Jimbo briefed relatively standard tactics, the same ones we studied and practiced every day; it was good to know that Hog guys from different bases practiced the same stuff our squadron did. I noticed he did do a good job emphasizing the basic communications and lookout duties that he expected of a wingman. Such information sometimes gets left out when flying with many of the same guys, and it is important to have it stressed from time to time. I also thought in the back of my mind, as Jimbo probably did, that this was not the day to become complacent—even with all the talk of things winding down.
We eventually stepped, took off, hit the tanker, and entered the AOR uneventfully. We started looking at the areas of interest that intelligence had briefed us about. There was very little activity, and we found nothing where intel told us to look. Capt Christopher “Junior” Short and Col Al Thompson were the prior AFACs on station, and they were looking at an area in southern Kosovo, 10 miles southwest of Prizren. They thought they had found some APCs or tanks but had to hit the tanker, so they gave us a quick talk-on and left the area.
Jimbo made a couple passes with the binoculars but could not quite make out what was there. He also did a Maverick search but could not tell for sure if the potential targets were live vehicles, decoys, or “tactical bushes.” He saw a horseshoe formation around a dirt berm, so he elected to drop his Mk-82s on them to see if we could get some secondaries or movement from them. He rippled his four Mk-82s on the eastern side of the formation. We did not see any secondaries, but the targets did not seem to be decoys because they stayed relatively intact. After climbing back to altitude and joining the briefed formation, he instructed me to drop my Mk-82s on the western side of the formation.
Target area southwest of Prizren
As I rolled in to begin my dive delivery, I saw a flash and smoke trailing a missile quickly climbing towards the spot where I had last seen Jimbo. I immediately broke off my delivery, called out the missile launch, and directed him to expend flares. Shortly after I spit out all the required radio calls, the missile passed behind Jimbo along his flight path. I made sure I knew exactly where the launch came from because I was pissed that they had tried to kill us. There was still a significant amount of smoke in the area from where the missile had launched, and a thick smoke trail lingered in the air—we figured it was not just a MANPADS. We departed the launch-site area and broke line of sight. Meanwhile Jimbo briefed me on a suppressor-bomber attack. I was ready to roll right in and made sure Jimbo knew that. I was excited when I executed the attack, and as soon as I rolled out on “final” I realized that I had not considered the winds. “Final” is the airspace flown through during the few seconds after rolling out of the diving turn and just prior to weapons release. It is where pilots would normally refine their dive angle, airspeed, and ground track so that when they depress the pickle button, they will have the correct sight picture, airspeed, altitude, and dive angle so the bomb will hit the target. As I rolled out, I realized I needed to come off dry—without dropping any bombs—because the wind had blown me too far, and I would not be able to attain the necessary delivery parameters to make a good pass and kill the target. Fortunately, I decided to come off early and had enough energy to expedite the next attack.
Jimbo had suppressed the threat area with the gun before I rolled down the chute. He put a bunch of bullets in the vicinity of the launch site, and I dropped my bombs on a nearby tree line, close to a road intersection where military vehicles appeared to be located. As I recovered from my pass, Jimbo noticed a green, fluorescent flash that indicated I had hit something with rocket fuel or ammunition in it. After this attack we left the target area for the tanker and then headed home.
We debriefed with our intel NCO, SSgt Amos Elliot, on what we saw and what had happened. Amos was very excited about getting all the specifics. BDA is usually very difficult to get, especially on fielded forces, but it is a very important aspect of the entire war effort. After our in-depth discussion, we were pretty sure we had hit a mobile SAM system. While we made sure to report it as “probable,” not “confirmed,” we also knew there was little chance of its ever being confirmed. The Serbians’ standard practice was to haul away the wreckage of targets we had hit to make BDA more difficult. It was another piece of Milosevic’s propaganda puzzle that still plagues NATO today.
