I finished my preflight checks and started to taxi. I returned my crew chief’s salute as I pulled out of the chocks. He then jumped up to pat his jet one last time for good luck. The guys in the maintenance van were pumping their fists in the air. These young airmen and NCOs are the heart and soul of the military—they are the heroes.
After takeoff, Surgeon and I refueled over the Adriatic Sea, and then flew south of Montenegro into Albania. The rugged terrain reminded me of the Rocky Mountains in early spring, when the peaks are still dusted with snow. Looking down onto Albania and Macedonia, I could see the orange terra-cotta tiles that cover the roofs of the local houses and other buildings. As we flew closer, Surgeon pointed out the numerous refugee camps scattered along the border of Macedonia and Kosovo. After seeing these camps from the air, I realized that no one can get an accurate feeling of how many people fled Kosovo by watching CNN—even on a 32-inch Zenith.
“Fence-in,” Surgeon called to me. I set my switches to arm my weapons and self-protection systems.
“Gunhog One-One, SA-6 at Derringer is active.” That call was made by the NAEW controller as we moved into Kosovo to warn us of the active SAM site.
Surgeon replied that he copied the information about the SA-6 site near the city of Pristina being active and pointed out artillery sites that had already been bombed. The scorched craters looked like black stars painted on the ground. The countryside was breathtaking in its beauty and ruin. I could not find one house with an intact roof.
We started searching for targets in an area that intel had said the Serbs were using as a vehicle-refueling point. Surgeon put me in a high-cover position as he scanned the area for the refueling point. My job was to keep an eye out for AAA or SAMs fired at our formation. I continually rolled up to check beneath our jets and change my heading. While I was in a right-hand turn looking out the right side of my cockpit, I saw something flash on the ground. I was in the perfect location to catch the morning sun’s reflected glint off the windshields of two westfacing parked trucks.
I called Surgeon on our FM radio and told him what I saw. He asked that I give him a talk-on, so I described the area around the trucks. He could not break out the vehicles and wanted to make sure we were both looking at the same place before we dropped our CBUs. He told me that he was going to roll in with the gun, and I realized that this game was real.
Surgeon squeezed off a healthy burst of 30 mm bullets that hit just to the west of the trucks. As he pulled off target I focused on the ground, ready to call break to Surgeon should the Serbs start firing. Surgeon pumped out four self-protection flares when he pulled off, and the bright red flares contrasted with the muted greens and browns of the background.
I told Surgeon where his bullets hit compared to where I had seen the trucks. He told me that he was going to roll in with his CBU. He entered a 45-degree dive-bomb pass, pickled, and pulled off; his bomblets also hit just west of the trucks. He climbed back to altitude and told me to set up for a rip-2 pass with my CBU-87.
I checked and rechecked my switches. My fuzing was set, and I had green ready lights. I checked my bomb-pass parameters one more time and then committed myself to the attack. “Two’s in,” I called and then started my roll in, accelerating towards the ground.
“Two, come off dry to the south,” Surgeon called me off. I broke off my pass, pulled out of my dive, started my climb to the south, and began punching out flares. My heart was racing. What did I do wrong?
Surgeon told me that he wanted me to roll in from the southwest to avoid the SA-6 that was active to our northwest. When I reached altitude, I checked my switches one last time. Now I was nervous. This would be the fourth pass on the same target. Everything that I’d read and heard from experienced guys said to never hang around a target too long. How long was too long?
I cracked my wings and rolled down the chute. I was completely focused on those two trucks. The lime green pipper slowly tracked up my HUD; I pickled and felt the thumps of the munitions leaving my jet. G forces pushed me heavily into my seat as I pulled hard on the stick during my safe-escape maneuver. I climbed, pumped out flares, and changed my heading so that I could look back over my shoulder to watch for my impacts. The bomblets covered an area as big as a football field, and in the middle of all the sparkles I saw a large, orange flash.
“Did you see that Two?”
“Affirm.”
“Those are secondaries.”
“Two copies.”
Surgeon set up for another attack while I held in a highcover position. He rolled in and dropped his second CBU on the target. A thick, black column of smoke started to form. We moved on to western Kosovo.
