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.
Redeployment, Beddown, and Maintenance
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-
