs went to Aviano in support of operations over Bosnia, they went as the Buzzards. During the Air Force’s reorganization in the mid-1990s, the 510th was reactivated at Aviano AB, flying F-16s. The A-10s at Spangdahlem were redesignated and assumed the name and traditions of the 81st FS Panthers, which had formerly been an F-4G Wild Weasel squadron at Spangdahlem.
Over the years, the squadrons maintained strong ties. The Buzzards exhibited extraordinary hospitality when the Panthers came to town. During the 81st’s one-month deployment to Aviano beginning 7 January 1999, the 510th invited the Panthers to use its operations facilities while most of its F-16s were away. On 7 February 1999 we were ordered to remain in place and stand up a CSAR alert. The Buzzards, although now at full strength and in cramped quarters, once again invited us to operate from their facilities.
All of the squadrons in the 31st Fighter Wing, particularly communications, transportation, airfield management, and intelligence, generously supported the Panthers. When we hastily relocated from Aviano to Gioia del Colle in April, commercial trucking was uncertain, and Aviano’s 603d Air Control Squadron volunteered its two-and-one-half-ton trucks to take us 400 miles down the road. Although commercial trucks were eventually located, the 603d’s sincere offer was indicative of the welcome we had at Aviano. This above-and-beyond hospitality was even more impressive considering the crush of units and personnel that filled every available parking space, hangar, and office on its air patch.
Despite our comfortable arrangements at Aviano, we needed to move south to be more responsive with our CSAR mission. The CAOC proposed that we stand up a CSAR alert at Aviano and another at Amendola AB during our October 1998 deployment. Amendola is an Italian air force training base on the Adriatic coast opposite Split, Croatia; unfortunately, it had no US or NATO infrastructure to support all the communications and weapons requirements for CSAR missions. Although we wanted to move farther south, we rejected the idea of splitting our squadron. We proposed moving our entire CSAR contingent to Brindisi, where we could work alongside our principal partners in CSAR operations—the special forces’ helicopter units. However, Brindisi was already too crowded, and the USAF wanted to leave in the near future.
We continued to look for a more southern location. Amendola was now no longer possible, since the Dutch and Belgian air forces had filled all the available ramp space with a joint F-16 detachment. Goldie and I looked to the Sixteenth Air Force force-structure experts for help and asked to review their aerodrome site surveys. After looking at airfield diagrams in our instrument-approach books, we were most interested in Brindisi and Gioia del Colle. The surveys of the Sixteenth Air Force experts indicated there were too many complicating issues with United Nations (UN) logistics to safely locate even six A-10s at Brindisi. They also told us the Italian government had not given them approval to survey Gioia del Colle.
Our sorties during our first two days of operations (30 and 31 March) were seven and one-half hours long but provided less than two hours of on-station mission time. This proved the need to relocate nearer the KEZ. The physical toll on the pilots was enormous: two hours to get to the KEZ followed by three hours of “one-armed paper hanging” in the target area (including about an hour going to and from the tanker), finished by two hours of struggling to stay awake on the way home. If we flew two long sorties per day, our maintainers wouldn’t have enough time to fix any broken jets and still maintain aircraft ready for the CSAR alert. We were faced with limiting ourselves to one sortie per aircraft per day or accepting a continuous lowering of our mission-capable rate. Either choice would inevitably result in a reduction to one sortie per day. At the same time, the CAOC had asked us to increase our sortie rate and the already stretched 31st AEW at Aviano was told to expect another squadron or two of F-16CJs from Shaw AFB, South Carolina. It was time for us to go.
On Monday, 5 April, anticipating that the Italians might say “no,” I called the commander of the British GR-7 detachment at Gioia del Colle to ask whether there was sufficient parking space for 18 A-10s. He told me, “Yes, there is… We built our own parking areas and taxiways on the other side of the runway, so we’ve left plenty of room.”
Eureka! I immediately called Col Gregg Sanders, an A-10 pilot and the 52d Fighter Wing’s inspector general, who had recently been pressed into service in the planning division (C-5) at the CAOC. I told him about the situation at Gioia and asked if the CAOC would approve the 81st’s sending a site-survey team there. Later that day, after coordinating with the local Italian authorities, he called back to say that our team could depart the next day to visit Gioia del Colle and Amendola.
Our team of maintainers, aviators, and support personnel took two days to complete their site visit and returned to Aviano on Wednesday, 7 April. Gioia del Colle was the clear choice. It had more available space on the aerodrome and more obtainable hotel accommodations in the local area. The next day we sent an advance echelon team, comprised of Sixteenth Air Force and 81st personnel, to Gioia to evaluate the facilities and determine what it would take for us to begin to operate. Their initial assessment was that it would require at least one week without flying to get it ready. There was not enough space to build up munitions, nor were there sufficient maintenance facilities. Two floors of an old dormitory (complete with beds), serviced by a finicky and outdated electrical system, would become our operations area. On 9 April we received EUCOM orders to have 15 jets in place at Gioia by 11 April.
The same order requested that Air Combat Command (ACC) deploy four A-10s from the continental United States (CONUS) to augment us. I called CAOC personnel to make sure they understood that the 81st had three additional aircraft at Spang that we could immediately bring to Gioia. They said, “No one here knew that.” General Short had asked, “How many A-10s are at Aviano?” After the CAOC told him “15,” he replied, “Get four more from ACC.” It was too late to turn off the request, but we knew ACC couldn’t generate the aircraft and fly them across the Atlantic for at least a week. I tried to get approval to bring in the three 81st FS jets. After I had called the CAOC, Sixteenth Air Force, NATO’s Regional Headquarters Allied Forces Southern Europe (AFSOUTH) at Naples, EUCOM, and USAFE, I learned that publishing another EUCOM tasker in less than 24 hours for just three jets was in the “too hard to do” locker. However, I also learned that USAFE could move its own jets within the European theater without higher approval. After getting the CAOC to buy off on the idea, I asked my home wing leadership to weigh in for us. Brig Gen Scott Van Cleef, Col Jan-Marc Jouas, and Col Al Thompson came through, and on 10 April we got USAFE approval to fly the last three Spang A-10s into Gioia on 11 April.
The move to Gioia del Colle on 11 April 1999 involved establishing full-up operations in near bare-base conditions and relocating people, equipment, and aircraft from both Spangdahlem and Aviano. The following week contained one of the least known but most impressive logistics accomplishments of OAF. Maintainers of the 81st FS and logisticians of the 52d and 31st AEWs had only one “down day” to pack up all the tools and equipment, and load them on trucks, “Cadillac bins,” or pallets, while still maintaining a full CSAR alert of six aircraft and two spares. Even the right parts arrived at Aviano in time to replace those missing from our cannibalized aircraft (CANN bird), so we could fly it to Gioia. Our weapons loaders added extra bombs and missiles to the A-10s at Aviano to help cover our immediate munition needs. We estimated that it would take the munitions depot at Camp Darby, located on the Italian Riviera near Livorno, Italy, about three days to transport the weapons over the 500 miles to Gioia and begin routine deliveries. Eleven trucks departed Aviano for Gioia on 10 April. The next day, C-130s departed from Ramstein, Spangdahlem, and Aviano, and all 18 A-10s (15 from Aviano and three from Spangdahlem) took off on time and landed on time at Gioia del Colle. Colonel Thompson flew one of the three Spangdahlem A-10s to Gioia, where he established and assumed command of the new 40th EOG.