Surgeon called the FAC covering the west side of the KEZ to see if he had any targets for us. Surgeon stressed that we had four Maverick missiles left. He really wanted to shoot a Maverick on his last combat sortie here. But the FAC did’t have any targets and we were low on gas, so we headed home.
As we left Kosovo, Surgeon told me to look back at the target area we had worked. I rolled my wings and pulled the nose of my jet around to get a better view. From 20 miles away I could see the dark column of smoke reaching up to the sky. No one could have survived all that.
That was the first of my 18 sorties in Kosovo and typical of what it took to find and kill two fuel trucks. I became a flight lead a few rides later and flew most of my sorties as an AFAC. As such, I had to follow the ROEs closely, a requirement that continued to frustrate us throughout the campaign. We had to call Italy for CAOC approval to attack targets if they were within so many miles of the border of Albania or Macedonia. The ROEs put most vehicles off limits, and only those painted army green were considered valid targets. When those two ROEs were established, ABCCC repeatedly broadcast the detailed restrictions in the clear over an unsecure radio. Afterwards, we saw hundreds of white and yellow vehicles driving throughout Kosovo every day. The Serbs had to have been laughing at us while they shook those cans of spray paint.
We routinely located valid military targets, and called the CAOC for permission to hit them, only to be denied by a director sitting in Italy. I still do not understand why we had to get that clearance to drop on a target in Kosovo. A brigadier general and former CAOC director during OAF tried to explain it to me once in the Officers’ Club bar at Nellis. He had served as a colonel during OAF and been promoted six months after the conflict.
I had asked him, “Sir, did you guys plot the target coordinates we passed on 1:50 or 1:250 maps?” I used this question to try to understand how he, in Italy, developed his judgment on those targets. The 1:50 scale maps that AFACs carried in Kosovo were extremely detailed. Plus, I had a beautiful view of the target from my cockpit. He said that they had used 1:250s, maps that I knew showed much less detail.
I continued, “So, sir, why did you guys deny us clearance to hit some of those targets?”
He responded, “Well you need to understand the politics of the war. Do you really think striking that one target would have mattered in the overall campaign?” Then the recently promoted general added, “It really would not have mattered.”
I stared into my drink in astonishment. So he knew it didn’t matter. Great, I thought, soon he’ll get promoted again and will be one of the leaders for the next war.
“Sir, the next time we send our boys into combat to get shot at, we better make sure that it matters.” I refused to stand there and listen to his doublespeak. I walked away and ordered another drink.
From Wingman to Flight Lead
1st Lt Stu “Co” Martin
I began Operation Allied Force as an experienced wingman—I finished it as an inexperienced two-ship flight lead. I had developed a complete and utter confidence in the capabilities of the A-10 during the one and one-half years I had flown the Hog. However, I often thought that we were not very realistic with our expectations for the airframe during peacetime training. My OAF experience opened my eyes and provided insights that increased my love for, and confidence
in, the Hog.
The OAF conflict was not what I expected. I had previously flown medium-altitude sorties over war-torn Bosnia, so it came as no surprise when we employed under many of the same constraints. Those constraints, such as having to AFAC and employ weapons from medium altitude, led to the predictable difficulty in identifying and destroying tactical-sized targets. What I did not expect was that the ROEs would change on a daily basis and that tactical decision making would be taken out of the cockpit and given to someone in the CAOC—hundreds of miles from the AOR. The cumulative effect was that these constraints frustrated our ability to kill enemy targets that we badly wanted to destroy. In retrospect, our operations seemed to reflect more political than military considerations. That was frustrating for everyone involved—because we were capable of so much more.
For me, the war began in earnest after our departure from Aviano AB. In the beginning, our flying was constrained by the A-10’s limited mission taskings and bad weather. My last mission at Aviano was typical of our frustration. I flew over 10 hours, tanked four or five times, and brought home all my bombs because of bad weather in the AOR. After the decision was made to move our A-10s to Gioia del Colle in southern Italy, a quick look at the map made me smile. It would take only half an hour to fly from Gioia, across the Adriatic, and into the AOR. Finally, we could spend the lion’s share of our time finding targets and not droning back and forth to Aviano.
