Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat (28 page)

But there must’ve been at least one gunner with some balls down there, because streams of bright dots arced over my canopy. Sideways to the ground, facing back toward the SAM complex, I also saw half a dozen dirty-white popcorn puffs from 57-mm Triple-A. Spitting out some chaff, I snap-rolled upright, savagely pushed the nose down again, and headed west like a striped ape in a jungle fire.

“ELI Five is visual your smoke!”

Bright orange fire suddenly lit up the ground behind me and I twitched my tail to see. Twisting in the seat, I flipped the visor up and saw a black cloud envelop the emplacement I’d just strafed. Flaming bits of metal burst out in all directions followed by a SAM that shot out of the top. I was keying the mike to call it, when it fell over and dove into the Baghdad suburbs just across the canal.
I’ll bet my wingman sees the damn thing now,
I thought. Yanking the Viper around to the north, I said, “Drop on the revet just north of the explosion.”

“ELI Five, Rifle SA-3 . . .”

I sent a data-link, turned hard to the north, and threw up the
SLEWABLE
mode of my radar. Looking back again over the seat at the SAM complex, I saw more Triple-A from the center area, but it was anger-management, not the tracking type. My radar didn’t lock but the RWR lit up with an F-16 spike from behind me.

“ELI Five is tied, visual.”

“Join to fighting wing. ELI Four, come south above ten K and you’re cleared to join to one-mile trail. LAPEL Three, the target area is yours. Stay east of the Tigris for five minutes till we get clear.”

“LAPEL copies . . . nice mess you made back there!”

I chuckled. “The scraps are all yours. Heads-up for at least two active Triple-A pits.”

He zippered the mike as I hit the Tigris and headed southeast between the river and Taji.

P
ASSING
15,000
FEET
, I
SLOWED TO
350
KNOTS AND PUT THE LONG
brown ribbon of Highway 1 on my tail. A beautiful gray F-16 appeared a mile off my left wing, and ELI Four was dutifully a mile behind me and a little high. I waggled my wings to bring them both in and unclipped my sweaty oxygen mask. Wiping my face, I called up the steerpoint for the DOG South refueling track and stared down at Baghdad.

While my two wingmen slid into formation, I idly noted that my second decoy had disappeared somewhere over the SAM site and my chaff buckets were nearly empty as well. After battle-damage checks and fuel checks, we loosened up and headed down to refuel. The weather was getting worse, so I was happy to be done for the day. By my tally, we’d expended six cans of CBU cluster bombs and at least five hundred rounds of 20-mm cannon shells. And four HARMs, if you can count them. I passed all of this to LUGER as we checked out, and he replied, “A relay from JEREMIAH . . . shit-hot work today for ELI and LAPEL.”

Well, I thought, doesn’t that just put the cherry on the parfait. But I was nice and thanked him. JEREMIAH today had to be Kanga Rew. He was the only guy who bothered to talk to us.

“By the way, ELI . . . Air supremacy has just been declared over all of Iraq.”

I also found out later that the SA-3 complex was indeed a brigade-level headquarters and had contained at least four missile batteries along with twenty anti-aircraft guns for support. ELI and LAPEL had destroyed all four batteries plus the early-warning and search radars. Our attack had rendered the site useless. More important, it wouldn’t be threatening any of the American close air-support aircraft or helos working over the city as the fight for Baghdad intensified.

Skirting the Abu Ghraib section west of downtown, I could see the twin parallel runways of Saddam International Airport. Smoke still rose from the area to the east of it and downtown. On a whim, I flipped over my comm card and typed in a frequency.

“Baghdad Tower . . . Baghdad Tower, ELI 33.”

A male voice with a Southern American accent immediately answered. “ELI . . . this is Baghdad. Go ahead.”

“Afternoon Baghdad . . . flight of Vipers overhead, goin’ home. Just wanted to see if we’d won the war yet.”

“Waal, y’all are talkin’ to me and ah’m sittin’ in their tower eatin’ ice cream and wipin’ my ass with their prayer rugs. Guess we’re winnin’,” he drawled.

Air supremacy indeed.

