Pilots live by habit patterns, mastering repetitious tasks and distilling each step into a system of identical behaviors. Good habits do more than prevent mistakes; they create the possibility that a pilot will do something perfectly without thinking, even when low on oxygen and short on time.
McDowell had developed a ritual-like process for his preflight routine, and now his habits guided him.
Roughly two and a half hours before launching he attended the briefing, which lasted about an hour. He gave himself fifteen minutes to eat and use the toilet. At the forty-five-minute mark he inspected his aircraft. He read its maintenance history, checked the aircraft weight so the catapult setting would be correct, examined the tire pressure, ensured the aircraft’s fuel and liquid oxygen tanks were full. He walked in a circle around the F-14 for a visual inspection and noted that all of its hatches were closed. He reviewed the ordnance sheet and looked over the bombs to be certain that they were properly fuzed. He signed an inspection and acceptance sheet.
The aircraft was now his.
At this point McDowell allowed himself a symbolic deviation. He gathered a small Bible and a 2001 quarter commemorating New York State that had been minted in Pennsylvania, and packed them for the flight. He would fly these over Afghanistan to honor the victims from September 11. Then he headed back to the ready room, where the duty officer issued him his 9-millimeter pistol and ammunition, the recording cartridge for his aircraft’s targeting pod, and a blood chit—a multilingual written notice that promised a reward for assistance and a safe return that he could hand to civilians if his plane went down. From there it was a short walk to the parachute riggers’ shop, where he stepped into his g-suit and torso harness, which would attach him to his cockpit seat and parachute. He slid on his survival vest, picked up his knife, emergency radio, and holster, and met his backseater.
The two of them walked to the flight deck, then to their jet.
He met the plane captain, the enlisted sailor responsible for the aircraft when a pilot was not in it. They saluted each other. McDowell reviewed the aircraft once more. He checked again the weapons’ settings, climbed aboard, strapped in, and waited for permission to start its engines.
The plane captain stood at parade rest in a brown pullover shirt a few feet in front of the F-14’s nose. The aircraft remained chained to the steel deck.
About thirty minutes prior to launch, the plane captain stood at attention and gave a thumbs-up. McDowell turned on the engines and switched his attention to a deck officer in a yellow shirt who would lead the aircraft to the catapult.
McDowell fastened his oxygen mask.
It was almost time to go.
Sitting in the cockpit on the flight deck, engines warm, bombs ready, McDowell did something rare. He crossed his fingers, hoping not to catapult off with the first wave. He was a spare for this bombing run. If he missed it, he would fly later on combat air patrol, with a chance to engage a Taliban MiG.
The last of the other pilots got off the carrier without McDowell being called. His F-14 never moved. He felt a surge of satisfaction and shut its engines down.
He returned to the ready room for his next assignment and was given exactly what he wanted.
He returned to the deck and found his plane. For a combat air patrol he had a full slate of weapons. Two laser-guided bombs for air-to-ground strikes were suspended beneath the aircraft beside the ordnance he hoped to use: a pair of short-range Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, a medium-range Sparrow, and a Phoenix, the longest flying air-to-air missile in the Navy’s inventory, which could down a MiG-21 from such distance that an opposing pilot might not even know that McDowell was onto him.
The preflight routine repeated itself until McDowell was taxiing behind a sailor in a yellow shirt. He stopped in place above the catapult. The blast deflector went up. Engines idling, McDowell raised his hands; in this way he could not accidentally hit anything as deck crew dashed beneath the F-14 to connect the plane to the catapult’s piston and arm the air-to-air missiles.
Once the last sailor was clear, McDowell lowered his hands, took the stick, released the brakes, gave the engines power, and stirred the flight controls while watching the instruments. Good hydraulics. Good engines. Good flight controls.
“How you looking?” he asked his backseater.
“Looking good,” he heard.
It was dark. McDowell switched on the F-14’s exterior lights, indicating he was ready.
The catapult controller punched a button. The catapult banged forward, yanking the aircraft by its nose along the deck into the wind, forcing it, in about two seconds, to more than 150 miles per hour.
