Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign sic-2

by Tom Clancy

  This policy was obviously wrong on several counts, starting with the assumption that all pilots were of equal ability when it came to fighting. It further encouraged unusual tensions and risk avoidance, as pilots tried to stay alive for their 100 missions or their year rather than concentrate on the job of defeating the enemy. (Pilots with 90 missions would really get edgy.) Thus, it removed the primary incentive of a pilot for doing his combat duties to the best of his abilities, the goal of winning.

  At Korat, one of the pilots was shot down after about 88 missions. He survived, came back to the base, and wanted to finish his tour flying with the Wild Weasels.

  The job of the Wild Weasels was to locate and destroy SAM sites; and it was the job of the number one and three pilots in a Weasel flight of four aircraft to do that. The number two and four pilots were not Weasels; and they flew ordinary F-105Ds with bombs. Their job was to stick close and look out for MiGs while the other two were teasing the sites. If the one and three cornered a SAM site, two and four would drop regular bombs or CBUs on it.

  This pilot figured that flying with the Weasels would be a soft touch, since the one and three often left their wingmen on the ridge in comparative safety, while they ventured out on the Red River valley floor to find the SAMs. They could maneuver a lot more aggressively if they didn’t have to take care of a wingman.

  As luck would have it, though, on his first mission with the Weasels, this pilot had sixteen SA-2 missiles shot at him. They all missed, but when he returned to base he couldn’t even get drunk. His hands shook so much, he couldn’t hold a glass.

  To his credit, he finished his 100 missions, but he became a dip bomber and was never again effective.

  A dip bomber was a pilot who went in at 15,000 feet, rolled in over the target, and at 14,000 feet dropped his bombs so they were sure to hit somewhere on the surface of the earth. He then immediately started a climb until he could rejoin the rest of the flight, who’d gone down to much lower altitudes to try to hit the target, even though it meant getting shot at. There were a number of dip bombers at Korat. Some, like this one, evoked sympathy; some were the object of scorn.

  It’s not hard to understand why pilots who’d been shot down became dip bombers. For a pilot the cockpit is an air-conditioned and familiar womb, but when he is about to go down and he blows the canopy, he’s jerked out of the womb into the real world of wind blast, noise, and if he’s flying at high speed, pain. The uncertainty as he floats down in his parachute quickly follows: Will I get rescued? Will I get injured when I hit the ground? Will I get captured by civilians and beaten to death with hoes and stones? Will I be captured by the army and spend the rest of my life getting tortured in jail? When your plane gets hit, you’re scared. Chuck Horner’s plane was never hit, but he has no doubt about how he would have reacted if it had been.

  Why did the Air Force fall into this particular trap?

  Partly for old-style ticket-punching reasons — to give every officer a chance for quality combat time in order to justify promotions. Worse, in Horner’s view, the Air Force felt that since the war offered an opportunity to renew the combat experience of the force, they wanted to offer that experience to as many pilots as possible. Since it really didn’t matter how good any of these pilots were, they could afford to send in the second team. In other words, playing the entire bench was more important than winning the game.

  As far as Horner was concerned, the generals who led the Air Force should have resigned rather than put up with any of this.[16] Instead, they should have found the best pilots, put them in fighters, and sent them off to war with the warning: “Don’t come home until you’ve won.” They’d have figured out how to win. If they’d extended that policy all up and down the military line — as was done during Desert Storm — they’d have had a solid chance of victory.

  The Israelis have devised a system that allows an air force to put its best pilots into the best planes. It wouldn’t be at all difficult for the USAF to implement such a system. The Israeli Air Force has a ladder — a list naming the pilots: top of the ladder is the best and the bottom is the worst. The best pilots go to the best squadrons. There is also a ladder of squadrons: the best squadrons fly the top fighters, U.S.-made F-15s and F-16s. The next-best squadrons fly Mirages or F-4s, which are older fighters and cannot compete with the F-15s and F-16s. From time to time, the top of the ladder in the F-4 squadron will get orders to fly the F-16, and the bottom of the F-16 ladder will get orders to fly the F-4. Below the F-4s or Mirages are other, lesser aircraft, all the way down to multi-engine and helicopters. Conceivably, an F-15 pilot who loses his nerve or concentration could free-fall all the way down to being a chopper pilot.

