gas to set up an attack, so we headed for the tanker and passed that target off to another set of fighters. On the way out we heard Meegs call, “I think I took a hit.” During a rocket pass he had noticed AAA muzzle flashes, and then his caution panel lit up as he pulled off target. He quickly realized his aircraft was losing hydraulic fluid, and, even though he was able to stop the leak, he eventually lost one of his two hydraulic systems. On the ground, his crew chief determined that he had not taken a hit but had just suffered from a noncombat-related hydraulic failure. What a coincidence!
On 14 May I was scheduled to fly a mission check ride with Capt Scrape Johnson. I would fly as an AFAC, work the eastern half of Kosovo, and use Snoopy 61 as our call sign. Scrape would evaluate me while flying my wing. I was pumped about the mission—the weather was great, and we had some good target information from our squadron intelligence. We were passed new target coordinates over the radio as we entered the AOR, and I commenced what I would now describe as a wild-goose chase. Such chases were not uncommon since targets passed in this fashion were considered high priority, and we were required to search for them. We learned from experience that these precise coordinates seldom resulted in actually finding a viable military target—I had much better luck just looking for targets in the main areas of interest. We, nevertheless, spent a good half hour plotting coordinates and searching those areas.
I found a large tunnel south of Urosevac with fresh tank tracks leading to its entrance. I could just make something out at the opening but was unable to identify it with the binoculars because of the shadows. I set up for a Maverick pass, thinking I might be able to use the IR seeker to confirm that the object was a valid target. If so, I planned to launch the Maverick, destroy the target, and seal off the tunnel and all its equipment.
Unfortunately, I was still unable to ID the object and began my slow climb back to altitude. While my Hog, with its grossly underpowered engines, strained to get me back to altitude, I rolled into an easy right turn and started using the binos to try to ID the object again. It was then that I heard Scrape’s excited voice call, “BREAK!”
I had been flying with my knees; my left hand was on the throttles, and the binos were in my right. I was not in a good position to execute the break turn. I dropped the binos, rolled right, honked back on the stick, and put out a string of flares. As I checked six I saw the smoke trail of a SAM behind my aircraft. The smoke trail went all the way down to the ground and ended in a burned-out house on the north end of a small town. I felt as though I was looking down a 15,000-foot kite string. I was not at all happy with the guy flying the kite. I asked Scrape if he could tell exactly where the missile had come from, thinking that he was in a better position to attack, since he had more altitude and airspeed than I. He said, “No,” so I replied, “One will be in with the gun; Two cover.”
I checked my airspeed and altitude, and then cursed my engines for not having more thrust. I wanted to roll in right away and shoot, but I needed more altitude to minimize the chance of getting hit by another missile. I checked my gas and realized that this was going to be our only pass on this target before we had to head for the tanker. I set up for a 60-degree strafe pass and checked that the gun-ready light was on. As I rolled in, I thought about the gravity of this situation; I was looking death in the face. I put the pipper on the target and let fly with 150 rounds or so and started my recovery. I couldn’t tell for sure whether the rounds had hit their mark—but I didn’t receive any return fire.
We headed south for gas and passed to ABCCC the information about the SAM launch and our subsequent attack. We had just pulled up behind the tanker when a two-ship of Turkish TF-16s pulled up, declared emergency fuel, and jumped on the tanker in front of me during my scheduled air-refueling time. I was angry because I was really in a hurry to get back and look for whatever had shot at me. We refueled, and as we were about to go back in country, Scrape noticed that he had expended all of his chaff. We couldn’t go in country without it, so we had to head home early. As I recalled this sortie and put the details down on paper, I realized that I had never said thanks for that “break” call—thanks, Scrape!
I was again flying as an AFAC on another unusual mission, but this time with Col Alan Thompson, the 40th EOG commander, on my wing. This is not the most exciting story, but for me it is representative of the entire conflict; it was always interesting, if seldom extraordinary.
On this day the weather was fairly poor. An F-14 was working the western half of the country, coordinating through-theweather deliveries for strike aircraft with compatible capabilities. Most of the other strikers had been sent home, but ABCCC was kind enough to let us stay and look for holes in the weather. We were using call sign Cobra 41 and working the eastern half of the KEZ. We were operating above a low undercast and had spent a great deal of time just looking for holes. I set up an east-west, zigzag search pattern starting in the south and working north. We had little success; every hole I found would close up before I could get the binos up to look through it. We worked further north, and I found a larger hole over Serbia proper, about 15 miles north of the Kosovo border. It was nicely aligned and situated directly over our fixed target—an ammunition-storage facility. As I positioned our flight for an attack, I thought it would be great not to have to land with our Mk-82s, especially since I had dragged us so deep into bad-guy land.
I set up an attack from the west with the sun and wind at our back. I rolled in, pickled my bombs, pulled off, and started working south so I could monitor the boss’s attack. He rolled in; as he dove down the chute, I saw what looked like flashbulbs at the Super Bowl. The entire side of a large hill lit up with muzzle flashes for what seemed to be 30 to 40 seconds.
I called, “Cobra Four-Two, work south, jink! Triple-A north!”
I saw his aircraft roll and turn south as the muzzle flashes continued. Shortly after his bombs hit, the muzzle flashes stopped, but I had a great bead on their position. Once we were back together I rolled in with the Maverick. I planned on locking up any hot spot on the side of that hill and firing. When I found a hot spot, I cross-checked my HUD to confirm that the Maverick was looking at the hill and not the town just to the south. The Maverick symbology indicated that the hot spot was on the border of the hill and the town. I thought for a second and came off dry. In the time it took to reposition and take another look, the clouds had covered the target area, and we were low on fuel.
Like I said, this was not the most exciting story but one that best reflects my experiences during OAF. Most of my tactical decisions erred on the conservative side. Late at night I sometimes second-guess myself when I think about the conflict. I wonder if I should have been more aggressive, shot more rounds, or dropped more bombs. Then I remember three things: (1) We all made it home alive, (2) I did my best to avoid civilian losses, and (3)— well, I guess there were only two things. Nevertheless, those two were important because, as Stanley Kubrick wrote in
Big Brother
I initially expected the air war over Kosovo to be similar to the one in Desert Storm, and that it would have similar results. As a veteran of 43 of the latter’s
