pressed in. Stu steadied his crosshairs and pulled the trigger. “Runaway gun! One’s runaway gun!” is all we heard on the radio. The Gatling gun on Stu’s jet had malfunctioned. It had spun up but fired no bullets.
He immediately pulled up and banked hard to the left, egressing over the water. As I heard this I looked out front, curious about the call and expecting to see the gun firing uncontrollably, but in the heat and excitement of the moment, Stu made an incorrect call.
As I looked out in front of Stu’s jet, I saw a group of vehicles off the side of the road, and then I saw Stew aggressively turn towards the sea. Since my job was to cover for the flight, I also turned west and egressed with flares. We were both jinking over the water now at less than 1,000 feet AGL. I looked back over my shoulder at the target for any threat reaction. There were no missiles or gun flashes, but I could see the second two-ship running towards the target.
Unfortunately, they never got eyes on the radar, so they aborted their pass. The same thing happened to the remaining two-ships. Because Stu’s jet malfunctioned and I was low on fuel, we were not able to reattack the target. The other Hogs were able to loiter for a little longer but never acquired the radar.
I often wonder if I should have hit those vehicles I saw at the last minute. I could have called “contact” and requested clearance to fire. This would have at least marked the target for the remaining Hogs. My job, however, was to clear. With Stu egressing, who would clear for me if I focused on the target? Still, I wish I could have killed that thing!
The Hogs did kill the radar on a subsequent sortie. Capt Joe Bro Brosious finally got it—he strafed it until it wasn’t anymore! This was just one more example of the variety of missions the A-10 can fly. Even though it was designed to provide CAS for the Army, it has repeatedly been used successfully in other roles. Hogs have attacked and destroyed radar sites and communication facilities, and have suppressed enemy air defenses—an ability we demonstrated against SA-6 sites in Kosovo. These missions make the Warthog such an exciting plane to fly—I wouldn’t trade it for anything!
A Monkey and a Giraffe
“Do you need me to drive?” I yelled from the backseat. I continued, “If you kill us going to work today, I will make sure that you never fly again.” I was a scheduler, so this was a credible threat.
In retrospect, the drive to work was the most dangerous thing we did on a daily basis during OAF. The Italians had a knack for turning two lanes of traffic into three, and, depending on which of us was driving, things could get pretty sporty. It was around 0500 when I was rudely awakened by the stunt driving of the lieutenant behind the wheel. The drive to the squadron was the last quiet moment I could expect to have when flying a morning sortie. Everyone was usually too tired (or too tense) to talk, and the ride left a lot of time for reflection—or sleeping, as the case had been that morning. Now we at least had something to keep us all awake, and we spent the rest of our commute expressing displeasure with our young chauffeur’s driving abilities. A person normally develops a very thick skin working in a fighter squadron. The ability of a pilot to give someone grief for stupid remarks or actions is almost as highly respected by the pilot’s fellow aviators as is his ability to fly the plane. Indeed, it has truly been raised to an art form—a by-product of putting 30 type-A personalities together in the same workplace. It helped take our minds off the three million other things we were supposed to get accomplished during the day besides flying.
Morning sorties were always hectic. We had to get up at four in the morning—arriving at the squadron any earlier was not a rational option. A point of diminishing returns occurs when an alarm clock is set any earlier than around four in the morning (I used to think it was around 0600, but the Air Force recalibrated me). Getting up at 0400 is not something a normal human being should do on a regular basis.
No matter how early we arrived, we were always behind. There was never enough time to wade through all of the information thrown at us during the morning intelligence brief. We had to be very selective about what actions and thoughts we let occupy those precious two hours before takeoff. Mission planning had become a three- step process that was reflected in a series of three questions I asked myself before every sortie: What’s out there trying to kill me? What am I trying to kill? How do I accomplish my mission without getting into trouble? The last question seemed like a no-brainer, but it was one of our biggest concerns and something we had to concentrate on during our pre-mission planning. Information about every airborne flight was continuously transmitted to the CAOC and played on the big screen. “Big Brother” was watching, and nobody wanted to highlight himself. Just a week before, two of our squadron majors were ordered to the CAOC to explain an apparent ROE deviation, and they received a tongue-lashing of epic proportions. We all knew that any one of us could have been called up there and nobody wanted to make that trip.
