Every Man a Tiger (1999)

by Tom - Nf - Commanders Clancy

  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 mistake.”

  At the base, everything was quiet. He wondered where everyone had gone, but then he noticed lights in the mission planning room. When he got there, the room was crowded. Everybody was there, from General Turki, the base commander, on down; and everybody was talking, trying to brief Turki on the details of the mission they’d been tasked to fly.

  Sultan walked across the room to the general, saluted, and asked, “What is going on?”

  His squadron commander answered, “We are going to war.”

  Sultan then asked, “Is it real?”

  The general slowly and sadly answered, “Yes, this is real.”

  The aircrews were now assembled, and now it was time for the mission commanders—like Sultan—to lead them. The young lieutenant colonel was one of the oldest fliers in this young squadron in this young Air Force, and now it was time for him to take charge.

  Sultan walked to the mission planning table, where the crews were poring over maps and intelligence plots of Iraqi air defense guns and surface-to-air missile sites. At that point, Lieutenant Mohammed Raja, S
ultan’s weapons system officer, gave him some disturbing yet exciting news: “Colonel Sultan, sir, I think it’s our time!”

  Sultan looked at him. “Are you sure?” he asked, and Mohammed nodded yes.

  As they turned to leave, General Turki stopped them. All the pilots at Dhahran’s King Abdullah Aziz Air Base respected Turki. Not only was he a superb aviator, he listened when they needed to get anything off their chests, he chewed them out when they made a mistake, and he praised them when they shined. Because the aircrews loved their commander, they wanted to please him; and because he was one of them, he loved them in return.

  Now they had to go on the RSAF mission of war.

  Colonel Assura, the chief of logistics, who was standing beside Turki, took Sultan’s hand. “I wish you good luck,” he said.

  Then Turki put an arm around him. “Just go for it,” he said. “Good luck. I wish I was with you.”

  Moments later, Sultan had assembled the crews in the personal equipment shop. There they donned their survival vests and G suits. Once they were suited up and gathered close around him, he could sense their eagerness and fear. “I know you are used to having a briefing before we fly,” he told them. “Tonight this is war. We will fly off the plan. Don’t change anything. We have been planning this strike for six months. Just follow the plan and you’ll be all right.”

  Though he was the oldest man there and was doing all he could to calm them, in his heart Sultan himself was deeply troubled. Most were his students. They hung on his words. But this night would see the birth of a combat air force. After tonight, they would be the old heads, the veterans—but first they had to make it through the night. This was a first time for everything—first time into combat, first time to carry and drop the huge JP-233 runway-busting munitions, and the first time someone would make a concentrated effort to kill them.

  The bus ride to the aircraft shelters was deathly quiet. Each man was locked in his own thoughts. For his part, Sultan wondered why they were fighting this war. He thought about the Iraqis, brother Arabs, united in Islam, who had savagely violated Kuwait, also brothers. He thought about an old adage: If someone points a gun at you, and you think he’ll shoot, then you must kill him. Well, the Iraqis were pointing their gun at Saudi Arabia, so he and his WSO Mohammed had killing work to do.

  At the aircraft, number 760, the crew chief was busy pulling off the dust covers. Sultan did not do a preflight, since the crew chief had already done that, and he appreciated Sultan’s trust and confidence. As he swung his right leg into the cockpit, a warrant officer on the ground crew asked if they could write a message on the bomb load slung under the fighter’s belly. With a grin, Sultan told them to write whatever they wanted to, then went through the time-honored procedures of strapping the jet to his body. He never learned what message he carried to Iraq, because he was too engrossed with engine start and system check to find out.

  Because Sultan had skipped the preflight, he and Mohammed reached the runway first. Though they rolled into their takeoff position eight minutes behind schedule, they knew they could make up the time because slack had been built into the inflight refueling delay. The engine run-up was good, and the afterburners lit off, blasting the night’s silence and darkness with a roar and yellow-blue flames. As they rolled down the runway, however, Sultan realized he had never flown so heavily loaded and had not computed the takeoff data, check speed, nosewheel liftoff speed, takeoff speed, and distance.

  “What’s the takeoff speed?” he asked Mohammed on the intercom.

  “I don’t know,” Mohammed replied. In true WSO fashion, the backseater had no intention of doing the pilot’s job for him, even if it meant he might wind up in a ball of blazing twisted metal off the end of the runway.

  “Okay,” Sultan told Mohammed, “I’ll take her to the end of the runway, and then if we can’t get off, I’ll eject and take you with me, okay?”

  Mohammed did not answer, as the fighter was now going over 150 miles per hour.

  Aware that the heavy bomb dispenser fastened under the aircraft required added speed for a safe takeoff, Sultan watched until the “3,000 Feet Remaining” sign flashed by, then tenderly pressed the front part of the control stick, and the nose of the Tornado started to fly off the runway. As the last of the runway flashed by, the jet was waddling into the darkness.