McDowell was flying.
He stayed low to the water for a few miles, under stacks of aircraft circling the carrier, then climbed to cruising elevation for the flight through Pakistan. He entered Afghan skies before morning twilight, ahead of the usual Taliban flying times. The sky turned from black to dull gray to pink.
The Taliban’s base had been getting hit for a few hours. He wondered: Would their pilots take up the challenge?
The air was empty of bogeys. McDowell did not know why the Taliban’s MiGs were not flying. Their forces were under attack. He thought a sense of duty should have sent them up to fight.
His radio came alive. A helicopter was flying through a valley outside Kandahar. It was not an American or allied aircraft, the controller said. Anyone who could get a helicopter now, McDowell thought, would likely be a Taliban VIP. He signaled his intention to engage the contact. He and his wingman turned toward the valley.
Voices called out the locations, but McDowell could not find the aircraft. He had seen cases of radar having trouble distinguishing helicopters moving close to the ground from large trucks. It must be almost skimming the ground, he thought. Someone had passed through the Americans’ net. His fuel low, McDowell turned back toward the sea. The window for a dogfight was closing.
* * *
Two nights later, the squadron scheduled McDowell for the longest combat flight of his career—from the ocean to an airfield near Herat, more than a 1,500-mile round trip to destroy Taliban aircraft idled on the ground. F/A-18s hit the airfield ahead of them, striking the runway and part of the radar system. He and his wingman then made a pass. As they dropped in, the Taliban fired antiaircraft artillery, but not high enough to menace the Americans. His wingman hit a parked helicopter. McDowell struck a radar van. They circled around for second strikes and destroyed a transport plane and seven MiGs. McDowell knew no Taliban fighter jet was likely to fly again.
On October 14, after assisting F/A-18s with strikes, he and his wingman approached a KC-135 for fuel. McDowell went first. Usually, when a Tomcat pulled behind a tanker at night, both aircraft would have their position lights on. The F-14’s lights would illuminate the tanker’s trailing boom, hose, and fuel basket, and the tanker’s lights would allow the following pilot to see if the tanker was making turns or changes in airspeed. This allowed a midair coupling without night-vision goggles. But the war was in its early days. American aircraft still flew without lights. Pilots would have to join the fuel basket wearing goggles, which limit depth perception and narrow the field of view. On this night, foul weather and thick cloud cover obscured the horizon, making it difficult for the trailing pilot to determine if the leading aircraft was in a turn.
McDowell joined the basket. The turbulence was terrible. He could not stay behind the hulking tanker. Several thousand pounds short of a full load, he pulled back. His wingman, Lieutenant Commander Thomas Schumacher, took a turn.
As Schumacher plugged in, the tanker was either moving faster than he thought or changing heading. The hose went tight. The aircraft thumped.
“What was that?” his backseater asked.
The fuel probe, affixed to the F-14’s right side, had been strained as the two aircraft drifted apart. Twisting forces had bent it. Schumacher had only begun refueling. He could not join to the basket again with a damaged probe.
This was the situation the admiral had warned of before the strikes began. They were just south of Kandahar. Far inland, hundreds of miles from the Enterprise, the F-14 had roughly a third of a tank of gas and no way to take on more. Their mission was over. There was only one choice: abort. Schumacher immediately turned south toward the ship. Any remaining gas would be used to get him closer to a safe place.
Schumacher ran the math, calculating the Bingo profile—the minimum amount of fuel he would need to reach the Enterprise. It would be close, and when they crossed the beach and the aircraft headed out over the ocean, it would be dark—poor conditions for a rescue helicopter to find aviators in the water. Flying behind, McDowell expected he and Schumacher would be told to divert to a Pakistani airfield. They’d land there. Diplomacy would sort out the rest.
