Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat (32 page)

“AGNEW Two, call contact on the pond in the river bend.”

We were directly over the Tigris, heading north with Tikrit off the nose. Smoke columns from Highway 1 still rose off to our right and Tartar Lake shimmered along the western horizon.

“Contact.”

“Go one pond length west along a light-colored road to the intersection of the north-south hardball road.”

“Does the lighter road have a curve in it?”

“Affirm.”

“Contact on both.”

“One of the launch sites is at that intersection. My target. You’ll remain above five K and arc east to north. Heads-up for a second launch site along the pond and for Triple-A.”

“AGNEW Two copies.”

I let the nose drop a few degrees and focused on the Maverick video in my right MFD. Being heads-down was the one big drawback to using this missile. But I scanned, looked up and around, then scanned again.

“One is Walking the Dog.” I thumbed out a decoy, turned my RWR volume up, and stared down at the intersection.

“AGNEW Two, same.”

Juice peeled away to my right as I dropped farther toward the city. The Maverick video was amazingly clear, and I shook my head. What I wouldn’t have given for one of these things a few weeks ago. A weird-shaped ravine came off the pond to the west. Like a dancing pig with a long snout. Following the curved road, I walked the missile-seeker head along toward the intersection, and there it was!

“SA-2 site a hundred meters east of the intersection on the south side of the road.”

“AGNEW 21, KARMA . . . say again?”

Ignoring AWACS, I glanced outside again. Juice was watching as well, but I’d lived too long doing this to get assholed by the SAM I didn’t see. A long, dirty strip of concrete ran along the west side of the river south of town. Tikrit South airfield had been one of Saddam’s military fields, and I seemed to recall he had a few palaces here.

At four miles, I could plainly see two launchers with missiles up and ready to fire. There were no revetments, just some military barracks a quarter-mile south across an open field. It looked as if they’d just parked by the road and set up shop. Several transport vehicles, called transloaders, were stopped up by the road, but I couldn’t see the FANSONG radar. No matter. If we killed the missiles, the radar was useless.

“AGNEW . . . this is KARMA. Status.”

Jackass.

When I had something to say, I’d say it. “KARMA this is MUSKET. AGNEW is inbound for the attack so
stand by
!”

I chuckled. Hog drivers were all right. I zippered the mike for him. At three miles I was passing 2,000 feet, and I walked the throttle back a bit to hold 450 knots. Making tiny corrections with the stick, I aimed the jet and the missile. As the pointing cross settled on the middle launcher, I “designated” the target with my right thumb and released the switch. The Maverick locked on the target, and I moved my thumb to the pickle button. Men were sitting around the missiles smoking cigarettes, and several were squatting against the launcher. I smiled grimly. They had no idea that paradise was thirty seconds away.

“BEEP . . . BEEP . . . BEEP!”

Instantly my eyes swiveled to the RWR and the flashing “2” symbols. Right side, close! There . . . the huge, unmistakable rolling white cloud of an SA-2 launch. Southbound, parallel to my inbound flight path and climbing slowly. I took a mental snapshot of the location and snapped back to the Maverick video. The missile was still locked and the Iraqi shooters were all standing now.

“AGNEW One . . . there’s a launch in your vicinity . . . just west of the pond!” At least my wingman was watching. I kept the jet steady, watched the SAM from the corner of my left eye, and mashed the pickle button. There was an instant, hard kick as the Maverick lunged off the rail and nosed over. I immediately went to mil power, pulled hard left into the airborne SA-2, and punched the chaff button.

“AGNEW One . . . Rifle SA-2, Tikrit.”

Shoving forward, I floated off the seat and watched the SAM. My own missile was on its own, a true “fire and forget” weapon. Fortunately, the SA-2 was a relatively slow starter and not particularly maneuverable. I could never have hesitated against an SA-6 or a ROLAND.

“AGNEW . . . this is KARMA say again?”

I slapped a few more chaff bundles out, popped the jet upright directly over the Tigris, and stared back at the target area. “AGNEW One, defending . . . northeast over the river bend. Two, posit?”

“Two is due north, five miles . . . tally SAM to your south.”

“Mark the launch point.”

“Done.”

