Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat (2 page)

Suddenly a boxy shape appeared at the edge of my vision . . . and another. Trucks! Big military trucks. About twenty of them, lined up on the road and heading south toward the Marines as I dropped out of the dust like an avenging angel.

My left hand touched the MASTER ARM switch as I stared through the HUD. Long-ingrained habits took over, and I lined up on the far end of the string of vehicles. I was less than a mile and a half from the closest truck.

Bunting the nose down, I let the little aiming circle with the dot in it wriggle around at the bottom of my HUD. The idea was to drop toward the earth while the circle, the gun pipper, rose up toward the target. You made surgical adjustments to your airspeed and your aim to put the pipper on the target close enough to kill it. It was good not to kill yourself, either, by hitting the ground at 800 feet per second.

Passing a hundred feet, the pipper was still well short of the truck, so I eased back slightly and physically pulled the nose of the jet—and, hence, the gun—up to point at the truck. The moment the little green pipper touched the big tailgate, I squeezed the trigger with my right forefinger.

“BUURRRPPP . . .”

The jet rocked sideways as the Gatling gun spat out a few hundred 20-mm shells. I instantly pulled up again and then bunted forward, aiming at the middle of the convoy.

“BUURRRPPP.”

Rolling and pulling off to the right, I cranked up on one wing and flew sideways down the column. Dark little figures were scattering both ways off the road and jumping behind bushes or into ditches. I was so low I could see small Iraqi flags painted on the doors of the vehicles.

Several things happened next.

Groups of soldiers turned, and I clearly saw them bring weapons to their shoulders. Seconds later, they began shooting at me—I was well within their range.

“BINGO . . . BINGO . . . BINGO . . .” The audible warning system, called Bitching Betty, also started screaming at me over my low-fuel state.

Then two of the trucks at the back of the convoy blew up. Zipping down the road at a bare hundred feet, I booted the rudder, rolled again, and zoomed up to about 300 feet.

“CHIEFTAIN . . . ROMAN 75 is off to the south and west . . . vehicles burning. The column has stopped in place.”

“ROMAN . . . hit ’em again . . . hit . . . Rags are . . .” And he faded away again into crackling noise.

I knew I didn’t have enough fuel left to go all the way back out and re-attack as I’d just done. So, when the front of the convoy passed off the left wing, I turned and locked my eyes to it, staring so hard that my eyes watered. As it began to disappear in the dark, blowing sand, I slammed the throttle forward, popped straight up, and rolled nearly inverted to the right. Using the 200 feet of altitude I’d gained, I sliced down toward the ground and the leading Iraqi vehicle. It was a Russian-made armored personnel carrier (APC).

And it saw me, too.

Pulling the throttle back, I skidded sideways to line up, and the thing opened fire at me. A double line of green tracers arced off to my left and began correcting as the gunner got a better look at me.

I ignored it and rolled my wings level, letting the pipper come up to the target. I was close enough to see that the gunner wasn’t wearing a helmet and he had a mustache. As the pipper reached the front bumper of the APC, I squeezed the trigger again.

“BUURRRPPP.” The vehicle disappeared in a sudden fog of chewed-up dirt and sparks. As I pulled up and bunted over again, my eyes flicked to the
ROUNDS REMAINING
counter and then to the radar altimeter. Fewer than a hundred rounds left, and I was less than 140 feet above the ground.

There wasn’t time for finesse, so I just manhandled the pipper to the leading truck and opened fire for the last time.

“BUURRP.” And the gun shuddered to a stop as I passed through 50 feet.

Cranking up hard off to the west, I kicked the rudder to spoil anyone’s aim, pulled on the stick, and looked over my right shoulder. Just then the truck exploded, shooting off thousands of rounds of ammunition, and I flinched reactively. One cannon shell must’ve hit the next truck in line, because it blew up, too. As the ground vanished into the brown haze, I saw the remaining trucks and BTRs sliding off the road into the ditch.