  Sultan had never flown in worse weather—thunderstorms, rain, and lightning buffeted the jet as they searched the night sky for their RSAF KC-130 tanker aircraft; yet when they reached the air refueling contact point over northern Saudi Arabia, they were now only four minutes behind schedule . . . only, there was no tanker. They had to refuel or they could not get to the target and make it back home.

  This really must be war, Sultan thought, because things are rapidly getting all screwed up.

  Breaking radio silence, he called the “Camel” aircraft, asking for his position (“Camel” was the call sign used by Saudi pilots for their refuelers).

  His tanker answered that he was a hundred miles to the south, too far for Sultan to make a rendezvous, refuel, and make it to the target on time. In other words, Sultan and Mohammed were out of the show their very first try at combat.

  Just then, another Camel aircraft called, its pilot a longtime flying buddy of Sultan’s. “Sultan, is that you? Do you need gas? I’m at the refueling track at the next block altitude, sixteen thousand feet.”

  In their excitement, Sultan and his KC-130 pilot friend were talking in Arabic instead of the more correct English, until someone else came up on frequency to tell them to keep quiet (they were supposed to be comm out). Sultan then climbed up 4,000 feet and put his Tornado behind this new tanker. Now he had to get hooked up to the basket trailing a hundred feet behind the KC-130. During daylight and in good weather, this was a demanding task. At night and in thunderstorms with a heavily loaded jet, it proved close to impossible.

  Sultan called his tanker friend: “If you really want to help me, climb another four thousand feet so we can get on top of this weather.”

  “I can’t,” Camel replied. “There are aircraft above us.” (He had read the Air Tasking Order, good man.)

  Always the fighter pilot, Sultan simply hooked up and said, “Then keep your eyes open and give me high flow.” (That meant pump the gas at maximum pressure, so the receiver aircraft would fill its tanks in the minimum time.)

  As they bounced through the night sky, riding the tops of angry clouds, desperately hanging on to the hose of a pirated tanker, risking collision with other aircraft scheduled to use that same piece of sky, Sultan asked Mohammed to let him know exactly when they had enough fuel to get to the target and back. Though they were now eight minutes late and still short on gas, Mohammed advised Sultan that they could do that.

  Sultan thanked the tanker and backed off, then rolled the fighter onto its back and split “S”s down into the inky blackness. Because of their high-speed descent, and because the tanker had dropped them off at the north end of the refueling track, they were able to save six minutes. Now they needed only to fly faster and make their appointed time over target.

  Leveling off at 3,000 feet, Sultan checked out the terrain-following radar and its connections with the jet’s autopilot. Since everything was working, he selected 1,500 feet, soon followed by 1,000 feet; and then, swallowing hard, he flipped the switch that caused the fighter to drop to 200 feet above the ground.

  This was another first—the first time this crew had operated this close to the ground using the terrain-following system.

  Mohammed extinguished the aircraft’s exterior lights, and now, the only light came from the eerie glow of the cockpit displays.

  Meanwhile, Sultan watched his moving map display, which showed them where they were located at any given time. He watched with fascination as the Saudi border with Iraq began to approach. This looks like the real thing, he thought, ten miles to the border. Perhaps they’ll call us back. Surely they will call this off.

  When they fl
ashed across the border at 200 feet above the desert, Sultan sadly concluded, “Well, so it’s war!” and armed up his weapons dispenser.

  On the radio, two squadron mates called that they were three minutes behind and low on fuel. Sultan ordered them home, as they could not possibly catch up, and they must not be late. Meaning: Sultan and Mohammed were now alone.

  Mohammed then said to his pilot, “We’re on track and on time.”

  Sultan looked ahead, but saw nothing except darkness. At thirty-five miles out, he concluded they were headed for the wrong target, or else nothing was there. At twenty-five miles, the supporting Wild Weasel launched a high-speed antiradiation missile at a SAM radar, and suddenly night turned to day, as thousands of tracers lit the night sky.

  In his surprise, Sultan cried out, “My God, look at this, Mohammed!”

  But Mohammed, ever the quiet one, had nothing to say about the show. And anyhow, he had more important things to do than gawk at fireworks; he had the exacting work of putting the crosshairs on the target.

  At fifteen miles, Sultan asked his mate if he was happy with the target. Meaning, is the radar picture good enough for an accurate release of their weapons?

  “See that big fire?” Mohammed answered, meaning the SAMs and tracers rising from the airfield ahead. “That’s it.”

  It’s a beautiful thing when your WSO is cool, while you are thinking you’ll never see your wife and children again.

  Sultan then realized that it was time to pay more attention to what he’d been sent out to do. At the same instant, it occurred to him that he was likely to die. Thinking he’d better let Mohammed have a vote, he asked, “Mohammed, we can turn back. It’s up to you. Will you go with me?”

  The taciturn Mohammed replied simply, “I’ll go.”

  Then Sultan repeated the Islamic prayer uttered by those about to die.