The Call Sign Was Cub 31
I joined the squadron at Aviano on 28 March and was immediately tasked to go to Vicenza to be one of the squadron’s CAOC representatives. Eight days later I returned to Aviano and flew my first sortie. After a couple of weather days, I was selected to be a member of our advance team and was sent to Gioia del Colle.
I will not soon forget my first opportunity to fly after the squadron moved to Gioia. It was 14 April 1999 and only my second sortie of the conflict. I was the flight lead, Lt Col Surgeon Dahl was my wingman, and our call sign was Cub 31. The first half of our AFAC sortie in the eastern half of the KEZ was uneventful. We were flying above a broken deck, which made our search difficult because it was hard to see targets around and through the clouds. After completing our first vul period, we went to the tanker; by the time we returned the weather had cleared significantly. I checked in with Maj Joe “Dice” Kopacz, the other AFAC on station, and learned he was busy dodging AAA. When he finally got a chance to talk, a couple of expletives were quickly followed by a recommendation not to come over to his area. He had found some targets along the Kumanovo Valley road and had, in his words, “stirred up a bees’ nest.” He suggested I give it a little time to cool down in case I wanted to come over and take a look. I took his recommendation to heart and continued to search for targets south of Urosevac.
Shortly after Dice departed, Moonbeam (ABCCC) transmitted that Bear 21, an F-16 AFAC in the western half of Kosovo, had found and was preparing to engage a large convoy of more than 100 vehicles. Bear 21 had requested that Moonbeam send any available fighters, and I was not about to miss an opportunity to engage some targets. I called Bear 21 and told him that my flight was holding in the eastern half of Kosovo and that we were available as strikers. Since I was fourth in his stack of fighters, I continued to look for targets on my side of the KEZ.
While waiting, I spotted a large truck on the road below me but couldn’t immediately confirm whether it was civilian or military. I used my binoculars to investigate, but I still couldn’t get a good look because he was moving down the road. I decided to try to stop the truck by firing a couple of rockets. I had previously observed rockets being fired on a range and knew they made a lot of noise but created a very small amount of frag or blast. I estimated the distance in front of the moving truck where I needed to aim so that the impact would occur far enough in front of him to get his attention but avoid hitting him with frags. I set up, flew the pass, and launched two rockets that bracketed his position. The truck immediately came to a stop, and I tried to get a closer look. It appeared to be a deuce-and-a-half military truck—but I wasn’t sure.
While I was trying to confirm the truck’s identity, I got another call from Moonbeam. Apparently someone at the CAOC had questioned the composition of the 100-vehicle convoy target being attacked in the western half of the KEZ. Moonbeam wanted an aircraft equipped with binoculars to check out the convoy to make sure it was a valid military target. I contacted Bear 21 to get the location of the convoy. I was not sure that I had sufficient fuel to fly all the way to his target, observe the convoy, and still make it to a tanker with the required reserves. I was required to have enough gas when I reached the tanker to be able to recover home in case the refueling was not successful.
I communicated my concern to Bear 21 on the common strike frequency. He pushed me to a different radio frequency, checked us in, and said he was sure that he was striking a good target and that he really just needed me to come on over and check it out. I figured it would take me at least 45 minutes to get to the tanker and back, during which time the attacks on this lucrative target would be halted. I had refueled many times before without any problems. I considered the consequences of having a malfunction today and decided that even if we had difficulties, we would still be able to land at a friendly airfield—just not at our home base. We would get refueled on the ground, and with a fast turnaround we could quickly be on our way home. We had Moonbeam confirm that tankers would be available and proceeded to Bear 21’s target.
The convoy, which had been heading to the southeast, was stopped near the town of Dakovica, on the main road to Prizren. At 20,000 feet and with my naked eyes, I could tell the target was not military—at least most of it wasn’t. It consisted of lots of colorful vehicles. I could see blues, reds, and a lot of bright silver from bumpers reflecting the sun. I let Arden know that I was going heads-down to use the binos. I could then see that a number of civilian cars and tractors had pulled over to the side of the road. I also noticed a couple of larger vehicles leaving the area to the west. One of them was a large charter bus with some colorful paint marks down both sides. There were one or two other west-moving vehicles whose identity I could not confirm before they entered the town of Dakovica and disappeared.
I then noticed a strange-looking pattern south of the road and took a closer look. I identified it as a crowd of people who had left their cars and tractors and had run away to a safe distance. They were waiting in the fields for their vehicles to stop exploding. I immediately transmitted that the convoy was definitely civilian. Bear 21 ensured that all attacks and weapons expenditures were stopped. The CAOC quickly closed the KEZ and sent everyone home. We had been trying to extend the target-area time to prosecute this target—that was obviously no longer required.
Our day wasn’t over. We flew to the tanker to get a little fuel before going home. I took gas without a problem, but Arden started getting a lot of fuel spray from around the refueling receptacle, the location where the tanker’s boom connects to the nose of the aircraft. He disconnected, reconnected, and tried again with the same result. Since the A-10 tech manual recommended that refueling be discontinued in the event of fuel spray due to the potential danger of fuel pooling in the electronics bays, Arden ended up taking on only about 500 pounds of gas. We did the math to figure out if we had enough fuel to get home. It didn’t look good for flying straight home, but we could make it to our divert base. While we waited for the jets to be refueled at Brindisi, we learned that CNN was already covering the attack on the convoy. Immediately after landing at Gioia del Colle, Arden and I wrote our reports and submitted them to our CAOC rep at Vicenza.
It was not a glorious moment for either the Air Force or NATO. However, we thought it could be a critical lesson learned and a memorable chapter in Hog history. There are plenty of things technology can do, but experience and training in the basics remain critical. When it came time to confirm a target with vast political implications, it was not a high-tech targeting pod but a set of 12-power binoculars in the hands of an experienced AFAC that provided the accurate and critical identification.
I watched the post-incident briefing at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) on public television a couple of weeks later. This was one of the most frustrating aspects of the episode. I wouldn’t describe the briefing as misleading, but the description just didn’t quite match what we had experienced. Arden and I had submitted our written reports to the CAOC through our rep at Vicenza—but I didn’t recognize any of those details in the SHAPE brief. I suspect that our reports were not part, or at least not the focus, of SHAPE’s investigation. Its briefing went into much detail on the circumstances of the incident, including identifying Bear 21 and showing his F-16’s cockpit video. The briefing appeared to focus on “how” this tragic incident could have happened.
The A-10’s role in terminating the attack was understated during the SHAPE briefing. A-10 AFAC expertise did not get credit for its critical role in identifying the noncombatant nature of the convoy, terminating the attack, and preventing further civilian casualties. Like the role we played, our call sign was also abbreviated. We were simply referred to as “Cub flight,” which could identify any one of several Cub call signs flying that day. I appreciated our leaders’ desire to explain the circumstances of “how” this could have happened to the public, get this tragic incident quickly behind us, and refocus on our continuing combat operations. However, my hope is that we don’t forget an important lesson—technology cannot completely substitute for training and experience. This is especially critical in basic tasks like looking at the ground and being able accurately to identify and understand what is really there—particularly when fighting a cynical enemy willing to use civilians as human shields.
