Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (69 page)

Watching a moment, Bones saw the fins pop out. The bomb wobbled, then nosed over slightly. It was guiding. Pulling the power back a bit, he pulled up and away to the left, away from Basra and Iran, scanning the ground for Triple-A or the dirty tails of SAM launches.

It took longer than he thought. Bones stretched his tired neck and craned over the rail to look but saw nothing. Glancing inside at the fuel, he knew they’d have to leave now.

“Whoa!”

Jeff’s head snapped up at his wingman’s voice. Then he saw it. A tremendous black cloud spreading out across the ground. Dirt and something light gray had been flung up higher than the rest of the mess. Other bits of the helo were spinning off in all directions. Fuel had ignited, throwing an orange fan out to the northwest. Even as he watched, it was swallowed up by the dust and oily smoke.

Chuckling, he zippered the mike and banked back to the right. Hobo Two flushed out in a wide tactical formation and both fighters began a slow climb, away from Basra and the dead helicopter toward the greenish blue waters of the Gulf.

SADDAM HUSSEIN’S INVASION
of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, caught the U.S. military by surprise. Washington made the assumption, as it had so often in the past, that the mere threat of armed American intervention would discourage any aggression. Baghdad gambled that whatever it did to Kuwait would not meet America’s threshold for war. So both sides underestimated the other, and the result was a massive buildup of military force throughout the fall of 1990. President George H. W. Bush continued to threaten, and Hussein continued to believe that it was simply rhetoric. Any action against Iraq, he dearly hoped, would trigger a massive, pan-Arab reaction. As with Korea and Vietnam, it was colossal miscalculation—on both sides.

A coalition of more than fifty nations had formed to deal with Saddam. The United Nations got involved, passing UN Security Council Resolution 678 warning Hussein to leave Kuwait by January 15, 1991. If he did not, there would be consequences.
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Publicly Iraq was defiant, but privately Saddam was extremely worried. It was one thing to thumb one’s nose at Washington, but quite another to face the American armed forces. This military was unchallenged in the world, especially in their ability to power project across the globe. Both the Navy and the USAF were masters at this, as they’d proved for decades. Pilots, in particular, were weapons that could suddenly and lethally appear from a carrier deck or some remote air base—anytime and anywhere. Where did they come from, these men?

Unlike the Israelis, American fighter pilots had to be commissioned officers
before
they could be considered for pilot training, and there were several paths to achieving this status. An exceptionally qualified high school graduate could procure an appointment to either the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs or the Naval Academy in Annapolis.
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After four years of training and study, usually in an engineering or technical field, a graduate earned an accredited bachelor’s degree and was commissioned into the Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps.

Another method was to receive a four-year degree from a civilian university and then apply for officer candidate school where, after completing a 90-day crash course, the graduate was commissioned. The last way was to participate in a Reserve Officers’ Training Course (ROTC) while attending a university. Upon graduation, commissioning would usually follow within the year.

In parallel with obtaining a commission, the potential pilot could apply for a flying training slot. This involved an entirely separate battery of physical, psychological, and aptitude tests. A series of interviews combined with multiple selection committees resulted in further eliminations. In this fashion, the military was able to send only the best-qualified candidates off to flight school. Jets and weapon systems had evolved to the point where the ability to absorb vast amounts of technical information was a necessity, so the criteria were exceptionally demanding. Although there was no immediate war, everyone expected it, and a young officer’s entrance to flight school was just the beginning. A chance to get up to bat, nothing more. Success past this point was a combination of natural ability and perseverance. Each service had similarities in their training programs but approached the process somewhat differently.

Jeff Ashby, former NASA astronaut, Navy captain (O-6), and F/A-18 fighter pilot, began flight training during the late 1970s. Basic, as it was called, lasted about five months and earned a student 40 hours in the T-28 piston-engine trainer. Elementary contact flying focused on takeoffs, landings, and emergencies, and despite the intense selection process, student pilots began dropping out like flies. As in past programs, skill and scores determined which follow-on track came next: jets, helicopters, or prop aircraft. For Jeff, primary jet training took place in the T-2 Buckeye at Kingsville, Texas. A few like him progressed to the TA-4J, flying formation, advanced aerobatics, and learning carrier operations. He came away from the next six months as a fully qualified (day) naval aviator with gold wings.

