Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat (20 page)

Flying at night was the best time to Weasel, in my opinion. Seeing the stuff that was being shot at you was the biggest advantage. Nighttime also made optical launches nearly impossible for the bad guys. Of course, defensive reactions were much more difficult, because you lacked the normal daylight visual cues. A pilot could fly through the green world of night-vision goggles, but that picture was often washed out by too much light. Oil fires, the moon, and any explosion would ruin an NVG picture for a few seconds.

There was also really no air threat at night. At least not in Iraq. Their MiGs were doing well to get off the ground during the day, and if they did fly at night, they’d be completely dependent on ground radar control, which we had targeted and decimated. Night was also better for escape and evasion. If you ejected, then at least you weren’t floating down in plain sight of every armed peasant within 50 miles. Tonight, 200 miles deep into enemy territory and trying to attract SAMs, this was a real concern.

Twelve years earlier, I’d been in these very skies, getting shot at by the same people. Economics, geopolitics, national defense, revenge . . . you could take your pick of any number of reasons why I was once again ordered north of the 32nd Parallel to kill Iraqis. The real reason was that both sides wanted a war.

Saddam Hussein, beset within by rebellious Kurds and increasingly disillusioned military officers, opted for the time-honored strategy of solving domestic troubles through an external threat. He figured that if he could provoke the United States into action, then other Islamic countries would fall in line and fight to throw us out. This was a predictable and naive approach. But then, Saddam was basically a street punk who’d risen to power by animal cunning and sheer ruthlessness. As with most dictators, he lacked a real grasp of the world beyond his own little arena and mistook his domestic dominance for global significance.

I’d always thought that the First Gulf War must’ve shocked Saddam. He’d been a U.S. ally during the 1980s. The Reagan White House had even removed Iraq from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list in 1982 so we could transfer dual-use technology to Baghdad. “Dual use” means it can be, and usually is, used for peaceful or military purposes. For instance, the same nuclear reactor that provides power also generates plutonium as a by-product. Plutonium is fissile and can be then utilized to produce nuclear weapons. Dual use.

Saddam Hussein had also received agricultural credits, weapons, and intelligence from America to support his war against Iran. His vicious rise to power had been generally ignored beyond the Middle East until the shah of Iran fell. The United States needed a new proxy to counter Soviet-supplied Arab nations, and Saddam wanted to be the man. He was even made an honorary citizen of Detroit in 1980—not bad for a fatherless thug from an ugly, dusty town in Iraq.

E
ARLY THIS VERY MORNING, THE
CIA
HAD BELIEVED
S
ADDAM
H
USSEIN
and his two sons were spending the night at a secure complex in southeast Baghdad. Dora Farms lay just below a horseshoe-shaped bend of the Tigris River and less than ten miles east of the international airport. So, the detailed war plan that we’d all studied (OPLAN 1003V) was thrown entirely out in favor of this “hot” last-minute intelligence. The rationale was that if the Iraqi leadership was wiped out, then there would be no war.

Now we were past all the theorizing. My four-ship had been cleared north past The Line (the 32nd Parallel), and we were jabbing at the fringes of Baghdad’s air defenses. Armed with HARMs, we’d charge in by pairs at the outer ring of SAM batteries. As soon as we got spiked, we’d split apart and both run perpendicular to the SA-2s and SA-3s. By turning sideways, we made it harder for their radars to hold their locks so they had to stay on-air longer. This gave our systems a better chance of ranging them in and providing a targeting solution. It also decreased the SAM firing range considerably, as we weren’t closing the distance by flying directly at the site.

When we’d taken off four hours earlier, no one had a timeline on the Dora strike, since no final approval had been given. So we just hung around 200 miles inside Iraq, air-refueling every hour, until Washington and the Pentagon made up their minds—which they did at 7:12
P.M
. Eastern Standard Time. Minutes later, a flight of F-117s, based from al-Udeid in Qatar, crossed into Iraq, awaiting clearance to drop four tons of bombs on Saddam’s head. A CIA asset inside Baghdad passed the word that the Iraqi dictator was inside his bunker, and at 5:31
A.M.,
Baghdad time, the southern suburbs rattled as the Dora complex suddenly disappeared. Utterly undetected, the stealth fighters headed back south, leaving the angry and bewildered Iraqis shooting at empty sky. And the Weasels.

