weather guy changed his forecast several more times. The lowest forecast was for a 2,000-foot ceiling, and the highest called for a 10,000-foot ceiling. It seemed that the CAOC and Kimos considered this priority target important enough that the normal ROE altitudes would not apply, and I was cleared to go “below the weather.” I found out later, however, that the forecast ceilings that the CAOC, Kimos, and I were planning with were all different. Therefore, the attack altitude that corresponded to the below-the-weather approval meant different things to each of us.
Our planning turned to ordnance and formations. Because our Mk-82s were wired for a high-altitude delivery, they would not have time to arm if we dropped them that close to the ground. I therefore requested that the Mk- 82s be replaced by CBU-87s on all four of our aircraft because of their low-altitude employment options and their ability to provide us good firepower and mutual support. A well-respected A-10 rep at the CAOC sent down his attack plan. Unfortunately, this particular evening’s fog and friction prevented most of his ideas from reaching me.
I launched with Dice on my wing, along with Capt Corn Mays and Capt Joe Brosious as my numbers three and four. Capt Larry D. “LD” Card II suggested a little tactical deception which caused the NAEW to make bogus radio calls that indicated to all who were monitoring the transmissions that Sandy flight was going to rendezvous with a tanker and sit airborne alert. Halfway across the Adriatic, we hit the solid-undercast cloud deck that had been predicted by the weather forecaster. We turned off our squawks, blacked out, and “stealthed up” as much as a Hog can. I led the boys down through the weather and leveled off in a black hole at 1,500 feet on the radar altimeter. NAEW played its role perfectly and began giving us phony traffic advisories and then vectors towards an actual tanker that was airborne over Macedonia. We hit the Albanian coast at our control point (CP) and turned north towards the IP. The IP itself was an illuminated boat dock with a 1,500-foot ridge behind it. Finding the IP would update us on the drift of our navigation systems as well as provide us some indirect terrain masking from any radar. With the poor visibility, I couldn’t see the IP until I was right on top of it. I then had to fly a very hard turn to keep from being scraped off on that ridge. Kirk said later that he got much closer to that particular piece of the Balkans than he would have liked. I had the boys throw the master arm switch to “arm” at the IP as we turned west towards Montenegro and the radar.
The ceiling dropped to about 1,500 feet and, with the high humidity and moisture, we couldn’t see anything with the Maverick or NVGs except straight down. I nearly passed over the top of the target coordinates without seeing anything. Kirk did likewise one minute behind me. We proceeded out to the rendezvous point over the water. I’m here to say that India ink cannot compare to the blackness I encountered when I pointed my Hog’s nose out over an open ocean in the middle of the night below a solid overcast. I flew 500 feet above the cold Adriatic off nothing more than a radar altimeter and a green circle in my HUD that said I was wings level. Due to the outstanding skill of my wingmen, I had to expend only two self-protection flares to help regroup the formation as I turned back towards the coast. At this same time NAEW was rendezvousing our imaginary formation with a tanker 120 nautical miles away. I led us back in on a reattack with CBUs. On the way in I slewed an IIR Maverick missile onto the spot where the target was supposed to be. In the midst of a cold, dark background I found a single hot object. It didn’t exactly look like the radar van, but it was in the correct relative position. I locked the Maverick onto the hot object as my thumb gently caressed the pickle button that would unleash the missile.
I don’t care much about CNN or the influence the media has on military operations, but there was no way I was going to mistakenly destroy a Montenegrin hotdog stand. It boiled down to the fact that I had a slight doubt as to the validity of my target, so, as a professional soldier, I couldn’t proceed with the attack. I learned later that Kirk had also found a hot object, possibly the same one, and had similarly forgone indiscriminately attacking it. I called for yet another “Jake”—the reattack code word that I had named after my three-month-old son. I thought that with one more attack we might just get lucky. Someone, however, without the distraction of having their fangs imbedded in the floorboard, made a wise decision and relayed through NAEW that we were done for that particular night. Feeling rather dejected about not finding the target, I led Dice home. Kirk and Joe Bro—without pretending—flew to the tanker, refueled, and assumed their real airborne CSAR alert. This is where the story gets really interesting.