Swallowing several times to get some spit back in my throat, I selected the point for the TWITCH refueling track and began a steady climb.

“CHIEFTAIN . . . ROMAN 75 is off to the west . . . Bingo . . . Winchester and RTB.”

That was the short way of saying I was leaving the target area, out of gas and weapons, and returning to base. But it didn’t matter, because he didn’t answer and I had other things to worry about now.

Seventeen hundred pounds of fuel.

I was so far below Bingo that I wasn’t sure I could reach the border, much less a forward-divert base in Kuwait. I felt the cold sweat drying on my skin as I safed up my weapons and eyeballed the engine gauges to make sure I hadn’t picked up a stray round or two.

Passing through 8,000 feet heading southwest toward the border, I broke into the clear. Not much in my life has looked better to me than that weak blue sky. Dropping my mask again, I wiped my stubbled chin and rubbed my eyes.

“ROMAN Two . . . One on Victor.” I keyed the mike and waited.

No answer. I changed frequencies and tried the AWACS. “LUGER . . . this is ROMAN 75.”

Again, no answer.

And now I had a decision to make. Maybe my last one. The tanker track was roughly 120 miles off my nose, but there was no guarantee I’d find a tanker there. Or, if I did, he might not have any gas to spare. In which case, I was screwed.

About the same distance off my left wing was Kuwait. There were several bases I could probably coast into and manage to land. But without talking to AWACS, I had no way of knowing which ones were open or in good enough shape for me to land. And then I was still screwed.

What a shitty day.

I’d now been strapped in a fighter cockpit for more than eight hours, and I’d refueled five times. I’d planned on a normal six-hour mission and hadn’t brought food or water. My butt hurt and my eyes ached. I turned the heat up because my sweat-soaked flight suit was making me shiver.

I’d flown more than one hundred combat missions by the time
this
war began and was no novice in combat. I had a hatful of campaign ribbons and medals, including a Purple Heart, from earlier conflicts, and by the time I retired, I had been awarded four Distinguished Flying Crosses with Valor—one for the First Gulf War, and three for my service in the second war in Iraq. But that was all either in the past or the future. For right now, not far to the west, one of nature’s true nightmares was fast approaching. The khamsin, the sandstorm, was an ominous wave of dirt stretching north and south along the horizon as far as I could see. The sky above the storm was gone.

It was appalling.

The momentary relief I’d been feeling leaked out of me. A storm like that could ground every aircraft on the continent, and I realized maybe that was why I hadn’t heard from anyone.
That
was a nasty thought. Swallowing again, I passed 15,000 feet and stared out at the brown carpet stretching out before me. If I managed to get to 25,000 or 30,000 feet, I could glide to the border and at least eject over friendly territory.

Like I said, it had been a shitty day.

And it wasn’t over yet.

1

YGBSM

“Y
OU’VE
G
OTTA
B
E
S
HITTIN
’ M
E
”:
THAT’S THE BATTLE CRY OF
the Wild Weasels. Surface-to-Air-Missile (SAM) killers. The first pilots sent into a warzone. Men who purposefully provoke fire from enemy missiles and anti-aircraft guns on the ground—then hunt and kill the SAM nests, making the sky safe for all other aircraft and helicopters to follow. I was proud to be one. True, like every F-16 fighter pilot, I’d fly many other types of missions in my career, but I always came back to being a Weasel. Why? It’s where the action is. SAM hunting is the most dangerous mission faced by today’s fighter pilots, a job more hazardous and difficult than shooting down enemy jets. With 151 combat missions, twenty-one hard kills on SAM sites, eleven aircraft destroyed (on the ground, unfortunately), plus many tanks, trucks, artillery, strikes on high-value targets, and other assorted operations, I’ve been called the most lethal F-16CJ Wild Weasel in the U.S. Air Force.

To truly understand what I used to do and how I got there, you need to understand the mission itself. So, before we go any further, here’s a little history lesson.