Schumacher was not so sure. He had also run a fuel ladder, calculations projecting how much fuel the aircraft would burn in fifteen-minute periods, all the way to the end. Uncertainty inhabited F-14 fuel ladder math. Tomcats’ fuel gauges could be off by 1,000 pounds. Schumacher still expected to reach the Enterprise with fuel for at least one pass. He was on his third tour, with more than 1,800 flight hours, and had done his share of difficult traps, including once with one of an F-14’s twin engines down. At the speed he flew he planned to be near the ship in predawn twilight for a day approach, which meant a tighter turn into the carrier and less time with the aircraft’s landing gear and flaps down. All of this would save fuel.
The two F-14s passed over the coastline and out to sea, beyond the point where they could turn back. McDowell thought through Schumacher’s problem. He would get one look at the boat, one try at a trap. If he missed the wire he’d have to bolter, turn around, and fly downwind until positioned beside the hull, where he and his backseater would eject. A search-and-rescue helicopter, already in the air, would then pluck the two aviators from the water. At least there would be a little light for that.
The dim outline of the ship appeared far ahead. They’d made it to the last stage.
From above, McDowell watched Schumacher fly past the carrier, turn hard left, and line up for the descent. He landed neatly. A short while later McDowell followed him down.
It was late 2001 and the last time he would fly an F-14.
The pace of air strikes in Afghanistan was already declining. McDowell’s senior officers informed him that he could now detach and go back to the States to begin postgraduate school in Monterey, California, to which he had been accepted in a dual program with the Navy’s test pilot school. The Navy had plans for him. VF-14 could finish the war without him.
McDowell returned to his stateroom and packed. The next day he was to be a passenger on the COD, a propeller plane that ferried him to Bahrain, his first stop on the way home.
Washington and New York had been attacked only a few weeks before, but the United States had marshaled its military power in convincing fashion, and he was comfortable with what he had done. He had not met a MiG above Afghanistan. But he had participated in the strikes against the Taliban and al Qaeda, and he had no questions about whether he had harmed the wrong people or picked up fresh moral freight. The Taliban had been badly damaged. McDowell thought it would probably not last much longer as a viable military threat.
He considered himself fortunate. The war in Afghanistan might end soon. Not many strike fighter pilots, he thought, would get to fly over the place.
* * *
I. Upon landing on the aft section of a carrier flight deck, fighter and attack jets are stopped by a tension cable that is engaged by a tail hook on the aircraft.
II. Lieutenant Commander Mark Fox and Lieutenant Nicholas Mongillo both were credited with the kills.
After ousting the Taliban from power in Kabul and chasing much of al Qaeda’s leadership into Pakistan, the Pentagon began preparing in earnest for the invasion of Iraq. As Afghanistan’s interim government tried to consolidate its post-Taliban position, the administration of President George W. Bush asserted that as punishment for developing weapons of mass destruction, giving refuge to terrorists, and defying international obligations, Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, should be forcibly deposed. By early 2003, political dialogue had run its course. Preparations for invasion were nearly complete. American forces were arrayed near Iraq’s borders, readying for attack. Their number dwarfed the size of the force in Afghanistan, which had grown to about 10,000 troops. Afghanistan was no longer the priority. A second war was soon to start.
TWO
* * *
* * *
INTO THE KILL ZONE
Sergeant First Class Leo Kryszewski and the Gauntlet at al-Kaed Bridge
“They’ll never expect us to go through a second time.”
MARCH 22, 2003
Inside a darkened MC-130 flying into Iraq
Leo Kryszewski felt the cargo plane shudder in flight and knew this was his cue. The hulking propeller plane, carrying one-half of a Special Forces team, had lined up for a nighttime descent into Iraq.
His unit, Operational Detachment Alpha 572, was a twelve-soldier team entering the country apart from the main body of American forces to screen overland routes between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad. Its mission was to find Iraqi military units on the Americans’ path, focusing on an area west of the Euphrates River around Najaf and the Karbala Gap, where the Medina Division, a Republican Guard unit, had scattered its soldiers in villages and palm groves. Kryszewski was thirty-six years old and had been in the Army for eighteen years. Clean-shaven and in a standard desert camouflage uniform, he made the flight in the right front seat of an unarmored Humvee that was strapped inside the belly of the plane. The driver, a staff sergeant who served as the team’s medic, sat behind the steering wheel. The team’s engineer, a sergeant first class, sat in back, ready to stand in the turret with the .50-caliber machine gun.