I arrived in the first jet to land at Gioia and was unpleasantly surprised to find a USAF cameraman filming us as we taxied in and climbed down the ladders. Airlift is a zero-sum game. If something is added, something else must be taken off. I was livid—what was a cameraman doing on the flight line when we barely had enough crew chiefs to recover our jets and enough airlift to move our most critical items? I didn’t yell at him; he just got on the returning plane as ordered. I found out later that Ramstein had manifested combat camera personnel and equipment on the first C-130 to land at Gioia. While they were just trying to do their job—document our move and beddown—they took up limited airlift capacity, and I’d much rather have had more toolboxes.
The maintainers already on site immediately went to work generating the aircraft necessary to bring up our CSAR alert status. We were down for only two hours—but even that delay would have been less if it were not for a fuel truck delay. These maintainers worked through the night—often without enough tools to go around. MSgt Daniel E. “Dan” Weber, MSgt Rod Many, and a number of key maintainers toiled for 24 hours straight to ensure we had jets to meet our tasking. The aircraft were ready for the next morning’s AFAC lines, and the first sortie airborne appropriately logged a Maverick kill on a Serb APC.
Operations experts also sprang into action, setting up a functional intel section (crucial for CSAR and AFAC missions), secure telephones, an operations desk, and life support in less than 12 hours. By the morning of 12 April, our combat operations were up and running around-the-clock again.
Meanwhile the 74th FS Flying Tigers at Pope readied four aircraft, nine pilots, and 65 maintainers to send to the fight. We had asked ACC to provide pilots with a good level of experience, particularly in AFAC and CSAR missions. Once they arrived at Spangdahlem, USAFE told them they might be used to train the 81st’s eight new pilots instead of joining the Panthers at Gioia. USAFE was aware of the capacity to park only 18 A-10s at Gioia, and those spots it knew were being used by the 81st. We had not yet informed USAFE that we had found room for four more A-10s. In a proposal to the CAOC, we highlighted the increased sortie rates we could achieve with those additional aircraft, and its leadership won the Italian government’s approval. The Italian base commander wasn’t pleased with either the process or the decision, but we didn’t want to give him a chance to veto it—and we now had 22 Hogs to unleash in the KEZ. Colonel Thompson, as commander of the newly established 40th EOG, once again worked his magic, soothed hurt egos, and smoothed things over.
After some initial awkwardness, all of the 81st and 74th operations and maintenance functions became fully integrated into the 40th EOG. Flight leads from each squadron flew with wingmen from the other, and a Flying Tiger maintenance-production superintendent ran the daytime-sortie generation for all 22 aircraft. There was some good-natured hazing, particularly on Hog paint jobs. For some months, the 81st had taken care of a 74th jet that had been left in Kuwait after a deployment because of parts problems. It was eventually flown to Spangdahlem to be fixed. When that aircraft (the fifth Flying Tiger jet) arrived at Gioia, it not only had the trademark Flying Tiger shark’s teeth on the nose but also huge, black panther heads on the engine nacelles. Soon afterwards, and with the same good-natured spirit, the lower jaws of the panther heads that decorated both engine nacelles were painted over in light gray, making the panthers look like rats.
All of the flight-line personnel worked together with inexhaustible energy and enthusiasm. After every sortie, crew chiefs and weapons loaders swarmed over the aircraft to prepare it for the next flight. Nothing motivates tired, greasy wrench turners more than seeing their jets—the ones they had launched fully loaded—come home with clean wings. Together, the 81st and 74th had a total of 26 A-10s in-theater. Of those, 22 were at Gioia del Colle, and at any given time at least two were undergoing major inspections at Spangdahlem. The 40th EOG normally flew 30 combat sorties with those 22 aircraft during the day between 0600 and 1830, and then used them to generate the six aircraft to stand CSAR alert between 1830 and 0600 the next morning. We launched up to 16 aircraft on each day’s “first go” and then turned (postflighted, loaded, preflighted, and launched) 14 of those aircraft on the “second go” each day. The British also flew an aggressive schedule with their one forward-deployed squadron—sometimes launching 10 of their 12 GR-7s. The Italians eventually had 24 Tornados at Gioia del Colle, but we never saw them launch more than six aircraft at a time. As a matter of interest, the 40th EOG flew more sorties and hours in Allied Force than the entire Italian air force. The French air force deployed 15 of their Mirage 2000D strike aircraft to Gioia and, like most European air forces, swapped out their personnel after three to six weeks, flying only six days per week. By contrast the 40th EOG personnel knew we were there for the duration and flew seven days a week. We made an exception on 1 May 1999, the only OAF day we “took off”—even then we still maintained a 24-hour CSAR alert.
There is not enough room here to detail all of the incredible feats of professionalism that molded the 81st FS, 74th FS, 40th ELS, and 40th Expeditionary Air Base Squadron (EABS) into an efficient fighting team. The numerous small things were exemplified by our first sergeant, SMSgt Stanley J. “Stan” Ellington, who went to a local grocery store to buy food on the first day for folks who never left their jets. Chaplain (Maj) Karl Wiersum’s frequent visits to the flight line—just to listen to people who needed to talk—made a world of difference in putting jets in the air and bringing them back again. Every member of our team played an absolutely crucial role in carrying out the mission, and the following stories can relate only a small part of it. Every pilot knew that no excuse could justify missing the target when all of those people had done all of that work to put him in a cockpit with an enemy tank in his sights.
Operation Allied Force was my first true combat experience, and I was the 40th EOG commander deployed to Gioia del Colle AB in southern Italy. At our peak, we had 25 A-10 aircraft from the 81st EFS and the 74th EFS and nearly 700 personnel.
Combat operations began against Serbia on 24 March 1999. The 81st EFS from Spangdahlem, flying the trusty A-10, participated from day one of the air campaign while deployed to Aviano. The 74th EFS from Pope joined us at Gioia del Colle.
When it became apparent early in the NATO air campaign that Aviano-based A-10s could not be optimally employed because of the long distances to Kosovo, they found a new home at Gioia del Colle, an Italian air force fighter base. The 81st was out of the bomb-dropping business for only 36 hours while it deployed forward to Gioia del Colle. By air, it was only about 240 nautical miles (NM) from Gioia to Pristina—the capital of Kosovo province. This record-setting deployment was truly a Herculean effort and significantly increased our on-station time and combat effectiveness.
