part of the team and liked seeing us take off with bombs and come home clean; he now had an idea of what we were going after, and that made a big difference.
The mission that I briefed to Joe wasn’t going to be as easy as it appears in Hollywood movies. Imagery was suspect; our needs were not high on the CAOC’s targeting and intelligence-support priority list. Satellite reconnaissance was well suited to support interdiction strikes against fixed targets, but most of our targets were mobile forces. Those forces would be photographed at 1400 on the day prior, and the information was accurate at the time it was taken. However, unlike fixed targets, they had 18 hours to move before we would be in the predicted area. Out of necessity, Lt Stephen “Al” Smith, our intelligence officer, and his enlisted troops did their best to get us the most current pictures from all sources. Al and the others spent all night sifting through image databases, which were sorted only by basic encyclopedia (BE) numbers that had no correlation to the target type, date of the imagery, or its location. It was a laborious and dull task, repeated every night to find the right combination of target type, location, and date of image. Without the hard work of Al and his team, we would have had far less success at finding targets. Their pictures told us where the enemy forces had been and when they had been there; they also provided us with a starting point for our searches. Although our confidence in the target’s current location was not as good as we would have liked, it was far better than nothing. With people like Al and Joe on our team, we were optimistic.
Ground ops were pretty standard. It had been a beautiful day so far and a stark contrast to the previous foggy mornings. The light from a brilliant sun, filtered by high cirrus clouds, fell onto red poppy fields dancing in a gentle, wind-driven rhythm just outside the base perimeter. Looking at that beauty, I found it surreal to imagine that we would launch in 40 minutes—take off to wage war and wreak havoc and destruction on the Serb army.
As I led Capt Rip Woodard airborne, I felt another surge of excitement.
This was it! I was in the lead of Taco flight, making the decisions. I was the one who would do the target search, ID the target, and dictate the tactics. I had been excited on my first six sorties, but this was different. This time I was responsible for the flight, which was both exhilarating and sobering. It reminded me of the first time, after I had received my driver’s license, that my parents had let me take the car out by myself on the interstate. I had approached that with a nervous excitement—excited about the new opportunity and praying, “Please God, don’t let me screw this up.” This was no different.
Rip joined on me and we flew east over the Adriatic, performed our systems checks, and looked over each other’s jets. We continued east across Albania and into southern Macedonia, where we rendezvoused with our tanker—a KC-135 that would refuel most of the A-10s going into the KEZ during our vul period. The actual air refueling was a relatively simple task. Because of the distances, almost every aircraft required aerial refueling to complete its mission. That demand made the management of aircraft schedules, flow patterns, and gas offloads critical. I had witnessed firsthand the CAOC’s complex planning process which ensured that it all flowed smoothly during execution. Their planners developed tanker, SEAD, and ABCCC schedules, put together airspace-control plans, and integrated the resources and the requirements of the 700-plus aircraft armada. Even the A-10, which consumed relatively little fuel, still required refueling if it was to stay airborne in the target area from three to six hours at a time. Tankers seemed to be everywhere, but unless they were well managed, there would never be enough gas when and where it was needed. So while
We flowed on and off the tanker during our planned refueling time and headed for the eastern side of Kosovo. The AFAC today was one of the augmenting Pope pilots—Capt Larry Card, a young 74th FS weapons officer. I was glad to be working with Larry, whom I had known since we were in the same squadron at the academy. He had been a sharp, introspective cadet then, and he had since become an excellent fighter pilot. I checked in with him just prior to crossing the Kosovo border. He was busy FACing a pair of British Harriers and sent us north to check on sites near Podujevo. I put Rip in a wedge formation position—about 45 degrees back on the left side— where he could comfortably maneuver and clear for threats as we flew north.
Over the radio we could hear Larry working the flight of Harriers on his target. It sounded like they were missing short. The Harriers were normally great to work because they had actually been trained for CAS, which meant they were proficient at looking outside the cockpit to visually acquire targets. Even though we weren’t flying CAS missions in Kosovo, what we were doing required many of the same strengths and skills. We saw a big difference between pilots who trained to acquire targets visually and those who trained to bomb coordinates. It was much easier to talk the first group onto targets. The Harrier pilots could be expected to find the target visually, but their BLU-755s hit short almost every time because of a software glitch in their aiming and delivery system. I couldn’t help thinking how frustrating that was for both the Harrier pilots and the AFAC as I continued leading my flight north.
