A-10s over Kosovo

by Christopher E. Haave Kimos

  AFACs knew that the responsibility to find and accurately identify enemy forces was all theirs. They also knew that incoming fighters trusted them implicitly; they expected to be talked-on to only valid targets. Likewise, the fighters knew that their obligation was to hit valid targets only. Due to the unpredictable nature of locating and identifying the enemy, strikers would normally have to wait at their contact point until the AFAC could find a target. The strikers would often consume most of their available fuel and become anxious to unload their ordnance by the time the AFAC was ready to direct their attack on a target. Attacking quickly required that the strikers have complete trust in the AFAC. Not once did any striker question the validity of any target during the dozens of attacks I directed.

  Okay, Two, Big Eyes Out!

  1st Lt Allen “JAKS” Duckworth

  “Okay, Two, big eyes out!” came the flight lead’s simple yet meaningful order. I was flying on Capt Jim “Meegs” Meger’s wing, and we were about five seconds from crossing the Kosovo-Albania border. This would be my first-ever combat mission. I had been flying the A-10 for only 10 months; not only was this my first combat mission, but it was also my first flight without a grade sheet. Less than two weeks earlier, I finished my mission-qualification training, kissed my wife good-bye, and boarded a plane with Lt Glib Gibson, another new wingman. We were excited because we would finally join the rest of the squadron in Italy. We had heard many stories of the great time to be had in Aviano and expected to experience unbounded fun between flying peacekeeping missions over Bosnia-Herzegovina. Instead, as we quickly learned, we were going to war.

  At first the A-10 was tasked for nothing more than covering CSAR alert and a little CAS alert. Since I was not a qualified Sandy, I was told that I would probably not be needed. Capt Buster Cherrey had pulled me aside prior to the first bombs falling and had given me the choice of staying in Aviano or going back to Germany, where I could get some flying, at least. I initially thought that I should go home, fly, and spend more time with Cheryl, my wife of only seven months. However, I finally decided to stay and help if I could. By the time I got back to Buster to tell him my decision, he had already decided to keep me there. Since the A-10 did fight, I was very happy with that decision.

  So there I was—flying into Kosovo to find and kill a real enemy who was, most likely, trying to find and kill us. I remember thinking to myself, “What am I doing here so soon?” That thought quickly gave way to the realization that I really needed to have “big eyes.” I spent nearly all of my time scanning the ground for AAA and SAMs while we were on the other side of the fence, a term we used to describe the boundary between friendly and enemy territory. Although we did not find anything to destroy, I was excited to join the brotherhood of combat pilots, and I knew there would be more missions.

  More missions came. Except for often being tired, I found myself quickly getting used to the combat-ops tempo. I flew mostly early morning sorties; I went to bed at about 1930 hours and got as much sleep as I could before my 0200 wake up. Each time I flew, I felt—and rightly so—that it was my responsibility to keep my flight lead and myself alive. However, as fatigue built up and challenged my discipline, I was tempted to stop clearing and slip into the more exciting task of looking for targets. I often had to remind myself that it was my job to be looking for threats and that the AFAC would find the targets.

  On several occasions the AFAC did find targets. I was flying with Maj Lester Less on an AFAC mission and instead of looking in Kosovo, we began our search in Serbian proper—in the Kumanovo Valley. As we approached the town of Vranje from the south, Lester found an area he wanted to search more thoroughly. A few moments later he keyed the radio and excitedly half-yelled, “Okay! Okay! We’ve got military vehicles down there!” We both felt an immediate surge of adrenalin. Neither of us had ever fired weapons in combat, and Lester decided to use a Maverick missile to kill one vehicle and have it serve as a mark for me. His missile was a direct hit, allowing me to verify that the vehicles I saw were the same ones he meant for us to attack. He told me to drop two bombs on a row of four trucks in the same area. As I positioned myself to roll in for my Mk-82 delivery, I thought about how much I did not want to miss those targets. This was for real. I wanted to know that I could do it right, but even more importantly, I wanted to contribute to the effort. After completing my diving delivery and safe-escape maneuver, I looked back at the target area to see where my bombs had hit. About 15 seconds later, I got my answer as all four trucks disappeared under two huge fireballs. My first time to employ weapons in combat had been a success.