The next two days passed uneventfully as I finished my turn in the barrel on the CSAR alert schedule. I couldn’t forget about that radar because every day ABCCC tasked A-10s with a priority target that had coordinates in Montenegro. On the fourth morning I was the mission commander for the entire KEZ. As we tried to conduct an air war during the Balkan spring, we ended up fighting the weather as much as anything else. The weather was “dog crap,” and I started sending the forces, including me, home. As I returned home at 22,000 feet and turned the corner around Montenegro (our ROEs did not allow us to fly over it), I focused my binos on the area where the Flat Face had been previously reported. I began a structured scan pattern when, low and behold, about 600 meters west of the previous location, I found a van with twin horizontal radar dishes turning on it. I called ABCCC and, via secure means, asked if the Flat Face was still a valid priority target. The response was that I could attack as long as I obtained SEAD support. I called all the other A-10s on VHF while coordinating the SEAD on the UHF radio. Within minutes I had eight Hogs lined up, along with four F-16CJs and an EA-6B Prowler. Even Mr. ABCCC came rumbling over to take a look (or get in the way). I took control of my new strike package. By some crazy luck, my new element leads—“three,” “five,” and “seven”—turned out to be, in perfect order, “two,” “three,” and “four” from Sandy flight on the first night. Since we all had a full load of ordnance and varying amounts of fuel, I sent the fourth element, numbers seven and eight, to the tanker.
During the time it took to rejoin the formation, line up the SEAD, and coordinate the attack, a small, midaltitude deck of clouds had moved in below us. I was the only one who had seen the target, but I thought it would be “no big deal.” I explained to the second and third element leads where the target was in relation to the map study we had accomplished in preparation for the first night’s attack. The briefed plan was a ladder of Hogs (two-ship element orbits with vertical separation between elements) with the wingman providing cover on the right side during an attack from southeast with a southwest pull-off. One, three, and five were shooters with Maverick, while two, four, and six (all of whom had no exact idea of what we were attacking) were supposed to provide cover from any threats that popped up. I briefed the plan. When they reached the cloud layer, they would descend through it as fast as possible, acquire and ID the radar, shoot, and recover quickly back to the clear air above the clouds. Everyone acknowledged that he understood the plan.
One of my most distinct memories of OAF is the feeling of adrenaline building up as I prepared for this attack. However, the tight knot that had formed in my chest quickly unclenched and was replaced with pride and awe when I looked over my right shoulder. I wish I had the eloquence to describe what it is like to watch five Hogs follow your every move—all of them hulking with a full combat load that glistened in the midday sun. I noted the awesome firepower we had available: six tons of bombs, 12 Mavericks, 84 Willy Pete rockets, and almost 7,000 rounds of 30 mm combat mix. The sight of those marvelous airplanes and the pilots who had chosen to fly them humbled me.
I began the attack and realized the weather was slightly lower than I had expected. However, this was the high-priority target we had been gunning for during the last four days. It was the target the CAOC and my squadron commander had deemed so important that they had sent us to attack it (or so I had believed) when the weather was well below the ROEs. During that attack attempt, I had flown over it at a few hundred feet just three nights before. On this day, therefore, I pressed on with the attack despite the weather. I hit the edge of the clouds about four miles from the target. Unfortunately, there was some misunderstanding as to the in-trail spacing I expected between my element leads, which caused my second element lead to pitch back into the third element. My six-ship had quickly turned into a two-ship below the weather.
It took a few seconds to get my bearings below the cloud deck. I found the original position of the radar, worked my eyes from there to where the target should be, and visually acquired the radar site. I stabilized the Maverick on the radar site and tried to lock onto the van. The missile locked onto the cooled van and also on some cold background clutter that would, most likely, have caused a total miss. I attempted once more to lock just the cold van without any luck. I was now getting close enough to start breaking out the hot radar dish and components within the van. I quickly pulled the pinky switch on the left throttle to the aft position to cause the Maverick seeker to look for hot targets. For the third time in a matter of seconds, I couldn’t get the Maverick to lock onto the van. I then made an extremely superfluous comment, but one I felt had to get across the radio: “One’s going to
