complete, they boarded the aircraft. The ground crews then handed them the paperwork for the mission — target photos, maps, checklists, and locations of emergency airfields. Each pilot also carried a protective suit against chemical attack, a rescue radio beacon, a 'blood chit' (in English and Arabic), which promised a large reward for helping a pilot escape, and a 9mm Berreta automatic.
The first wave was made up of 415th TFS pilots; they had been at Tonopah East since August, so Colonel Whitley felt they should have the honor of being first. One pilot almost missed his chance; Capt. Marcel Kerdavid discovered he could not start his plane's port engine. He grabbed his paperwork and the tape cartridge that held the mission data and was driven to the spare F-117A. He did a fast preflight and was ready to go.
Just before midnight the F-117AS were towed out of the hangars and began moving down the taxiway. The day shift had just come off duty, and the taxiway was lined with maintenance personnel. They saluted as the planes went past. Just after midnight, the first F-117A took off; by 12:22 A.M., January 17, the last was gone.
The F-117As flew in pairs to the tankers. The first refueling occurred soon after takeoff. The second was completed thirty-five nautical miles from the Iraqi border. So far, everything was exactly the same as the training missions.
The first pair completed their refueling, left the tankers, and slipped undetected into Iraqi airspace, and the unknown.[510]
At home, the day of January 16, 1991, had passed slowly. It was clear that war was inevitable. People gathered around their televisions, waiting for news. At 6:35 P.M. EST (2:35 A.M. in Baghdad), CNN's David French was interviewing former defense secretary Casper Weinberger. He stopped and said, 'We're going to Bernard Shaw in Baghdad.' Shaw began his report: 'This is — something is happening outside… The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated. We're seeing bright flashes going off all over the sky.'[511]
The sky above Baghdad had erupted with antiaircraft fire, but, as yet, there were no U.S. aircraft over Baghdad. At 2:39 A.M., only minutes after CNN began broadcasting from Baghdad, army Apache helicopters blasted two Iraqi early warning radar sites. This opened a gap in radar coverage, and F-15Es flew through it to strike Scud missile sites in western Iraq.
Two F-117As had already crossed into Iraq. They were followed by six more. Unlike the F-15Es, they did not have support from EF-111A jamming aircraft. It was one of these follow-on F-117As that opened the Black Jet's war.
The target was the Nukhayb IOC in western Iraq. Located in a hardened bunker, it could coordinate attacks on the incoming F-15Es and the follow-on strikes. The pilot was Major Feest, the lead pilot for the Panama strike.
He located the target and released the bomb at 2:51 A. M. He saw the bomb penetrate the bunker's roof and blow off its doors. He turned toward his second target, an SOC at the H2 Air Base. When he looked back, Feest saw the night sky was filled with antiaircraft fire, triggered by the bomb's explosion. When he looked toward the second target, he saw the whole sky was alive with ground fire.
As the other F-117As closed on Baghdad, antiaircraft fire seemed suspended above the city. Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Getchell, 415th TFS commander and leader of the first wave, likened it to Washington, D.C., on the Fourth of July. The firing at the empty sky had been going on for a full twenty minutes, but at 2:56 A.M., a cease- fire order was issued. A stillness fell over the city. From their cockpits, the pilots could see the eerie glow suddenly disappear. Through the IR displays, individual buildings took shape. Baghdad was still brightly lit, and car headlights could be seen stream-ing out of the city.[512]
As the Dark Eagles moved unseen and unheard above, CNN reporters Bernard Shaw and Peter Arnett were discussing what had happened. As they spoke, Capt. Paul Dolson placed the cross hairs of the targeting system on the fourteen-story Al-Karak telephone and telegraph center. The plane's bomb door opened and a GBU-27 LGB fell free. Millions of people gathered around television sets heard this exchange:
Shaw: 'We have not heard any jet planes yet, Peter.'