11

ELI 33

April 7, 2003

1046 local time, Baghdad, Iraq

“S
ON OF A BITCH
,”
I
MUTTERED INTO THE SLIPPERY OXYGEN
mask as sweat ran down my forehead, through my eyebrow, and into my left eye. Then I saw it.

In front of a rolling cloud of dirty white smoke, the surface-to-air missile came up off the ground. The SAM was twenty feet long, weighed a thousand pounds, and was accelerating to 2,300 miles per hour. Its speed exceeded a half-mile per second, and it was locked onto me.

There wasn’t much time.

“BEEP . . . BEEP . . . BEEP . . .” The radar-warning receiver, called RWR, screamed into my helmet, telling me enemy radars had locked onto my jet. “BEEP . . . BEEP . . . BEEP . . .”

I hesitated a long moment to make sure the thing was actually tracking
me
. I shoved the nose of the F-16 down, my butt came off the seat, and I blinked rapidly as cockpit dust floated into my face. The long white plume behind the missile flattened out as it leveled off a thousand feet above the Baghdad rooftops.

Not me, I briefly thought. It’s onto something else. Not me.

But then it pitched upward and the smoke trail shortened as the enemy radar fed tracking corrections to the missile, and it turned to kill its target. Me.

Shit . . .

Flipping the Viper on its back, I deployed one of my towed decoys. This little thing would stream out 300 feet behind me on a cable and generate a nice fat signal for missiles to track instead of my jet. I hoped so, anyway, since the SAM was gathering speed as it arced around in my direction. Staring down at central Baghdad, I swallowed hard, counted two of my heavy, thumping heartbeats, and then smacked a bottle-top-size button on the bulkhead above the throttle. As bundles of radar-deflecting chaff shot out behind the tail, I pulled straight down toward the city.

Instantly reversing the pull, I snapped the jet around to keep the missile in sight and pulled the throttle back. I dropped out of the sky on the tip of a wild corkscrew with the horizon crazily spinning before me.

Down!

Down toward the gray earth. Down toward the buildings and the muddy-green Tigris River.

Down through the hole in the clouds to the guns of Baghdad.

A gap in the clouds was called a “sucker hole” for a reason. Usually a rough tear in an overcast cloud deck, it was a way to get down below the weather and visually see your target. Sometimes it was a large gap and sometimes it wasn’t. But it was always dangerous and this one was no exception.

The problem with a hole in the clouds was that everything on the ground that could shoot was generally aimed up
through
the hole. Waiting. Waiting for some fighter pilot with more balls than brains to try and sneak down through it. A sucker.

But sometimes it was the only way. If a friendly got shot down, then you went through the hole and did whatever you could to save his skin. Sometimes you were forced through it after evading the SAMs. Or you were given a special mission, like emergency close air-support and had no choice.

That would be today.

There was no choice. ELI 33, two F-16s from the 77th Fighter Squadron, had just been given a critical mission in Baghdad. And to stay high and slow, silhouetted against the clouds, meant a messy explosion and bits of me floating into the Tigris River.

As I slammed the throttle back to
IDLE
, my eyes flickered to the HUD in front of my face. I was now at 450 knots and accelerating. Fanning open the speed brakes to slow down, I shoved my helmet visor up and stared at the missile. The SAM corrected its flight path and was beginning to turn north directly toward me. As the smoke thinned out, I could actually see the long, pointed body of the missile against the gray buildings and wispy clouds.

Then the second SAM lifted off.

“ELI One, tally the second SAM, right one o’clock . . . west of the river . . . One is defending!”

The radio clicked three times in my headset, meaning my wingman heard my call, understood I had seen another SAM launch, and was looking for the missile himself. ELI Two was Scott Manning and, like me, he was a veteran lieutenant colonel and instructor pilot. He just happened to be flying a wing position today, and it was good to have someone along who didn’t need babysitting.

The smoke plume from the second SAM was visible, streaking over the rooftops. Long, colored fingers of anti-aircraft artillery clawed upward. Some were obviously tracking and others just fired for effect. It made the Iraqis feel better to shoot their guns, and they had plenty of ammunition. Twisting and weaving, I flew south along the Tigris River, trying to work east and away from downtown.

