warfare readiness.
The approach is normal, and the city of Dhahran seems to be as lighted as usual. We touch down at 0415 local time and notice that the civil air terminal is shut down. No airliners are at the gates. We turn down the long taxiway to the military side and are soon aware that this is not the Dhahran of past missions.
It's very different this morning. There's none of the beehive of activity that we're accustomed to. In fact, we're the only aircraft there. The hangar doors are closed. The floodlight coverage is cut back to about a quarter of its usual strength, bathing the flight line in a shadowy ghastliness. Few vehicles move about. I certainly don't expect Iraqi troops to come storming across the field, but still a cool foreboding comes over me. Rob and I don't talk a lot as we walk toward the hangar, but we agree that we need to get our business of offloading and refueling done and leave this place.
While we proceed to the hangar complex to file our flight plan and get an intel update, the rest of the crew works at the aircraft. Dave takes his station on the 'long cord' out in front as a safety observer while Larry monitors the fuel panel in the cockpit. Both wear their headsets and are in communication with the refueler back at the right wheel well. Mike is running the noisy electric winch that is used to load and unload trailers and other unpowered rolling stock. Our twenty-five troops wait restlessly for their transportation to arrive. Then, at 0445, the first one comes.
Events take place with lightning speed, and few people know, at first, what is happening. 'What was that?' is the first sign of trouble, as Dave's voice cracks on the interphone. But Larry, on the flight deck, sees nothing. An electric streak appears in the sky over Dave's head, shooting south to north. A sonic boom resounds, echoing off the hangars. A maintenance van swings to a stop beside the jet, and men inside yell for the crew to hurry aboard. Dave relays the warning to Larry, who leaps from his seat and yells from the flight deck door back to Mike. Looking up from the winch cable, Mike hears but can't understand Larry's shouted warnings. Then Mike's blood chills when Larry reappears in the flight deck door wearing his chemical mask, motioning frantically to get off the aircraft.
Mike drops the cable and runs to his chemical bag. It seems an eternity to untie the wrappings. While he fumbles and claws into the bag for his mask, he hears excited shouts from outside, as the soldiers break into a run, and the blood-curdling wail of an attack-warning Klaxon starts up. Mike knows that it would be impossible to don the entire suit in the few seconds he might have left. Finally finding his mask and hood, he bolts for the crew door and into the van with the rest of the crew.
The events of the first missile attack of the war are more subtle for me. As I present the flight plan to the Saudi dispatcher, Rob calls the weather station. Across the room a Saudi with telephone in hand shouts over to the dispatcher in their native language, and I clearly pick out the word 'Scud.' The dispatcher turns to me with a sort of comical grin on his weathered face and repeats the word.
'Scud.'
I play along with this strange attempt at Saudi humor and feign a dive under the planning table. The dispatcher laughs and takes the flight plan, and Rob and I begin the long walk down the hallway to the intel shop. Along the way we meet a number of Marines who are pulling on their masks, but we've seen such drills before, and as transiting aircrew we are not required to participate.
Outside things are not so tranquil. The maintenance van races across to the nearest bunkernothing more than a trench about four feet deep covered with sandbags on a wooden frame. The guys breathe heavily and with much effort in the cumbersome masks. In his haste Larry has forgotten to snap on the rubber gasket that allows free breathing when not plugged into the aircraft-supplied oxygen system. Under normal circumstances it is a mistake that would immediately have been noticed; the flow of filtered air was minimal, almost to the point of choking. But in his excitement, fueled by the flood of adrenaline, it takes him several minutes to realize that he is slowly suffocating. Mike has the opposite problem. He tries to calm himself down, realizing he's beginning to hyperventilate.
Filing into the bunker, the men are abruptly halted and turned back. It's full. Along with maintenance people, it is filled with another C-141 crew who arrived after us but parked nearer the bunker. Uttering muffled imprecations, they reverse course and reboard the van, speed down the tarmac to the next hole and dive in. There they, hunker for the next half hour, listening to the maintenance radio blaring excited reports about missiles and explosions. The bunker is dark and muddy, and they feel extremely claustrophobic in the heavy gear, but they know that the air could be laced with lethal chemical agents.
