Most of our pilots and maintainers had no previous combat experience. That included both colonels and both squadron commanders at Gioia del Colle, who received their baptism of fire over Kosovo. I will never forget Dirt Fluhr’s radio call on 7 Apriclass="underline" “Hey, they’re shooting at us!” as we checked out a convoy of civilian and military vehicles northwest of Prizren. Our reaction that day was similar to many battlefield responses recorded in history—a warrior’s training takes over, and he acts aggressively and dispassionately to eliminate the threat immediately.
Many of our first combat experiences included shouldering the mission’s heavy responsibility and acquiring the “I’d better not blow this!” syndrome. Maintainers understood and internalized the importance of preparing the aircraft, building up and loading the weapons, installing and setting the self-protection countermeasures pod, and loading and setting the chaff and flares—all of these systems had to work. Pilots experienced similar character-building pressures when they led young wingmen in combat, squeezed the trigger near a civilian village, and decided what got shot and what didn’t in a highly politicized conflict.
AFACs knew that the responsibility to find and accurately identify enemy forces was all theirs. They also knew that incoming fighters trusted them implicitly; they expected to be talked-on to only valid targets. Likewise, the fighters knew that their obligation was to hit valid targets only. Due to the unpredictable nature of locating and identifying the enemy, strikers would normally have to wait at their contact point until the AFAC could find a target. The strikers would often consume most of their available fuel and become anxious to unload their ordnance by the time the AFAC was ready to direct their attack on a target. Attacking quickly required that the strikers have complete trust in the AFAC. Not once did any striker question the validity of any target during the dozens of attacks I directed.
Okay, Two, Big Eyes Out!
1st Lt Allen “JAKS” Duckworth
“Okay, Two, big eyes out!” came the flight lead’s simple yet meaningful order. I was flying on Capt Jim “Meegs” Meger’s wing, and we were about five seconds from crossing the Kosovo-Albania border. This would be my first-ever combat mission. I had been flying the A-10 for only 10 months; not only was this my first combat mission, but it was also my first flight without a grade sheet. Less than two weeks earlier, I finished my mission-qualification training, kissed my wife good-bye, and boarded a plane with Lt Glib Gibson, another new wingman. We were excited because we would finally join the rest of the squadron in Italy. We had heard many stories of the great time to be had in Aviano and expected to experience unbounded fun between flying peacekeeping missions over Bosnia-Herzegovina. Instead, as we quickly learned, we were going to war.
At first the A-10 was tasked for nothing more than covering CSAR alert and a little CAS alert. Since I was not a qualified Sandy, I was told that I would probably not be needed. Capt Buster Cherrey had pulled me aside prior to the first bombs falling and had given me the choice of staying in Aviano or going back to Germany, where I could get some flying, at least. I initially thought that I should go home, fly, and spend more time with Cheryl, my wife of only seven months. However, I finally decided to stay and help if I could. By the time I got back to Buster to tell him my decision, he had already decided to keep me there. Since the A-10 did fight, I was very happy with that decision.
So there I was—flying into Kosovo to find and kill a real enemy who was, most likely, trying to find and kill us. I remember thinking to myself, “What am I doing here so soon?” That thought quickly gave way to the realization that I really needed to have “big eyes.” I spent nearly all of my time scanning the ground for AAA and SAMs while we were on the other side of the fence, a term we used to describe the boundary between friendly and enemy territory. Although we did not find anything to destroy, I was excited to join the brotherhood of combat pilots, and I knew there would be more missions.
More missions came. Except for often being tired, I found myself quickly getting used to the combat-ops tempo. I flew mostly early morning sorties; I went to bed at about 1930 hours and got as much sleep as I could before my 0200 wake up. Each time I flew, I felt—and rightly so—that it was my responsibility to keep my flight lead and myself alive. However, as fatigue built up and challenged my discipline, I was tempted to stop clearing and slip into the more exciting task of looking for targets. I often had to remind myself that it was my job to be looking for threats and that the AFAC would find the targets.
On several occasions the AFAC did find targets. I was flying with Maj Lester Less on an AFAC mission and instead of looking in Kosovo, we began our search in Serbian proper—in the Kumanovo Valley. As we approached the town of Vranje from the south, Lester found an area he wanted to search more thoroughly. A few moments later he keyed the radio and excitedly half-yelled, “Okay! Okay! We’ve got military vehicles down there!” We both felt an immediate surge of adrenalin. Neither of us had ever fired weapons in combat, and Lester decided to use a Maverick missile to kill one vehicle and have it serve as a mark for me. His missile was a direct hit, allowing me to verify that the vehicles I saw were the same ones he meant for us to attack. He told me to drop two bombs on a row of four trucks in the same area. As I positioned myself to roll in for my Mk-82 delivery, I thought about how much I did not want to miss those targets. This was for real. I wanted to know that I could do it right, but even more importantly, I wanted to contribute to the effort. After completing my diving delivery and safe-escape maneuver, I looked back at the target area to see where my bombs had hit. About 15 seconds later, I got my answer as all four trucks disappeared under two huge fireballs. My first time to employ weapons in combat had been a success.
Not all of my missions were on an AFAC’s wing. In fact, my most successful mission occurred when I was flying on Capt Nate “Foghorn” Brauner’s wing in a two-ship of strikers. Our primary job was to kill the targets that our AFAC might find and assign to us in western Kosovo. However, if a striker flight lead was AFAC qualified, as Foghorn was, he was often allowed to search for targets while waiting. If he found any enemy forces, he would call the designated AFAC to take a look. On this day as we waited, Foghorn searched the area of Dakovica. He saw something and talked my eyes onto a small area on the southern edge of town, asking what I saw there. By this time in the air campaign, the Serbs had learned to hide nearly every piece of equipment they had. I could not believe it; here were two-dozen trucks and APCs parked in an open area! I told Foghorn what I saw, and he quickly responded, “Yeah, that’s what I see, too.” The AFAC, Capt JD McDonough, also had trouble believing our target description—it seemed too good to be true. He took a look and cleared us to kill it. We each dropped four Mk-82s, launched one Maverick, and fired hundreds of rounds of 30 mm—my first time to use the gun in combat. By the time we departed, nearly every vehicle was burning. On later missions, I would steal a quick glance when I flew in that area to see if the vehicles’ hulks were still there. We must have destroyed or damaged them all beyond repair because they remained there even after the air campaign ended. Although many fellow pilots teased Foghorn about inflating his BDA, I knew he was right on at least this occasion—we had British imagery to prove it.