I arrived in advance of the main party, only to find a bare base with an old dormitory that would serve as our operations section. All we were able to accomplish during the 24 hours prior to the arrival of the squadron was to break down all the bunk beds to make room for furniture and equipment—items that weren’t there and that we didn’t own. In spite of that, the 81st was flying combat sorties within 48 hours of deploying to southern Italy. Our experiences were often surreal. We would fly, attack targets, and get shot at. Then only hours later, we would be at the Truck Stop, drinking vino and eating pasta. On “English night” we would even watch a movie at the local theater. Every once and awhile, you’d stop and think about the weird and incongruous aspects of our lives.
Mission Check
A war was being fought. Nevertheless, the peacetime administrative routine continued—much to my surprise. I flew my mission-qual check ride over Kosovo with Lt Col Kimos Haave, our squadron commander. I flew as his wingman and remembered going into the brief thinking, “Cool, don’t get shot down, Stu, and you should pass this ride.” I realized that Kimos was going to apply peacetime check ride criteria about halfway through the brief. Therefore he would need to see me drop bombs or shoot something—and I might have to hit the target using CBU-87s for the first time. In retrospect, I think it made sense. I also realized that I might not complete the check because on more than one occasion I had returned with all my ordnance due to a lack of viable targets or bad weather. Finding targets in the AOR seemed to be either feast or famine. On some days, we’d drop all our bombs, shoot the gun, and, if the right target came along, launch a Maverick. Other times, we’d fly back with all our ordnance since A-10s rarely ever hit “dump” targets. I felt better bringing back my ordnance knowing that, on a later date, I could drop it on the skull of some town-burning Serb.
I signed out at the ops desk and learned that I’d be flying aircraft 992; that jet had my name painted on the nose, and I was immensely proud of her. I thought she was the best in the fleet—a status due mostly to the efforts of her crew chief, SSgt Donny Trostle. Don wasn’t there when I arrived at the jet, but no matter; she had been code-one for the past 15 sorties. I knew that she could safely carry me through harm’s way. Preflight, taxi, and takeoff were normal, but I remember thinking how sluggish the controls seemed as we lumbered into the warm morning air. The two CBUs were roughly the same weight as four Mk-82s, a load I was familiar with; however, the CBUs had the aerodynamics of two barn doors, produced considerable drag, and significantly degraded the aircraft’s flying characteristics.
Once we entered the KEZ, the search for targets began. Kimos was given a target area that included a factory complex constructed of red brick in southeastern Serbia between Presevo and Vranje. Using his binos, he spotted three tanks lined up in the factory’s parking lot and rolled in for a medium-altitude Maverick attack. Unlike a real tank, this target disintegrated when the Maverick hit it. Kimos concluded that the tank was a decoy and that the factory complex was likely producing decoys. He then directed me to set up for a CBU attack on the western end of the factory complex, which also contained mortar positions and lighter vehicles. I knew from studying CBU ballistics that I could get a HUD solution only if I bombed with a tailwind. The winds were strong out of the west, so I set up and rolled down the chute from west-northwest. I say “rolled down the chute,” but at our gross weights and altitudes we did not have the thrust or aerodynamic authority to do much more than smoothly coax the jet to fall to the correct dive angle. With my pipper on the target and at the desired combination of altitude, dive angle, and airspeed, I hammered down on the pickle button and felt the familiar clunk of ordnance being released. However, something wasn’t right—I felt only one clunk. Sure enough, only one can of CBU came off, and my other station was still showing a “green ready.” Since my thumb was still on the pickle button, I knew it had to be an aircraft malfunction. I initiated my safe-escape maneuver and began the climb back to altitude. Much to my chagrin, the CBU hit well short of the target. I discussed the problem with Kimos, and we decided that I should check all of my switches and try to deliver it one more time. I rolled down the chute and pickled on the target, but nothing came off the jet. With the end of our vul time approaching, Kimos decided to attack the target with his CBUs. Those, unfortunately, also hit extremely short of the target. We then departed the KEZ for home.