The Only Sortie as a Wingman
Capt Jim “Meegs” Meger
I “grew up” as a first-assignment FAC at Osan AB in the Republic of South Korea, the “Land of the Morning Calm” or the “Land of the Not-Quite-Right,” depending on how I viewed my own situation. That assignment was the best thing that ever happened to me as a FAC. I learned by leaps and bounds from the best fighter pilots and AFACs in the world—the AFACs who carried the revered Misty call sign. While at Osan I listened to the older Hog drivers who had been in Desert Storm, learning from their combat experiences and hoping to have the chance to put my training into the “Big Game.”
From Korea I went to the 81st Fighter Squadron at Spangdahlem for my second operational tour. With the Panthers, I gained valuable experience in the A/OA-10’s missions and learned how NATO integrated them into an air campaign.
My only sortie as a Panther wingman was the closest I came to meeting a Serb soldier face-to-face. Being in the CSAR rotation as a Sandy 1 and a FAC, I was surprised to see I was on the schedule to fly on the wing of Kimos Haave, the squadron commander. This was a role I had explained to my wingman many times before, and now it was time to walk the walk. Being a good wingman takes discipline, especially since I was used to being a flight lead. It was not my formation to run and I was not responsible for the navigation. My job called for providing support to my flight lead, keeping him in sight, and watching for any threats to the formation or our supporting fighters. With this in mind, I had put away my maps and had zero intention of pulling them back out unless it was necessary or requested by the flight lead.
Kimos, as the mission commander, gave the briefing and went over our targeting information for the day. There had been some heavy activity along the borders, due in no small part to the ROEs that were in effect. I was glad to be flying in the afternoon since the morning fog had delayed or cancelled most of the early packages that week. The afternoon-go also had the benefit of intelligence updates and hot target areas from the morning’s sorties.
We stepped to the jets and launched on time across the Adriatic with Kimos as Pepper 01 and me as Pepper 02. Because of some problems with the tanker, the entire package was delayed. We pressed across the “fence” 45 minutes late and began our target search with the imagery we had received. The active ABCCC aircraft was a Navy E-2C Hawkeye, call sign Cyclops, responsible for coordination among all elements to include the CAOC in northern Italy. Shortly after we arrived on station, Cyclops informed us of an active Serb command post west of Urosevac and requested that we locate the target. Kimos found the area and then began a search from medium altitude. He quickly located the command post and several nearby armored vehicles. In accordance with the ROEs, we still had to coordinate for attack permission because of the proximity to the Macedonia border, even though we had been directed to, had found, and had positively identified this target.
Serb command post west of Urosevac
After we received authority to strike, we armed up our 500 lb Mk-82s, and Kimos called, “One’s in.” His bombs hit a tank and a command-post building. He then cleared me in on two APCs slightly to the south.
I returned his call with, “Two’s in.” With my flight lead in a cover position, I rolled down the chute. The bombs hit on target, but I did not see any secondary explosions because I was maneuvering and ejecting flares as I pulled off target. The E-2C relayed that a set of F/A-18s was en route to the target area. When the Hornets arrived, Kimos gave a quick FAC brief and rolled in to mark with Willy Pete rockets.
“One’s off dry, hung rockets,” called Kimos. His selected rocket pod had malfunctioned, so he selected his jet’s other pod and roll
ed in again. After his second passed he radioed, “One’s off dry, both pods of rockets are hung. Two, you have the lead. Go ahead and mark for the Hornets.”
I assumed the lead, maneuvered my jet to a different attack axis, and rolled in. The second smoke was on target and the lead Hornet began to employ his ordnance. The second jet lost sight of the target area and asked for another mark. “Watch the number of passes in a target area” was the lesson firmly planted in everyone’s mind after Maj Goldie Haun had been hit by a MANPADS and limped to Skopje only two days prior.
“Two’s in.”
I hammered down on the pickle button at 17,000 feet above mean sea level (MSL) and was rewarded with a quick, “tally the target,” from the second Hornet. When the Hornets departed for the carrier after their attack, we egressed the target area and began a new search.
“Pepper 01, this is Cyclops. We have a two-ship of A-10s with CBU that needs a target.” Kimos called them up and decided to have them unload their CBUs on the command-post area.
