to concentrate directly on the target. Passing 300 rounds on target, I kept the hammer down and began to move the pipper around the target area until I saw an explosion—500 rounds later.
“Two is egressing south.” With the tables turned and the Serbs diving for cover, I called my flight lead and told him the heading on which I was departing the target area. Looking over my left side, I saw that Kimos was in a solid cover position as we concluded our first vul period, crossed into Macedonia, and began the air-refueling process in preparation for the sortie’s second scheduled vul period.
Deep Thoughts
I had to think for a while about what I really wanted to say here. Many of my friends will write about what happened in Kosovo in 1999. I flew 36 combat missions over Serbia, so at first glance the task didn’t seem all that tough. I thought about writing about my first-ever combat sortie—we didn’t hit anything because we were recalled by the CAOC in what became an almost daily ritual of higher-headquarters mis-/micromanagement. I thought I would write about the time my flight lead Goldie Haun was hit by a SAM and barely made it back over the border. I briefly thought about my most effective sortie, in which Capt Nathan S. “Foghorn” Brauner and I destroyed 14 APCs and eight artillery pieces. To me it seemed like a routine sortie, but we were fortunate enough to get real results. Finally, I thought about the sortie that Lt Col Coke Koechle, my operations officer, let me lead for the first time. A fighter pilot’s first sortie in the lead is one that he or she will always remember, and in my case that sortie was in combat over the FRY. As I landed, I felt as if I had genuinely accomplished something.
All of these sorties were memorable, but they didn’t really define Kosovo for me. After thinking about it for a while, I finally figured out what I actually took away from Kosovo. Being on the front lines of this war has given me a new perspective and has caused me to view historical accounts through different eyes. From my perspective, Kosovo was weird—just plain weird. Some have written about the delayed stress of combat operations; others have discussed the guilt they feel after taking human life. As for me, I mostly felt, and still feel, that the whole experience was surreal. It didn’t seem possible that I was actually in the middle of this whole thing. All my life I had either watched or read accounts of historical events. In Kosovo the Panthers didn’t watch history in the making—we made it. We were key players in the first conflict in which the war was fought and won almost exclusively in the air. That I contributed to that victory is a great feeling, but every once in a while I think to myself, “What happened over there, anyway?”
If you get them away from the cameras, many pilots will say that, from a public-support point of view, Kosovo was similar to the Vietnam conflict. The older members of my squadron who had fought in Desert Storm told us of how the support from home had helped boost morale during the tougher times of the war. In Kosovo, we really didn’t get much support, and, to tell the truth, we did not even get the animosity I had read about during the Vietnam conflict. It seemed to me that most Americans didn’t know that the war was going on, at least at the level of intensity we faced. It becomes emotional when I am asked to risk my life for a just cause. To take such a risk when the cause is controversial is different. It is simply bizarre to do so for a cause my countrymen seem unaware of or indifferent to. Therefore, I often found myself wondering if this war was at all real.
During the first few weeks of the war, we fought out of Aviano. My squadron was housed in a hotel off base throughout the 1990s—ever since Bosnia-Herzegovina really heated up. When we entered the base from the hotel, there would be literally thousands of people outside the gates. We were sure there were Serbian intelligence gatherers in the crowds, and we were concerned about protests. However, it seemed that most of the crowd were made up of people who were little different from those encountered at an air show—teenagers who wanted to see jets launch in the early morning sunrise. I wanted to scream at them, “Do you realize what’s going on here?” It was really strange.
We were directed to relocate to Gioia del Colle AB, soon after the war started and Aviano began to get crowded. Gioia was in southern Italy, much closer to Kosovo, which meant an increased sortie rate for us. It also meant we were housed like kings—our enlisted troops were in quarters near the beach, and the officers lived in a great hotel. We would get up around 0100, arrive at work about 0145, brief, launch, tank up, and enter Kosovo around 30 to 45 minutes after sunrise to get the best chance of identifying targets. Of course, that also gave the Serbs the best chance of seeing us—a concept I was to fully understand after my third sortie!