I faced the opportunity and challenge of a lifetime when Brig Gen Scott P. Van Cleef, the 52d AEW commander, selected me to stand up and command the 40th EOG at Gioia. On 11 April I deployed to Gioia with three A-10s from Spangdahlem to fill out the 81st’s 18-aircraft squadron. It may seem unusual for a vice wing commander to command an expeditionary group. Although it did not happen, initial thinking had this group expanding to an expeditionary fighter wing.
I had to set priorities quickly and get organized upon arrival at Gioia del Colle. The first priority was to meet each day’s ATO in the variety of missions tasked by Lt Gen Mike Short, the combined forces air component commander (CFACC), at the CAOC in northern Italy. Just as important was mission safety on the ground and in the air. The peacetime rules, of course, did not go away, and a host of new ones for combat operations—known as ROEs—came into play.
My third priority (frankly, they were all nearly equal in importance) was taking care of the men and women charged with performing the mission. I knew I could depend on all of them to do their very best. I wanted to set our basic direction, keep us focused, and rely on the leaders at all levels from my four squadron commanders (two fighter, one support, and one logistics) all the way down to dedicated crew chiefs. None of us knew how long the air campaign would last, so we each had to be prepared for the long haul. There was no time for distractions—we just sent home anyone not pulling his or her weight or not demonstrating absolute professional behavior. While I tried not to add a lot of extra rules for our deployed situation, but those few I did add had a direct effect on the mission and force protection.
Gioia del Colle is a large NATO air base designed to accept other squadrons during conflict. Upon our arrival we were given several ramps for A-10 parking, four hardened aircraft shelters for our maintenance functions, and some administrative space as well. The base is blessed with two long, parallel runways, and the weather in the spring and summer is normally clear except for some morning fog. Since Gioia del Colle is a fighter base, our integration did not pose a huge problem. Because Gioia was so close to Kosovo, many other NATO squadrons still desired to bed down there—even long after we arrived, when it was bursting at the seams.
From day one, the Italian 36th Stormo (Wing) was a great host despite our almost overnight deployment. Although the 36th Stormo provided lots of space and such basics as fuel, electricity, and water, we were on our own for everything else. I spent lots of time maintaining good relations and working particular issues with the Italians and the RAF detachment. The Brits had been regularly deployed to Gioia during the previous five years to support sorties over Bosnia-Herzegovina. The RAF had great insight and experience on how to fit in and work smoothly with the Italian hosts. The Italians flew Tornado fighter-bombers and the older F-104 Starfighters. The British flew the GR-7, more commonly called the Harrier. Challenges with our host wing were frequent; the following account highlights a couple of them.
Our group had most of the functions that a wing would have. Our Air Force security forces, all 13 strong, were forbidden by the Italians to carry weapons. The Italian military had primary responsibility for security both inside and outside the base fence. In the first days after arrival, we found several holes cut in the fence next to our parked A-10s—not a good sign. Shortly after, a bomb threat was directed at our personnel in one hotel. Additionally, our Italian hosts were very concerned about our safety off base and the number and location of hotels we had contracted. Hence we avoided taking military vehicles off base and took other precautions as well.
Another challenge was getting an accurate reading on the weather during foggy mornings to determine if our first-go sorties would be permitted to take off. Leaving out the technical details, the way the USAF computes the visibility and ceiling is slightly different than the Italians’ procedure. There is no exactly right or wrong way to do this. If done independently, both national measurement methods and weather minimums would allow aircraft to operate under similar conditions. However, the Italians’ methods for measuring ceiling and visibility are more conservative than ours, and our weather criteria are more conservative than theirs. When Italian measurements were applied to US criteria, US aircraft were prevented from taking off under weather conditions that Italian rules deemed suitable for take off. We were hamstrung by this situation on several mornings and, in my view, lost sorties unnecessarily. We worked quickly to find a compromise with the host base and tower personnel. Afterward we essentially used our own weather data for determining take-off minimums; under our Air Force and USAFE regulations, I also had a limited waiver authority, which I exercised on foggy mornings. These alternatives were sound and safe. All pilots had the right to decline to launch if they thought the weather was too bad, but none ever refused.
Driving in southern Italy can be very risky, and, sadly, we had several major car wrecks. Some of the accidents resulted in serious injuries but, thankfully, no fatalities. While I was in command, the most serious accident involved a senior maintenance supervisor who drove back to his hotel alone after a 12-hour night shift. He fell asleep and literally drove a full-size guardrail through the center of his rental car from front to back. Going through, it struck the side of his face and shoulder. If the car seat had not given way instantly to lessen the blow, he would have died on the spot. He received emergency treatment, an immediate operation in an Italian civilian hospital, and was then flown by the USAF Aeromedical Evacuation system (Medevac) to the United States to complete his recovery.
We also had a serious aircraft-parking problem at Gioia with fully combat-loaded A-10s lined up a few feet from each other on two closely spaced concrete ramps. Since we did not meet any of the Air Force weapons-safety criteria, we required a three-star USAFE waiver just to operate. If a single rocket had gone off or an engine had caught fire on start, we could have lost all of the A-10s and a few hundred personnel in seconds. This situation reminded me of a similarly congested parking problem at Bien Hoa AB, South Vietnam, early in the Vietnam War. The enemy fired mortars one night and destroyed many aircraft. The aircraft vulnerability at Gioia was not acceptable and had to be improved. During the visit of the secretary of the Air Force and the commander of USAFE, I walked them both down the entire ramp to ensure they were aware of the parking situation. More importantly, I briefed them on our plan of action—to quickly build five temporary asphalt parking pads around the airfield so not more than four A-10s would be at risk from any one incident.
The EOG made an incredible effort to get engines, pods, and parts to keep the jets flying at a high rate, and to build and load the bombs, missiles, and bullets. Taking care of the personnel was no easy task either, but it was done with great focus, energy, and class. Our parent wing, the 52d at Spangdahlem, provided around-the-clock support, and no task was too hard for it. I had gained valuable experience, which really helped me accomplish the overall mission by serving as the wing’s vice commander and regularly flying with the 81st before the conflict began. General Van Cleef exhibited remarkable leadership and we talked almost daily. Even though he had his hands full as the AEW commander, he still found time to visit us several times and see us in action. General Short’s Air Forces’ forces rear (a term he used to describe the USAFE staff) was also spectacular and provided world-class support.
I tried to fly almost every other day, but that was only one key part of my command. Staying on top of the myriad of issues on the ground was equally important, as was hosting visiting dignitaries and military leaders. We had the press to deal with, but we were not their main interest in Italy or even at Gioia. I visited as many maintenance functions as I could each day, usually on my expeditionary bicycle. As the senior safety officer, I visited each CSAR ground-alert crew and aircraft daily during the entire conflict.