Good kid. I rolled up and flew sideways up the river, watching for Triple-A. Suddenly, there was a tremendously bright flash near the intersection. Billowing up and out, a black mushroom cloud with dirty-brown edges completely obscured the area. As I keyed the mike to speak, flaming orange bits shot from all sides of the clouds. Then a thick, white plume shot up through the middle as one of the spare missiles cooked off. It corkscrewed wildly for a half second, then plowed into the military barracks south of the site.

“Cool,” someone said on the radio.

“Good hit AGNEW.”

I smiled but didn’t take my eyes off the target area. Sure enough, another SAM lifted off from the site that I hadn’t seen the first time. This one was headed east in my general direction, so they had an operable radar down there.

Shoving in the afterburner, I punched out more chaff and cranked the fighter over at the SAM site.

“AGNEW One . . . attacking SA-2, Tikrit.”

My eyes danced around the cockpit. The decoy was still intact, my jamming pod was transmitting, and the other Maverick was up. Using the HUD, I called up the
BORESIGHT
cross and simply dove straight at the SAM. As the Tigris disappeared beneath me, I stared across the pond at the launcher. Glancing at the video, men were plainly scrambling, and I blinked. They were swiveling the missile around
by hand
on its launcher. Maybe the motor had burned out or they’d lost power. I shrugged, refined my aim, and locked the base of the launcher. It wouldn’t matter in about forty seconds; as the missile swung around toward me, I hit the pickle button again.

The right-hand Maverick leaped off the rail, and I instantly pulled up and over to the right in a kind of half-barrel roll. More chaff . . . and I knife-edged over the pond on my left wing. For a long second, I saw the whole picture, and realized why we hadn’t seen this junk before. It was all concealed in the ravine. Launchers, transloaders, trucks, and missiles. They were hiding here until they were ready to fire—then they’d scoot out, let the missiles fly, and scuttle back into the ditch. That’s why there’d been no revetments. They weren’t needed, and, in fact, the Iraqis had figured out those were dead giveaways.

“AGNEW One . . . Rifle SA-2.”

Zipping past an island in the Tigris, I headed west over the town at a thousand feet and 500 knots. As I screamed over the outskirts of Tikrit and zoomed up in a left-hand climb, my missile hit. There were several explosions and lots of tracer fire. Must’ve hit an ammo dump, too, I thought, and pulled the power back. Leveling at 6,000 feet and 425 knots, I checked my gas and gauges and sent a data-link.

“AGNEW Two . . . request.”

“Go ahead.”

“Two would like to attack from the north. Tally a transloader at the eastern edge of the ravine.”

I looked at the MFD. He was about six miles northwest of the target.

“Say gas.”

“8.2.”

“AGNEW Two . . . cleared hot.”

He zippered the mike, and I took a deep breath. A couple good hits from two successful H-model Mavericks. Kanga would get a woody over this. There were a dozen brownish crop circles about six miles west of town, so I slowed down more and began an easy orbit. There might be other sites down there, and I wanted to watch Juice’s attack. Slewing the radar off to my right, I was rewarded with a lock.

And there he was. The F-16 was over the Tigris, heading south, and I began a gentle right turn to keep him in sight. Even though he was about eight miles from me, I plainly saw the Maverick launch beneath his wing. I caught a brief glimpse of his belly as Juice racked the jet up and away across the river to the east.

“AGNEW Two . . . Rifle . . . Tikrit.”

As I orbited, I saw his missile impact. It wasn’t a huge explosion, but the amount of smoke and fire suggested he’d hit one of the big transport trucks. He must’ve seen it, too, because he almost immediately said, “AGNEW Two, request a reattack to strafe.”

“On what?”

“Two is visual . . . uh . . . tally some missiles on a truck. At the far north corner near the road. I think they’re trying to pull out.”

“Cleared.”

“AGNEW Two’s in from the northeast.”

There wasn’t time to go back out and hit it with his last Maverick. The kid had good eyes. This should be interesting. There was now a lot of smoke over the target area from our previous attacks, and I never saw him come back in. To my horror, I saw a long, burning trail of fire smear itself across the ground where my wingman was attacking.

No . . .
no
. It couldn’t be.

Swallowing, I keyed the mike and watched the flaming mess spread out. Whatever was at the front was pointed and moving very, very fast.

“AGNEW Two . . . status?”

Nothing.

Ah, shit. I brought the Viper around just east of the road and stared through the smoke. He’d hit the ground. He’d fucked up his strafe pass and hit the ground. My eyes flickered up above the smoke, looking for a parachute. Maybe he’d ejected just before impact. Maybe—

“AGNEW Two is off west. Didja see that?”