S
INCE MAN FIRST COMBINED FLIGHT WITH WARFARE, OTHER
men have been trying to shoot aviators down. As early as the American Civil War, when manned balloons were used by Union forces to spot enemy troop movements, Confederate sharpshooters immediately started firing at them. Five years later, during the Franco-Prussian War, the Germans mounted a small cannon on a horse cart for the sole purpose of putting holes in French balloons.

With the advance of tactical aviation during World War I came corresponding advances in anti-aircraft capabilities. By December 1914, the British Royal Air Force had become sufficiently concerned about the German bomber threat to London that they developed a 37-mm pom-pom gun. In June 1917, their caution was justified when fourteen plywood-coated German Gotha V bombers lumbered over London at eighty knots and dropped their bombs. Among the 162 dead were 46 children killed when their kindergarten was destroyed. Within a year, twenty-eight of these “heavy” bombers had been shot down, stopping the raids. These missions, though puny by modern standards, marked the first real use of strategic airpower and ushered in the age of air defense.

As aircraft improved, the systems designed to kill them also became more lethal. Weapons that could bring down wooden bombers flying straight and level at eighty knots were hopeless against the much faster and more maneuverable planes of World War II. This meant more accurate aiming systems had to be fielded, which could cope with more aggressive targets. Eventually, the British developed the Kerrison Predictor. Though ineffective against fighters (it was designed to track bombers), it was the first truly automated Fire Control System.

Weapons improved as well. Ironically, two of the best pieces of anti-aircraft artillery (AAA, or Triple-A) came from neutral countries. Bofors, a Swedish company, manufactured a 40-mm piece which proved lightweight, rapid-fire guns were tactically feasible. Bofors also exemplified the concept of “business neutrality” by selling its weapons to both the Axis and the Allies. Incidentally, the man who transformed Bofors from producing raw steel to manufacturing armaments was Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. He also founded the Nobel Prize—for peace.

Swiss-built Oerlikon 20-mm cannons were used with much success during the war by both the United States Navy and the Royal Navy as short-range anti-aircraft weapons. Interestingly, derivatives of this cannon were standard armament in two of the greatest World War II Axis fighters: the Japanese Mitsubishi Zero and the German Luftwaffe’s Messerschmitt 109.

The Germans also developed Fliegerfaust, arguably the first surface-to-air missile system. This was a portable system that looked like a Gatling gun and fired manually aimed 20-mm rocket projectiles.

Wasserfall was a derivative of the large V-2 rockets being fired at British cities and factories. It had a radio-controlled aiming system called Manual Controlled to Line of Sight. This meant the operator had to manually track his target
and
steer the missile to intercept. Designed to counter the strategic threat posed by overwhelming numbers of American bombers, the system proved an abject failure.

The period between the end of the Korean War and the beginning of Vietnam saw tremendous technical advances in both aircraft and weapons. This resulted in the development of new air-combat missions, including close air-support and high-altitude precision bombing. There was also a reconnaissance aircraft, the U-2, that could operate higher than any gun could shoot or any fighter could fly. Such a capability would also put it beyond the range of surface-to-air missiles.

On April 9, 1960, an American pilot named Bob Ericson seemed to confirm this when he crossed the Pamir Mountains into the Soviet Union. MiG fighters, guns, and thousands of Russian curses failed to bring him down as he calmly flew over four of the most sensitive targets the Soviets possessed, including, somewhat ironically, their surface-to-air missile test center at Saryshagan.

But weeks later, on May 1, another U-2 pilot wasn’t so fortunate, and Francis Gary Powers suddenly became a household name. To the astonishment of the Air Force and CIA, his plane was brought down by several surface-to-air missiles. The Russians called it the S-75. (NATO, to keep everyone confused, named it the SA-2 Goa. There actually was an SA-1 system, but it was deployed around Moscow to stop American B-52 bombers.)

