Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat (25 page)

Rolling wings level to the ground at less than a hundred feet, I pulled straight up. Grunting against the Gs, I forced my head around toward the SAMs and puked out a few more flares and chaff bundles. The jet was still fast, maybe 400 knots, but zooming uphill and slowing down. So I barrel-rolled back toward the road, eyes straining against the dust, and tried to see the missiles.

Then the horizon disappeared!

I had a moment of sheer terror that only a pilot knows when all his visual flying cues suddenly vanish. For an eternal half-second, I didn’t know which way was up, down, or sideways. This wasn’t good, a few hundred feet above the ground in a dusty cloud over thousands of angry enemy soldiers.

Get out of the damn cloud,
my brain screamed. Over-pulling and slicing back toward the earth was the only way to do it, so I tugged the throttle out of afterburner and did just that. Problem was, without a horizon, at that altitude, I was about three seconds away from becoming a permanent part of Iraq.

Suddenly the dust peeled back, and I had a face full of earth. Scrub brush, tires, and even an old car chassis registered in my head as I dropped out of the clouds.

Holy shit!

Instantly pulling back hard on the stick, I felt the F-16 mush toward the ground. Shoving the throttle into burner, I caught sight of the road about a hundred yards off my left wing. I was more or less heading northeast,
away
from that mess.

They saw me.

Once again, everything that could shoot swung in my direction and opened up. Green tracers arced through the dark air like whipcords. Orange blobs from heavier anti-aircraft pieces floated past, and ground fire sparkled all around me. But the F-16 responded, and as I came up through the horizon, rolling away from the threat, I hit the pickle button and felt the cluster bombs kick off.

Immediately snapping the jet hard over to the right, I avoided the clouds this time, pointed east, and dove back toward the relative safety of the earth. Passing a hundred feet, I twitched my tail to the left, pulled out of burner, and raced away northeast. Looking back, Highway 8 was still lit up like Times Square. In fact, so many vehicles were shooting at me that the column appeared as if it was burning. More SAM trails streaked out beneath the clouds, and I snapped back right and plugged the burner in. I did this three or four more times, until the road disappeared.

Throttling back to mil power, I swallowed hard and realized that I’d been thumbing the countermeasures switch the entire time. It was empty, of course, and, glancing at the HUD, I saw that all my towed decoys had been shot away.

Thank you, Raytheon.

I also saw that Highway 1 was eight miles behind me and receding fast. Easing up to a hundred feet, I stared through the HUD. Off to my right, somewhere in the gloom, was the Shaykh Mazar MiG base, but they’d never fly in this crap. It did have SAMs and Triple-A though, so I angled away to keep clear.

There.

Straight ahead was the metallic gray-green snake of the Tigris River. Little brown villages lined the banks and I saw boats in the water. The men in the boats had seen and heard me. They were standing up, shaking their fists, and grabbing their undersized crotches, so, with a touch of bravado, I waggled my wings as I flashed past.

“I should’ve kept the cluster bombs,” I muttered, rolled up on a wing, and gave them the finger.

Once the Tigris disappeared, I began a smooth pull up through the dust and turned away from Baghdad toward the south. Initiating a data-link, I heard the little cricket noise as it found my wingman and displayed his position on my MFD. Passing 2,000 feet, I glanced at the display and saw WICKED 2 was actually about twenty-five miles due south of me.

Angling southeast to give Shaykh Mazar a wide berth, I broke into the clear at 8,000 feet and stared up at the sun. Taking a deep breath, I dropped the mask and leaned my head back against the ejection seat. I had the same feeling I’d had a few days earlier, at Nasiriyah, when I broke out safe above the mess. It was beautiful. For a few seconds, as I continued to climb away from the city, I just stared up at the powder-blue sky.

But even at only 400 knots there isn’t much time for reflection, so I ran the air-to-air radar out and locked onto my wingman.

“WICKED Two, One is Bull’s-eye one-five-zero for fifty-six . . . passing ten thousand for twenty.”

After a few seconds, I saw the familiar F-16 radar spike on my RWR.

“Two is contact.”

“Cleared to join . . . fighting wing. One is 5.1, tanks dry.”

“Two is 8.7 . . . feeding.”

So, I had about 5,000 pounds of fuel remaining, and my wing tanks had been sucked dry. I glanced at the digital time in the HUD. From the time I’d passed the shoreline of the lake headed inbound, the entire thing had lasted less than six minutes and taken almost 7,000 pounds of fuel. And four towed decoys and 120 chaff and flare bundles. And two cluster bombs. And a partridge in a pear tree. I wondered if I hit anything. Sighing, I pulled out my gloves and wiped my face. It didn’t matter. They hadn’t hit me.