We were essentially on our own to establish and maintain communications with higher headquarters. We had the deincluded about 30 high-tech specialists led by a young captain. The package’s equipment included a satellite dish, switchboard, and all the key communications capability we needed. The team was spectacular and worked tirelessly to get us set up in a few short days with all the military communications critical to performing our mission. They ensured we had the ATO in time to plan and execute each day’s missions.
I was scheduled to fly on 27 missions during the 60 days I commanded the EOG. Three of my sorties were cancelled because of bad weather, so I ended up flying 24 long and hard sorties over Kosovo. My first mission was on 15 April with the 81st EFS commander to southeastern Serbia. I was really keyed up and had much on my mind. The night before I got only about three hours of sleep—not ideal for my first taste of combat. We were on an AFAC mission, primarily working the Kumanovo Valley, a Serb area northeast of Skopje, Macedonia, that includes the towns of Presevo, Bujanovac, and Vranje.
I flew as number two, having the primary responsibility of keeping lead from getting shot down and then attacking the targets he assigned me. His job was to find military targets and then control a variety of NATO fighters during their attacks. We launched from Gioia del Colle with a typical combat load. The weather on this first mission was incredible, not a cloud in the sky. We pushed in after “tanking” (aerial refueling) and lots of airborne coordination, and then immediately began searching for ground targets. Since this was the first day we could use Macedonian airspace to fly attack missions, we had not yet worked this valley. Therefore, targets were plentiful, but so were SAMs and AAA. Not long after we entered the area, I called a break turn for a shoulder-fired SAM. I was not sure I called it in time since I saw its smoke trail pass between our two aircraft. AAA was everywhere that morning, most of it well below our altitude. I was excited, to say the least, and felt this would be a long and hardfought air campaign. We found, attacked, and killed several targets, including some artillery and APCs.
During all of our sorties, our total focus was on the mission. We had no reservations about what our president, secretary of defense, and NATO commanders had tasked us to do. The horror of nearly a million Kosovo refugees fleeing their homes was more than enough reason. I was ever mindful of the great tragedy unfolding on the ground before our eyes. Villages were being burned every day, masses of humanity were camping in the most austere conditions in the hills, and innocent people were being forced to flee their homeland with everything they owned pulled by farm tractors. Families were separated, and, as we learned much later, untold atrocities were being committed.
Our overarching mission was very clear—find and destroy the Serb military in and around Kosovo, reduce its capability, and inhibit its ability to move and operate. The mission was always very difficult since there was no direct threat of a NATO ground invasion. The Serb army and MUP could—and did—hide from us, commandeering and using civilian vehicles to move around. Hence, finding and attacking a massed military ground force in the traditional sense was not in the cards.
Life seemed surreal flying home over the Adriatic after the first mission. Fatigue set in immediately after landing. After over five hours in the air, I felt almost too tired to climb out of the aircraft—I vowed to do better next time.
The most difficult missions were our CSAR or Sandy missions. Capt Buster Cherrey, mission commander on the successful rescue of an F-117 pilot downed deep inside Serbia, was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry. He was recognized by the president of the United States on 27 January 2000 during the State of the Union Address:
And we should be proud of the men and women of our Armed Forces and those of our allies who stopped the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, enabling a million people to return to their homes.
When Slobodan Milosevic unleashed his terror on Kosovo, Capt John Cherrey was one of the brave airmen who turned the tide. And when another American plane was shot down over Serbia, he flew into the teeth of enemy air defenses to bring his fellow pilot home. Thanks to our Armed Forces’ skill and bravery, we prevailed in Kosovo without losing a single American in combat. I want to introduce Captain Cherrey to you. We honor Captain Cherrey, and we promise you, Captain, we’ll finish the job you began.[2]
I flew a mission on 9 June, the last day we were authorized to expend ordnance. We found and attacked several APCs in southern Kosovo near Mount Osljak before my air conditioner control froze in the full-cold position, which forced our return to Gioia. For over an hour I flew in a frigid cockpit and thought my toes would suffer frostbite until the valve somehow freed itself.
By 10 June my AEW commander wanted me back at Spangdahlem, and Col Gregg Sanders, my extremely capable deputy, was ready to take over. I flew home solo in the A-10 on 11 June, after assembling and thanking all of the fine airmen. I could not find the right words of appreciation for their dedication, hard work, and professionalism. What an unbelievable effort by every one of them—I have never been prouder of an all-ranks group of airmen in my entire life! Readjusting to the parent wing—52d AEW—was difficult, and I immediately turned my energy to helping reconstitute our wing’s force.
It is important to review observations and lessons learned, in many cases lessons relearned, or lessons validated under fire. In no exact order, here are mine:
• With solid leadership, training, and equipment, anything is possible. Any clear mission is attainable over time. No one can precisely predict the time necessary to complete an air campaign or any other type of campaign.
• Realistic training and exercises pay off in combat. Those experiences provide confidence to commanders and airmen at all levels. Realistic training and exercises also help develop tactics and procedures that, in turn, minimize learning on-the-fly and unnecessary mistakes.
• Experienced pilots are a force multiplier. Both the 81st and the 74th were blessed with mature pilots and high levels of A-10 experience. This is not to say that the young pilots struggled—they did not. However, our combat experience was enhanced and our risks minimized by having experienced pilots leading in the air, reviewing all aspects of our daily operations, and then guiding everything from the daily flying schedule to combat tactics.
• Combat is team building and teamwork in its finest hour. Our flying-squadron organization worked in peace and war. It was one team, with one boss, going in one direction, and with everyone pulling his or her weight. There were no divisions, no competition, or conflicts between maintenance and operations.
• Clear communication between the squadron, group, and headquarters is crucial to success. You know it’s a “bad day” when the CFACC invites you for a face-to-face talk because someone in your command has failed to “follow his published guidance.” Such a communications failure makes his job of commanding the air war more difficult.
• Regular deployments working with allies facilitate future fighter operations in a coalition air campaign against a determined adversary. Knowing and trusting one’s allies before the shooting starts are imperative to the successful execution of an air campaign.
• General Jumper’s principle of “tough love” saves time and trouble when things get difficult. He emphasizes establishing and communicating expectations and then holding everyone accountable to those standards. Any required action was fair, firm, and quick. I found nearly all of the 40th EOG ready to fight and win; those few that were not were sent packing.
• There should never be an expectation that A-10s can fly 5,000-plus combat hours in a 360-degree threat without a loss. To have flown an entire air campaign without a combat loss is a miracle, unlikely to ever be repeated, and should never be an expectation of war planners, senior leaders, or politicians.
• Pilots will forever resist political restrictions that defy the principles of war and air and space power doctrine. However, they will unhesitatingly follow those restrictions to the letter. These pilots deserve to have the rationale for the restrictions explained, particularly when lives are at stake. They also deserve to have those restrictions regularly reviewed for operational necessity.