  Location of military vehicles south of Vranje

  Not all of my missions were on an AFAC’s wing. In fact, my most successful mission occurred when I was flying on Capt Nate “Foghorn” Brauner’s wing in a two-ship of strikers. Our primary job was to kill the targets that our AFAC might find and assign to us in western Kosovo. However, if a striker flight lead was AFAC qualified, as Foghorn was, he was often allowed to search for targets while waiting. If he found any enemy forces, he would call the designated AFAC to take a look. On this day as we waited, Foghorn searched the area of Dakovica. He saw something and talked my eyes onto a small area on the southern edge of town, asking what I saw there. By this time in the air campaign, the Serbs had learned to hide nearly every piece of equipment they had. I could not believe it; here were two-dozen trucks and APCs parked in an open area! I told Foghorn what I saw, and he quickly responded, “Yeah, that’s what I see, too.” The AFAC, Capt JD McDonough, also had trouble believing our target description—it seemed too good to be true. He took a look and cleared us to kill it. We each dropped four Mk-82s, launched one Maverick, and fired hundreds of rounds of 30 mm—my first time to use the gun in combat. By the time we departed, nearly every vehicle was burning. On later missions, I would steal a quick glance when I flew in that area to see if the vehicles’ hulks were still there. We must have destroyed or damaged them all beyond repair because they remained there even after the air campaign ended. Although many fellow pilots teased Foghorn about inflating his BDA, I knew he was right on at least this occasion—we had British imagery to prove it.

  Lt JAKS Duckworth following a combat mission (Photo courtesy of author)

  I had flown a total of 30 combat missions by the end of the conflict. Not all of them were successful because on various days we had bad weather, could not find targets, or experienced aircraft malfunctions that forced an early RTB. And on some days we became the targets of Serb SAMs and AAA. Even though the Serbs did not often shoot at me, I retained a healthy degree of unease each time I flew. On every sortie it was important to me to be a good wingman; I wanted my flight leads to be confident that they could count on me to add to, rather than diminish, our flights’ combat capability. After all, Glib and I had been brand-new wingmen when the air war started, and we had to prove ourselves. My biggest fear, therefore, was not being shot down—but failing my flight lead.

  First Time Out Front

  Capt Nate “Foghorn” Brauner

  I felt a surge of excitement as I departed our squadron’s makeshift ops center for the jet parked on Gioia’s ramp. I hadn’t flown in three days and was stepping for my sixth combat sortie. However, I felt excited today because I would lead a flight into combat for the first time. I climbed into the aircrew minivan, got comfortable, and began to reflect on the series of events that had occurred during the past six months—the events that began with my arrival at Spangdahlem and brought me here, sitting in the crew van en route to a combat-loaded aircraft.

  Panther taxiing at Gioia del Colle AB, Italy (USAF Photo by TSgt Blake Borsic)

  I hadn’t been flying much. I had arrived at Spangdahlem as a new pilot in early March, just three weeks before the campaign started and while the squadron was still engaged in “split ops.” For the past six months the Panthers had maintained a near-constant presence at Aviano with half the squadron, keeping the other half at home in Germany. It was a tough situa
tion for everyone in the 81st. The delicate peace negotiations seemed to drag on for years; however, they now seemed close to breaking down, as they had on several occasions. The Panthers had been sent to Aviano in anticipation of the need for air strikes should the negotiations fail. They had been sent to provide CSAR support in case one of our planes got shot down, not to conduct air strikes.