Location of tank decoys between Presevo and Vranje
I had a “hung” CBU, and, depending on the circumstances, I would either land with it or attempt to jettison it over the Adriatic. The weather for the approach and landing was good. The CBU appeared secure on an inboard station and did not pose a problem for landing. We decided that I would land with it. I flew a straight-in approach with Kimos flying chase to monitor the CBU and warn me of any problems he might detect. The landing was uneventful, but Kimos later told me that he was relieved when I touched down and the CBU didn’t fall off. A subsequent inspection reveled that the ejection carts had correctly fired when I had attempted to release the CBUs. However, during much recent use, some cart-generated carbon had been deposited on the mechanical linkage and ejector orifices. Those carts’ hot gas would normally be used to overcome the forces required to open the two mechanical suspension hooks and release the CBUs. When I had hammered down on the pickle button, a firing pulse had been generated; the ejection carts had fired, but the generated gas pressure had been insufficient to open the hooks and release the CBU. Nonetheless, Don Trostle never forgave me for “breaking” our jet and ruining 992’s streak of flawless performances.
During the debrief Kimos voiced his disappointment with our bombing. However, he admitted he couldn’t very well downgrade me on my bombing accuracy when both of our CBUs had hit short. We reviewed the tape, and everything appeared normal with both of us pickling on the target. I discussed the problem with Maj Goldie Haun, our weapons officer. He stated that anomalies in our bombing computer’s algorithms often cause CBUs to hit short when bombing with a strong tailwind—we had 70 knots at altitude.
4 June 1999
Capt Scott R. “Hummer” Cerone, a member of the 74th FS out of Pope AFB, and I were paired up for a mission. Hummer and I had gone through our initial introduction to fighter fundamentals and the A-10 replacement training unit courses together. In addition, we both recently had pinned on captain rank and passed our flight-lead check rides on the same day, 31 May 1999. Hummer was an AFAC, so according to the rules, he was the only one in our flight qualified to pick out and direct strikes on targets. We decided that I would be t
he flight lead for the sortie. I would give him the tactical lead in the KEZ so that he could find targets and comply with the ATO. We were young flight leads and flew that day with our “fangs out”—happy to be flying on our own and not with some older, more staid member of the squadron.
Hummer and I got a handoff from an excited Foghorn who had apparently located 12 APCs in a field. Foghorn talked louder than ever over the radios and was hair-on-fire as he departed for gas. When Hummer and I arrived, we looked for something other than bales of hay. We used binos and our Mavericks but finally asked an F-14 AFAC to recce the area with his pod—all with no luck. Hummer and I gave up on those targets and proceeded to an area north of D-Town. We dropped our Mk-82s on some small revets before I spotted a large revet, which I was convinced contained an arty piece. I talked Hummer’s eyes onto it and got clearance from him to launch one of my Mavericks. I hammered down, and the Maverick hit the target less than 30 seconds later. Hummer, unfortunately, lost the missile at burnout, from his viewing angle he thought the Maverick had “gone stupid” and had flown towards the west. I guess he was trying to see if it hit northern Pristina, probably thinking, “How are we gonna explain this one!” I got his eyes back into the target area, but for a few minutes I was unsure whether he had actually cleared me to hit that target. We talked about a possible miscommunication during our debrief but, with some map study, became convinced that we had been looking at the same target. Later that year, after I had been reassigned to the 74th FS, I ran into Hummer at Pope. He kiddingly said, “We both had hit ‘bags of dirty diapers’ that day.”
6 June 1999
Hummer and I were paired again. After checking in with all the appropriate agencies, we entered the KEZ and proceeded to an area north of D-Town. We got a handoff from an F-14 AFAC who was trying to talk a flight of Hogs (Corvette 71) onto several APCs that he had located with his targeting pod. We called contact on the targets, and the F-14 departed. Hummer told me he was going to use his binoculars to visually ID these targets. With Corvette 71 flight orbiting to the north, Hummer took a couple of laps around the field. After a minute of silence, he came over the radio and told me he’d cover me while I got a visual: “Tell me what you see down there.”
A-10s over Kosovo Page 32