• The quality of our parent wing’s maintenance, effectiveness of its training, courage of its pilots, and superb quality of its leadership enabled the 52d AEW to fly more than 3,500 combat sorties for over 15,000 hours in F-117s, F-16CJs, and A-10s against a determined enemy and in a high-threat environment without any combat losses and with exceptional effectiveness. But this absence belies the high threat! The Serbs had a fully integrated, robust, and lethal air defense system and used it cunningly, firing over 700 missiles and millions of rounds of AAA.
• Many people sacrificed much to support the air campaign. Our wing had over 1,200 of its 5,000 active duty personnel deployed for up to six months. The families left behind took care of our children, sent us care packages, and prayed for our safe return. I will never forget seeing all the yellow ribbons tied around trees at Spangdahlem AB when I came home.
As everyone should know, freedom is never free—it puts at risk and may cost the lives of our soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. There is no better air force in the world today than our United States Air Force; the hardworking, dedicated airmen of all ranks deployed all around the world make it great. Since we are back to our expeditionary roots—not off chasing some new idea—and doing what we have done well for most of our history, we must have an expeditionary mind-set. Finally, NATO’s tremendous value and the role it plays in this rapidly changing and dangerous world cannot be overstated. NATO proved false the prediction that it could not stay together until the end—and did so convincingly.
All those maintainers assigned or attached to the 81st EFS during OAF put forth the necessary effort and were directly responsible for keeping the aircraft flying—24 hours a day for 78 consecutive days. Both obvious and not so obvious things went on behind the scenes during this conflict.
To say we showed up, did our jobs, and went home would in many aspects be correct. However, that statement would not do justice to all the individuals who went the extra mile and gave their all every day. Their total commitment was demonstrated not only during the campaign but also during the months leading up to it. When the 81st FS left Spangdahlem in January 1999 for a 30-day rotation at Aviano to support Operation Joint Forge, our jets were already in good shape. Despite having to deal with serious parts shortages and an aging airframe, our maintainers did everything within their control to keep our A-10s fully mission capable and at the same time support an aggressive flying-training program. Our crew chiefs kept their deferred discrepancies—those identified, noncritical aircraft problems whose correction had been delayed to an appropriate time in the future—to a minimum. Our maintenance schedulers worked our phase flow at a healthy 220-hour average, and our time-change items were all in compliance, with nothing deferred or coming due in the near future.
We usually looked forward to a trip to Aviano. This one was no different. It was to be a short 30 days in northern Italy supporting Bosnian overflights. Aviano was a “full up” air base with nearly all the comforts of home. Maintenance support was available, to include supplies and equipment. Aviano also had a base exchange, commissary, and eating establishments on and off base. As tensions began to heat up in the Balkans, we were extended for an additional 30 days, while political efforts attempted to resolve the crisis. As we got closer to the March deadline, we were extended indefinitely. We immediately added a couple of A-10s to our forces at Aviano, bringing our total to eight; by the time air operations commenced on 24 March, we were up to 15 Hogs on station—all ready for the fight.
Aviano AB was crowded with over 150 airframes of various types on station. We had one hardened aircraft shelter that heldtwo A-10s—one CANN aircraft and usually one that was undergoing unscheduled maintenance due to an in-flight write-up. The other 13 Hogs were parked outside—up to three per hardstand. This created an additional workload for the maintainers by requiring additional tow jobs at the end of the scheduled flying period; it also necessitated some creative planning during launches. We continued to generate more and more sorties, as well as CSAR alert lines. Due to our 24-hour CSAR commitment, we did not enjoy the eight- to 10-hour down period to maintain our aircraft that many of the other units had. We usually flew our tasked sorties during the day and then assumed nighttime (airborne or ground) CSAR alert. Most other flying units had either a day mission or a night mission. Due to our capabilities, we had both. We would postflight our last sorties of the day and immediately start reconfiguring jets to cover the night CSAR alert tasking. This dual tasking presented many challenges and resulted in a full schedule—one that challenged our aircraft, aircrew, and maintenance resources every day.
This pace continued for the next couple of weeks with our pilots flying long sorties—often exceeding seven hours. Aviano continued to receive and bed down additional fighter aircraft. By 7 April, it had over 170 aircraft on station and was looking for a place to park more F-16s. To help reduce our sortie length and make room for more aircraft at Aviano, the 81st looked for a new location further south that would be closer to the KEZ. We were tasked to send a senior maintainer on a site survey trip to several southern Italian air bases. CMSgt Ray Ide, our rep, evaluated three bases during a 12-hour trip on 6 April 1999. When he came back he said, “Gioia del Colle will work, but we need about a week to spin it up to minimum standards.” There were no munitions on base, no munitionsstorage or buildup area, no dedicated facilities for use by maintenance, and virtually no back-shop maintenance support in place. By the next day, rumors were rampant, and most folks anticipated relocation in about two weeks.
Shortly after I arrived at work on Thursday, 8 April, I was tasked to visit Gioia del Colle for a more in-depth site survey. I was accompanied by some Sixteenth Air Force logistics reps. We arrived at our destination late that night and were ready to get busy the next morning. We had all day Friday to look at the base. From a maintenance perspective, I could tell instantly that we had our work cut out to make it suitable. We would be able to use only one of the hardened aircraft shelters for the entire maintenance package—which had now grown to 22 A-10s (18 from Spangdahlem and four from Pope). This increase also meant that additional personnel and equipment would be required. We went toe-to-toe with the Italian air force and were able to gain a second shelter. We would still be a little crowded, but we were definitely much better off with the additional shelter and would be able to set up our back-shop support in one shelter and run the flight-line maintenance-support section and mobility-readiness spares package in the other.
Eventually we would add a small garage-type building that would house our nondestructive-inspection, wheel-and-tire, and repair-and-reclamation sections. This arrangement would be the extent of our shelter facilities for the duration of OAF. Since we were unable to get any more hangar space to work our CANN aircraft or to conduct any heavy maintenance, we would have to be creative with pallet bags and tarps to cover and protect areas of the CANN aircraft from the elements and debris.
On Friday, 9 April, we not only learned that we would redeploy to Gioia del Colle, but also got the other “good news” that we would do it on Sunday—in two days. Our focus instantly changed from the site-survey mode to the advanced echelon (ADVON) mode, and we knew we were way behind the power curve. I now had a day and a half to prepare to receive 18 A-10s with more to follow shortly as the 74th FS Hogs made their way across the Atlantic from Pope to Gioia. To further complicate our planning, we learned that we would have to vacate Aviano on Saturday by 1200 due to a large local war demonstration expected to take place at the main gate that afternoon. Our list of “must haves” was instantly growing. We had located initial work areas, located billeting to accommodate 400 personnel as we stood up an expeditionary operations group, and worked a contract shuttle bus for the one-hour trip between our accommodations and the base. We wrapped up what we could on Friday and Saturday and then proceeded to pick up our ADVON team of aircraft maintainers on Saturday afternoon. Sunday was coming way too fast. We managed to sneak in a pretty decent meal at the hotel before hitting the sack early in preparation for the big day that lay ahead of us.