Thirty-five feet long and more than two feet in diameter, the SA-2 could reach speeds exceeding Mach 3 (three times the speed of sound, or about 2,600 miles per hour) on its way up to 80,000 feet. If this 5,000-pound flying telephone pole hit an aircraft, there wouldn’t be much left of it.

Fortunately for Gary Powers, radar-guided systems, though not new, were a long way from being perfected. This was an age of vacuum tubes and slide rules, not microchips and supercomputers, so figuring aiming solutions on jet aircraft seven miles above the earth was not a simple proposition. However, bombers and reconnaissance aircraft like the U-2, unlike fighters, fly nice, predictably straight lines, and this certainly helped three missiles detonate close enough to Powers’s U-2 to knock it down—thankfully, without obliterating the aircraft or himself. Powers was captured and humiliated, but he eventually returned home alive.

Another U-2 pilot, Major Rudolph Anderson, wasn’t so lucky. In October 1962, the South Carolina native was killed over Cuba by the same SA-2 system. During the past two years, the missile’s tracking had greatly improved, and the Cuban-launched weapon shattered Major Anderson’s U-2.

These incidents finally forced the Pentagon to seriously consider electronic countermeasures. These include radar-warning receivers, which tell a pilot that he’s being targeted; chaff-and-flare dispensers that would confuse tracking solutions; and offensive jamming pods that could deny or defeat enemy radars. It was a new field and all of this equipment was either primitive or nonexistent. Despite the U-2 losses, there was time, the Pentagon thought, to develop these capabilities.

I
N THE EARLY 1960S
, V
IETNAM WASN’T REALLY ON ANY
A
MERICAN’S
“give a shit” list, and by 1963, President John F. Kennedy had even publicly disengaged the United States from Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, he departed this world before we could extract ourselves from Vietnam, and in August 1964, two American destroyers—the
Maddox
and the
Turner Joy
—were “attacked” in the Gulf of Tonkin. President Lyndon Johnson now had his excuse to go to war, and the subsequent Tonkin Resolution permitted combat operations without a congressional declaration of war. Despite the rather silly notion that two U.S. destroyers had been attacked by the North Vietnamese riverboat navy, the president could now fight whomever he wished.

And that’s precisely what he did.

As usual, America’s involvement started with air and sea power. Flaming Dart, Rolling Thunder, and Arc Light were air campaigns designed to protect U.S. ground troops and destroy the North Vietnamese capability to fight the war. However, by March 1965, some 3,000 Marines had been deployed into Vietnam, and by December that number reached 200,000.

To counter this, Hanoi began importing huge amounts of Soviet hardware, including the latest surface-to-air missile systems and anti-aircraft artillery. You see, the Vietnamese knew they could win a ground war. They simply had to wear the Americans down and outlast their political willpower, just as they did the French during the 1950s. But the Americans were different. They had air support with advanced capabilities the French had never possessed and stopping them was a serious tactical problem. The Vietnamese needed modern air-defense technology and again turned to the Soviet Union. The Russians, of course, were happy to oblige, since they got to test their equipment
and
kill Americans.

U.S. pilots flying strike missions were suddenly faced with a very dangerous and unanticipated air-defense threat. On a summer day in 1965, an event tragically highlighted the enemy’s lethal capacity—and gave birth to the Wild Weasels.

It was to be Captain Ross Fobair’s fifty-fifth and final combat mission before going home. Once more across the line for Fobair, an F-4C Phantom pilot from the 45th Tactical Fighter Squadron, it was now almost routine. The twenty-nine-year-old captain had packed up the night before, and he planned on departing Vietnam after landing from his afternoon mission. The Freedom Bird, a transport aircraft back to the States, was leaving that very night. He was going home to California and a well-deserved rest, a reunion with his wife, Anita, his sister, Betty, and his young nephew, Bruce. It was July 24, 1965.

It was Ross Fobair’s last day.