“RAMROD, RAMROD . . .
THIS IS
WICKED 23.” I
FIGURED
I might as well give them the good news.

“WICKED . . . stand by for update.”

A flash caught my eyes and I looked to the right and slightly high as my wingman swooped down from the south, crossed overhead, and slid into position off my left wing. Waggling my wings to bring him in close, I punched up the steerpoint for the nearest refueling track.

I looked over at the other fighter and the pilot’s helmeted head. He had his visor down and his sleeves rolled up. I grinned. Just a chip off the old block. Giving him a quick sign with my thumb and forefinger, I saw him nod and begin the Battle Damage check.

“WICKED . . . this is RAMROD . . . vehicles and armored units at passed coordinates are possible RPG units . . . repeat . . . RPG units.”

RPG. Republican Guard tanks and mechanized infantry.
That
would’ve been nice to know. Saddam’s elite force. Elite compared to the other Iraqis—or Iranians or the French—but certainly not to us. They were still all going to die, they’d just die better-dressed. However, Republican Guards also had their own attached air-defense units, as I’d seen up close and personal. Shaking my head, I watched Notso slide beneath me and appear on the other side as he looked my jet over for holes, leaks, and missing parts.

“WICKED . . . exercise extreme caution.”

Gee, thanks. I wondered what he thought I’d been doing for the last ten minutes.

“WICKED . . . how do you hear?”

I took another deep breath. If I answered now, I’d say something unprofessional, snide, and completely called for. So I waited until Notso finished his battle-damage check and flashed me a thumbs-up. Kicking the rudder, I watched him peel away, giving me a glimpse of the bombs and missiles slung under his wings.

Keying the mike, I managed to sound bored and said, “RAMROD . . . WICKED 23 . . . armed recon complete. RPG units confirmed . . . armor, mechanized infantry, and air defense.”

“WICKED . . . can you estimate numbers?”

I saw it in my mind’s eye. The road. Hundreds of vehicles pulled off to the side as far as I could see. The flashes from the guns.

“RAMROD . . . division-strength. Several hundred vehicles . . . all southbound on Highway Eight.”

“WICKED . . . can you say type of vehicles?”

“The shooting type.”

“Say again?”

This went on for a few minutes while we headed back to the tanker to refuel. They plainly wanted more information, but from the few seconds I’d had to make an assessment and survive, that was all there was. Then he said it.

“Ah, WICKED . . . we’d like a second pass over the target.”

Now, second passes are always dangerous, because whatever you flew over and attacked is now fully aware, awake, and angry. But we do it when we have to. In critical situations, like close air-support or search-and-rescue, no one would hesitate, but this wasn’t one of those situations. Besides, I had no more chaff or flares or decoys. And I wasn’t sending Notso down there. The boy had a long life ahead of him and it wouldn’t be fair to all the women who hadn’t met him yet.

“RAMROD . . . does JEREMIAH direct this?”

There was too long of a pause. Finally, he came back with, “Ah . . . negative WICKED. This is a RAMROD request.”

You’ve gotta be shitting me.

I wasn’t going back down there simply so those bozos could fill in a few missing spaces on whatever form they were working up. I’d seen everything that needed to be seen. And I told him that. And that we were heading to air-refuel, then going home.

As it turned out, those Iraqis on the road were not simply relocating, and they definitely weren’t just a patrol. They were, in fact, armored and mechanized infantry units from the Medina and Nebuchadnezzar units of the Republican Guard. They were moving south to counterattack the American advance at the Karbala Gap. The Iraqi High Command had concluded that the American advance was stalled and, in fact, the 3rd Infantry Division had slowed about fifty miles south of Baghdad due to continuous harassment. North of Nasiriyah, the Marines were heavily engaged and very slowly fighting their way up the Tigris River.

With the sandstorm as cover, Saddam ordered the Guards to move out of their positions in Baghdad and head south to fight. Unknown to me, another RPG brigade was also moving southeast out of Baghdad to strike at the Marines.

U.S. airpower had literally beaten the fight from the Iraqi frontline combat forces, but Saddam’s generals reasoned that the current bad weather would impede American air support. And without air support, the Iraqis felt equal to confronting the American Army and Marines. They’d obviously forgotten the First Gulf War. It also slipped their minds that American fighter jets would attack in any weather. We didn’t like it, but it certainly didn’t stop us. So, as with so many battle plans, it was gutsy from one point of view and utterly stupid from the other.