Sunday the 11th went really well. We recovered (parked and performed postflight inspections) all 15 A-10s from Aviano and three more from Spangdahlem as scheduled. We were now waiting on the transportation system to catch up. Our relocation had not been without problems. Because our initial request for airlift had been denied, we had contracted for commercial trucks to supplement the assets the US Army Transportation Command had in Italy to move our equipment from Aviano to Gioia del Colle. We had nearly one-half of our equipment on the road by the time we convinced the decision makers that this approach would not get our sortie-generation equipment to us in time to meet the schedule for six CSAR alert lines that night, and our tasked sorties for the next day. We were finally allocated some C-130 airlift and were able to get a limited amount of key equipment to Gioia, but it remained far from an ideal situation. One of the redeployment’s most frustrating moments was the excitement of seeing our first C-130 on final, anticipating the delivery of our much-needed sortie-generation equipment, only to find that some of our materiel had been delayed to make room for a combat camera crew. The crew was there to cover our activity at Gioia del Colle as we began to regenerate our jets. Cameramen were absolutely our last priority since they weren’t among the things we needed to have on station to get our A-10s ready to fight—but I figured they would at least be able to take some nice pictures of our 18 static-display aircraft the next morning if the stuff they had displaced didn’t make it.
The flow of equipment and tools from Aviano could not have been worse. We had gone into great detail in planning the order we needed to receive the equipment at Gioia del Colle, but since the operational methods varied among the numerous transportation contractors we used, some shipments unexpectedly took longer than others to make the trip. Some trucks had two drivers and did not stop en route. Others had only one driver who took two or more days to make the trip due to overnight stops for rest. It appeared that almost everything showed up in reverse order. The one movement we had control over was the equipment we used to get the jets out of Aviano. After the Panther launch, we loaded that equipment onto the C-130s, and it made it to Gioia shortly after the Hogs arrived. That limited C-130 airlift support probably saved our efforts and allowed us to meet Sixteenth Air Force’s aggressive timeline.
Keeping track of everyone was another redeployment challenge. We did not have a personnel accountability (PERSCO) team on hand to track the people who were showing up from Aviano and Spangdahlem. An Air Force PERSCO team would normally complete all personnel actions required to support deployed commanders, such as reception processing, casualty reporting, sustainment actions, redeployment and accountability of Air Force personnel, and management of myriad other personnel-related programs. Without their help, we did everything we could to catch everyone on their way in, get a copy of their orders, and record some basic information that included their room assignments.
The first three days at Gioia del Colle were absolutely the most difficult. Many of us had already put in a few very long days to get the jets from Aviano to Gioia. Those who had worked a lengthy shift to generate and launch the jets at Aviano jumped on the C-130 for a two-hour flight to Gioia and then went right to work to get our Hogs ready to meet the Monday frag. We did our best to ensure that our technicians stuck to a 12-hour schedule, but that didn’t always work out. It was easy to have people working over 24 hours with little more than a nap. We cut our maintenance crews back to the minimum necessary to prepare the aircraft to meet our CSAR alert for Sunday and get the first eight aircraft ready for Monday. We prepped six front lines and two spares to cover Monday and put everyone else on shift, letting them get some much-needed and well-deserved rest.
Five A-10s and about 70 personnel from the 74th FS at Pope were headed our way. They had been holding at Spangdahlem until our redeployment fate was decided, and then held a few additional days to let us settle in. With all that was going on with our own redeployment, inheriting additional aircraft and personnel added to my list of things to do and worry about. Some unique maintenance issues had to be resolved as we molded aircraft and personnel from Pope and Spangdahlem into a deployed unit under the air and space expeditionary force (AEF) concept. We did what we had to do by the book and applied common sense as much as possible. We encouraged team integrity by letting the dedicated crew chiefs work their own jets, and we took the team approach to the rest of the maintenance workload. Once we got through the initial growing pains, things seemed to work well. Everyone shared the goals of generating safe and reliable aircraft to support NATO’s missions and of bringing all of our pilots home safely.
We faced several other challenges in addition to a hectic redeployment with an almost impossible timeline. We were in a small town in southern Italy with none of the “conveniences” of home. We arrived on a weekend and were pretty much unable to work any support issues that involved the locals, such as portable toilets, bottled water, or any type of eating facility for our troops. The RAF and the Italian air force were gracious enough to allow us to use their facilities to cover our needs for the weekend, and that enabled most of our day shifters to get a good meal. We were able to scrounge up some “meals ready to eat” (MRE) for our night shifters, and a few of the other troops were able to go off base before their shift and find grocery stores or restaurants to meet their needs. Positive attitudes and a strong sense of mission were the keys to making the redeployment work.
We were not able to provide such basic needs as bathrooms, bottled water, and meals for the first three days—even so, I heard absolutely no complaints. For the most part, everyone was too busy and tired to worry about it, and I think just knowing the problem was being worked was enough for the majority. Everyone’s dedication was incredible. We had to order some people to leave work because we knew they had been there way over their 12-hour limit. Attitude was everything. I cannot say enough about the effort put forth by the maintainers—those on the flight line and those in support roles. Our liquid oxygen for the first day’s flying was courtesy of an innovative liquid-fuels specialist. Our equipment to fill the bottles was still en route. The specialist knew that Brindisi AB was just an hour or so down the road and he took all of our aircraft bottles and brought them back full. Had he not done so, our first flights on Monday would have not made it off the ground. It was this sort of dedication and creativity that kept us in the fight until our cargo caught up with us a few days later.
Once our equipment was in place, we began to settle into a routine. Our hotel was a 75-minute drive away. Adding two-and-a-half hours of driving to a 12-hour shift wasn’t the route we wanted to take. Once we resolved some initial scheduling issues and adjusted the shuttle schedule, the bus system worked great. It was definitely the way to go.
A typical day at Gioia was pretty fast paced. At the height of the air campaign, we were launching 16 aircraft on the first go and usually 14 on the afternoon go. We used a UHF/VHF-equipped Humvee as the production superintendent’s vehicle. This enabled us to talk to the pilots and “ops desk” to get aircraft status on the inbound so we could begin to line up the afternoon sorties and have technicians standing by to begin to work the inflight write-ups. We definitely had a full plate turning the aircraft from the first go to the second go.