  American personnel types don’t like to hear about such a system, because it starts with the premise that some pilots are better than others, while the bureaucrats try to keep their own job simple by assuming that all pilots are round pegs for round holes, plug-and-play as the laws of supply and demand dictate.

  WEASELING

  Until the introduction into the war of the Wild Weasels and Electronic Counter Measures Pods (ECMs confused SAM radars), enemy SAMs had an easy time against U.S. jets. There was virtually no defense against them. The free ride ended in 1966, when the first combat Wild Weasel, a two-seat modified F-100F fighter, located an SA-2 site and killed it with rockets and cannon. This was the first confirmed kill of a SAM site. It meant the enemy manning them were no longer safe. When they went to work at their SAM site, they stood a chance of dying, just the same as the pilots they were shooting at.

  Weaseling was fairly straightforward. A pilot teased and tempted the enemy enough to provoke him to try to kill the Weasel, and then the pilot dodged the bullets while he closed on the enemy’s camouflaged position and stuck a knife in his heart. (The camouflage — nets over the radar and missiles — was quite effective, especially when a pilot was going 600 knots in a jet and trying to see all around him at once, looking for MiGs and missiles from other sites and tracking gunfire.) For Weaseling to be successful, the Weasel pilots had to have much better information than the strike aircraft about where the SAM radar was looking and the status of the SAM operator’s attack on his target. Then, when SAMs were launched, the Weasels had to be able to see the best ways to maneuver in order to avoid being tracked or hit by them. In short, Weasel pilots needed better detection gear and better training than other strike pilots.

  After a few months of Weasel attacks, the SAM radar operators were forced to limit their time on the air to just a few brief seconds, or else they would be located and killed. The combined effects of the Wild Weasels and the self-protection ECM Pods on the bombing aircraft meant that the SAM became a manageable threat. Now thousands of SAM missiles had to be fired before the enemy was able to knock one U.S. aircraft down. The growing in-effectiveness of the SAMs meant that attacking fighters could operate at medium altitude, out of the range of most of the AAA guns. The Weasels, by helping to solve the SAM problem, helped to solve the visually-aided-guns problem.

  This success came at a price. Too many Wild Weasel aircraft and their crews were lost; the job was hazardous to your health.[17]

  The inspiration for the Weasels came in 1965, shortly after the failed attempt to bomb the SAM site at the junction of the Black and Red rivers. After that failure, the Pentagon realized (to their credit) that it was time to take a hard look at electronic combat. The result was an acquisition process called QRP, for Quick Reaction Process, whereby the Pentagon sent queries out to industry about what could be done.

  One suggestion was to mount electronic jamming pods under the wings of U.S. aircraft. The electronics in the pods put noise jamming on the SAM radarscopes, so the operators could not lock onto the target aircraft.

  These pods led to a whole new way of flying bombing attacks. Instead of flying in at low level, where a pilot would be vulnerable to AAA, he’d come in at 15,000 or 20,000 feet in what was called a pod formation. When the North Vietnamese tried to make
out what their radars were picking up, all they could see was a blob — not an individual aircraft they could lock onto and attack. The Air Force liked this idea and implemented it. Before long, the pods began to have a good effect over the skies of Vietnam.

  A second response, meanwhile, came from a small company in California, Applied Technology Incorporated. ATI suggested a radar signal receiver mounted on an aircraft that would allow the aircraft to locate SAM radars on the ground, then tell the pilot the radar’s status — searching for a target, locking onto a potential target, preparing to fire, or just having fired a missile at a target — and it could tell the pilot if he was the target.

  The Air Force also liked this idea, and ATI produced prototype black boxes for testing. Then they found a few experienced fighter pilots from TAC, such as Gary Willard and Al Lamb, and bomber EWOs (electronic weapons officers — the people who operate the black boxes) from SAC, such as Jack Donovan. (Most bomber EWOs had never been near a fighter, but they were schooled both in the ways of SAMs and of the black boxes that helped bombers penetrate Russian SAM defenses.) These people flew the black boxes in two-seat F-100s at Eglin AFB, Florida, and proved that they could find radars whenever they were turned on, no matter how much they were camouflaged.

