days following the Brits’ discovery of this tank by the house, coalition forces found and killed numerous pieces of artillery and armor hidden in and around this target area. A picture is indeed worth a thousand kills. Once again, I learned that if something on the ground doesn’t look quite right, it’s probably a Serb hiding from the wrath of the Warthog. Thanks to my British war brethren for the great target.
Break Left! No, Your Other Left!
The first of May began like any other day in Gioia. I was scheduled to fly as Maj Kirk M. “Corn” Mays’s wingman on an AFAC mission around the town of Urosevac. Corn was not alone in his feeling of frustration in not being able to find great targets. The Serbs were getting craftier at hiding their fielded forces because the A-10s were locating and killing them daily. Secret funerals were being held in Belgrade so the Yugoslav public would not know how many of their boys were dying in Kosovo. The Serbs were digging in deeper, and we were getting better at discovering their secrets of concealment.
Corn asked me to lead the reconnaissance portion of the mission since I had succeeded in finding some lucrative targets in the past. We flew into theater and began working with the operator of a UAV who had spotted a tank and Serbian troops hidden in a tree line. I searched the area of interest with both binoculars and the Maverick seeker, but could not positively identify the target in question. Neither could I talk to the UAV operator directly because he was located too far from the AOR. Instead, I relayed my radio transmissions through the ABCCC. This process took a great deal of time and required us to stay in the target area longer than I had wished to positively identify the target. I rolled in and put three Willy Pete rockets close to the area I thought the UAV operator was talking about in hopes that the operator would see my smoke and confirm its position in relation to the target. Minutes later I got the confirmation from the UAV pilot via ABCCC that I was looking at the correct target. At this point Corn and I were rapidly approaching our bingo fuel for our next aerial refueling. Corn was coordinating a handoff of the target area with another two-ship of Hogs piloted by Capt James P. “Meegs” Meger and 1st Lt Michael A. “Scud” Curley. I was positioning myself to roll in and drop my Mk-82s on the troop concentration in the trees.
Just as I was about to roll in, I heard, “SAM launch, SAM launch” over the UHF radio. Looking east towards Pristina Airfield, I saw a volley of two SAMs followed immediately by two more. I was amazed at the amount of white, billowy smoke they produced and the rapid speed at which they flew in our direction. All four SAMs were guiding towards us. I began evasive maneuvers and called the SAM launch out on the very high frequency (VHF) radio that all four A-10s were using to work the target-area handoff. All four A-10s began a SAM defense ballet, the likes of which I have never seen and hope to never see again. The sky was full of chaff, and the world’s greatest attack pilots were maneuvering their Hogs like their lives depended on it—and they did! A SAM, the second launched, malfunctioned and detonated in spectacular fashion about 2,000 feet above the ground. From my now- inverted cockpit, I could feel the concussion of the warhead detonating in a blaze of orange fire. The other three SAMs continued on course in an attempt to thwart our attack against the troops massed in the forest below us.
All but one of the SAMs failed to guide—and that one chose Scud as its soon-to-be victim. Wouldn’t you know it would pick Scud, who was the least-seasoned pilot in our four-ship—a formation that had over 3,500 hours of combined Hog experience. Meegs did an excellent job of defeating the threat, maintaining situational awareness on his wingman, and calling out the final evasive maneuvers that prevented the SAM from impacting Scud’s jet and ruining our day. All four SAMs were defeated, and the Serb troops in the forest below awaited the wrath of the Panthers. The Serbs failed to take a lesson from Desert Storm. In that campaign, the Iraqis quickly learned that if they shot at an A-10 they had better kill it because if it survives, it is going to shoot back with a vengeance.
Corn and I were out of gas, so we departed the area with our hearts in our throats and left the counterattack to Meegs. He dropped four Mk-82 airburst bombs on the troop concentration in the trees and eliminated those forces from the rest of the campaign. (I can make that statement with a high degree of certainty. One year later I received an Air Medal for my participation in that sortie. Afterwards a member of the audience approached me, introducing himself as the UAV operator with whom we had worked during that mission. He had personally witnessed Meegs’s Mk-82 attack, vouched for the devastation it created, and was pleased to finally meet one of the mission’s pilots.)
After getting fuel from the tanker, Corn and I proceeded back into the KEZ to look for more targets in the northern region of the country. We had received numerous intel reports about troops and targets in this region, but we had not achieved much success in finding them. We flew approximately 15 miles northwest of Pristina Airfield and began searching for targets. I found one area of interest that appeared to have mobile AAA and possibly some other military vehicles in a small valley. I was just starting to talk Corn’s eyes onto the area to get his opinion when I saw two SAM launches from just north of Pristina Airfield. I thought, “Here we go again.” I called out the SAM launch to Corn and directed his break turn to defeat the attack. As I dumped out as much chaff as I could muster and made the appropriate break turn, I looked back to see that Corn had turned in the wrong direction. He was heading straight towards the SAMs, increasing their probability of intercept. Realizing that he did not see the SAMs, I directed him to “take it down! Break right now and roll out west! Chaff! Chaff! Chaff!” As the second SAM guided in Corn’s direction, I continued to monitor his progress and update his maneuvers while attempting to talk his eyes onto the threat. I was certain the SAM was going to hit him, and I was just about to call out a last ditch maneuver when it began to drift aft to pass about 1,000 feet behind him.
Once we were clear of the SAMs, I plotted the area from which they were launched on a 1-to-50 map. I passed the coordinates to a Navy F/A-18 flight, which swiftly acquired the SAM system and destroyed it with LGBs within minutes of its attack on our flight. After the attack, we exited the area and headed home. The trip back to Gioia was very quiet. Not until we got to the cash register to pay for dinner that evening, Corn insisting that he pay for mine, did I realize the full magnitude of what had happened that day. Not feeling the effects of combat until hours after the mission and debrief is fairly common. It seemed that after a day of fighting the Serbs, the adrenaline level ran out somewhere between the order of steamed mussels with garlic and butter and the homemade gelato with fresh strawberries and cream on top. Dinner at the Truck Stop (a favorite eatery between Gioia and the hotel) was a savored ritual. The food was Italian standard—excellent—and the meal was a chance to recap the day’s events over a glass of wine. That’s when everyone seemed to “crash.” During those moments, I said a little thank- you prayer and just hoped that somehow what we did that day had really made a difference.
Final Thoughts
I flew several other sorties over Kosovo, fighting the Serbs with the best fighter pilots in the world. Milosevic did not stand a chance. The sorties I have recalled here were examples of the most memorable ones. For me, OAF was exciting, stressful, and frustrating. It was exciting because I finally got a chance to fight in the world’s finest attack aircraft with the best-trained and most professional pilots in the US Air Force. It was stressful because we were getting shot at daily and the physical demands of running a 24-hour wartime operation took its toll on all of us. And it was frustrating to see villages burning several weeks into the campaign and not knowing what to do at that moment to stop the carnage. I am grateful to God that he delivered us all home safely to our families and that the air campaign was enough to convince Milosevic to give in. My last sortie in the A-10 was on 17 May, when I took a jet from Italy back to Spangdahlem for required maintenance. Opportunities like flying in this campaign present themselves only once in a lifetime. I am grateful and honored to have been a member of the fighting 81st FS Panthers.
Chapter 3
