more importantly, I wanted to contribute to the effort. After completing my diving delivery and safe-escape maneuver, I looked back at the target area to see where my bombs had hit. About 15 seconds later, I got my answer as all four trucks disappeared under two huge fireballs. My first time to employ weapons in combat had been a success.
Not all of my missions were on an AFAC’s wing. In fact, my most successful mission occurred when I was flying on Capt Nate “Foghorn” Brauner’s wing in a two-ship of strikers. Our primary job was to kill the targets that our AFAC might find and assign to us in western Kosovo. However, if a striker flight lead was AFAC qualified, as Foghorn was, he was often allowed to search for targets while waiting. If he found any enemy forces, he would call the designated AFAC to take a look. On this day as we waited, Foghorn searched the area of Dakovica. He saw something and talked my eyes onto a small area on the southern edge of town, asking what I saw there. By this time in the air campaign, the Serbs had learned to hide nearly every piece of equipment they had. I could not believe it; here were two-dozen trucks and APCs parked in an open area! I told Foghorn what I saw, and he quickly responded, “Yeah, that’s what I see, too.” The AFAC, Capt JD McDonough, also had trouble believing our target description—it seemed too good to be true. He took a look and cleared us to kill it. We each dropped four Mk-82s, launched one Maverick, and fired hundreds of rounds of 30 mm—my first time to use the gun in combat. By the time we departed, nearly every vehicle was burning. On later missions, I would steal a quick glance when I flew in that area to see if the vehicles’ hulks were still there. We must have destroyed or damaged them all beyond repair because they remained there even after the air campaign ended. Although many fellow pilots teased Foghorn about inflating his BDA, I knew he was right on at least this occasion—we had British imagery to prove it.
I had flown a total of 30 combat missions by the end of the conflict. Not all of them were successful because on various days we had bad weather, could not find targets, or experienced aircraft malfunctions that forced an early RTB. And on some days we became the targets of Serb SAMs and AAA. Even though the Serbs did not often shoot at me, I retained a healthy degree of unease each time I flew. On every sortie it was important to me to be a good wingman; I wanted my flight leads to be confident that they could count on me to add to, rather than diminish, our flights’ combat capability. After all, Glib and I had been brand-new wingmen when the air war started, and we had to prove ourselves. My biggest fear, therefore, was not being shot down—but failing my flight lead.
First Time Out Front
I felt a surge of excitement as I departed our squadron’s makeshift ops center for the jet parked on Gioia’s ramp. I hadn’t flown in three days and was stepping for my sixth combat sortie. However, I felt excited today because I would lead a flight into combat for the first time. I climbed into the aircrew minivan, got comfortable, and began to reflect on the series of events that had occurred during the past six months—the events that began with my arrival at Spangdahlem and brought me here, sitting in the crew van en route to a combat-loaded aircraft.
I hadn’t been flying much. I had arrived at Spangdahlem as a new pilot in early March, just three weeks before the campaign started and while the squadron was still engaged in “split ops.” For the past six months the Panthers had maintained a near-constant presence at Aviano with half the squadron, keeping the other half at home in Germany. It was a tough situation for everyone in the 81st. The delicate peace negotiations seemed to drag on for years; however, they now seemed close to breaking down, as they had on several occasions. The Panthers had been sent to Aviano in anticipation of the need for air strikes should the negotiations fail. They had been sent to provide CSAR support in case one of our planes got shot down, not to conduct air strikes.
When I arrived at Spangdahlem, the squadron showed the long-term effects of its split ops. Several bachelors even considered Aviano more “home” than they did Spangdahlem. The deployed Panthers had been staying at a mountain chalet just north of Aviano—affectionately known as “Mr. C’s.” Its owner was a former pilot and an aviation enthusiast—to say he was hospitable to his American guests would have been a gross understatement. The Panthers were comfortable there despite the married pilots’ families being several hundred miles away. They were quite happy to enjoy the Italian food and wine, and receive the American per diem to pay for it all. The women were striking, the scenery was equally luscious, and the flying was good. It was as close to a fighter pilot’s dream as was possible in post–Cold War Europe. The constant deployment was seemingly never going to end, and the squadron had established a well-defined routine. When I met Kimos, the Panther squadron commander, he assured me that I would get well acquainted with life in northern Italy and that I would also be a candidate to go with the squadron when it deployed to the Air Warrior CAS exercise at Nellis AFB in early April. He said, “It is going to be a very busy spring, so don’t get too comfortable relaxing in Germany.” He couldn’t have been more correct. I would be on the road quite a bit, but the real reason was one that even our most experienced pilots did not foresee at the time.
The deployments were an exciting prospect, but I still had several hurdles to jump before I could participate. I hadn’t flown the A-10 since mid-December, thanks to a mountainbike accident while I was at home on leave. A clavicle fracture and resulting surgery had kept me out of the cockpit, and it would be the end of March before I could fly again. It was a bad position to be in; I hoped that I would be healed enough to start flying and make our April deployment to Nellis. I wanted to be on that trip—and all others like it.
My heart sank on 15 March when all of our planes and combat-ready pilots were directed to deploy immediately to Aviano. I had been out of flying for three months, and when our squadron’s time came, I wasn’t qualified to go. It grated on me like nothing I had ever known. I have been entranced by listening to war stories ever since I was a doolie at the academy. I wondered how I would I react when it was my turn. Would I carry away the same perceptions and learn the same lessons that others had? I had no doubt about my training. And now— when the call came—I had to carry water while the rest of the team took to the field. It wasn’t a good feeling. I was convinced that there must be some way to join the fight, but how to do so eluded me.
As I continued to heal and wait for my opportunity to join the effort, I prepared for my recurrency flights by studying “the threat” in the classified tactics manuals we kept in our squadron vault. I also listened to the first reports that came back from Aviano—invariably through the wives’ network—of Panthers sitting CSAR alert as the first interdiction strikes were launched. On 27 March, I was home eating a late dinner and enjoying my recently installed satellite TV, when CNN broke in with the news of the first allied plane to be shot down. I was riveted by the news accounts of the crash and didn’t sleep more than an hour or two that whole night. The task to rescue the pilot would fall to our 81st pilots. Because of the locations of the targets the F-117s were tasked to attack, I knew the wreckage must be deep inside Serb territory, which would make the rescue difficult. Nevertheless, it was all over six hours later. Once again, the pilots of the A-10s had risen to the occasion and performed their duty in an exceptional manner. Unlike a previous F-16 shoot down several years earlier, there were no press conferences, no smiling for the cameras, and no million-dollar book deals. The pilots involved were serious about this conflict and did not want any attention or publicity to distract them from their primary job—flying combat missions. I felt a surge of pride at being counted as one of them, and that only served to strengthen my resolve to join them as soon as possible.
The two flights I needed to regain all of my currencies happened in rapid succession the following week. My instructor was Lt Col Snoopy Schulze, the Panthers’ previous commander. Snoopy was an old hat at flying in Germany and quickly got me up to speed after months of inactivity. I was now ready and chomping at the bit to go.
Finally my call came—not to join the squadron at Aviano but to be the squadron’s rep at the CAOC in Vicenza, Italy. Going to the CAOC was kind of like paying my dues. It was imperative that we had an A-10 rep there—an experienced flyer who understood our mission and could help with planning the details of the air war. It