The heavy door to the intel shop swings open, and Rob and I are stunned to see the intel staff wearing their chem gear. They motion us in and tell us that the field is indeed under attack, but the shop is fortified and serves as a shelter. We put on our masks and listen as the staff converses on their secure telephones, their speech muffled by the masks. We quickly learn that a Patriot missile has intercepted a Scud, fired from Iraq, at an altitude of 17,000 feet just north of the base. I didn't know the Patriot could do such a thing. I thought it was for shooting down aircraft. I immediately wonder if it was one of the many Patriots I had brought from the States in recent weeks. Reports also come in of Scud impacts east and west of the air base. A few minutes later, we are all astounded when the shop's TV set, tuned to CNN, replays the actual attack that has just taken place over our heads. Fascinated, we watch with the entire world as the Patriot streaks into the dawn and impacts the Scud with a bright flash above the thin cloud layer. Other reports come in of Scud attacks on Israel. A few minutes later, the shop receives a phone patch that the Israelis have launched a retaliatory nuclear strike against Baghdad. I stare through the mask lens and listen with detached horror. The world is coming apart at the seams, and there is nothing I can do about it. Yet I have no feelings of disbelief. Everything that is happening is plausible, even predictable. Pink Floyd was right; this is Armageddon.
As daylight falls on the airfield, the all-clear horn sounds. Rob and I hurry back to the aircraft, arriving before the rest of the crew. The long cord lies outstretched in front of the jet, headset still attached. Various articles of clothing, tools, and personal gear are strewn around, abandoned. The Starlizzard, still powered by the humming external power cart, sits contentedly without human accompaniment. Shortly the rest of the crew arrives in a breathless frenzy of conversation and falls hurriedly to prepping the jet for departure.
Very quickly we make ready for engine start. I'm sitting in the jump seat, programming the navigation computer while Rob and the pool pilot go through a nervous and hurried cockpit preflight. Glancing out the windscreen toward the maintenance trailers, I'm awestruck to see dozens of gas-masked men scurrying toward the bunkers. The fight is on again. I press the interphone and utter the two words, well recognized by all crewdogs, that signify trouble.
Once again the maintenance van brakes in front of us, and the driver beckons furiously for us to join him, which I hastily do. It seems reasonable to get to a relatively safe bunker rather than be strapped to a tremendous target full of jet fuel. But I quickly realize that I am the only member of the crew on the van; the aircraft is starting engines. The idea of being left behind has no appeal, so I abandon the van, which speeds away as I jump off. I race to the crew door and vault up, pulling the ladder up behind me. Larry slams the door down, and the jet lurches forward as I climb up to the flight deck. Vicious lies later circulate for weeks that I pounded on the closed crew door, begging to be taken in.
We depart what is to become known as Scud City with a multitude of sensations. The report of Israel's atomic attack was bogus, but still, Saddam had made it personal with us now. We will never know how close we came to being casualties. We will joke about it for weeks and take dubious pride in having been involved in the first surface-to-surface ballistic missile attack since World War II and in having been witnesses to the first missile-to- missile engagement in history. The name Patriot will take on an entirely new and lasting meaning for us. And we will listen with fascination to the even wilder and more spectacular Scud experiences of other crews in the weeks that follow. I will watch missile engagements from an airborne advantage. Other crews will fly through such battles, watching the rocket plumes flash by their wings in the night, the detonations lighting the skyscapes about them.
But a few days later, we hear sobering news of a C-5 crew from the New York Air Guard that was dispatched to Dhahran to evacuate the children of American residents. The Scuds came as the children were boarding. The crew quickly herded the children into the bunkers, and as they waited in the darkness, a man appeared in the entrance wearing a full complement of chemical gear. He warned them that a chemical agent was present, and casualties were resulting, then hurried away. The crew quickly pulled on their masks and adjusted the fit but then looked around at the children, who had no protection; their eyes were tearful, and a few were sobbing. Some of the kids clung to the airmen in fright.