Navy and Marine pilots then went through a two-month instrument course on their way to the yearlong Replacement Air Group (RAG) on the East or West Coast. Here they were introduced to the jet they’d fly operationally; in Jeff’s case, the F/A-18 Hornet. After a year of emergency procedures (EPs), basic fighter maneuvers, air combat maneuvers, and surface attack, he made ten more day traps on a carrier, plus six night traps. The whole program lasted from twenty-four to twenty-six months and the new pilot arrived at his fleet squadron with about 250 flying hours.

The Air Force began its program with undergraduate pilot training (UPT). Student pilots spent their first two weeks in academics and another complete round of physical exams. Classwork focused on aircraft systems, EPs, ground procedures, and local area familiarization. Critical EPs, called “boldface,” were memorized verbatim. These were problems that would kill you in the air: engine fires and failures, out-of-control situations, ejections, et cetera. There were daily exams. During this time a stud, as he was called, was fitted with life support gear and given a parachuting refresher class.

After about ten days of this, he went to his squadron and began flying. There were usually three squadrons per aircraft type, and each was subdivided into flights. A flight contained about twenty students, four to each instructor pilot (IP). This man was responsible for scheduling, flying, and supervising each student’s overall training. Good ones, like Capt. Russell Greer,
the
Daddy Rabbit, was a screen for his young officers. Isolating them from the inevitable bureaucratic nonsense in any organization, he encouraged, cajoled, and, when he had to, threatened his students to get results. The Daddy Rabbit was an expert at cutting to the chase on any given subject and a magnificent pagan bastard of a pilot.

He was the man with the plan and cared little about Training Command sensitivities, etiquette, or egos. Of the other instructors, the most numerous were the FAIPs (first assignment instructor pilots). A new pilot right out of UPT himself, a FAIP had scored fairly high in the program but was not selected as a potential fighter pilot. Sometimes there just weren’t enough fighters to go around, but more often the IPs came to a subjective conclusion, supported by performance, that a particular lieutenant just wouldn’t cut it in a fighter cockpit. Instead, he became a mighty pissed-off T-37 or T-38 pilot for three years till he grew up and might be able to try again. Some turned out very well, others not so well.

Then there were those who were brought back from operational flying units. Most of these came from tankers or transports, with some BUFF drivers, like the Daddy Rabbit, and a sprinkling of fighter pilots. These men and women knew about life beyond the Training Command, had wide experience all around the world, and usually were excellent at instructing. They were there to keep an eye on the FAIPs, provide some mature decisions, and keep things in line. And Rus Greer did. Fiercely loyal to his varmints, as his students were called, he went to the wall for several of them. He won most of the battles, and in a jet that man could play a cockpit like a virtuoso.

USAF students began flying in a T-37 jet trainer named the “Tweet” after the high-pitched whistle its tiny engines produced, or maybe because it was small and had a rounded nose like Tweety Bird.
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As with most training programs, this was basic contact work: patterns, spins and stalls, aerobatics, and of course emergency procedures—everything needed to solo a jet. As in all other first-class flying training, people started washing out immediately. Many were around on Monday and gone by Friday—it didn’t take long. And for good reason, as too much was at stake to pull punches.

Each morning during the mass briefing, a situation was described by an instructor pilot, then handed off to a student to finish. He had to stand up, with only his in-flight publications, and finish the scenario in real time. Every flight and simulator session was graded, plus academics covering every aircraft system, meteorology, and other subjects. After six months of this and three check ride evaluations, anyone left standing was allowed to go across the street to the T-38 Talon.