  When I arrived at Spangdahlem, the squadron showed the long-term effects of its split ops. Several bachelors even considered Aviano more “home” than they did Spangdahlem. The deployed Panthers had been staying at a mountain chalet just north of Aviano—affectionately known as “Mr. C’s.” Its owner was a former pilot and an aviation enthusiast—to say he was hospitable to his American guests would have been a gross understatement. The Panthers were comfortable there despite the married pilots’ families being several hundred miles away. They were quite happy to enjoy the Italian food and wine, and receive the American per diem to pay for it all. The women were striking, the scenery was equally luscious, and the flying was good. It was as close to a fighter pilot’s dream as was possible in post–Cold War Europe. The constant deployment was seemingly never going to end, and the squadron had established a well-defined routine. When I met Kimos, the Panther squadron commander, he assured me that I would get well acquainted with life in northern Italy and that I would also be a candidate to go with the squadron when it deployed to the Air Warrior CAS exercise at Nellis AFB in early April. He said, “It is going to be a very busy spring, so don’t get too comfortable relaxing in Germany.” He couldn’t have been more correct. I would be on the road quite a bit, but the real reason was one that even our most experienced pilots did not foresee at the time.

  The deployments were an exciting prospect, but I still had several hurdles to jump before I could participate. I hadn’t flown the A-10 since mid-December, thanks to a mountainbike accident while I was at home on leave. A clavicle fracture and resulting surgery had kept me out of the cockpit, and it would be the end of March before I could fly again. It was a bad position to be in; I hoped that I would be healed enough to start flying and make our April deployment to Nellis. I wanted to be on that trip—and all others like it.

  My heart sank on 15 March when all of our planes and combat-ready pilots were directed to deploy immediately to Aviano. I had been out of flying for three months, and when our squadron’s time came, I wasn’t qualified to go. It grated on me like nothing I had ever known. I have been entranced by listening to war stories ever since I was a doolie at the academy. I wondered how I would I react when it was my turn. Would I carry away the same perceptions and learn the same lessons that others had? I had no doubt about my training. And now—when the call came—I had to carry water while the rest of the team took to the field. It wasn’t a good feeling. I was convinced that there must be some way to join the fight, but how to do so eluded me.

  As I continued to heal and wait for my opportunity to join the effort, I prepared for my recurrency flights by studying “the threat” in the classified tactics manuals we kept in our squadron vault. I also listened to the first reports that came back from Aviano—invariably through the wives’ network—of Panthers sitting CSAR alert as the first interdiction strikes were launched. On 27 March, I was home eating a late dinner and enjoying my recently installed satellite TV, when CNN broke in with the news of the first allied plane to be shot down. I was riveted by the news accounts of the crash and didn’t sleep more than an hour or two that whole night. The task to rescue the pilot would fall to our 81st pilots. Because of the locations of the targets the F-117s were tasked to attack, I knew the wreckage must be deep inside Serb territory, which would make the rescue difficult. Nevertheless, it was all over six hours later. Once again, the pilots of the A-10s had risen to the occasion and performed their duty in an exceptional manner. Unlike a previous F-16 shoot down several years earlier, there were no press conferences, no smiling for the cameras, and no million-dollar book deals. The pilots involved were serious about this conflict and did not want any attention or publicity to distract them from their primary job—flying combat missions. I felt a surge of pride at being counted as one of them, and that only served to strengthen my resolve to join them as soon as possible.

  The two flights I needed to regain all of my currencies happened in rapid succession the following week. My instructor was Lt Col Snoopy Schulze, the Panthers’ previous commander. Snoopy was an old hat at flying in Germany and quickly got me up to speed after months of inactivity. I was now ready and chomping at the bit to go.

  Finally my call came—not to join the squadron at Aviano but to be the squadron’s rep at the CAOC in Vicenza, Italy. Going to the CAOC was kind of like paying my dues. It was imperative that we had an A-10 rep there—an experienced flyer who understood our mission and could help with planning the details of the air war. It was a thankless but important job that most units pawned off on their lieutenants. The rep often felt like a small cat that had been dropped into a pen of hungry dogs. We looked at it as a sanity check on the whole process, and most of our captains had already served there for at least a week. It was time for me to pay my dues, and I was ecstatic just to get a chance to play a role—any role. I could contribute to the cause from my new position and, with some luck, join the squadron in about a week.