The first SAM had disappeared. After an almost slow-motion start, it quickly accelerated past the sound barrier, gaining altitude and speed. My RWR gave an electronic depiction of all the radars and missiles tracking my aircraft, and it was completely saturated. There was so much jizz, or radar emissions, in the air that the display looked like a Scrabble board. At last count, there were still more than fifty SAM sites in Baghdad alone.

New flashes erupted from the right, and I winced as a stream of fireballs arced up in my direction. Then another. And another. Crazed streams of glowing beads that crisscrossed the sky on all sides of my jet. Anti-aircraft artillery. Triple-A. There were ten thousand guns down there.

“ELI One . . . Triple-A . . . defending east.”

Yanking the jet sideways, I booted the rudder pedal and glanced to my right. As the fighter skidded through the air, I took a breath and glanced at the suburbs. Lots of glowing, white-hot pellets shooting upward from the rooftops.

Too many.

“ELI Two . . . come in from the west . . . don’t follow me in.”

“Unable,” came the terse reply.

Shit
. Again. He was already committed.

Everyone in Baghdad was awake now and looking up at the two American fighter jets who were insane enough to come down low over their capital city and basically flip the bird to every SAM and anti-aircraft gun on the ground. I think it
really
pissed them off.

Down . . . down . . . down. The fighter was shuddering from the speed and the weight of the cluster bombs under my wings. Five hundred and twenty knots now . . . 600 miles per hour. What a way to spend a birthday. Today I was thirty-nine, and I’d really rather be on a beach with a pitcher of margaritas.

Fanning the speed brakes again, I cranked the jet back to the left, twisting eastward to put some distance between myself and the anti-aircraft fire. Berserk garden hoses, spraying streams of glowing droplets and leading me like a duck on the wing. I pulled up and felt the F-16 jump. Holding it a long moment, I bunted forward again and forced the nose down. The gunners tried to keep up but they liked straight and level bombers—not jinking, gray targets like me.

Target? . . . screw that.
I’m
the predator. I whipped my head around toward the south and east.

Little fuckers, I swore to myself. If I’ve got any extra bombs, I’ll be back for you.

The SAM . . . where
was the damn thing . . .

Of course, you rarely saw them anyway, and you almost never saw the second or third one. Situational awareness, that elusive sense of what’s happening around you, was easily overloaded. In combat, time really can slow down at critical moments. That, combined with training and experience, at least gave you a fighting chance.

I was still staring directly down at the city. Like someone had hung me in a chair facedown on the horizon. Pulling back hard on the stick and fanning the boards again, I dropped through 8,000 feet with vapor streaming from the wingtips. Snapping the jet left and right, I strained to see the threats.

The first SAM had disappeared. At this range, I had less than ten seconds before it hit me. I began to count.

Two . . .

The second missile had pitched up, too, following the first one with the same arcing flight path. My breathing quickened, and I rolled the Viper slightly right toward the SAMs and pulled hard. Six times the force of gravity, about 1,200 pounds, slammed me back into the seat.

Three . . .

Ignoring the sweat on my face, I snapped the fighter upright, shoved the throttle into afterburner, and pulled straight for the sky. Though I couldn’t see the missiles, I knew the effect this had. Each time my jet moved, the tracking radar on the ground had to detect it, measure it, and transmit that movement to the SAM. Microchips interpreted my position, moved the fins, and the missile changed course to keep up with me. All in fractions of seconds. But each movement cost the missile incremental time, distance, and energy. Each movement could also save my life.

Four . . .

Grunting against the tremendous force of gravity and 500 knots of pure jet power, I let the nose come up through the horizon, then rolled again. This time, away, so my butt was pointed at the missile’s general area. Holding the pull a moment longer, I then shoved forward—or bunted—the fighter again and tugged the throttle out of afterburner. This time, I floated weightless against the seat straps. Inverted now, ass to the missile, and hanging in space, I hoped my maneuvers confused the tracking radar as much as they hurt me.

Six . . .