At this point I was fairly comfortable with the target area. The Serbs had not shot back on their “normal” timing, and I was now lighter and had good energy, having already dropped my bombs. With Kimos in a cover position and the fighters in trail to watch the mark, I began a roll-in to the right on a previously unused attack axis.
“Two, break left!” was the call I heard. I immediately began to dispense flares, turned in the cockpit, and saw two trails of smoke following behind what appeared to be red flares arcing towards my jet. Since I had been in the process of rolling in, I had already committed myself to a right turn—versus the break left—and began to lower the nose while pulling hard on the stick to turn quickly and put the missile at three o’clock. I can still see the red glow of the rocket motors and the way the missiles kept turning with me. I remember thinking that the missiles were rejecting the flares, and my next thought was, “What is three to five seconds?” (Our training tells us that three to five seconds before we think the missile will impact, we should perform a special maneuver to make the missile miss.) I was still breaking into the missiles and ejecting flares when the first missile lost track. I saw it would miss well behind the jet, but the second was rapidly getting closer.
“Two, get rid of your stuff.” One of the other A-10s advised me to “combat jettison” all of my ordnance to improve my turn and energy state. It seemed like I had time to think it over and decide that I was okay with just my Mavericks. There was no way I was going to take my hands off the stick or the throttle and the flare button located on it!
As I began a last-ditch defensive maneuver, the second missile began to fall behind the aircraft. I can still see the missile trying to turn and “hack” the corner as it began to lag. With all this defensive maneuvering, I had turned approximately 270 degrees, and I was now looking exactly at where the two smoke trails had started their journey. Time to turn the tables. The GAU-8 30 mm Avenger cannon is the most flexible and formidable weapon on the A-10. Since it was built to destroy Soviet tanks in Germany’s Fulda Gap, one can imagine its effectiveness on softer types of vehicles—especially a lightly armored SAM system.
I distinctly remember switching from rockets to the gun in the weapons-delivery mode of my head-up display and then placing the pipper short of the two vehicles where the smoke trail began. I dropped the hammer and began to retaliate in anger. An A-10 driver will normally shoot about 100–200 rounds in a combat burst, attempting to concentrate directly on the target. Passing 300 rounds on target, I kept the hammer down and began to move the pipper around the target area until I saw an explosion—500 rounds later.
“Two is egressing south.” With the tables turned and the Serbs diving for cover, I called my flight lead and told him the heading on which I was departing the target area. Looking over my left side, I saw that Kimos was in a solid cover position as we concluded our first vul period, crossed into Macedonia, and began the air-refueling process in preparation for the sortie’s second scheduled vul period.
Deep Thoughts
Capt Andrew “Buffy” Gebara
I had to think for a while about what I really wanted to say here. Many of my friends will write about what happened in Kosovo in 1999. I flew 36 combat missions over Serbia, so at first glance the task didn’t seem all that tough. I thought about writing about my first-ever combat sortie—we didn’t hit anything because we were recalled by the CAOC in what became an almost daily ritual of higher-headquarters mis-/micromanagement. I thought I would write about the time my flight lead Goldie Haun was hit by a SAM and barely made it back over the border. I briefly thought about my most effective sortie, in which Capt Nathan S. “Foghorn” Brauner and I destroyed 14 APCs and eight artillery pieces. To me it seemed like a routine sortie, but we were fortunate enough to get real results. Finally, I thought about the sortie that Lt Col Coke Koechle, my operations officer, let me lead for the first time. A fighter pilot’s first sortie in the lead is one that he or she will always remember, and in my case that sortie was in combat over the FRY. As I landed, I felt as if I had genuinely accomplished something.