With him on the mission was Captain Richard “Pops” Keirn, who was flying in the front seat of the Phantom. (Keirn was a retread on his fifth mission in Vietnam. A former bomber pilot from World War II, he’d been shot down over Germany and spent nine months in Stalag Luft 1, courtesy of the Third Reich.) The mission was fairly straightforward. It was a Combat Air Patrol, called a MiGCAP, to protect a strike force of F-105 Thunderchiefs from stray North Vietnamese fighters. The F-105s—or Thuds, as they were known—were hitting a munitions factory at Kang Chi some forty miles west of Hanoi. MiG sweeps were what fighter pilots lived for—essentially, roaming around and looking for trouble. The idea was to force enemy fighters into engaging the Phantoms and thus leaving the Thuds free to drop their bombs. So, the F-105s would smack their target and the F-4s would get to dogfight.

A perfect day.

But it didn’t quite work out that way. Forty miles northeast of Hanoi, over the Vinh Phu Province, a SAM shot up through a soggy cloud deck and hit the Phantom. There hadn’t been time to react, and the F-4C didn’t carry the threat-detection gear that became standard equipment on later jets. Unfortunately for Keirn and Fobair, the previous shoot-downs involved spy planes, so the CIA and the Air Force hadn’t released much useful threat information. Nothing was really known about this new type of threat, and so the pilots hadn’t been trained to defeat it. The missile was the same radar-guided SA-2 that had knocked down Gary Powers and killed Major Anderson. It left little margin for error.

The spine-jarring impact immediately put the Phantom out of control. In the front seat, Pops Keirn struggled to assess the flashing lights, aural warnings, and acrid smoke filling the cockpit. He got no response from the back cockpit. Twisting around against the mounting G-forces, he saw Ross Fobair slumped in his seat, blood streaming from his nose. As the F-4 spun into the clouds, Keirn ejected and would spend the next seven and a half years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton, a POW for the second time.

But Ross Fobair disappeared. Thirty-two years later, his nephew, Bruce Giffin, returned to Vietnam and discovered his uncle’s fate. Near a remote village on the slope of a 4,000-foot mountain, Ross Fobair’s remains were found and finally returned home for a full military funeral.

Answers to a combat death are rarely clear, and finding a meaning, especially in any modern war, is difficult. But this combat loss has a legacy that endures today: Fobair’s death was the final link in the chain that created the Wild Weasels. Many, many lives have been saved over the years because the USAF dedicated men and machines to hunting and killing SAMs. If a meaning can be found in Ross Fobair’s fate, then perhaps this is it.

L
ESS THAN TWO WEEKS AFTER
F
OBAIR AND
K
EIRN WENT DOWN
, Air Force officials conducted a secret meeting to arrive at a solution for the new threat. Navy and Marine aircraft were also being lost to the SAMs, and the U.S. military, not just the Air Force, needed aircraft that could kill such a threat. To torment, track, and follow prey into its hiding place just like a fierce and relentless wild weasel.

Project Weasel, also called Wild Weasel One, was born.

But there were problems. First, how do you find a SAM site? Especially when it’s camouflaged or hidden in a jungle? So, Applied Technologies Corporation built the AN/APR-25 radar homing and warning receiver (RHAW) that could locate an SA-2 by the emissions of its own radar. For this to work, the enemy radar, called a Fan Song, had to be operating. The RHAW receiver could see the enemy emissions and would then provide a rough bearing to the site for the attacking aircraft. In theory, anyway.

It worked like this. As a missile gets closer to its target, much more accurate tracking updates are required for the SAM to hit the aircraft. The APR-26 was supposed to detect this shift in guidance beams and trigger a flashing red warning signal light in the cockpit to warn the pilot that a missile was close. An additional receiver, the IR-133, would permit an Electronic Warfare Officer (EWO) to identify specific threats by analyzing the signal. This became more important as more types of SAMs were created, because different threats were defeated by different methods. If you knew what was after you, then you’d know how to beat it—again, theoretically. None of this equipment was really battle-worthy, and everyone, from the scientists down to the aircrews, was feeling their way. The pressure was on, though, since Americans were dying every day.