Jones waited. And waited. Every minute dragged. Unknown to him or the Special Ops rescue crew, the Warthog pilot's coded coordinates had been confused; the Pave Lows were heading twenty miles south of him. Meanwhile, a fresh pair of A-10As came north to help. Jones made contact, then directed them toward the water tank and held down his mike button so the Hog "drivers" (as the pilots call themselves) could use their radios as direction-finders.
At about the time Jones heard the throaty hush of the planes' twin turbofans, he heard a closer and more ominous noise. A pair of Iraqi troop trucks were approaching in the distance, kicking dust behind them. The Iraqis had homed in on his radio signal.
Trask clicked his mike switch to alert the A-10s.
"Roger, we got 'em," said the Warthog driver. "We're in."
A few seconds later, the attack planes rolled onto the trucks. A thick stream of 30mm uranium-depleted shells smashed the lead truck to bits. Its companion turned and fled.
"Okay, where's he at?" Trask asked the A-10s from the Pave Low.
"He's right next to the truck."
By now, the truck was simply a big black hole, smoking in the desert. Trask whipped the Pave Low down between the hulk and the pilot. Within seconds, the PJs were helping one very happy Navy lieutenant aboard for the ride home.
When Lieutenant Jones had pulled the handle, he'd been flying somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 feet; the ejection and landing had bruised him some and left him sore. But otherwise he was uninjured — and went on to fly thirty more missions in the war. His backseater, unfortunately, had been captured. He would spend the rest of the war as a POW.
Special Operations forces continued to fly combat search-and-rescue missions for the duration of the conflict.
There were other successes: A Navy SH-60B launched from the USS Nicholas picked up an Air Force F-16 pilot in Gulf waters two days after the Slate 46 incident; two SEALs made the actual rescue, jumping into the water to help the pilot.
After the start of the ground war, the pilot of an F-16 shot down in southern Iraq was picked up by aircraft from the Army special aviation unit. The MH-60 helicopters that made the rescue were equipped with weapons and an avionics set roughly comparable to those in the larger MH-53J.
All in all, a total of 238 rescue sorties were flown by Special Operations aircraft, accounting for about a third of their overall mission flights. By comparison, the Air Force flew ninety-six rescue sorties; the Navy and Marines, a total of four.
The allied air forces lost thirty-eight aircraft to hostile action over Iraq and Kuwait. While that is a staggeringly low percentage of casualties compared to the total number of combat sorties—64,990 by all allies — the majority of the downed airmen who survived their crashes were captured by the Iraqis. This was caused in great part because they had bailed out into hostile territory many miles from American forces.
After the war, emergency equipment and procedures were upgraded. A radio with better range and security was introduced (which, ironically, ground SOF units already carried). Efforts were also made to improve procedures and information-sharing between the services, so locating a downed pilot wouldn't again depend on a lucky frequency assignment.
Special Operations aircraft performed a variety of missions beyond combat rescue. Within a few days of their arrival in the Gulf, they were supporting SEAL reconnaissance teams, and Air Force AC-130 Special Operations "Spectre" gunships were to play a critical role when ground action began — as they had in Panama.
Two slightly different versions operated in the Gulf during the war, the AC-130A and the AC-130H. While most of the basic armament and equipment sets in the planes are similar, the H models feature more-powerful engines — and a howitzer. The gunships make terrific high ground for firing artillery, but they are vulnerable. Typical operations call for night-fighting over extremely hostile territory.
Depending on the model, Spectre weapons include a 105mm howitzer, two 40mm cannons, and miniguns. The weapons are controlled by an array of radar and targeting systems, and are very accurate.
AC-130Hs from the Air Force Special Operations Squadron arrived at King Fahd International Airport on September 8, 1990.
Some months later, on January 29, after the start of the air phase of the war, the gunships were called out to help Marines repel a raid by Traqi forces on Khafji, a small desert village in northeastern Saudi Arabia. The raid, conducted by several mechanized brigades (its aims were unclear — possibly to provoke Schwarzkopf into starting ground action before he was ready), caught the Americans off guard. As the small Marine unit in the village dropped back to a more defensible position, two six-man teams found themselves isolated on rooftops amid a sudden flood of enemy troops. The Marines stayed in the city, quietly directing artillery and air strikes via radio.
Next day and during the following night, more Iraqis streamed forward to reinforce the town.
U.S. Marine and Saudi units struck back. Three AC-130Hs provided firepower in what turned out to be one of the hottest engagements of the war. The Spectres blasted Iraqi positions and tank columns in and around Khafji. As daylight on January 31 approached, the planes were ordered to return home. The black wings and fuselages of the slow and relatively low-flying planes made them easy targets against the brightening sky.
One of the gunships—69-6567, called Spirit 03—was backing a Marine unit that had come under fire from an Iraqi missile battery when the call came to go home.
They stayed on station to help the Marines.
Another order to break off came in.
"Roger, roger," acknowledged the copilot.
A few seconds later, an Iraqi shoulder-launched SAM slammed into the wing and sheared it off. The Spectre spiraled into the Gulf; all fourteen crew members died.
This was the worst SOF loss of the war.
A SPECTRE'S firepower is awesome, but that pales in comparison with the weapon a C-130 deployed a few days after the Khafji battle.
The plane was an MC-130E Combat Talon, designed for low-level missions behind enemy lines. Typically, Combat Talons insert and supply Special Forces troops with long-range clandestine parachute drops. Some are also equipped with Fulton STAR recovery systems and can literally snag commandos from the ground in areas too dangerous for helicopter pickups.
The MC-130E's unique ability to carry a large cargo and deliver it at a very specific time and place also allows the propeller-driven craft to drop skid-mounted BLU-82s, or "Daisy Cutters" (because they work like very destructive lawn mowers). Consisting of 15,000 pounds of high explosive, the "Blues" are about the size of a Honda Civic hatchback. A long sticklike fuse in the squat nose triggers the explosion before the bomb buries itself in the ground, maximizing the explosion's force.
BLU-82s were used during the Vietnam War to flatten jungle areas for use as helicopter landing zones.
After that war wound down, the BLU-82s were largely forgotten until Major General Stiner — in his days as commander of the JSOTF — remembered his experience with the bomb in Vietnam as he was searching for a weapon that might be used effectively against terrorist-training camps. What he needed, he realized, were BLU-82s. But when he went looking for any that still remained, he found only four BLU-82 shells in a bunker at Tuello Army Depot. He also managed to locate a couple of Vietnam-era Air Force sergeants who still knew how to mix the slurry (explosive). None of his air crews had ever dropped one.