Together the three men had nearly a half century of military experience, and had removed the truck’s front doors so they could get in and out easily and fire rifles as they drove. Around them were their tools and supplies: jerry cans filled with diesel; jerry cans filled with water; small-arms ammunition; shoulder-fired antiarmor rockets; smoke grenades; chemical warfare masks and protection suits; spare batteries for radios and flashlights; a spare tire; food; first-aid gear; the team medic’s trauma kit; and chewing tobacco.
The MC-130 was to land at Wadi al Khirr New Air Base, an airfield in southern Iraq abandoned by Saddam Hussein’s military after being damaged by air strikes in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Once on the ground, Kryszewski would be the team’s lead navigator. The Army had issued him a handheld GPS device and equipped the team’s four Humvees with an integrated battlefield monitoring system, known as a blue force tracker, which showed each vehicle’s position. In theory these devices were welcome technological developments. Kryszewski considered them unproven. Having joined the Army before the GPS era, he was a creature of old habits and manual tools—the pace count, the compass, the protractor, the laminated map, the grease pencil and alcohol pen—that together informed an almost robotic mental cycle of always knowing exactly where he was. A trained soldier with a map, Kryszewski told himself, could still work when batteries died or satellite signals failed. In the run-up to the war he had spent months gathering and studying maps. They surrounded him now, at least two hundred in all.
The aircraft’s adjustment in flight told Kryszewski they were only minutes away from landing. He left his seat and began to free the Humvee from its tie-down straps. In front of him was another Humvee rigged the same way. A soldier was loosening its straps, too. The MC-130, a Talon variant the Air Force used for Special Forces missions, was one of two flying without lights over the barren desert of southwestern Iraq. Still more planes were coming, each carrying Special Forces or CIA teams with missions of their own. Some teams would try to hunt down mobile ballistic missile launchers. Others were to screen different sections of the battlefield. Each was a gear in the start of a new war.
None of this was Kryszewski’s business. He had expected for almost a year—since not long after his team returned from the pursuit of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan—that the United States would attack Iraq, and that he would be among the first to cross the border. For months his team had been training for vehicle-based desert warfare. He focused on his team’s job and understood the principal risk of the flight would be antiaircraft fire from the Iraqi military, which was only beginning to be weakened by American ordnance. Moreover, there had been intelligence in the days before the invasion indicating that an Iraqi mobile antiaircraft unit was operating near the airfield. Kryszewski had decided not to worry. It was beyond his ability to counter, much less control.
That’s not our problem, he told himself. That’s an Air Force problem. Everything had its box. That box was not his.
Kryszewski felt an almost mechanical sense of calm. The satellite imagery he and the American analysts had studied found nothing that led him to believe Iraqi units were stationed there. He had spent months trying to imagine how to organize the war from the Iraqi side. He assumed Saddam Hussein would not send out his military to meet the Americans everywhere. He would position them to fight at key road junctures between the border and Baghdad, and then in the capital itself. Why would the Iraqis want Wadi al Khirr after not bothering to rebuild it for twelve years? Kryszewski could think of no good reason. He expected Hussein would instruct his generals to let the American columns cross the border, and counter them near Karbala.
The hunch was confirmed before the flight, when ODA 572 received reports from the airfield. The company command team, Operational Detachment Bravo 570, of Company A, Third Battalion, Fifth Special Forces Group, had secretly entered Iraq two days before. Its soldiers, with Toyota pickup trucks, had been inserted by helicopters on a landing zone about ten miles from the airfield and had approached it to determine whether it was unoccupied and fit for use. They found the grounds empty, then checked its runway to see whether it was suitable for MC-130 traffic. It was not. The surface had suffered too much bomb damage from the American attacks in 1991. But airmen accompanying the soldiers determined the taxiway would do, and spent the day removing shards of shrapnel so planes might land without puncturing their tires.
The Fighters Page 4