“Magic, Taco One, say BRAA to Bandit,” I transmitted as I asked the NAEW for the bandit’s bearing, range, altitude, and aspect.
Pause. “Taco, Magic, unable, stand by,” came the reply.
Stand by??!!! You can’t be serious! NAEW controllers had never shown stellar performance getting us information when we had trained together in the past, but at least they had given us some close control when we were at medium altitude. Now, when it really mattered—and we weren’t at Red Flag over the Nellis ranges—all they could do is say “stand by.” I wanted to reach out and wring their necks. They probably didn’t even know what my position was—let alone how close the bandit was to any of us. I increased the amount of time that I was checking six—the airspace behind our aircraft.
“Bandit, Derringer, 090 for 52, heading 240, hot!”
I looked down and checked my chaff and flare settings. We were quickly approaching the point where I was going to have to turn the formation to be ready to fight. Two green ready lights stared up at me from the panel. Everything was set. I hacked the clock and started mentally calculating the range.
“Magic, Mink Three-One. Contact target, closing for VID (visual identification),” a charged but steady voice came over the radio. It was the same voice that I had heard earlier when the F-16s had departed their holding point to intercept the Bandit. There was a very pregnant pause. I checked six again. The next call sent a shiver down my spine.
“Magic, Mink Three-One. Target is an EA-6. Turning south now.”
I was relieved, upset, and mad—most of all I couldn’t believe my ears. We had almost shot one of our own aircraft—an EA-6B—because he wasn’t in his planned orbit, and the NAEW didn’t know who or what he was. I could have been taking part in an impromptu CSAR had it not been for the professionalism of Mink 31 and his ability to visually identify an EA-6B. I had a flashback to when that had not happened—when two friendly Black Hawk helicopters had been misidentified and shot down by friendly fighters, taking the lives of Lt Laura Piper and 25 other people flying low over northern Iraq. I was also mad because we had lost about 10 minutes of our available time over Kosovo; it was time to get back to our mission.
We deselected our AIM-9s and turned north. Rip floated back to a good wedge position, and I could see him pick up the gentle rhythm of checking our six and providing cover against AAA and SAM threats. Irregularly, his jet would move—slight changes in heading and pitch angles—just enough to give him a better view of the ground beneath us and to remain unpredictable. In front, I was doing the same thing. I picked out visual landmarks that would help orient and guide me into the target area. It gave us something to do while the adrenaline worked its way out of our system.
We arrived near Podujevo after taking an easterly and slightly circuitous 20-minute route, about the same time the adrenaline wore off. Podujevo lay in the middle of a long valley that pointed south towards Pristina and terminated in the north at the Serbian border. Like most of Kosovo, this was an agricultural area, and the fields were full of the spring crops.
We didn’t see many farmers operating heavy farm equipment these days. With the oil embargo in full effect, there probably wasn’t any gas to spare, and most of the work was likely being done by hand. We rarely saw any traffic on the roads. The Serbs either had learned their lesson or had figured out our ROEs. They knew that civilian vehicles were safe (at least from A-10s); therefore, civilian vehicles were the only type we would see on the roads.
Today there was little movement on the ground, and the few vehicles I did see on city streets were definitely civilian. I checked along the tree lines and in other areas that our imagery from the past two days had indicated as likely locations for Serb equipment. There was nothing. If the Serb army was in the vicinity of Podujevo, it was well hidden.
In the background, I could overhear the communication between other fighters and AFACs. I called Larry and told him that there wasn’t anything to be found around Podujevo, and asked, “Do you have anything else for us?” “Taco, check with Stew Two-One. He’s working over near G-Town,” Larry said. We sometimes referred to the major cities in Kosovo by their first initial. It kept the chatter down and gave the Serbs who were listening something else to figure out. He quickly passed me coordinates and pushed me to the backup frequency. I sent Rip to the assigned frequency for the eastern half of Kosovo, checked him in, and was almost immediately contacted by Stew 21.
“Taco, Stew Two-One, good voice; say ordnance and playtime.” I recognized the voice of Maj Bumpy Feldhausen, one of the boys from Pope. I replied, “Stew, Taco, One’s got two by CBU-87, Maverick, and the gun. Number Two has four by Mk-82s. We’ve got another 20 minutes of playtime.” “Roger,” Bumpy said, “we’ve got some arty positions in the tree line in our target area. We’re halfway between G-Town and Vranje. Confirm you have the coordinates.”
I looked at the INS. “Another five minutes away,” I told him.
“Copy all. I want you guys in at 200 and below. We’ll hold over you, 210 and above, and we can provide your cover. When you get into the target area, I’ll give you a talk-on.”
“Taco Zero-One,” I replied. Switching frequencies, I compared fuels with Rip. We’d have enough for about 15 minutes in the target area. I plotted the position of the target on one of my 1:50 maps. It was within a kilometer of the corner of the map, halfway up the side of a hill on the eastern side of a fairly nondescript small valley. It wasn’t going to be easy finding it—especially without being able to reference the map features to the immediate south and west of the target. To see all of that, I would have to juggle two other 1:50 maps in the cockpit along with the one I already had out and the 1:250 that I was using for navigation. It wasn’t an easy thing to do.
We were almost there—only three miles away. I looked out and saw Stew 21 circling over the valley to the south, slightly higher than us and about four miles away. “Stew, Taco’s visual, ready for the talk-on,” I announced.
“Right beneath you, there’s a fairly long town in the middle of the valley, oriented north-south. Call contact.”
I looked down into the valley. There were a lot of towns. I came back inside, checked my map, checked the compass, back outside. Yep, there was the town that he was talking about, and it was pretty much north-south. “Contact,” I replied and then added, “Confirm that there is a hardball road leading through the length of the town.”
“Affirmative,” came the answer. “Let’s call the length of that town one unit. Now look on the eastern side of that town. There’s a dirtball road leading southeast up into the hills. Call contact.”
I looked down. There were a lot of dirtball roads, some more prominent than others. “I see a lot of dirtball roads,” I said.
“Right, this one is the most prominent one. It leads out in a straight line to the southeast and hits a tree line in the hills about two to three units away from the town.”
I looked down. None of the roads that led out the town to the southeast ran into a tree line. I checked my orientation. OK, I was looking to the southeast of the town. No trees. My frustration started to build.
“Stew, Taco’s not contact with that tree line,” I admitted.
“It’s right underneath me now. I’ll put down a mark to show you.”
I looked up to watch him. He wasn’t over the town. Where was he? I looked off to the south. Searching, searching… I had lost him while I was looking for the target. One potato, two… wait a minute—there he was—only he was a lot further south than he should be. How was he going to mark this target area from so far away? Then it dawned on me—I was looking at the wrong hillside. I swore to myself. How could I be so stupid? I had been looking at the wrong area. My INS pointed to the area that I was looking in, but it must have drifted. I looked about three miles south, underneath the area where Bumpy was circling. There was another elongated town in the valley, with a hardball road leading through it. “Stupid idiot!” I cursed at myself for a novice mistake!
I called Rip on FM to say that we had been orbiting too far to the north and were shifting south. Rip acknowledged, and we started south just in time to watch Bumpy roll in and put down two Willy Pete rockets on the side of the hills. One landed near but on the north side of a dirtball road; the other Willy Pete landed about 200 meters north of that.
“Stew, Taco’s contact with your smokes. We were looking in the wrong area,” I admitted, somewhat