In the midst of the communication between Larry and his Harriers, we heard a standard call from NAEW: “Aircraft, Derringer 060/80, say call sign.” Most of these calls reflected the dynamic environment and the difficulty NAEW had in keeping track of many maneuvering aircraft. NAEW would occasionally lose track of someone, locate a return, and then query him or her to make sure the controller had the correct call signs. “Derringer” was a geographical point from which to describe a radial direction and distance in nautical miles. Derringer was colocated with Slatina, the Pristina airport. The NAEW had asked the aircraft located on the 060 radial (east, northeast) from Slatina at a distance of 80 NM to identify itself. We were about 10 minutes north of the border when I heard an NAEW transmission on strike frequency that I had not yet heard during OAF: “Outlaw, spades, Derringer 070 for 75, southwest bound!”
What did those brevity terms mean? It had been a little while since I had reviewed all the terms in our manuals. Nevertheless, I knew “outlaw” meant that an aircraft met the bad-guy point-of-origin criteria, and “spades” said that it wasn’t squawking the right IFF transponder codes—that wasn’t good. Usually I would hear those calls right before an unknown aircraft was declared a bandit (enemy aircraft), and that wasn’t good either. I quickly pulled out my 1:250 chart to plot the position. The plot came out right near the Bulgarian border, inside Serbia. And it was heading this way.
Another, older voice came over the radio: “Aircraft, Derringer 070 for 75, tracking 230, this is Magic on Guard; identify yourself immediately!” This wasn’t supposed to happen. The F-16CJs, who had been in an orbit overhead providing SEAD support for us, called NAEW and departed their orbit to intercept the intruder. I could hear their fangs sticking through the floorboards over the radio. Blood was in the air, and they could smell it.
Looking back at my map, I tried to get a rough estimate of the distance between us and the contact the NAEW had identified. It was about 45 miles. Time for us to pull back a bit. We both still had all of our ordnance on board. I had two cans of CBU-87 and Rip had four Mk-82s, along with our Mavericks. I didn’t feel like getting into an air-to-air engagement with all of that on board, but I sure didn’t want to get rid of it and give the outlaw a mission kill. “Taco, let’s hook left. Line reference steer-point five.” I had given Rip a copy of my lineup card when we briefed the sortie; today, steer-point five was Skopje, Macedonia—nominally friendly airspace.
Rip maneuvered into a good defensive line-abreast position, about a mile and a half off my right side. NAEW transmitted on Guard again, directing the unknown aircraft at Derringer 080 for 65 to identify itself. There was no response. I looked down at my map—30 miles to Skopje. He was obviously going a lot faster than we were. Thirty seconds passed as I increased my scan outside the cockpit, looking across the formation and behind us. I knew that Rip was doing the same thing in his cockpit.
“Mink Three-One, Bandit, Derringer 080 for 60, southwest bound, hot!” NAEW called out to the F-16CGs. “All aircraft in NBA, this is Magic. Chariot directs retrograde.” NBA was the code word that we were using for eastern Kosovo.
Great. NAEW was now declaring the contact of a bandit—an enemy aircraft heading towards friendly aircraft. Time to make sure that both of us had our switches ready for an air-to-air fight. “Taco, check AIM-9 in Select, master arm to arm, gun rate high. Let’s push it over. No lower than 160,” I said as I traded altitude for airspeed, but still stayed above 16,000 feet.
“Two,” came Rip’s immediate response to indicate he understood and would comply with my instructions. I expected that he would have had his switches set, but I had to be sure. In the background, almost drowned out by the excitement of the moment, I could hear the low growl of the AIM-9 seeker head looking for a target.
“Bandit, Derringer, 090 for 56, southwest bound, descending, hot!” I checked the distance—about 25 miles. Suddenly, despite all the coalition aircraft out there, I felt very alone. Time to get some information from NAEW.