I exhaled and squeezed my eyes shut for a second. Rolling back out heading south, I replied, “Good hit.”

Shaking my head, I managed a weak grin. I’d tell him about
that
later. We loitered around for ten more minutes while I strafed my cannon empty. I destroyed another truck that was trying to escape and got the FANSONG trailer.

“MUSKET, STAB . . . AGNEW flight is off for the tanker. SA-2 site south of the city is dead. Happy hunting.”

“AGNEW from MUSKET One . . . great work guys. And thanks!”

Zooming up above the burning city, we headed south. Passing 20,000 feet, I glanced back at the black fingers of smoke that rose, twisting and fading, from the brown desert far below. My wingman seemed motionless against the clear, blue sky as he hung in perfect formation off my left wing. Rocking him into close formation, I watched as he slid from side to side checking my jet for holes. I dropped the sweaty oxygen mask, took a long pull of warm, plastic-tasting water, and gazed down at Baghdad.

A
PRIL
13, 2003,
WAS MY LAST COMBAT MISSION OF THIS WAR.
In fact, my last combat mission as a military officer and fighter pilot. Baghdad had fallen on April 9 and, though I didn’t know it at the time, all major military operations would end tomorrow, on April 14.

During this war, 20,228 fighter sorties had been flown to employ 19,000 guided munitions along with 9,200 dumb bombs and CBUs. In a big, raised middle finger to those who’d believed strafing was obsolete (space clowns and UAV-lovers), we used 328,498 rounds of 20- and 30-millimeter ammunition. Flights over Iraq consumed an astonishing 612,891,043 pounds (90,131,035 gallons) of jet fuel. Sadly, some of this was used to drop 31,800,000 silly propaganda leaflets with more than eighty different messages. So many leaflets, in fact, that you could make a paper highway from Texas to Alaska out of them. (I remember a leaflet from the first Gulf War that said “
SURRENDER
AND
DIE
” instead of “
SURRENDER
OR
DIE
.” A PsyOps weenie actually wanted us to fly back to Baghdad to drop the corrected version.) Someone thought there was more value added to this than, say, Weasels getting H-model Mavericks. Makes you wonder.

More than sixteen hundred SAMs were launched during the Iraq War. Yet only one fixed-wing fighter and six helicopters were brought down. Just twelve years earlier, during Desert Storm air operations, we’d lost thirty-nine fixed-wing fighters and five helicopters. Better aircraft, training, and countermeasures all contributed to this success, but I believe there are other reasons: Iraqi confusion and tactics aside, Desert Storm tended to focus on jamming and suppression. Both are necessary but are basically defensive in nature.

By the Iraq War, the offensive, hard-kill mentality of some of the Wild Weasel squadrons made the difference. We went after critical command-and-control nodes, radars, and SAM sites with hard ordnance right from the beginning. HARMs were used to maybe make the Iraqis duck a bit, but the threats were killed with precision munitions and cluster bombs—not suppressed. We were allowed to do this by officers in leadership positions who didn’t presume to dictate weapons and tactics to us. All they wanted were results, and how we got them was up to us.

The 77th Fighter Squadron alone
killed
more than fifty SAMs and vital air-defense components with hard bombs, CBUs, Mavericks, and the cannon. These included SA-2s, SA-3s, SA-6s, and ROLANDs. Twenty-eight radars, thirty-seven Triple-A pits, and eight surface-to-surface missiles were also knocked off. Of course, we did other things, too. Forty-six aircraft and helicopters were destroyed on the ground along with sixty-five tanks, trucks, and armored personnel-carriers. So, if we’d succumbed to the HARM suppression-only mind-set advocated by some, how many friendly aircraft might have been lost? Amazingly, there were several CeeJay units that hadn’t embraced the concept of destruction of enemy air defense. They largely spent their war thirty miles from the action, at 30,000 feet, and brought their HARM missiles home each day.

No, thanks.

A
MONTH LATER, THE
G
AMBLERS LEFT
P
RINCE
S
ULTAN
and never returned. On the way home, we stopped over for a night at Lajes Air Base in the Azores Islands off the Portuguese coast. The Air Force support folks and their families gave us a real American cookout—hamburgers, hot dogs, and margaritas. It was heaven. We ate and drank, thrilled to be alive and happy to be going all the way home the next day.