  The next step came in 1966, when black box-equipped F-100s were deployed to Southeast Asia and sent into North Vietnam. Al Lamb and Jack Donovan, flying one of these F-100s, killed the first SA-2 site (with rockets and strafing; later Weasels used a mix of Shrike radar-homing missiles, 20mm cannon, cluster bombs, general-purpose bombs, and sometimes, high-velocity rockets). Unfortunately, the F-100s were slow and vulnerable when flying in the heavy defenses over North Vietnam and took too many losses. As a result, this initial cadre of Wild Weasels returned to Nellis, and ATI built even newer black boxes for F-105s, which greatly improved their radar detection system. Since F-105s had a crude heads-up display, ATI could install antennas on the nose of the aircraft, and a red dot was projected on the pilot’s gun sight that showed the location of the SAM radar on the ground. F-105s also carried more munitions, and they were faster and more survivable than the first F-100 Weasels.

  ★ At Nellis, meanwhile, Horner volunteered for a variety of test programs designed to introduce into the war the AT-37 Dragonfly (a T-37 jet trainer modified into an air-to-ground aircraft for counterinsurgency warfare; it was sold to several Third World nations) and F-5 Tiger Jet (a T-38 aircraft modified to act as a supersonic fighter; it was easy to fly and maintain, low in cost, and could be used by nations with small air forces; thousands of these aircraft are still flying today throughout the world). But he was turned down, just as he’d been turned down repeatedly for well over a year whenever he’d asked to return to Southeast Asia. He remained at Nellis.

  One morning he was at Mobile Control, a small glass house between the runways, where one watched students in the traffic pattern, making sure they don’t crash or land gear up. As it happened, Al Lamb, a captain like Horner, was also assigned to Mobile Control that morning. While he was there, he talked about his recent experience in Southeast Asia flying F-100 Wild Weasels, the new secret outfit designed to find and kill SAM sites. They were just starting up, he explained, and needed experienced pilots who were also volunteers. “I want in,” Horner told him.

  About an hour later, Lamb finished his tour in Mobile and left. Soon after he himself was relieved from Mobile that morning, Horner got a call from Gary Willard, a lieutenant colonel, who was commander of the new Weasel school. “Al told me you’re a volunteer,” he said to Horner.

  “That’s true,” Horner answered, and by 11:00 A.M. that day he had orders to report to the Weasel squadron for extra training. The Air Force forgot the cold eye they had previously cast on his attempts to return to combat. They placed great importance on the Weasel program.

  ★ Horner entered Wild Weasel training together with his good friends, Billy Sparks and Jim Hartney (White Fang), whose father, a major, had been Eddie Rickenbacker’s ops officer in World War I.[18] He also went through the training with a cool, somber electronics warfare officer named Dino Regalli, who had been an EWO on spy missions flown out of the Middle East to eavesdrop on the Russians.

  The training itself emphasized the obvious, that Weaseling is like making love to a porcupine: you approach them and do your thing very carefully.

  Practically, it consisted of a great deal of classified classroom instruction on SAM radars, SAM operations and limitations, and tactics for approaching a SAM site, as well as in-flight training. The ATI black box that allowed Weasels to see where they were in the enemy radar-tracking radar beams was called the ER-142. The Weasels also had a set of antennas that allowed them to see where the radar was located on the ground, even if it was hidden from visual view. Using these electronics, they were trained in the modes and tactics of the SA-2 radar. They were also trained to use the Shrike radar homing missile and to outmaneuver the SA-2 Guideline missiles.

  ★ In the spring of 1967, Horner, now a Wild Weasel, returned to Korat, Thailand.

  Between 1965 and 1967, the base had expanded, and the facilities were much improved. There was now a large, new, air-conditioned officers’ club with a swimming pool and all sorts of other amenities. (The 1965 club was being used to store soft drinks for the new BX.) There was also a two-story hospital and an air-conditioned church. The hooches were now two-man air-conditioned rooms in four-room suites. Each suite had a flush toilet and shower and a sitting area complete with refrigerator and chairs. Quite a change from the shacks where they lived and slept in 1965, and the rubber raft pool.

  As a Wild Weasel, Horner flew both Wild Weasel missions and night radar bombing missions, a total of seventy in addition to the forty-one he’d flown in 1965.