About fifty miles past the refueling track, we crossed the border into Saudi Arabia and I actually started to relax a little and slow down mentally. A fighter pilot gets accustomed to thinking at 500 miles per hour, and, as anyone who’s ever lived with one can attest, this is really annoying. But it’s an occupational hazard. My brain began settling back to relatively normal levels, and I could feel the muscles in my back stretching out a bit.

Removing my helmet, I ran my fingers through my sweaty hair and poured water on my head. As I scratched my scalp and took a long drink of warm plastic-tasting water, I noticed something strange. My thumb and forefinger were twitching slightly. Very slightly, but twitching nonetheless.

Now, I’d had more close calls in my career than I could count, and I’d been seeing the Elephant on and off since 1991 without flinching. I stared at my hand a few more seconds, snorted once, and tugged at my glove.

But I knew that I’d just come closer to Death today than ever before. I hadn’t attacked anything or done anything heroic. This mission would never get written up, nor did I ever mention it. But I just knew.

I knew that I’d found a place where even the Elephant doesn’t go.

10

SAMbush

April 6, 2003

1104 local time, north of Baghdad

“D
AMN IT!
”

One eye burned as bits of dust floated under the visor and hit my eyelid. Rolling over until completely inverted, I pumped the stick forward and snapped the F-16 upright. Keying the mike, I squinted over the wingtip. “ELI Three and Four . . . defending Triple-A over Baghdad.”

Dirty-white smudges suddenly appeared where we’d been, so I shoved the power up, climbed a few thousand feet, and pulled away from downtown. The newly christened George Bush Airport (formerly Saddam International) passed behind me to the left as we hit the western suburbs of Saddam’s battered capital city. Bunting over, this time blinking fast to keep out the specks, I stared back down at Baghdad. Saddam’s capital was a bit beat-up; the pea-green Tigris River was visible beneath the brown smudges hanging over downtown. Like black commas, hundreds of smoke trails rose over the buildings and streets. Tracers arced and sporadic explosions blew more debris into the dirty air. Apparently, the Iraqis still had some fight left down there, even after the arrival of the Army and Marines.

Today was a motorcycle-gang mission. Basically, we roamed around different killboxes and looked for a fight. The threat was unknown, the weapons were our choice, and our only objective was to kill whatever the Iraqis had left.

On this day, we had two four-ships of F-16CJs—ELI 31 and LAPEL 77. I led the second element of ELI and we’d split up the area around Baghdad. ELI One, Zing Manning, was southeast of the city somewhere, beating up the Iraqi defenders along the Tigris River and dodging F/A-18s. Hornets had been everywhere the past few days as the 1st Marines fought their way into the capital from the east.

The 3rd Infantry Division had attacked and taken Baghdad International Airport on April 4, during some of the toughest fighting of the war. On April 6, the Army had initiated Operation Thunder Run from the suburbs toward the airport, and that section of the city was essentially safe. But the center of Baghdad, plainly, was not; the place was a mess. Lines of frightened civilians tried to escape to the north and west, while the military threw up defensive positions downtown to counter the American advance.

Iraqi armor moved through the northern outskirts of town, and fierce street fights broke out everywhere. Tanks are hard to distinguish anyway, and without the targeting pods that we’d pushed so hard to add to the CeeJay, it was nearly impossible for a pilot to tell friend from foe. So we’d decided to leave inner-city tank-busting to the A-10s and F/A-18s. We were trolling for any SAMs, particularly the remaining Rolands and SA-8s, which would kill helicopters and Warthogs.

A
RCING AROUND THE CITY FROM THE WEST
, I
DROPPED DOWN
to about 10,000 feet to stay well beneath the increasing cloud cover. The city was a kaleidoscope of grays—gray earth, darker gray concrete, and gunmetal-gray roads. Shafts of sunlight lanced through the clouds and softened the hard background in mottled dove-gray patches. Lines of black smoke rose straight up from countless bright red fires. Orange and yellow tracers occasionally shot upward and exploded beneath the clouds.

I rolled up again and flicked a wing hard to the right. Obediently, my wingman floated to the outside, my left, as we continued around the city. This put me between him and any threats, but still allowed him to fly formation off of me and observe Baghdad. I heard the crinkling sound of a data-link in my headset and glanced at the MFD. He’d data-linked me a Flap Wheel radar and an SA-3. The Flap Wheel was a fire-control system, and that meant Triple-A guided by radar—much tougher than the stuff they shot visually. I angled away from the location and looked again at the SA-3. It was about fifteen miles north of us, just off Highway 1. There was a big MiG base up that road, called Balad, so no doubt the SAMs were there to protect it from people like us.