The second missile had disappeared, too. The motor had burned out and the damn thing had shot up above somewhere and was now dropping down on me like a malignant spear. The Triple-A pits around the river had also opened up, since I was well below 10,000 feet and in range. The Iraqis were using a sound tactic. Fire the SAMs and get a fighter to defend itself until it was low enough to be engaged by the guns. It worked, too.

Eight . . .

Almost . . . almost . . .

Now!

Pulling back hard to the right, I began a huge, deep roll shaped like a barrel. A barrel roll was wide, fast, and powerful. The idea was to give the missile too many changing variables to overcome in the limited flight time it had left. If you could force a SAM to overshoot, you’d won, as it couldn’t maneuver and come back like a fighter jet.

Pulling up, I smoothly brought the F-16 over on its back, but instead of rolling out I let the nose continue to fall down past the horizon, toward the smoky earth. Soon I was lying completely upside down along the horizon. It wasn’t a high-G maneuver nor was it particularly violent. The idea was to get through the horizon inverted, pull the power to slow down, and then roll your way back to your starting point. Graceful and powerful, it played hell with older radar-tracking systems. Too many oblique angular corrections, and it would run the missile out of airspeed. It was effective against the SA-2 and SA-3. It didn’t work at all against the newer SA-6 and SA-8.

And usually you could only get away with it once. The second SAM, or other types of missiles and Triple-A, would catch you by then.

And that’s exactly what happened.

The city slowly spun upright as I came through the bottom of the roll. Blending in a smooth pull, the nose came up, and I was slowly and heavily pressed against the seat. Every four to five seconds, I smacked the chaff button; my head constantly swiveled, looking for other threats. The Triple-A had disappeared behind me for the moment, and I knew the first SAM must’ve overshot. Too much time had elapsed. Stealing a quick look at the HUD, I saw the target was behind me and about six miles away to the northeast.

At 550 knots, I zoomed up through the horizon and reversed to come back around toward the target. As I did, my eye caught a flicker of movement. Instinctively, I pulled straight up, rolled, and slapped the chaff button.

It saved my life.

The deadly shape of another missile passed behind me on its way into the clouds. It had come
up
. . . it couldn’t have been one of the SA-3s. The “X” in the bottom of my HUD told me the decoy was still alive and transmitting. So, it had been an infrared-heat-seeking SAM . . . not a radar-guided missile.

Son of a bitch
. . . where there was one there were two. Still zooming upward, I turned sideways in the seat and tried to look down over my shoulder. But I stared a second too long and lost the picture of the world around me. Blue changed to gray and the horizon disappeared as I sliced into the cloud deck.

“ELI Two . . . defending, Triple-A!”

Perfect . . . there was nothing I could do for him at the moment—he was on his own.

Suddenly the jet bucked wildly under my hands and my stomach came up through my chest. I’d been hit!

But the F-16 kept flying and my eyes flickered to the warning-light panel. Nothing.
What the fuck . . .

My eyes darted around the cockpit at the warning panels and engine gauges.

I must’ve flown through the disturbed air from the missile. I twisted my head back and forth, trying to find the horizon. Up was down and down was sideways. This sucked.

“WARNING . . . WARNING . . .” Bitching Betty rang through my helmet as the fighter shuddered and ran out of airspeed.

Eighty-six hundred feet over Baghdad, out of airspeed, and falling out of the sky. Not good.

Staring at the attitude indicator on my front console, I gave up on the outside world for a moment and flew the jet out of the cloud using the big round instrument. As my wings fell through the horizon, the jet picked up speed, and my breathing slowed a bit.

I’d come back down to 5,300 feet now, heading north and accelerating past 350 knots. I still had a target to hit.

“ELI One is ten miles south of the target, northbound at 5,300 . . . 6.9.”

Ten miles. Barely a minute and a half. Sixty-nine hundred pounds of fuel and 5,300 feet above the gray, smoky earth. Still high enough to keep me clear of Iraqis with AK-47s but in range of every anti-aircraft gun and SAM in Baghdad. No choice, really. To climb up would take time and make me slow, and that was not a good combination over a heavily defended city.

“Two is 6.1 . . . thirteen south . . . uh . . . eastbound.”