All of these sorties were memorable, but they didn’t really define Kosovo for me. After thinking about it for a while, I finally figured out what I actually took away from Kosovo. Being on the front lines of this war has given me a new perspective and has caused me to view historical accounts through different eyes. From my perspective, Kosovo was weird—just plain weird. Some have written about the delayed stress of combat operations; others have discussed the guilt they feel after taking human life. As for me, I mostly felt, and still feel, that the whole experience was surreal. It didn’t seem possible that I was actually in the middle of this whole thing. All my life I had either watched or read accounts of historical events. In Kosovo the Panthers didn’t watch history in the making—we made it. We were key players in the first conflict in which the war was fought and won almost exclusively in the air. That I contributed to that victory is a great feeling, but every once in a while I think to myself, “What happened over there, anyway?”
If you get them away from the cameras, many pilots will say that, from a public-support point of view, Kosovo was similar to the Vietnam conflict. The older members of my squadron who had fought in Desert Storm told us of how the support from home had helped boost morale during the tougher times of the war. In Kosovo, we really didn’t get much support, and, to tell the truth, we did not even get the animosity I had read about during the Vietnam conflict. It seemed to me that most Americans didn’t know that the war was going on, at least at the level of intensity we faced. It becomes emotional when I am asked to risk my life for a just cause. To take such a risk when the cause is controversial is different. It is simply bizarre to do so for a cause my countrymen seem unaware of or indifferent to. Therefore, I often found myself wondering if this war was at all real.
During the first few weeks of the war, we fought out of Aviano. My squadron was housed in a hotel off base throughout the 1990s—ever since Bosnia-Herzegovina really heated up. When we entered the base from the hotel, there would be literally thousands of people outside the gates. We were sure there were Serbian intelligence gatherers in the crowds, and we were concerned about protests. However, it seemed that most of the crowd were made up of people who were little different from those encountered at an air show—teenagers who wanted to see jets launch in the early morning sunrise. I wanted to scream at them, “Do you realize what’s going on here?” It was really strange.
We were directed to relocate to Gioia del Colle AB, soon after the war started and Aviano began to get crowded. Gioia was in southern Italy, much closer to Kosovo, which meant an increased sortie rate for us. It also meant we were housed like kings—our enlisted troops were in quarters near the beach, and the officers lived in a great hotel. We would get up around 0100, arrive at work about 0145, brief, launch, tank up, and enter Kosovo around 30 to 45 minutes after sunrise to get the best chance of identifying targets. Of course, that also
gave the Serbs the best chance of seeing us—a concept I was to fully understand after my third sortie!
After 45 minutes of hunting, we would leave Kosovo and refuel in Macedonia, and then go back in. After this second vul period, we would head for home, making a total sortie duration of around four and one-half hours. We would land, debrief, eat, and get some sleep before the next day’s work. We fought exclusively as two-ships. On most sorties I flew as a wingman but was privileged to lead six.
I was getting shot at daily, but to watch CNN Headline News, Kosovo was a cakewalk, interrupted only by incompetent NATO pilots bombing civilians. Of course, nothing could have been further from the truth. I saw my close friends going to great lengths to avoid harming innocents, often putting themselves at considerable risk in the process. Guys like Capt Francis M. “JD” McDonough have earned my everlasting respect for their actions to keep civilians safe in Kosovo. This is a facet of the war that has been almost entirely overlooked.
We worked under ROEs that severely hampered our ability to attack targets. We were strictly forbidden to engage if there were any chance of collateral damage, no matter how small. That’s an important goal, but when taken to extremes, it proved very frustrating. As an example, on one sortie, I saw a red vehicle traveling at high speed towards a village. I paid attention to it because, by this time in the war, we had pretty much destroyed the petroleum reserves in the country. A civilian vehicle racing down the highway was very unusual—especially when the Kosovar-Albanians had been forcibly evacuated and the Serb civilians were given a very low gasoline priority. Anyway, this vehicle stopped in a small village. A few minutes later, the village burst into flames. The vehicle then left the village as quickly as it had come. It seemed obvious that Serbs had torched the village. The Serbs, who, not long into the war, had wisely abandoned their tanks, had taken to driving around in stolen Kosovar-Albanian civilian vehicles. Even though this vehicle obviously was involved with hostile action, we were prohibited from attacking it because it was painted red—not the green of Serb military vehicles!
A-10s over Kosovo Page 15