The weather recon birds almost canceled the mission, but at the last minute, they allowed the exercise to continue with flight restrictions between 15,000 and 25,000 feet/4,572 and 6,720 meters. The wall of Eagles moved forward, and the 'push' call launched the Blue strike force toward the targets. It was a mess. The cloud deck divided the sky into high and low zones, creating two separate fights for the Eagles. The two aggressor F-16s made their move over the top, but they did not go unnoticed. The AWACS aircraft saw what was happening and called for support from the F-15s. The two Red Falcons got close, but not close enough for a shot at the HVHAAs before the Eagles drove them off. Still, the Eagle drivers were agitated that night over dinner. They would have to find ways to adjust their 'wall' tactics for bad weather.
And then it happened. Everyone was already on the way out when an emergency call came in that one of the U.S. Army OH-58C helicopters was down… and it was bad. Everyone went silent. The 66th RQS rushed an HH- 60G Pave Hawk up to the crash site to look for survivors. But there were no survivors. Both crewmen, officers from the 2-229 Attack Helicopter Regiment at Fort Rucker, Alabama, had perished in the crash. It was the first fatal accident to take place during a Flag exercise in over three years, and it cast a pall over the rest of the day.
In early 1995, the causes of the crash are still being assessed, though it appears that the chopper hit a rock wall of a mountain while returning to Indian Springs. The old Monday-after-the-weekend jinx had struck again, and the Green Flag staff was not happy. They immediately went on a tear with the aircrews to review safety and ROE instructions. Dinner that night did not taste very good.
Tuesday, April 19, 1994—Adversary Tactics Operations Center
Today we would view the morning mission from the Adversary Tactics Control Center, then fly an afternoon tanker mission with the 22nd ARS. Our host, Major Steve Cutshell, gave us the Red side of the Green Flag story. He confessed that the 366th had given the Red Force challenges they had never experienced before, and that subsequent exercises might require more Air National Guard F-16s to reinforce the Red air forces. On the other hand, the ground-based Red forces had done well, considering the age of the equipment. The wily contractor personnel who live uprange and operate the emitters have years of experience. Indeed, they could probably teach the Russians a thing or two about how to use their systems! Red communications jamming against the Have Quick II radios had been fairly effective, though it tended to wipe out their own communications. And Red's radar jamming usually worked, though the newest U.S. airborne radars with advanced signal processing can out-fox most ground-based jammers, or just burn through them with raw power.
That afternoon, we headed back out to the HVHAA ramp, and were pleasantly surprised to find we were assigned to the same aircraft (62-3572) and crew we rode with the previous week. This time we were the second tanker in the flight, called 'Refit,' and our call sign was Ruben-50. We would refuel six F-16s from the 389th FS that were going to strike targets on the southern side of the range, as well as a pair of F-4G Wild Weasel aircraft from the 561st FS at Nellis AFB. The Vipers would each get 5,000 lb./2,272 kg. of fuel, with 8,000 lb./3,636 kg. going to each of the Weasels. Since the F-4s had the shortest 'legs' of any aircraft in the strike force, they would tank last, to be as full as possible when the push to the targets came. Takeoff went smoothly, though there was a lot more cloud cover this afternoon, a residue of the previous day's thunderstorms. This made for a rough ride, and Sergeant Hughes's skills were taxed to keep the tanking on schedule. He had particular difficulty with the old refueling receptacles of the Phantoms; their tricky (and now worn-out) refueling probe latching mechanism had trouble establishing and maintaining a solid connection. Nevertheless, he managed to fill everyone up, and they all made the mission push on time.
Then, just as we were scheduled to head home, there was an urgent radio call from the Blue Force air-to- air mission commander. Several aggressor F-16s had finally made it over the top, and were chasing several of the HVHAAs, including us! Luckily, a couple of Eagles hunted them down, but it was now clearly too risky to leave the big birds unescorted during missions. For the rest of the week, until it was certain that all the airborne Red aircraft had been killed, there would be fighter cover for the HVHAAs.
Friday, April 22, 1994
As the last missions finished up, the 366th and the other units prepared to pack up and head back to their home bases. While the Gunfighters had 'won,' that really was not the intention of the exercise or the true measure of what was achieved. Much more important: The composite wing concept was validated, at least as far as the resources of Nellis were capable of testing it.
For the 366th Wing itself, there was a mass of data to be analyzed, assessed, and acted upon when they got back to Mountain Home AFB. As the last missions were flown and the ground crews started packing up their gear onto the FAST tankers, everyone could take pride in his or her own contribution. The raw steel that General Hinton had passed on to General McCloud the previous year was now a sharp sword, though it might still require some polishing. That could wait for tomorrow. Today the Gunfighters were going home to their families. As we joined them, it gave us much to reflect on, for we had seen more than any civilian had seen before about how the USAF gets ready for war.
AFTERWARDS
Later in 1994, we returned to Mountain Home AFB to see how the wing was implementing the changes that emerged from Green Flag 94-3. In the few months since the deployment, many jobs in the wing had changed hands. When we arrived, Dave McCloud had less than a week left in command of the 366th; his next assignment was a staff job for General Joe Ralston (now the ACC commander) in the Operations Directorate of the Air Staff. This was a good omen for his future promotability to lieutenant general (he made the list 'under the zone' in early 1995). McCloud's replacement, Brigadier General 'Lanny' Trapp, came from the A-10 wing at Davis-Monthan AFB in Arizona, and chose an F-15E Strike Eagle as the new 'Wing King' aircraft. Colonel Robin Scott had left to attend the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Lieutenant Colonel Clawson, now promoted to full colonel, moved over to the wing staff. Roger 'Boom-Boom' Turcott, who had given John Gresham his ride, moved up to command the 'Bold Tigers.' And the 34th BS became fully operational with its B-1Bs. It conducted its first Global Power/Global Reach mission just six months after 'standing up.' The steady flow of new personnel is a positive sign that the wing is alive and healthy.
Finally, there was one more big exercise for the 366th Wing in the fall of 1994—Joint Task Force (JTF)-95. JTF-95 was planned to team elements of the new Atlantic Command (a carrier battle group and a Marine expeditionary unit) in a combined exercise. But just as the exercise was kicking off, the U.S. intervention in Haiti and an emergency deployment to Kuwait took away the Atlantic Command assets, wiping out the entire JTF-95 exercise package. In our 'new world order,' global events seem to be keeping military units too busy to train for the future. In a time when we are contemplating further force structure cutbacks, that is something to think about.
