Amn Joe Ulshafer was busy annotating the aircraft forms to document the maintenance work that had been done on the jet since it had returned from the first go that morning. Joe was a young first-term airman on his first assignment with the 81st FS. In recent times, shooting wars have been scarce (thankfully), so I couldn’t help thinking that the experience he was gaining from this war would serve him well for the rest of his time in the Air Force. He looked up as I came around the jet.
Joe flashed me a sharp salute and a smile. Salutes out here were a lot sharper than back home—probably a reflection of the excitement. He asked if I was ready to give the Serbs a dose of their own medicine. “They don’t stand a chance,” I replied. Continuing, I asked, “How did the jet come down?”
We settled into some friendly banter about the jet. I always thought it was good to know how the jet, which I was getting ready to strap on, had been flying recently so I would know what to look for. I didn’t expect any problems. We were both part of the same team, and it was important to let the crew chiefs know what we were doing. I showed Joe on my map where we were going to start off—north of Pristina near Podujevo—and that we’d be looking for some tanks and APCs at the location where they had been located by imagery. They knew they were part of the team and liked seeing us take off with bombs and come home clean; he now had an idea of what we were going after, and that made a big difference.
The mission that I briefed to Joe wasn’t going to be as easy as it appears in Hollywood movies. Imagery was suspect; our needs were not high on the CAOC’s targeting and intelligence-support priority list. Satellite reconnaissance was well suited to support interdiction strikes against fixed targets, but most of our targets were mobile forces. Those forces would be photographed at 1400 on the day prior, and the information was accurate at the time it was taken. However, unlike fixed targets, they had 18 hours to move before we would be in the predicted area. Out of necessity, Lt Stephen “Al” Smith, our intelligence officer, and his enlisted troops did their best to get us the most current pictures from all sources. Al and the others spent all night sifting through image databases, which were sorted only by basic encyclopedia (BE) numbers that had no correlation to the target type, date of the imagery, or its location. It was a laborious and dull task, repeated every night to find the right combination of target type, location, and date of image. Without the hard work of Al and his team, we would have had far less success at finding targets. Their pictures told us where the enemy forces had been and when they had been there; they also provided us with a starting point for our searches. Although our confidence in the target’s current location was not as good as we would have liked, it was far better than nothing. With people like Al and Joe on our team, we were optimistic.
Ground ops were pretty standard. It had been a beautiful day so far and a stark contrast to the previous foggy mornings. The light from a brilliant sun, filtered by high cirrus clouds, fell onto red poppy fields dancing in a gentle, wind-driven rhythm just outside the base perimeter. Looking at that beauty, I found it surreal to imagine that we would launch in 40 minutes—take off to wage war and wreak havoc and destruction on the Serb army.
As I led Capt Rip Woodard airborne, I felt another surge of excitement.
This was it! I was in the lead of Taco flight, making the decisions. I was the one who would do the target search, ID the target, and dictate the tactics. I had been excited on my first six sorties, but this was different. This time I was responsible for the flight, which was both exhilarating and sobering. It reminded me of the first time, after I had received my driver’s license, that my parents had let me take the car out by myself on the interstate. I had approached that with a nervous excitement—excited about the new opportunity and praying, “Please God, don’t let me screw this up.” This was no different.
Rip joined on me and we flew east over the Adriatic, performed our systems checks, and looked over each other’s jets. We continued east across Albania and into southern Macedonia, where we rendezvoused with our tanker—a KC-135 that would refuel most of the A-10s going into the KEZ during our vul period. The actual air refueling was a relatively simple task. Because of the distances, almost every aircraft required aerial refueling to complete its mission. That demand made the management of aircraft schedules, flow patterns, and gas offloads critical. I had witnessed firsthand the CAOC’s complex planning process which ensured that it all flowed smoothly during execution. Their planners developed tanker, SEAD, and ABCCC schedules, put together airspace-control plans, and integrated the resources and the requirements of the 700-plus aircraft armada. Even the A-10, which consumed relatively little fuel, still required refueling if it was to stay airborne in the target area from three to six hours at a time. Tankers seemed to be everywhere, but unless they were well managed, there would never be enough gas when and where it was needed. So while hitting the tanker (our term for the actual refueling) was a relatively simple task, it required a great deal of coordination and effort to make it work.
We flowed on and off the tanker during our planned refueling time and headed for the eastern side of Kosovo. The AFAC today was one of the augmenting Pope pilots—Capt Larry Card, a young 74th FS weapons officer. I was glad to be working with Larry, whom I had known since we were in the same squadron at the academy. He had been a sharp, introspective cadet then, and he had since become an excellent fighter pilot. I checked in with him just prior to crossing the Kosovo border. He was busy FACing a pair of British Harriers and sent us north to check on sites near Podujevo. I put Rip in a wedge formation position—about 45 degrees back on the left side—where he could comfortably maneuver and clear for threats as we flew north.
Over the radio we could hear Larry working the flight of Harriers on his target. It sounded like they were missing short. The Harriers were normally great to work because they had actually been trained for CAS, which meant they were proficient at looking outside the cockpit to visually acquire targets. Even though we weren’t flying CAS missions in Kosovo, what we were doing required many of the same strengths and skills. We saw a big difference between pilots who trained to acquire targets visually and those who trained to bomb coordinates. It was much easier to talk the first group onto targets. The Harrier pilots could be expected to find the target visually, but their BLU-755s hit short almost every time because of a software glitch in their aiming and delivery system. I couldn’t help thinking how frustrating that was for both the Harrier pilots and the AFAC as I continued leading my flight north.
In the midst of the communication between Larry and his Harriers, we heard a standard call from NAEW: “Aircraft, Derringer 060/80, say call sign.” Most of these calls reflected the dynamic environment and the difficulty NAEW had in keeping track of many maneuvering aircraft. NAEW would occasionally lose track of someone, locate a return, and then query him or her to make sure the controller had the correct call signs. “Derringer” was a geographical point from which to describe a radial direction and distance in nautical miles. Derringer was colocated with Slatina, the Pristina airport. The NAEW had asked the aircraft located on the 060 radial (east, northeast) from Slatina at a distance of 80 NM to identify itself. We were about 10 minutes north of the border when I heard an NAEW transmission on strike frequency that I had not yet heard during OAF: “Outlaw, spades, Derringer 070 for 75, southwest bound!”
What did those brevity terms mean? It had been a little while since I had reviewed all the terms in our manuals. Nevertheless, I knew “outlaw” meant that an aircraft met the bad-guy point-of-origin criteria, and “spades” said that it wasn’t squawking the right IFF transponder codes—that wasn’t good. Usually I would hear those calls right before an unknown aircraft was declared a bandit (enemy aircraft), and that wasn’t good either. I quickly pulled out my 1:250 chart to plot the position. The plot came out right near the Bulgarian border, inside Serbia. And it was heading this way.