I was scheduled to fly this particular morning with Capt Michael L. “Smokey” Matesick. I was the only one who called him Smokey. The nickname stems from an antiskid brake-system check that Mike had performed at the request of our maintenance personnel. They asked for volunteers one night when we were sitting CSAR alert, and Smokey, being the youngest, got to volunteer. They had spent the last six hours fixing the brakes and needed them checked. All they wanted was for Smokey to taxi the jet above 25 knots, slam on the brakes, and see that the antiskid engaged. Well that is just what he did. However, out on the runway after he checked the brakes the first time, he realized he still had about 8,000 feet of runway remaining—plenty of room to really check the brakes. After the third test, and as he was pulling off the runway, the Italians in the tower shouted on the UHF radio, “A-10 on taxiway, you smokey!” Sure enough, Mike had severely overheated the brakes and sat there on the taxiway in disbelief as both main-gear tires went flat. If anything made me laugh harder during the war, I don’t remember it. Maintenance was not amused.
I liked flying with Smokey—probably more than flying with anyone else. We had flown together enough to know what to expect from each other, and I had good luck finding targets with him. I can’t really say I believe in luck or fate—I think people make their own. Strangely, however, I did feel that if I flew with a certain person, I was probably going to get shot at, or if I flew with another particular person it would likely be a slow day. Maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy on my part, but I’ll bet that most flight leads would admit that they had a lucky wingman.
I got my standard large cup of coffee, and then Smokey and I sat down for our intel brief. Four months into the war, we had a pretty good picture of what was out there and where people had been lucky or unlucky. Intel briefed on an unlocated SA-6 somewhere in Kosovo and SAN-4s off the coast of Montenegro—as they had been the entire war. We were mainly interested in what had happened the day before. Who had been shot at? Where did they find targets? With this information we had the ability to make our plan of attack. Included in our mission planning materials was a list of about 50 targets (some days more, some days fewer). Our first job was to look at the list and guess which ones were valid and which were bogus: 20 tanks just outside of Prizren (most likely bogus), 200 infantry with vehicles (probably bogus). We decided on a handful of targets that looked promising and rank-ordered them. One interesting target, with imagery, was two tanks parked next to a tree line. The picture, from a British Harrier, looked too good to be true. We assumed they were decoys, but they were a possible dump target if it turned into a slow day. I briefed about 30 minutes on flight contracts and other required items, and then we were out the door to fly.
The mornings stopped being hectic when we finally got airborne. I hated waking up at 0400, but there is nothing better than taking off at sunrise and being the first flight into the area of operations (AO). We hit the tanker inbound, refueled, and made our way across the border. We were slotted as an air-strike control (aka AFAC) sortie working in the western half of Kosovo, using Swine 91 as our call sign. We were more like “killer scouts” running down through a suspected target list. We searched each set of coordinates with handheld binoculars for any sign of the Serbian military. While scrutinizing our third target, I struck gold.
Two artillery pieces were backed against a tree line overlooking the border town of Zur. Closer investigation revealed what looked like a deuce-and-a-half truck parked nearby with the cargo cover pulled off. Smokey didn’t have the target but was more than happy to provide cover while I rolled in with an IIR Maverick air-to-ground missile. I was unable to break out the artillery pieces due to poor thermal contrast, but the truck showed up beautifully in my cockpit picture. I locked on and hammered down on the pickle button. My Maverick came off like a freight train, but then just as suddenly it pointed vertical and went blitzing off towards some unknown, unsuspecting