After 45 minutes of hunting, we would leave Kosovo and refuel in Macedonia, and then go back in. After this second vul period, we would head for home, making a total sortie duration of around four and one-half hours. We would land, debrief, eat, and get some sleep before the next day’s work. We fought exclusively as two-ships. On most sorties I flew as a wingman but was privileged to lead six.
I was getting shot at daily, but to watch CNN Headline News, Kosovo was a cakewalk, interrupted only by incompetent NATO pilots bombing civilians. Of course, nothing could have been further from the truth. I saw my close friends going to great lengths to avoid harming innocents, often putting themselves at considerable risk in the process. Guys like Capt Francis M. “JD” McDonough have earned my everlasting respect for their actions to keep civilians safe in Kosovo. This is a facet of the war that has been almost entirely overlooked.
We worked under ROEs that severely hampered our ability to attack targets. We were strictly forbidden to engage if there were any chance of collateral damage, no matter how small. That’s an important goal, but when taken to extremes, it proved very frustrating. As an example, on one sortie, I saw a red vehicle traveling at high speed towards a village. I paid attention to it because, by this time in the war, we had pretty much destroyed the petroleum reserves in the country. A civilian vehicle racing down the highway was very unusual—especially when the Kosovar-Albanians had been forcibly evacuated and the Serb civilians were given a very low gasoline priority. Anyway, this vehicle stopped in a small village. A few minutes later, the village burst into flames. The vehicle then left the village as quickly as it had come. It seemed obvious that Serbs had torched the village. The Serbs, who, not long into the war, had wisely abandoned their tanks, had taken to driving around in stolen Kosovar-Albanian civilian vehicles. Even though this vehicle obviously was involved with hostile action, we were prohibited from attacking it because it was painted red—not the green of Serb military vehicles!
Now, compare my story to one by Gen H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of Central Command. In 1991 he showed the world “the luckiest man in Iraq,” using the nowfamous video of a bridge being destroyed mere seconds after that Iraqi civilian reached the other side. This video was humorous in 1991, a story told lightheartedly by both the military and the media. In 1999, that same situation would have caused us to abort the attack; or if the attack had continued, it would have generated a huge media uproar. Weird? To me—yes. Nevertheless, it is probably something pilots will have to deal with in America’s next war.
After a while, the war’s routine and ROEs began to affect us all—but in different ways. Some guys got stressed out while others grew complacent. One of the chaplains on base was quoted in a major newspaper as saying that Kosovo wasn’t a real war because of the great conditions in which we lived. That was nonsense to most of the pilots. By this time, two NATO planes had been shot down, several unmanned drones had been blasted from the sky, and two Hogs from my own unit had been damaged. The pilot of one of them, Maj Goldie Haun, was my flight lead the day he was hit. I will never forget conducting a battle-damage check of his jet on the way back over the border and seeing a huge hole where his engine used to be. I could actually see his helmet through the cowling where his engine should have been. Goldie was lucky to make it back to friendly territory before his jet stopped flying altogether. His safe recovery is due to his outstanding flying skill and God’s grace.
In some ways though, the chaplain’s comments were understandable. Americans see images of World War II and Vietnam, and somehow feel that unless there’s mud involved, there is no war. Airpower has changed the reality of warfare—if not the public’s perception. World War II bomber pilots fought over Berlin and returned to party in London that night. USAF crews fought in Vietnam from such hardship locations as Guam. So, although the chaplain was dead wrong, I had to admit that the “Cappuccino War,” as we came to call it, wasn’t what I initially expected it would be. There’s something strange about watching my flight lead get smashed by a SAM—then coming back to base and ordering the greatest salmon tortellini I’ve ever had.
To all of us who fought, Kosovo was an important time—to some, a life-defining event. For example, any hesitation I had about dropping a bomb on another human being evaporated as I flew over Kosovo. Serb atrocities were clearly seen—even from three and one-half miles in the air. The country’s highways looked like parking lots as Kosovar-Albanians were forced to abandon their vehicles and walk into Albania. Entire villages were gutted and