Since then, armchair generals, strategists, and the “think-tankers,” who analyze things to death, have all gone back and forth on the Dora Farms operation. The supporters contend that a “decapitation” of the Iraqi leadership would have caused great confusion and likely prevented the war. I think they’re half-right. There would have been great confusion, but I think the Iraqis would’ve still fought. In fact, it might have even been a harder fight, with professional soldiers running the war and Saddam out of the way. Not that the outcome would have changed.

Detractors say that the attack forfeited the element of surprise and made the initial phase of the invasion more difficult. Again, half-right, in my opinion. I would suggest that our 450,000 troops and several hundred combat aircraft had somewhat clued in the Iraqi High Command that we were coming. Exactly
when
was problematic. And irrelevant. I couldn’t have cared less if the Iraqis knew the exact minute of our opening strike, because there wasn’t anything they could do to stop it.

In fact, after the Dora Farm strike, British and American ground forces moved north into Iraq and captured the Rumaila oil field. Splitting up then, the Americans moved northwest toward Nasiriyah, and the Brits headed northeast into Basra. More than thirty American special-ops teams, with their British and Australian counterparts, infiltrated Iraq that day.

It’s also possible that the strike generated enough confusion to disrupt whatever plans Saddam and his generals had made. These plans certainly included launching Scuds at Israel. If that had occurred, followed by Israeli retaliation, who knows what kind of a mess would’ve ensued. I really don’t think Syria and Egypt would’ve attacked Israel. At least, not with all of us deployed to the Middle East. This was Saddam’s big hope, of course, but, like so many of his other thoughts, it was nonsensical. Whatever else might have happened, the air strikes immediately following the Dora blast did knock the Iraqis off balance and put them on the defense from the beginning.

This is always a good thing to do to your enemy at the start of a fight.

“BEEP . . . BEEP . . .”

I glanced down and saw the “3” blink on my scope. But there were about six of them, and they were far enough away to not worry me.

Suddenly a string of explosions ripped through the darkness of downtown Baghdad. Maybe B-52s or more Tomahawk missiles from the Navy in the Gulf—I didn’t know, but the anti-aircraft fire became positively surreal.

Tens of thousands of Triple-A rounds shot angrily upward. The large-caliber stuff made it level with me and exploded. But they even fired the smaller guns—rapid-fire hoses of yellows and oranges that arced low over the ground and detonated. Most of it was firing for effect and rage. No doubt tomorrow Radio Baghdad would declare hundreds of American warplanes shot down. It was all bullshit, of course, but it boosted Iraqi morale.

Zippering the mike, I came around to the right and snapped wings level. We were now directly south of the city by twenty-five miles and heading east. Searchlights were sweeping overhead in a vain attempt to catch a fighter or a B-52. Running my eyes over the cockpit, I saw I’d used about a third of my chaff and my wing tanks were empty. The decoy was still with me, and the warning receiver looked like a Scrabble board. I took a deep breath and exhaled. It could be a lot worse. It—

“BEEP . . . BEEP . . . BEEP . . .”

My eyes locked on the display. SA-3. Close!

Reacting instantly, I rolled inverted and pulled straight down into the blackness, pumping out chaff bundles.

“STOIC One . . . defending SA-3 . . . close!”

Iraq was black—except for the parts that were burning, that is. There I was, upside down, at night, over enemy territory. The Viper’s nose was pointed straight down and I was hanging in my seat facing the brightly lit Iranian border.

“STOIC One . . . break! SAM under you . . . break!”

Slapping the throttle to
IDLE
, my right wrist strained against the stick and the fighter pirouetted. Spinning 180 degrees in about two seconds, I pulled hard on the stick while smacking the chaff button with the back of my left hand and began counting.

“C’mon . . .” I muttered as the jet fought gravity to come back up through the horizon. Slamming the throttle forward, I kept pulling and looked back for the SAM. As the F-16’s nose came through the horizon, I pushed the throttle into full afterburner.

“STOIC 2 . . . Ma . . . Magnum SA-3!”