By this time some of the stud’s abilities were known and he’d begun to prove himself somewhat. The T-38 handled like a little, underpowered fighter, and some who’d done very well with the docile, forgiving Tweet had problems in the Talon—landing particularly. The interminable coursework aside, this phase focused on advanced aerobatics, instruments, night flying, and, above all, formation. Not because it was tactical but because being calm enough and skilled enough to fly three feet from another maneuvering jet said a great deal about potential. Check rides, daily grades, and instructor evaluations all went into a class rating. In any group about 5 percent of a class (maybe four pilots) emerged above what was then called the fighter attack reconnaissance (FAR) line. Fighters were assigned based on Air Force needs, but personal preference was considered, and most pilots above the FAR line got one of their top three choices.

After graduating from UPT, the stud was now a rated pilot with silver wings and about two hundred hours of flight time. In addition to aerobatics, formation, and low-level flights, he walked away with ninety hours of instrument time, perhaps ten hours at night. Next were a few months going through land and water survival, escape, evasion, and resistance training on his way to lead-in fighter training (LIFT). Conducted at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, New Mexico, this lasted about two months and utilized the AT-38, an armed version of the T-38.

A thoroughly useful course that has now been eliminated, LIFT introduced the pilot to air-to-air and air-to-ground combat. Basic surface attack (see appendix B) and basic fighter maneuvers (BFM) were taught—and something more. These were squadrons composed entirely of line fighter pilots brought back to transition a new flyer from the training command environment to a tactical mentality. They taught attitude. They made you understand how different the fighter world really was and your part in it. All LIFT students went through the Advanced Physiological Course at Holloman, which added g-induced loss of consciousness (GLOC) through centrifuge training—essential for those going into high-performance jets that could sustain nine times the force of gravity. For the first time, a pilot began to realize that flying was just something you did so you could fight. A fighter pilot was someone who killed things. Taking off, landing, navigating, instruments . . . all were incidental to that single purpose.

Leaving Holloman with about thirty-five more flying hours, the pilot arrived at a Replacement Training Unit (RTU) base and began learning his operational jet. For new F-16 Viper pilots this meant either MacDill AFB in Tampa, Florida, or Luke AFB in Phoenix, Arizona. Those going to F-15 Eagles also went to Luke or to Tyndall AFB in Florida, and A-10 Warthog pilots got Davis-Montham AFB down in Tucson, Arizona. At nine months, Viper RTU was the longest, as it covered both air-to-air and air-to-ground combat to graduate a pilot with about eighty hours of fighter time. As always, there was extensive ground school for the complex systems of a modern jet fighter, plus all the weapons, tactical employment, and emergency procedures.

While at RTU an aviator also became instrument rated for the third time and qualified to air-refuel. So at the end of two years, a fully qualified USAF pilot headed off to a line squadron with an excellent mix of skills, tactical qualifications, and more than three hundred total flying hours. Once there, he’d start over at the bottom of the totem pole and go through a mission qualification course lasting several months. Taught by a variety of instructors, this covered the local area, instrument and night work, and theater-specific threats, plus a verification of all the air and ground combat training skills the pilot had been taught. Finally, after another tactical check ride, he was at last considered a fighter pilot. Training had come a long, long way since the 1915 five-hour flying program.

The 52nd Tactical Fighter Wing from Spangdahlem AB, West Germany, was typical in many ways, yet also unique. Home to the only three mixed Hunter-Killer squadrons in existence, it was heir to the Wild Weasels and their mission of dueling with SAMs. Following Vietnam, the USAF end of killing SAMs passed entirely into the F-4 community, this time with the Advanced Wild Weasel V pairing of the F-4E and F-4G. The G model, called a “Gzel,” was essentially the F-4E with the gun removed, a modified backseat, and the addition of the APR-38 system. This was later replaced with an APR-47, which located emitters and identified them through an internal library. An EWO could also listen to audio signals and tell exactly what type of radar was up. Once the location was known, the G model would typically provide cover with anti-radiation missiles while the Killer attacked. But by the early 1980s it was apparent that some changes were needed. The F-4G, with its backseater and specialized equipment, would remain as the Hunter, but a Killer was needed that could duel with the next generation of mobile SAMs.