Arnett: 'Now the sirens are sounding for the first time. The Iraqis have informed us — [static].'[513]
At that instant, the GBU-27 punched through the Al-Karak's roof and destroyed the communications equipment, cutting off CNN. Within five minutes of the 3:00 A.M. H hour, Marcel Kerdavid had destroyed the Al-Kark communications tower, Capt. Mark Lindstrom dropped an LGB through a roof vent on the new Iraqi air force headquarters, while Ralph Getchell struck the National Air Defense Operations Center, and Lee Gustin bombed Saddam Hussein's lakeside palace-command center. As the first bombs exploded, the F-117 pilots saw antiaircraft fire rise above the city.
Major Jerry Leatherman, following one minute behind Dolson, dropped his two GBU-10 LGBs through the hole blasted by the first bomb. Unlike the GBU-27, which was designed for attacking hard targets, the GBU-10 had a thin casing and a greater blast effect. The two bombs gutted the building. As his plane cleared the area, he looked back and beheld the wall of fire he and the other pilots had flown through. He said later, 'There were greens, reds, some yellows, and you could see little white flashes all over — the airbursts… [The SAMs] move[d] around as they were trying to guide on something, whereas the tracers would just move in a straight line. The 23mm… looked like pinwheels the way the Iraqis were using them… it looked like they'd just start firing them and spin 'em around.'
The F-117As sped away from Baghdad. Some, with both bombs expended, headed home. Others headed for their second target; Kerdavid bombed the deep National Command alternate bunker at the North Taji military complex. Its thirty-feet-thick roof proved too much even for a GBU-27, and it remained intact. More successful were attacks on a communications facility at Ar-Ramadi, the SOCs at Taji and Tallil, and an IOC at Salman Pak.[514]
Between 3:06 and 3:11 A.M., as the F-117As left Baghdad, Tomahawk cruise missiles began striking leadership targets, such as Ba'th party headquarters, the presidential palace, electrical power generation stations, and chemical facilities in and around Baghdad. The Tomahawks directed against the electrical plants shorted out power lines, and all over Baghdad, power went out, not to be restored for the rest of the war.
At 3:30 A.M., the disrupted air-defense network began picking up a huge attack force heading directly toward Baghdad. Comments by air force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael J. Dugan in September 1990 had indicated there would be a raid on Baghdad by nonstealthy aircraft between F-117A strikes.
General Dugan was fired for the comments, but the Iraqis still expected such an attack. As the planes neared, the radars came on and the SAMs were prepared to fire.
But they were not airplanes; they were decoy drones. And behind them were navy A-7s and F/A-18s and air force F-4Gs with HARM (high-speed antiradiation) missiles. The HARMs both destroyed radar sites and intimidated Iraqi air defense radar operators to stay off the air.[515] Even as the Iraqis were attempting to deal with this, the second F-117A wave was closing on Baghdad. It was led by Colonel Whitley. The flight toward Baghdad was a 'sobering experience.' He later recalled, 'At 100 miles plus, you could look out there following the horizon of Baghdad, and it looked like a charcoal grill on the 4th of July.' The glow was the continuous firing of nearly four thousand antiaircraft guns.[516]
At 4:00 A.M., the second F-117A wave restruck the air force headquarters and the National Air Defense Operations Center. Other targets hit were the IOCs at Al-Taqaddum Air Base and Ar-Rutba as well as leadership and communications facilities from the Jordan border to Kuwait.[517] In all, the two waves had dropped thirty-three bombs and scored twenty-three hits.
The third wave followed shortly before dawn. Their targets were chemical and biological weapons storage bunkers. The late hour was selected because sunlight would reduce the danger from Anthrax spores. As they approached their targets, a weather front moved into central Iraq, with thin clouds at 5,000 feet. The F-117A's bombing system required a clear view of the target or the LGB would lose its lock. Of the sixteen bombs dropped, only five were hits. These targets were considered less important, but it was a preview of the bad weather that would plague the bombing campaign in the weeks ahead.[518]
As the F-117 pilots turned for home, their mood was somber. They knew they had won a victory, but they were sure the cost had been high. Captain Rob Donaldson said later, 'I came out of there on that first night and