Our configuration was typically four Mk-82 low-drag bombs, two AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missiles, 30 mm combat mix ammunition, 14 2.75-inch rockets, two AIM-9 air-to-air missiles, chaff/flare, Pave Penny pod, and an ALQ-131 electronic countermeasures (ECM) pod. Obviously, our crew chiefs, weapons loaders, and system specialists were all busy. They worked in-flight write-ups, conducted aircraft postflight inspections, loaded munitions, and refueled—all of this had to come together in about two hours and 30 minutes. Our production superintendents orchestrated the activity on the line, and the troops hustled each and every day of the campaign to make it happen. Both the day and night crews did a remarkable job of keeping track of the frag, necessary configurations, and CSAR alert. We scrambled our CSAR-alert aircraft on the nights the F-117 and F-16 were shot down, and again on several other occasions. We took our CSAR-alert commitment very seriously, knowing that lives depended on it.
We also had to watch each of our aircraft’s phase-inspection timeline. Each A-10 must undergo a phase inspection after 100 hours of flying time to discover and repair problems that might have been missed during normal preflight and postflight inspections. We flew about 75 total hours and accomplished one 100-hour phase inspection at Spangdahlem each day at the beginning of the conflict. As the demand for airborne CSAR alert, AFAC, and A-10 strike missions grew, we were soon flying over 100 hours each day. We knew this would quickly become a problem because we were “earning back” only 100 hours per day with our current flow of one aircraft through phase. We quickly elevated the options: we needed to cut back down to below 100 hours a day, perform contingency phase inspections, or bring in enough personnel and equipment from the combat air forces (CAF) to stand up a second A-10 phase dock at Spangdahlem. We chose the third option. Those who stayed behind at Spangdahlem to perform A-10 phase inspections were just as valuable to the effort as those of us who deployed. Without the hard work and long duty hours performing these vital inspections on our A-10s, we would not have been able to keep up with our NATO taskings. Again, it was truly a total team effort, both at home station and Gioia del Colle.
Daily sustainability issues were initially challenging. We had no Air Force infrastructure to support us. Our spares packages were sparse, and any parts coming into country via premium transportation (Federal Express and DHL Worldwide Express) were subject to Italian customs inspectors. This worked well Monday through Friday, but we had no customs support over the weekend or on Italian holidays. This became frustrating when a part hit the airport on a Friday afternoon and we knew we wouldn’t see it before Monday afternoon when the delivery would be made. This was the single biggest issue that we were not able to resolve during the conflict. We learned to live with it but didn’t like it because it was often the one part we needed to return a jet to mission-capable status. We did get the luxury of a twice-weekly rotator flight back to Ramstein for ECM pod and precision measuring equipment laboratory (PMEL) support. We also used this flight to get parts and other needed items from home station, especially those short-notice items.
Looking back, I can honestly say that the only reason we were able to maintain our hectic pace was the dedicated team effort by all involved. Although it was a “pilot’s war,” I was proud to witness the support of the Air Force ground team—flight-line backshop, munitions maintenance, supply, transportation, personnel, administrative, finance, contracting, and the list goes on. They were all there to provide support—and they did it well. Their behind-the-scenes efforts were key ingredients in the success of the A-10s supporting KEZ operations from Gioia.
My memory of how the 74th FS got involved in OAF is a little hazy, but I think it all started with a planned deployment for the 81st FS to Kuwait. The boys from Spangdahlem were supposed to go down to Al Jaber AB, Kuwait, for a standard desert rotation to participate in Operation Southern Watch, also known as OSW. They were scheduled to arrive in Kuwait around late March or early April 1999, but there was a glitch in the plan.
By early March 1999, the 81st FS had been tasked to be on call for the situation that was brewing between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and NATO over the disputed region of Kosovo. There was no way the squadron could be on call and still meet its OSW tasking, so reinforcements had to be brought in. This is the point in time when the 74th got involved.
I guess I’ve heard about a million reasons why the 74th FS was chosen to participate in helping the Spang guys with their predicament, but I think it all had to do with geographical location and timing. Geographically, the A-10s at Pope were the closest to Germany, and it just made sense to me that we should be going. The 75th FS, our sister squadron at Pope, had just participated in an operational readiness inspection (ORI) for our wing at Moody AFB and had been on a pretty aggressive deployment schedule prior to the ORI. I don’t think our local leadership at Pope was willing to send the 75th guys after all their recent time on the road. That left us, the 74th Flying Tigers, to foot the bill.
The plan, at least the way it was briefed to us, was for the 74th FS to fly six or eight jets over to Germany to be the “on call” guys for NATO. At this time, NATO was fairly sure that Milosevic would capitulate and comply with all its demands, just like he had done in the past when threatened with military intervention. After we arrived in Germany, the 81st would then move out to the desert for a vacation in exotic Southwest Asia. The 81st could meet its OSW obligation and we could provide immediate help for NATO if needed. This sounded like a logical solution. The hard part would be to decide who would stay home and who would go to Germany.
The “list,” as it was affectionately called, contained all the names of the individuals chosen to participate in this pop-up deployment. It was not surprising that every pilot in our squadron wanted to go. We all had visions of flying at low altitude over the entire European continent without any concerns except where we would be eating that night. I was told very early in the process that I was on the list, and I knew it would be a tough thing to relay to my wife. I imagined what her response would be. I could already hear her saying, “You’re going where? For how long? Why?” I know the list changed several times, but my name remained. I waited until I knew for sure that I was going to Germany before I broke the news to my wife. During that time, things in Kosovo had taken a bad turn. The Serbs were not going to comply with NATO’s demands, and now there would be an armed response.
Obviously, the Spang Hogs were not going to Kuwait with the current situation in eastern Europe, and their immediate priority was to support anything NATO needed. Well, the bombs started dropping on 24 March, and OAF started to take shape. We, the 74th FS, were now told that we would fly four jets over to Spangdahlem to be a “rear echelon” force. Our primary purpose would be to fly with the few pilots of the 81st who were not mission ready (MR) and upgrade them to combat status. This was not the most noble of missions when there was a war to be fought, but that is what we were ordered to do. Certainly they (whoever “they” may have been) would not let a group of fully trained, combat-ready Hog drivers sit around an empty squadron staring at each other across a mission-planning table, wondering what training profile they would fly the next day.
On Sunday, 11 April, the 74th pilots on the list were contacted and told to be ready to deploy to Germany within 48 hours. Our tasking was still a bit nebulous. We were now being told there was a distinct possibility we would be joining the Spang boys in Italy to take part in OAF. It was at this point I felt obligated to let my wife in on the news, and I searched for the right words to tell her.
My wife is always one to worry, so I kept the whole deployment possibility a secret until it became certain I was going. Looking back on it all, I wonder if I should have kept her informed as I received details of the trip to Europe. However, there was no sense getting her upset at the mere chance of going on this thing, and I would do it the same way if I had to do it again.
Of course my wife cried when I told her I was going, but she knew that this was exactly why I was in this business. We had a long night discussing all the potential scenarios, but she kept coming back to a promise she wanted me to make—to assure her I would come back alive without any differences in my personality or demeanor. Basically, she wanted what any normal woman would want from a husband going into combat.
