Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

overjoyed at the chance to return to combat, and honored that Hamad had asked him.

Saint flew the first Bahraini combat mission as leader. He flew the next one as number three. Then, as the Bahrainis gained combat experience, he flew as number four.

He did this fully aware that flying combat for Bahrain was putting him into a legal no-man’s-land. At worst, if he was shot down, he had no status as a prisoner of war and could be executed as a spy. He could also lose his citizenship, as our State Department takes a very dim view of Americans running around the world fighting for other people. But he was a fighter pilot, and such insignificant details couldn’t keep him from strapping on his G suit.

Saint flew as many missions as he could, but reckoning had to come, and finally, friends in the American embassy warned him that the State Department had heard rumors about his activities and were preparing to investigate.

Though his combat missions had to stop, Saint’s experience and example had made a significant contribution to the Bahraini pilots’ self-confidence. Day in and out, they flew combat air patrols and bombed targets in Kuwait.

Were they afraid? Certainly. Was it a huge challenge? Yes. But they did everything asked of them with professionalism and pride.

After the war, I visited Sheikh Isa Air Base and pinned air medals on the chests of twenty-two extremely proud Bahraini fighter pilots. In the back of the room stood Saint. He had no medals on his chest, yet there was just as much pride on his beaming face.

Bahrain may have had the smallest air forces to fly combat in the Gulf War, but their record in the war was second to none.

? The United Arab Emirates received new Mirage fighters in late 1990. So getting them into the war was a very near thing.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Sheikh Zayed had been the first Arab leader to ask for American military assistance. We had deployed two KC-135 tanker aircraft to conduct air refueling exercises with UAEAF aircraft flying defensive air patrols in the Arabian Gulf. Later, Sheikh Zayed’s pilots and their new French fighters joined the Coalition air forces working to free Kuwait. The only problem: his pilots were not trained to operate the new jets, let alone fly them into combat.

Many people believe Arabs are lazy. I can tell you that when the temperature is over 120 degrees Fahrenheit, no one wants to engage in physical labor out-of-doors. Nonetheless, these men from the UAE had no other options. They worked. They put in eighteen-hour days, in ground school and in the air, learning how to fly their new jets, learning how to use their electronic warfare systems, radar, missiles and bombs, and honing combat skills in air-to-air and air-to-ground combat.

Young Colonel Abdullah led their first combat sorties. Though these didn’t go perfectly, the pilots got the job done; they got better; and day after day, they joined the stream of Coalition fighters coming out of the air bases in the UAE and going forward to free Kuwait.

? Perhaps the biggest hurdle Coalition airmen had to overcome was the fear of failure.

Even Saudi pilots had to face such fears — though they are among the most experienced in the world. Their commanding general, Behery, for example, had flown an F-86 on the national acrobatic team, and their Ambassador to the United States, Bandar bin Sultan, had been a skilled F-5 and F-15 pilot before his king assigned him to duties in Washington.

Even so, young Saudi pilots still had to confront the fear that every fighter pilot faces on his first combat sortie. And for the Saudis, the stakes were higher than normal. After all, the Iraqis were on their border.

The following story of one young Saudi pilot on his first combat mission is not atypical.

SOMETIMES IT TAKES A HERO

Imagine you are a young man who has caught the bug to fly.

Though you live in a nation that has not known war since its birth in the early days of the century, you join your country’s air force, and they send you off to fly the most wonderful airplanes, sleek F-5s and the awkward but powerful high-tech Tornado. You love the freedom of flight, and you are good at it, so there is the pride that comes from competence, and you are proud to serve your king and country.

It is not all easy. Some of your mates do not survive the hazards of flying fighters. You are often away from home, attending schools in the United States. And because you are a Type A personality, you put in more hours around the squadron than do some of the others. Still, it is an idyllic existence — until Saddam Hussein decides to rape Kuwait and threaten the safety of your nation, family, and home.

“Errr,” you think, “maybe being in the Air Force has some drawbacks… Oh what the heck, we’ve been training for this for years… Still, I wonder if I can hack it?”

Lieutenant Colonel Sultan Farhan Al-Milhim — our young aggressive Tornado pilot — loved flying, his country, his family, his base commander General Turki (who was his role model), and his God. Everything else was down in the noise level.

After the dust settled in August, the Royal Saudi Air Force got back into a training routine. Flying out of Dhahran’s King Abdullah Aziz Air Base, Sultan prepared to repel the Iraqi Army if it came across the border from occupied Kuwait.

Later, he planned strikes into Iraq. His target was an airfield, and his sortie on the war’s first night would be part of a major effort involving RSAF Tornadoes, U.S. Navy F-14s, and USAF Wild Weasels.

Early in January, with things heating up, the overall mission commander for the target Sultan had called a meeting of all the flight leaders aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kennedy. The mission commander was responsible for making sure all the planning bugs were worked out and that everyone understood what needed to be done for a successful strike. Once the mission was initiated, the mission commander could call a change or abort — depending on weather, enemy defenses, or the condition of the target.

The meeting went well; the U.S. Navy F-14 WSO mission commander and the Saudi Tornado pilot strike leader were on the same wavelength. Because the plans had meshed so quickly, Sultan was able to slip out to take care of the real reason he’d wanted to visit the carrier: to watch takeoffs and landings — among the most difficult operations performed by any fighter pilot. Though he’d love the challenge of trying that himself, he knew he’d never have the chance. His country didn’t have a carrier.

On January 16, with no inkling yet that war was only moments away, Lieutenant Colonel Sultan put in a long day at work, mostly going over maps and tactics the squadron aircrews would use to attack a variety of targets in Iraq. He worked well past midnight and then headed for home, a lonely place now, as his wife and children had gone to Jeddah to escape the threat of Iraqi Scuds.

On the way home, he stopped at a small restaurant in El-Kobar, a nearby town, for a bite to eat. At home, he called his wife to reassure her that all was well, turned on CNN, and slipped off his flying boots.

The phone rang. It was his squadron commander. “Sultan?”

“Yes,” he answered. (Who else would be here? he asked himself.)

“I want you to come back here,” the squadron commander said.

“Why?” Lieutenant Colonel Sultan asked. “Is there anything wrong?”

“You need to come back. Something has come up.”

“What kind of thing?”

“Maybe we are going to war.”

“Are you serious? You’re not joking?”

“No, come to the squadron.”

The young pilot quickly put his boots back on, turned off the television, and ran to his car. On the way to the base, he drove slowly, thinking about what might be ahead, and as a devout Muslim, his thoughts soon turned to prayer — a prayer shared by all the aircrews that night… not for the protection of his life or forgiveness for the horrible acts he was about to do. It was the universal fighter-pilot prayer: “Please God, don’t let me make a