In the European theater, the best expertise for finding and killing green-painted vehicles in green fields and forests resided in the A-10 unit, first at Aviano and then Gioia del Colle. Ironically, this capability had been developed during what many of us old-timers call “unrealistic” training 15 years ago in the Cold War’s European theater. We had cut our teeth on training flights in Germany long ago trying to find a single “tank in the trees.” We would complain about having the most unrealistic scenario possible. What enemy would hide his best combat power to begin with, and then, why would we ever waste the time to attack a single tank?
I Feel Lucky
Maj Phil “Goldie” Haun
I feel lucky. After getting weathered out of yesterday’s sortie, I was flying back into the KEZ. Maj Philip “Dirt” Fluhr was my wingman and a good friend. Dirt was an experienced A-10 instructor pilot who never lost his cool. That morning I was the mission commander for a 45-ship package of AFACs, strikers, command and control, and SEAD aircraft. Our objective was to destroy as many Serbian tactical vehicles (armor, artillery, and soft-skinned vehicles) as we could find. As AFACs, Dirt and I were to locate, identify, and attack these mobile targets. The entire package provided continuous coverage over Kosovo by splitting the country in two, with two sets of AFACs rotating on and off the tanker to cover our three-hour vulnerability window. On this day, A-10s had the east, code-named NBA, while the F-16CGs had the west, code-named NFL.
For AFAC operations, my A-10 was loaded with two pods of 2.75-inch Willy Pete rockets for marking, four Mk-82 500 lb airburst bombs, two 500 lb air-to-surface Maverick missiles, and over 1,000 rounds of 30 mm GAU-8 armor-piercing and highexplosive bullets. That gave me a variety of munitions not only to mark targets, but to kill them as well. With F-15Es, Canadian CF-18s, and British GR-7 Harriers available to me, I also had a lot of LGBs and CBUs at my disposal. Life was sweet.
That day’s five-hour mission included an hour’s flight to the KC-135 tankers holding over Macedonia for refueling, followed by an hour in-country over Kosovo, back to the tanker for more gas, another hour in-country, and then an hour back to Gioia del Colle—our deployed location in southeast Italy.
The morning’s mass briefing was only so-so. The weather looked workable, but our ability to employ weapons was threatened by midlevel cloud decks. On top of that, the bad weather during the last few days had prevented the accumulation of any good imagery, and we were forced to go it alone, looking for Serbian military vehicles with limited help from reconnaissance and intelligence sources.
This was becoming familiar. The Serbs had stopped using the roads during the day so I didn’t expect to find anything out in the open to shoot. I had two options available: systematically search the towns for military vehicles or comb the outlying areas for revetments. Visual reconnaissance in urban areas was extremely difficult. In the towns, the Serbs had been parking their tanks next to houses and sometimes in the houses. On a previous mission, I had been able to find Serb vehicles, but it had still taken about an hour to locate one target—and the attack had been only partially successful. My second option was to search the hills for revetments and see if any of them contained APCs, tanks, or artillery. The Serbians had hundreds of dug-in fighting positions all over the foothills that overlooked the main lines of communications (LOC) leading south and east out of Kosovo.
I was determined to give some revetments south of G-Town (Gnjilane, in eastern Kosovo) a first look. I knew where to find 20 juicy revetments that were full of APCs and artillery just two days ago. I found the revetments, called for fighters, and was given F-15Es and Belgian F-16s. Waiting for the F-15Es, I attempted to lock up and shoot a Maverick at one of the APCs, but the target contrast was too poor and I came off target dry. As I called to get an update on the fighters, I looked back at the target and saw a long trail of white smoke off my left wing. It had looked like the smoke trail off a Maverick missile, and I had been angry that my wingman had shot one on his own. I hadn’t given him permission, nor had I been able to provide cover for him. When he responded that he’d made no such attack, chills went up my spine. The smoke trail was evidence that a shoulder-fired SAM had been shot at my flight.
I didn’t have to wait long for the second SAM after I directed my wingman to roll in on the revetments where the smoke had come from. He came off dry with a hung Maverick only to see another SAM come streaking up for him. I called for flares and then held safely to the south until the strikers showed up. The F-15Es called in but were low on fuel. I talked them onto the target, but they bingoed out (reached the amount of fuel required to fly to a tanker and then on to their divert base if refueling proved unsuccessful) for gas before they could splash any of the revetments with their LGBs. Now I was running low on fuel, and before I could get the Belgian F-16s on target, I hit bingo myself. While flying formation on the tanker and waiting my turn to refuel, I plotted my revenge. Unfortunately, while I refueled, low-level clouds moved into the target area, and we had to leave all 20 revetments unmolested. It still burned me that they had been able to take two shots at us without retribution.
I was now eager to wipe the slate clean and start over. Dirt and I took off from Gioia, under the call sign of Cub 31, and headed east towards Macedonia. Coming off a tanker I turned north to see the weather over southeastern Kosovo looking good. I armed a Maverick as we returned to the revetments south of G-Town. Dirt covered me as I rolled in, but the APCs were no longer there and I came off dry—thwarted. The Serbian army had been extremely adaptive to our tactics. We never got a second chance in the same place with these guys.
I was forced to search around G-Town, looking at the hilltops for signs of other revetments. After 10 minutes I found what I was looking for: two groups of revetments three miles east of G-Town in a group of foothills. I put my binos on them and found the northern group filled with eight artillery pieces. In the southern group were two APCs. I called Moonbeam, the call sign for ABCCC, and requested a set of strikers. First up was Merc 11, a two-ship of Canadian CF-18s carrying 500 lb LGBs. I passed them coordinates and gave them an update as they came into the target area. My plan was to drop a single 500 lb Mk-82 bomb on one of the revetments to get the CF-18s’ eyes onto the target area and then let them drop their LGBs onto the artillery. Everything went as planned until I rolled in on the target. I dropped my bomb and then came off target, rolling up on my side to see where it landed. As luck would have it, the bomb was a dud. “The best laid plans and all,” I said to myself. I asked Dirt if he was in position to drop, but he wasn’t. It would take a while to build up the energy (airspeed and altitude) to roll in again, so I began a talk-on.
A talk-on simply describes the target area to the strikers and, with no more than a radio, gets their eyes on the target. It sounds like a much easier task than it is, as both the AFAC talking and the striker listening were flying war birds three to four miles above enemy terrain. At those altitudes, the revetments looked smaller than the head of a pin. Also, since the jets were flying at speeds of five to eight miles per minute and since English is not always the mother tongue of the strikers, (not so in this case but true of many others) a talk-on can easily be more difficult than just “laying down a mark.” Over the course of the war, I controlled USAF, United States Navy (USN), Canadian, British, Italian, French, Spanish, Turkish, Dutch, and Belgium strikers.