On the morning of 12 April, all the guys who were going to Germany got together in our squadron briefing room and discussed the upcoming events. An air of controlled excitement ran through the entire bunch. No one really knew what was about to take place, but we were certain we were headed for a big adventure. Our group commander eventually came down to the squadron and filled us in on what he thought our role would be in OAF.
The information that our commander gave us could not have been more wrong. He told us that we would be the 74th EFS, flying only with our own squadron mates and in our own jets. He also told us we would be fragged on the ATO as the 74th EFS (not the 81st EFS) and warned us about being pushed around by our new combat leadership once we got in-theater. He was very keen on maintaining our identity as a separate combat unit, complete with our own maintenance and set of taskings. This was indeed a pipe dream, but we didn’t realize it at the time. We all nodded and blindly accepted his briefing as gospel.
On Tuesday, 13 April, the day had come for us to depart. I spent all day packing and avoided direct contact with my wife. I figured if I kept busy, I could keep my mind off the moment when I would have to say good-bye. It was very tense in my house. I had my game face on, my wife was on the verge of tears, and my two young daughters still weren’t sure what was going on. Around 2000 hours, my wife and kids drove me to our squadron, and the good-bye was certainly something I will never forget. The thought of never seeing my family again did cross my mind, but I quickly reassured myself it would never happen to me. I figured being a prisoner of war (POW) was the worst thing that could possibly happen, and that would be a long shot.
I finally made it to Gioia del Colle on 20 April, having stopped at the Azores and Spangdahlem en route. The flight down from Germany to Italy was truly spectacular with beautiful views of the Swiss Alps and the Italian coastline. It was hard to believe that just across the Adriatic a war was being fought and people were being killed. It was even harder to believe that I would be in the thick of it all in less than 48 hours—but that’s another story.
I experienced OAF from a different viewpoint than that of the pilots—a support perspective. Support personnel, for example, range from the maintainer who fixes the jet, to the services person who finds places for people to eat and sleep, and to the communications personnel who ensure that pilots can talk to the ground or to a home unit.
When I stepped off the airplane, I was handed three hats. As the chief of personnel for the contingency operations team, it was my job to ensure accountability for all people deployed, to get more bodies when we needed them, and to assist folks with those parts of their professional military lives that extended beyond fighting the war—testing for rank, medals processing, performance reports, and so forth. As the executive officer, my job was to keep things organized and tied together so the group commander could concentrate on the big stuff—bombs on target and winning a war. As the protocol officer, I had to ensure that everything was ready for any high-ranking visitors who would pass through Gioia.
When I arrived at Gioia, about a week after the airplanes landed, I was amazed at the ingenuity of the people already in place. The Italians gave us two floors of an old dorm to use as office space. It was still full of beds, dressers, and nightstands. The members of the 40th EOG had stacked the mattresses in two rooms at the end of the hall, turned the bed frames on their sides, removed the closet doors from their hinges, and laid them across bed frames to form “desks.” In some cases the beds were left in one piece behind the desk to act as “chairs.” Nightstands were stacked two high and in rows to form a counter for the operations desk.
We all quickly adapted to our new office space, and the mission was unaffected. It was actually nice having everyone together in one location. At a home base, the support guys are rarely around when a jet lands, so they feel slightly removed from the mission. Not at Gioia! The pilots had to walk down the “support” hallway to drop off their flying gear, and the transportation, personnel, and civil engineering troops would come out into the hallway to ask how the flight went. Most of the time the pilots were more than willing to take the time to swap stories and play hero with the younger troops. It really built up camaraderie between the officers and enlisted folks.
Support personnel had to accomplish many tasks while the pilots flew their missions. Being in charge of the comings and goings of more than 900 folks was no easy feat, but the Air Force has a deployable computer system designed for just such a task. Of course, in the 100-plus days we were there, we never received all the parts required to make the system operational. We didn’t have to resort totally to stubby-pencil tracking, but I did have to design a database to meet our needs. Support folks fixed thousands of such problems as this with equal ingenuity.
When I wasn’t trying to track our people, I was getting ready to host our many visitors. One might think Gioia del Colle was too small for most people to find, but we had our share of “very important people.” Secretary of the Air Force F. Whitten Peters and Lt Gen Michael Short, joint forces air component commander, were two of the highest ranking US people to visit. Our visitors were not limited to Americans. The British were on the bottom floor of our dorm/office building, an arrangement that prompted Prince Andrew to pay us a visit as well during his tour of RAF operations. He appreciated the chance to see an A-10 up close and to talk to some of our members. Rock star Joan Jett also made a support appearance at Gioia, puting on a wonderful concert for the troops.
As an executive officer, I tried to deal with the minuscule things that go unnoticed to the untrained eye, such as storing mattresses, allocating office space, and playing peacemaker between operations and support personnel when they didn’t understand each other. I also dealt with all the administrative paperwork that goes hand in hand with any organization.
There were big problems to deal with and not-so-big problems. One of the funny inconveniences of our deployment was the lack of a place to wash our clothes. The Italians didn’t have Americanstyle laundromats, and the hotels charged ridiculous fees to wash even a shirt. The extra money the Air Force was paying us to cover expenses like this wasn’t going to hack it. People came up with some humorous solutions to the laundry problem. I heard of some pilots taking showers while wearing their flight suits so they could wash them at the same time. Others discovered the additional floor-mounted sink in their bathroom (known to most European travelers as a bidet) and used that to wash their clothes. Now is that creativity, desperation, or just cheapness? A few people mailed packages of dirty laundry to their wives, who usually returned clean clothes. I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of those packages! I am sad to say this little problem was never really solved.
There was definitely an upside to being deployed with this group of professionals. Walking around the area and talking to the airmen about their different jobs was enlightening. I’ll never forget the looks on the faces of the maintainers when their jet came back clean. The pride was evident: they bragged to one another, just as if they had dropped the bombs themselves. They were also concerned if a jet was late returning or if they could see the bombs still hanging as the A-10 came in to land.
After we had been in place a few months, things slowed down just enough to give the senior leadership a chance to hold a few meetings. Lt Col Chris Haave was the 81st commander, referred to as Kimos in most of this book—but support officers typically didn’t call pilots by their call signs. Colonel Haave briefed the troops on how we were doing against the Serbs and what impact the A-10s were making. He showed gun-camera videos that depicted bombs being dropped on targets, and he described a typical mission. Folks were on the edge of their seats. For the most part, these airmen had never been close to combat, and the briefing made it all the more real. Having a lieutenant colonel thank a group of enlisted and support officers, while explaining how they were really contributing to the war effort, made us feel needed and appreciated. It sure made coming to work for 12-plus hours a day more worthwhile.
President William J. Clinton, “2000 State of the Union Address,” 27 January 2000, on-line, Internet, 14 August 2001, available from <a l:href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/states/docs/sou00.htm#foreignpolicy">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/states/docs/sou00.htm#foreignpolicy</a>.