  The skies over Hanoi and Haiphong, meanwhile, and the surrounding Red River Delta, had become the most heavily defended real estate on earth. In the delta lowlands and the hills that ringed them had been placed more than 7,000 antiaircraft guns and as many as 180 well-camouflaged SAM launchers. By 1967, MiGs were also active, and doing surprisingly well against U.S. aircraft. At the start of the war, Air Force pilots had shot down four MiGs for every one of their own that was lost. Now the ratio was one to two. The Weasels and the ECM pods were badly needed.

  A typical Weasel mission over Hanoi or Haiphong usually went something like this:

  After takeoff, a pilot would proceed to the tanker in Thailand or over the Sea of China. After refueling, the package would form up. The Weasels would lead, followed by ingress MiG CAP F-4s, followed by twelve to sixteen bomb-laden F-105s, followed a little later (so they’d have fuel when the strikers were leaving the target area) by additional Wild Weasels and MiG CAP.

  As he neared Little Thud Ridge, northeast of Hanoi, or Thud Ridge, running northwest of Hanoi parallel to the Red River, his MiG CAP would start down the ridge looking for any MiGs that might scramble, while the Weasels would fan out over the flats looking for SAM sites. (Pilots called it Dr. Pepper when a pilot was out on the flats with a SAM site at ten o’clock, two o’clock, and four o’clock locked onto him at the same time.) The Weasel’s job was to play chicken with the SAM operators, to “encourage” them to turn off their radars. So he often turned into the site and flew toward it. When the radar operator saw him coming at him, he had two choices: he could fire a SAM at him from the ring of missiles that he operated, or he could shut down his radar, which was in the middle of the ring. If he fired, the booster on the Guideline missile kicked up a lot of dust and clearly marked his site, so all the pilot had to do was to dodge the missile(s) he fired, and turn in and kill him. But more than likely he shut down and waited for help from a nearby site. When that site came up on the pilot’s electronics, he turned on him, and the dance went through another round. After a few minutes of this, the strike package had already gotten in and out and were back over the ridge. At that point, the egress Weasel flight would fly in to cover the pilot’s exit back up to the ridge and the MiG CAP F-4
s would wait around in case any MiGs showed up.

  Throughout all this, there might be a Weasel or striker shot down, and this added to all the confusion of radar signals going off in the pilot’s headset, of radio calls from his flight members about SAMs coming at him, of calls from the strikers trying to get their act together, of calls from the supporting command and control shouting out MiG warnings, of the constant junk chatter from the F-4s, and finally, of the ominous sound on guard channel of the beepers that are automatically activated when a pilot’s parachute is opened.

  When he crossed the coastline or the Red River (there were few guns or SAMs west of the river), he was flooded with relief. He knew then that he was alive for at least one more day.

  ★ Though not everyone bought the ECM concept, the ECM pods were also proving their worth. The people at Ta Khli Base, for example, were suspicious of them and were still flying low-level tactics, even after two years of deadly lessons to the contrary. (For a time, Ta Khli was bereft of Wild Weasels, all of them from that base having been shot down; the Weasels from Korat had to take over some of their work until more could be sent from the States.)

  However, the wing commander at Korat, Brigadier General Bill Chairasell, decided that losses at low level were too high and ordered his pilots to try out the new pods and fly the required four-ship pod formation. Each aircraft had to fly so many feet from each other and so many feet above or below his leader, so the four ships filled a box of airspace about 4,000 feet across by 1,000 feet long and 1,500 feet deep. Though using the pods and flying in this formation left the North Vietnamese radar operators unable to discern individual aircraft on their radarscopes, and gave them insufficient accuracy in their systems to hit anything with the missiles they shot, that didn’t stop them from trying. They sent up their missiles into the blobs on their screens. They came close, but they didn’t hit. And this meant some jittery moments for the pilots up there, cruising along at 15,000 to 20,000 feet above the ground in their rigid formation, feeling naked to the SAMs, sweating it out if their pods would really work or not, only finding out when the missile would fly harmlessly by. Not only did flying the pod formation require extreme discipline, but flying it was a pure act of faith; yet it worked. Soon, because of Bill Chairasell’s leadership and the use of pod formation and the Weasels, losses at Korat took a nosedive, and “There ain’t no way” became “There is a way.”