pushed me heavily into my seat as I pulled hard on the stick during my safe-escape maneuver. I climbed, pumped out flares, and changed my heading so that I could look back over my shoulder to watch for my impacts. The bomblets covered an area as big as a football field, and in the middle of all the sparkles I saw a large, orange flash.
“Did you see that Two?”
“Affirm.”
“Those are secondaries.”
“Two copies.”
Surgeon set up for another attack while I held in a highcover position. He rolled in and dropped his second CBU on the target. A thick, black column of smoke started to form. We moved on to western Kosovo.
Surgeon called the FAC covering the west side of the KEZ to see if he had any targets for us. Surgeon stressed that we had four Maverick missiles left. He really wanted to shoot a Maverick on his last combat sortie here. But the FAC did’t have any targets and we were low on gas, so we headed home.
As we left Kosovo, Surgeon told me to look back at the target area we had worked. I rolled my wings and pulled the nose of my jet around to get a better view. From 20 miles away I could see the dark column of smoke reaching up to the sky. No one could have survived all that.
That was the first of my 18 sorties in Kosovo and typical of what it took to find and kill two fuel trucks. I became a flight lead a few rides later and flew most of my sorties as an AFAC. As such, I had to follow the ROEs closely, a requirement that continued to frustrate us throughout the campaign. We had to call Italy for CAOC approval to attack targets if they were within so many miles of the border of Albania or Macedonia. The ROEs put most vehicles off limits, and only those painted army green were considered valid targets. When those two ROEs were established, ABCCC repeatedly broadcast the detailed restrictions in the clear over an unsecure radio. Afterwards, we saw hundreds of white and yellow vehicles driving throughout Kosovo every day. The Serbs had to have been laughing at us while they shook those cans of spray paint.
We routinely located valid military targets, and called the CAOC for permission to hit them, only to be denied by a director sitting in Italy. I still do not understand why we had to get that clearance to drop on a target in Kosovo. A brigadier general and former CAOC director during OAF tried to explain it to me once in the Officers’ Club bar at Nellis. He had served as a colonel during OAF and been promoted six months after the conflict.
I had asked him, “Sir, did you guys plot the target coordinates we passed on 1:50 or 1:250 maps?” I used this question to try to understand how he, in Italy, developed his judgment on those targets. The 1:50 scale maps that AFACs carried in Kosovo were extremely detailed. Plus, I had a beautiful view of the target from my cockpit. He said that they had used 1:250s, maps that I knew showed much less detail.
I continued, “So, sir, why did you guys deny us clearance to hit some of those targets?”
He responded, “Well you need to understand the politics of the war. Do you really think striking that one target would have mattered in the overall campaign?” Then the recently promoted general added, “It really would not have mattered.”
I stared into my drink in astonishment. So he knew it didn’t matter. Great, I thought, soon he’ll get promoted again and will be one of the leaders for the next war.
“Sir, the next time we send our boys into combat to get shot at, we better make sure that it matters.” I refused to stand there and listen to his doublespeak. I walked away and ordered another drink.
From Wingman to Flight Lead
I began Operation Allied Force as an experienced wingman—I finished it as an inexperienced two-ship flight lead. I had developed a complete and utter confidence in the capabilities of the A-10 during the one and one-half years I had flown the Hog. However, I often thought that we were not very realistic with our expectations for the airframe during peacetime training. My OAF experience opened my eyes and provided insights that increased my love for, and confidence in, the Hog.
The OAF conflict was not what I expected. I had previously flown medium-altitude sorties over war-torn Bosnia, so it came as no surprise when we employed under many of the same constraints. Those constraints, such as having to AFAC and employ weapons from medium altitude, led to the predictable difficulty in identifying and destroying tactical-sized targets. What I did not expect was that the ROEs would change on a daily basis and that tactical decision making would be taken out of the cockpit and given to someone in the CAOC—hundreds of miles from the AOR. The cumulative effect was that these constraints frustrated our ability to kill enemy targets that we badly wanted to destroy. In retrospect, our operations seemed to reflect more political than military considerations. That was frustrating for everyone involved—because we were capable of so much more.
For me, the war began in earnest after our departure from Aviano AB. In the beginning, our flying was constrained by the A-10’s limited mission taskings and bad weather. My last mission at Aviano was typical of our frustration. I flew over 10 hours, tanked four or five times, and brought home all my bombs because of bad weather in the AOR. After the decision was made to move our A-10s to Gioia del Colle in southern Italy, a quick look at the map made me smile. It would take only half an hour to fly from Gioia, across the Adriatic, and into the AOR. Finally, we could spend the lion’s share of our time finding targets and not droning back and forth to Aviano.
I arrived in advance of the main party, only to find a bare base with an old dormitory that would serve as our operations section. All we were able to accomplish during the 24 hours prior to the arrival of the squadron was to break down all the bunk beds to make room for furniture and equipment—items that weren’t there and that we didn’t own. In spite of that, the 81st was flying combat sorties within 48 hours of deploying to southern Italy. Our experiences were often surreal. We would fly, attack targets, and get shot at. Then only hours later, we would be at the Truck Stop, drinking vino and eating pasta. On “English night” we would even watch a movie at the local theater. Every once and awhile, you’d stop and think about the weird and incongruous aspects of our lives.
Mission Check
A war was being fought. Nevertheless, the peacetime administrative routine continued—much to my surprise. I flew my mission-qual check ride over Kosovo with Lt Col Kimos Haave, our squadron commander. I flew as his wingman and remembered going into the brief thinking, “Cool, don’t get shot down, Stu, and you should pass this ride.” I realized that Kimos was going to apply peacetime check ride criteria about halfway through the brief. Therefore he would need to see me drop bombs or shoot something—and I might have to hit the target using CBU- 87s for the first time. In retrospect, I think it made sense. I also realized that I might not complete the check because on more than one occasion I had returned with all my ordnance due to a lack of viable targets or bad weather. Finding targets in the AOR seemed to be either feast or famine. On some days, we’d drop all our bombs, shoot the gun, and, if the right target came along, launch a Maverick. Other times, we’d fly back with all our ordnance since A-10s rarely ever hit “dump” targets. I felt better bringing back my ordnance knowing that, on a later date, I could drop it on the skull of some town-burning Serb.
I signed out at the ops desk and learned that I’d be flying aircraft 992; that jet had my name painted on the nose, and I was immensely proud of her. I thought she was the best in the fleet—a status due mostly to the efforts of her crew chief, SSgt Donny Trostle. Don wasn’t there when I arrived at the jet, but no matter; she had been code-one for the past 15 sorties. I knew that she could safely carry me through harm’s way. Preflight, taxi, and takeoff were normal, but I remember thinking how sluggish the controls seemed as we lumbered into the warm morning air. The two CBUs were roughly the same weight as four Mk-82s, a load I was familiar with; however, the CBUs had the aerodynamics of two barn doors, produced considerable drag, and significantly degraded the aircraft’s flying characteristics.
Once we entered the KEZ, the search for targets began. Kimos was given a target area that included a factory complex constructed of red brick in southeastern Serbia between Presevo and Vranje. Using his binos, he
