As the strikers departed, I decided we had just enough gas to allow my wingman to try a Maverick attack on the target. I had him try passes from several directions, but the trees prevented him from getting a good lock-on with his missile seeker. We were now bingo and had to depart the area. It was a long, quiet flight home—my most frustrating sortie of the war. We had started with one of the best targets we had seen in a long time and ended up with only the possibility of having damaged one tank.
There were numerous failures. Two different weapons systems had failed on my jet and I had failed to have striker flight track the three tanks as they headed off to the northeast while I attacked the APC. Nevertheless, the biggest failure of all was a process that required us to wait more than 40 minutes for approval to attack a lucrative target located far away from any civilians or buildings. The ROEs that had helped us for much of the war had now— for mostly political reasons—been turned against us. On this day they really bit us.
Humor in the Midst of Controlled Chaos
Humor is important. It makes us happy and rejuvenates the mind. We worked hard during the war’s 70-plus days, and our minds and bodies were tired. I saw and heard several things that now might seem insignificant, but at the time they were quite funny. One such event, which struck me as very symbolic, said, “This is a team effort; we will make this war work.”
A normal sortie profile includes taking off, flying to a tanker and refueling, working in Kosovo for about 45 minutes, taking a 45-minute round-trip flight to a tanker for more fuel, and then working another 45 minutes in Kosovo before going home. Although we often used the same tanker track for both refuelings, we might refuel from two different tankers. It was also normal for us to launch on every mission with all the tanker call signs and air- refueling track frequencies, so that we would have the information if it became necessary to switch to a different tanker while in flight. The tankers launched each day with the call sign and the amount of fuel they planned to off- load to each of their scheduled receivers. This enabled them to manage their fuel and deal with unexpected events. The plan was rather simple, flexible, and usually worked well. Occasionally, however, the refueling tracks became little more than controlled chaos.
On a rather stormy day about halfway through the conflict, my wingman and I were flying an AFAC mission in Kosovo using the call sign Ford 11. As I hooked up to our tanker at the beginning of the mission, I was told by its crew that, even though they were supposed to refuel us again during our second visit to the track, they would not have the fuel to do so. Most pilots like to take on a few extra pounds of fuel when the weather is bad; it seemed that today, because of those extra pounds, our tanker would come up short. The tanker pilot said that he was coordinating with the CAOC for a replacement tanker. I was not concerned since this was not the first time this sort of thing had happened. We took our gas and headed north to Kosovo.
We had some luck: the weather over Kosovo was better than that over Macedonia, where the tanker tracks were located. Eventually we had to depart Kosovo to meet our second tanker. We noticed more radio chatter than usual as we checked in with the area controller. This was to be expected with bad weather, but today the controller was also hard to hear. After trying for several minutes, I was able to get one good exchange with the controller. He said that my new tanker’s call sign was Esso 73 and that I would refuel on my original track. That was the last successful contact I had with the controller. That meant we could not have him give us vectors to the tanker, which created a problem since the A-10 does not have an air-to-air radar and the visibility prevented my acquiring the tanker visually. My only other method for finding the tanker was to use my radio’s direction-finding capability. That required my being in radio contact with the tanker. While en route to the track I tried all the frequencies but could not contact the tanker. We were now about to enter the track, and our remaining fuel dictated that we either start taking on fuel in the next few minutes or turn for home.
I entered the tanker track and found some clear air in the western end. The tanker pilots had a fair amount of discretion with regard to where they flew in the large tracks—the good ones tried to stay out of the clouds. Lucky for us, most tanker crews were good. As we were about to turn for home, I saw a tanker fly out of a wall of clouds on a heading that I could intercept. We turned to intercept it and started calling again on all frequencies for the track. Normally we didn’t talk to the tankers prior to refueling, but we were always on the same frequency and knew each other’s call sign. While we were still a mile or two from the tanker, it started a turn towards us, which helped my rejoin geometry and kept us from reentering the clouds before we could join on its wing. We were still about a half mile from the tanker and closing when I saw its flaps come down and the refueling boom lower. This was a good sign. I slid behind the tanker and stabilized next to the boom. From there I could see the boom operator settle into position.
Once connected to the tanker, I was able to talk to the crew on the intercom system. I felt a bit silly but asked, “Hi fellas, are you Esso 73?” As luck would have it, they were, and they asked if I was Ford 11. I guessed they had not received any help from the controllers either. This little exchange made me laugh. In spite of all our planning, our ability to continue with the rest of our mission came down to my plugging into the first passing tanker I saw and asking if it was ours. I then asked the most important question: “Do you have enough gas for two A- 10s?” But as I was asking, I looked down and saw that they were already pumping, bringing out an even bigger grin. These guys knew why we were there, how important it was, and got right to it. This was how a war should be run. I had a smile the rest of the day. I took just enough gas to stay above my turn-for-home fuel. I then asked for, received, and passed the tanker’s radio frequency to my wingman. I cleared him to drop down and fill up. When he finished, I got back on the boom and took the rest of my gas. It may not sound like much now, but I chuckled about it all the way back to the border. In peacetime, I rarely got near a tanker unless I had talked to the controller, he had cleared me, and I had checked in with the tanker. On this day, the tanker crew didn’t care that we weren’t talking to them or even who we were. They had a job, and they did it. This war—like all others—was a team effort by all the little guys at the bottom—the ones who made happen those things that the people at the top talked about.
Their Last Gathering
Late one afternoon in mid-May, I flew an AFAC mission in southeastern Kosovo. Thunderstorms had built up in the area east of Urosevac where I had planned to spend my second push for the day, so I took my wingman further east into the Serbian Kumanovo Valley. On the whole we spent less time in that valley than we did in Kosovo. Old Milo had been preparing a layered defense within the valley in reaction to the possibility of an invasion. We thought an invasion was unlikely, but if he was willing to provide us targets, we were willing to provide him with incoming ordnance. The AFACs who flew there usually had good luck.
As we entered the valley from the south, I started looking in and around the fortifications at the southern end of the generally north-south valley. The Serbs had done more work since the last time I had visited. During my previous trip, I had stayed at the northern end of the valley near Vranje. My plan was to start in the south, head north, and search for targets as we went. The sun was getting low, and the shadows being cast by the valley’s western mountains on its southwestern floor were growing. Because the northern half of the valley was oriented northeast-southwest, the shadows up there would not cover the valley floor as quickly as they did in the south. We had plenty of fuel but would be able to stay only as long as we could see targets in the dusk. By working our way northeast, we could use the last bit of available sunlight.
Dawn and dusk, while the sky is bright and the ground dark, are tactically the worst times of the day for a fighter to strike a ground target. The darkness on the ground reduces the effectiveness of the Mk-1 eyeball, and many night-vision devices are not operable because of the bright light at altitude. Unfortunately, the folks on the ground have no trouble seeing an approaching fighter. These factors usually result in high risk and little success for those who attack targets under these conditions. We flew anyway to keep up the pressure on the Serbs. My wingman and I continued searching up the valley. We stopped once down south to check out a square object up against a house, but it was too hard to identify (ID) in the shadows. I decided to go directly to Vranje since there