I grinned. Fat fucking chance.

Arcing about eight miles from downtown, we crossed Highway 1 on the northern outskirts of Baghdad, heading east at 450 knots. I methodically scanned the ground ahead on both sides of the jet’s nose. The RWR was turned full-up, the jamming pod was on auto, and we’d both streamed decoys. I also was bobbing and changing my altitude randomly every five or six seconds. We were in full-up Wild Weasel mode.

Passing over Highway 2, I glanced back over my left shoulder to check on the wingman. He was right where he should be, and I exhaled. Everything was okay and—

“BEEP . . . BEEP . . . BEEP . . . BEEP!”

My eyes riveted back to the RWR, even as I instinctively rolled away from the flashing “3” on the display. Pumping chaff with my left fist, I keyed the mike and yanked the fighter upright, heading due north.

“ELI Three, defending SA-3, north Bull’s-eye eight . . .”

Shoving the stick forward, I floated off the seat and slapped the chaff button again as a voice yelled, “ELI Four . . . missile! Ah . . . ELI Four, missile in the air!”

Where??

Snapping my head around to the right, I kept the power up and pulled sideways to hold the city in sight. Nothing. Opening my mouth to ask him, I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye.

There!

Almost directly off my nose, at twelve o’clock. The billowing gray smoke was hard to see against the nearly universal gray background, but the flaming trail of the missile was plain enough.

“ELI Three . . . tally missile launch, SA-3, right two o’clock, close.” I began a level, six-G turn away from the smoke to put the missile off my right wing. Lifting above the Baghdad skyline, the long plume was now visible against the clouds. But where had the first one gone?

“ELI Two . . . posit of the first SAM?”

“Two . . . uh . . . No joy on the SAM.” He couldn’t see it.

Rolling out, I bunted forward again as the RWR continued shrieking at me. There’s never just one threat, so I kept rapidly scanning the ground as we passed over the ramshackle neighborhoods and canals that spiderwebbed across northern Baghdad. Triple-A bursts were noticeable over downtown, and I saw the telltale fingers of other SAM launches farther south. The missile I had originally seen disappeared into the cloud deck, but its Low Blow radar was still locked to me.

Yanking the fighter around, I pointed directly at the patch of ground where the SAM site must be. Calling up the mark function, I nosed over again and slewed the little diamond over the general area. Luckily, there wasn’t much wind, so the smoke trail was still hanging in the air over what looked like a junkyard. The coordinates popped onto the HUD, and I pulled away hard to the left. Being belly-up to a threat that can shoot you isn’t a great idea for long, so I rolled out, checked for bad stuff coming at me, then rolled and pulled again.

Northbound now, with the SAM battery directly behind me at six o’clock, I saw my wingman float overhead to a wide loose-deuce position. Vapor streamed from his wingtips as he dropped into formation.

“ELI Four . . . stand by data.” And I zapped him a data-link with the SAM coordinates as we headed due north along the Tigris River. Zippering the mike, I brought us around the right, heading northeast. This would keep us well clear of Highways 1 and 2, which were full of retreating Iraqi military units. We’d also skirt south of Baqubah, a good-size and undefeated town north of Baghdad. The terrain was better out here, too—there was much more room to maneuver. The ground was low and wet, with fewer roads, so there’d be less of a mobile SAM or Triple-A threat.

LAPEL 77 was the other four-ship with us that morning, so I changed to his Victor freq. “LAPEL One, this is ELI Three.”

“Go.”

“ELI Three flight is engaging an SA-3, Bull’s-eye zero-two-zero for nine. Posit?”

“LAPEL One and Two are southeast Bull at twenty-five thousand, headed for the tanker. LAPEL Three flight is coming off the tanker in DOG South.”

I zapped him the SAM coordinates. “LAPEL One, have LAPEL Three ingress from the south and stay west of the river until we sort this out.”

“Wilco.”

My two-ship was on a twelve-mile arc due east of Baghdad. We were now heading north at 8,000 feet and directly abeam the SAM site. It was a good position. Operating on the fringe like this made us a tantalizing target, something you can almost reach. So they’d be watching and waiting. If the tracking radar got nervous or tried to lock on us, then our own systems were in the best place to locate it exactly.

The LAPEL flight would also be in area, so if I was attacked and wriggling around, he could find the SAM and put a bomb through it. Or vice versa, if he got targeted. The biggest problem with Weaseling were unknown threats, and this was a graphic example of that point. We really didn’t know what was down there. It could be a more deadly SAM, or a Triple-A nest, or an entire battery.

Turned out, it was all of that.

“ELI Three’s 6.4.”