Poor kid sounded like he was being strangled, but he got the HARM off. I caught an absurdly bright flash, and for a split second I saw the pointed nose of an F-16 before the darkness swallowed it again.

Two. . .

My head swiveled like it was on a stick. But without seeing the launch, I didn’t know what direction the damn thing had gone, and so I had no real idea where it was coming in from.

“STOIC Two . . . any posit on the missile?”

Four. . .

“Negative . . . lost it . . . Two is blind!”

Perfect.

Sixty degrees nose high, I was pointing back up at the stars. Pulling the throttle back to
IDLE
, I again flipped onto my back and stared at the sky. Nothing. Pumping out more chaff, I glanced at the HUD. Nineteen thousand feet and 390 knots.

“STOIC Two . . . come south above twenty K.”

“MOXIE are southbound . . . Bingo.”

Pirouetting again, I pulled the fighter around to the south and leveled off at 17,000 feet, panting hard. The RWR mercifully shut up, and I dropped my mask to let the cool air hit me in the face. Glancing at my multifunction display (MFD), I decided not to thread the needle down the MiG bases along the Euphrates River. Not because of the Iraqi Air Force, but because the air bases all had SAM rings. So MOXIE and STOIC came around southwest and headed in the shortest direction to the Saudi border. Maybe, I thought, if we refueled we could go back in and go MiG-hunting.

Wiping my face, I sat back in the seat and looked at the rapidly graying sky as sunrise approached. The more I thought of it, the more I believed that last SAM had been a false alarm. Rocking my wingman in for a battle-damage check, I keyed the mike. “STOIC and MOXIE . . . cut the Dog loose.” Meaning, sever any decoys. Looking in my HUD, however, I saw that my decoy was already gone, and I took a deep breath.

That last SA-3 had been real after all.

A
FTER LANDING BACK AT
P
RINCE
S
ULTAN
A
IR
B
ASE, WE IMMEDIATELY
began planning to continue the Shock and Awe campaign. Contrary to popular belief, this neat little phrase wasn’t invented in 2003. In fact, it had been formalized in 1996 as a military doctrine based on the use of “overwhelming decisive force,” “dominant battlefield awareness,” “dominant maneuvers,” and “spectacular displays of power” to “paralyze” an adversary’s perception of the battlefield and destroy his will to fight.

Okay.

Every battle or firefight I’d been in was like that, but someone now had to put a name to it. I think it appealed to the self-perception of American military and political leaders. They correctly saw our military capability as overwhelming, ultimately unstoppable (if utilized properly), and downright frightening. What they screwed up, and seem to always get wrong, are enemy reactions to our force. American leaders assume whoever we’re fighting will simply lift their skirts and run away. This doesn’t always happen, however. Chances are, when your nation is attacked, you’ll forget about everything else but defending your country and your family. Unless, of course, you’re French. Then you surrender and eat cheese. (Good cheese, I must say.)

If the United States was invaded, I don’t think people would give a damn how the guy next to them voted in the last election—they’d simply fight. American reactions to the September 11 attacks are a perfect example.

Planning on the other guy’s capitulation is also a dangerous way to start a fight.

In any event, the war was rolling. The following day, the ground invasion began in earnest as U.S. Marines, Brits, and Poles attacked the port of Umm Qasr. The 3rd Infantry Division and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force would enter southern Iraq on their way north. The heavy air campaign resumed on March 21.

Shock and Awe. In a twist of fate, it was the shock and awe of 9/11 that had provided the outward legitimacy for this war. We named it counterterrorism. Neighboring Arab countries would now call the invasion of Iraq an act of terrorism. Just goes to show you, the battlefield winner gets to write the slogans regardless of who triumphs in the end.

S
HOCK AND
A
WE HAD BEGUN IN EARNEST, AND
I
WAS GLAD.
The sooner it started, the sooner we’d win and could all go home. Walking outside our operations trailer, I stood there in the morning sun. My sweaty flight suit had long since dried, and I smelled stale. I yawned and rubbed my fingertips against the stubble under my chin. The door slammed behind me and the Gambler squadron commander, my good friend Storm’n Norman, stepped out.

“Breakfast?” I asked.

“Rather not. Been sick today already.”

I chuckled. The Wild Weasels were at war again.