  The CAOC was a loose collection of prefab metal buildings. The arrangement of the successive additions appeared haphazard, and their orientation suggested an accelerated growth to satisfy the CAOC’s expanding missions. New areas had been added in any space available—immediate needs clearly outweighed any desire for aesthetic beauty. I arrived on 10 April—still early in the war. Inside, officers frantically worked to align the scarce in-theater resources to support an increased air presence in the skies over the Balkans. It was obvious that our initial in-theater assets were not sufficient after President Milosevic refused to concede his position following the first few nights of allied raids. One of my first tasks was to help define the new and expanded role A-10s could play in the KEZ. More often than not, I was merely a conduit—passing information and ideas between the squadron leadership at Aviano (and later at Gioia) and the appropriate people at the CAOC. I had become the voice of the squadron.

  Being the squadron voice could be a good thing or a very bad thing, depending on the day’s events and who was sitting in the big chair. The man running the air war was Lt Gen Mike Short, whom we called Senior. He had flown the A-10 in the 81st during a previous assignment and had a son, whom we called Junior, in our squadron. Although it wasn’t obvious, he had a special affinity for Hog drivers and paid close attention to any news of our operations. Senior was tough as nails, much like a high school football coach who was busy directing the game of his life. No one in the CAOC ever took Senior lightly. His questions (or orders) were always direct and spot-on. He knew the game better than anyone else in the room and was familiar with most, if not all, of the details. He had subordinate experts tackle the details that he didn’t personally have time to address. None of us ever lost sight of the fact that Senior knew his stuff and would call us on the carpet if we failed him. He was always deadly serious. We took our breaks and killed time in the unit rep’s room by cracking jokes, surfing the net, or trading stories; but we knew when we came up front and Senior was in the big chair, there would be no latitude for levity. I couldn’t imagine anyone pulling the wool over Senior’s eyes. It seemed that he generally knew the answer before he asked the question and just wanted to keep people on their toes.

  I remember on one occasion being called into the CAOC’s main room to answer to Senior. It seemed that someone had told him that A-10s were going to bomb through the weather—release our bombs on coordinates without being able to visually identify the target. There is no way that we would have done that. Our navigational systems were not accurate enough, and even if they were, we had not trained that way. I couldn’t imagine any Hog driver who would have been willing to drop his weapons blindly without knowing wh
at he might hit. It just wasn’t in our thought process. Senior sent for me; when I arrived he gave me a hard look and said, “What’s this I hear about A-10s wanting to bomb through the weather on coordinates?” I must have looked fairly shocked and assured him that with all the civilians on the ground, we had no desire or inclination to start fighting this war that way. With a short grunt and a terse, “That’s the right answer,” Senior turned back to work. He had known the answer all along—he just wanted to make sure I knew it.

  Senior’s aptitude and extensive knowledge was shared by most, but not all, of the senior officers in the CAOC. Men like Lt Col Paul C. “Sticky” Strickland, Maj James “Dibbs” Dibble, and Lt Col Walrus Heise, to name a few, kept the place functioning. They dealt with daily issues as trivial as how to get gas to the rental cars and as critical as reorganizing the war’s SEAD support. They kept the big picture and sidelined those who didn’t.

  There were a few others whose priorities, war-planning abilities, or aptitude for leading men was disappointing. We had one officer in the CAOC who focused his efforts on ensuring that people didn’t pop microwave popcorn anywhere in the building, because he didn’t want to smell burnt popcorn. We had a war on and he’s worrying about people popping popcorn. On one occasion he called me to the floor after some of our jets had been shot at and returned fire. “Why are your guys getting shot at?… Don’t they know that they aren’t supposed to be looking for targets in these areas?” He blurted this out as he waved at a wide area hashed out on a 1:500-scale map.