Sixty-four hundred pounds of gas and no reply from my wingman meant he was within five hundred pounds himself. I touched the RWR volume, countermeasure panel, and tightened my harness a bit. Glancing outside, I saw the two snub-nosed cylinders beneath my wings and called up the weapons display. Today, in addition to the normal cannon and air-to-air missiles, I had two CBU-103 canisters—cluster bombs. These things are terrific Weasel weapons, because they can be used for area targets and are easy to use under fire. It’s like using a shotgun instead of a sniper rifle.

Each canister had about two hundred softball-size bomblets inside. The number of bomblets per thousand square feet is called the pattern density, and was mainly decided by how far above the ground the canister opened. This was controlled from the cockpit and varied according to the target. You’d need a greater bomblet density to knock out tanks versus unarmored targets like SAM sites.

Wheeling around to the right, we came back to the south on a fourteen-mile arc. The “3” was glowing softly on the RWR at about my two o’clock position. Orange-colored tracers shot up several miles off the nose and slightly right. They were aimed in our general direction but too far away to be a threat. I remembered that there was a small auxiliary airfield in that area and angled away slightly. As the next stream of tracers passed well behind my tail, I keyed the mike. “ELI Four . . . Slapshot SA-3, bearing two-two-zero.”

The other F-16 turned, vapor streaming from his wingtips, and pulled hard across my tail to point at Baghdad. I checked to the right far enough to keep him in sight and stared at the target area. The Diyala River twisted out from the city like a dirty green snake. East of it, where we were, the khaki-colored ground was deserted. Past the river, toward the SAMs, the earth became a mottled quilt of sage-green fields, gray roads, and scattered villages.

“ELI Four, Magnum SA-3 . . . Bull’s-eye zero-two-two for nine.”

A huge plume of white smoke mushroomed beneath his wing as the HARM came off. We both pulled away to the south, away from the missile’s path as it flattened out and sped toward Baghdad.

More Triple-A arced upward from the downtown area and the southern suburbs. This had to be directed at the Marine Hornets beating up on the Kut Highway and bridges over the Tigris. So much the better, as it would be a distraction to the Iraqi Air Defense units.

The target I’d marked was now directly off my right wing at twelve miles. Zippering the mike, I rolled almost onto my back and pulled to center the steering in the HUD. Popping upright, I brought the throttle back to hold 450 knots and quickly searched the ground. At my left, ten o’clock position, the downtown Triple-A had opened up again and the Tigris River was nearly fluorescent green in the weird light. A big canal ran along the Madina slums on the northern edge of the city, and I was surprised that one entire section was bright red. Iron in the water or sewage—either way, it was strange.

“ELI Three, attacking.”

With my right thumb, I called up the SMS display and checked the CBU settings one last time. The CBU-103 was a vast improvement over older cluster bombs. It could correct for winds, and in Iraq the wind was a very real variable that could easily mean the difference between an effective attack or a miss. Fins on the tail would also cant to spin the canister, and once it reached a preset rate, the canister would open and the bomblets would deploy. I confirmed all these settings, pulled the power back to hold 425 knots, and kept a slight descent as I passed 10,000 feet.

Black smoke continued to rise from the south and east, and my radar was speckled with contacts. Occasional flashes along the river caught my eye; it looked like the downtown fighting was still very heavy. Farther west, I saw the hanging gray fingers from more SAMs but hadn’t seen them launch. The RWR was saturated and useless, so my eyeballs were everything at the moment. The Strike frequency was alive with close air-support chatter, so I turned the UHF radio down.

At seven miles, I was in the sweet spot. The jet was throbbing perfectly, I was dead on-target, and everything was working. The HUD symbology for this particular weapon was called a “staple,” because that’s what it looked like. The top and bottom represented the maximum and minimum release ranges for the CBU based on my altitude, airspeed, and winds. There was a smaller staple for the optimum zone, and this is usually where we tried to release—situation permitting. I watched the little caret slowly slip down the staple and squinted through the HUD. The TD box was sitting firmly where I left it, but I was still too far away for fine-tuning.

“ELI Three . . . break right. Now!”

My throat clutched, but my hands instantly moved. Instinct and training habits took over again and I shoved the throttle forward, over-pulled to the right, pumped out chaff, and yanked the fighter sideways back toward the north. I was directly over some shitty little town on Highway 5 with a perfect four-way canal-road intersection. Rolling out directly over the road, I slammed the stick forward, felt my helmet smack the canopy, and blinked as the cockpit dust floated into my face.

“Missile in the air! Missile . . . ah . . . north Bull’s-eye ten.”