Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat (29 page)

Thirteen miles southeast . . . he must’ve defended himself over there to stay clear of downtown. Sixty-one hundred pounds of fuel. That gave us a bit more than two thousand pounds to play with before he was BINGO (out of fuel) and we’d have to return to the tanker for gas.

I pictured it in my head as if I was looking down from above. God’s-eye view, we called it. If the target was the center of a clock face, I was at six o’clock and my wingman was at four o’clock. I’d turn north toward twelve o’clock and attack. Number Two would circle up toward three o’clock and then turn in for his own attack. The time it took him to do that would keep him clear of my frag. (“Frag” was short for
fragments
—the bits of my bombs and whatever I’d hit that were on their way back down after being blown up. It was critical not to fly through the crap, since engines didn’t agree with pieces of metal passing inside them.)

“ELI Two . . . arc east at ten miles and call in from the east.”

Hopefully, this would work. With any luck, the Iraqis would be looking in the direction I’d come from and my wingman would hit them from the side. You never both attacked from the same direction if you could help it.

He zippered the mike, and then said, “Check cameras on . . . Green it up.”

I checked my switches again and made sure the camera was filming and the master arm was on, or “green.” That was another advantage to flying with another highly experienced pilot. He was thinking ahead, too. Zing was a good man. It made things easier when you didn’t have to keep track of several young, inexperienced wingmen.

My headset gave me a cricket-like chirp, and I glanced down at the right-hand display above my knees. Multi Function Displays (MFD) were an amazing bit of situational awareness. As the name implied, they could be set up to show almost anything related to the jet, the weapons, or the area you were fighting. On the right MFD, I had a screen up that presented known SAM rings, several routes of strike aircraft, and my current target. The left display was used for my air-to-air radar.

A tiny symbol appeared, accompanied by another chirp, as my wingman data-linked me his position. He’d avoided the unmarked SAM and Triple-A belt that I’d found and was angling around to attack from the east.

I looked down and saw the northeast Baghdad suburbs disappearing beneath the left wing. It was time.

“One is in from the south.”

Rolling and pulling, I brought the fighter around to the north and shoved the throttle up to full non-afterburning power. The F-16 surged forward immediately, and I checked the HUD.

9.1 miles to the target.

Attacking a target in a modern fighter is a bit like playing several musical instruments at the same time. My left hand constantly adjusted the throttle. My left fingers worked the radar, fanned the speed brakes, and managed my electronic countermeasures. I also changed radio frequencies and accessed any of the hundred different functions of the up-front control head with my left hand.

I flew with my right hand. The F-16 has a side stick mounted on the right side of the cockpit, not coming up from the floor like older fighters. My right fingers danced along the Display Management and Target Management switches on the stick while I flew. I also dropped bombs, launched missiles, and shot the cannon with my right hand. I really never needed to take my hands off the controls to do anything. It was a very well-designed cockpit. It had to be, for one pilot to keep up with five or six types of weapons, fly, navigate, and fight.

8.0 miles.

I glanced at my fuel displays and saw that they agreed with each other. Satisfied, I shoved up my visor again and peered at the solid green line running from top to bottom in my HUD. Called a “continuously computed release point,” or CCRP, it provided steering to a release point that was calculated based on the selected weapon and selected target.

7.0 miles.

My eyes flickered around the cockpit again. Master arm was on. The jamming pod was transmitting against every threat it could sense. My towed decoy was out and also, theoretically, transmitting. The altitude readout was rock-steady at 5,000 feet, and I walked the throttle back to hold 500 knots.

Leaning forward, I stared around the HUD at the target area. Khan Bani Sad airfield. Saddam Hussein’s back door.

There! The runway lay in a cleared patch of tan earth just west of the green banks of the Diyala River. Unlike on a planned mission, I had no photographs or diagrams of the target area. All that had been passed to us fifteen minutes ago were the coordinates and vague info about a helicopter pad on the northern end of the airfield. Earlier today, a B-1 bomber strike had leveled a city block in the al-Mansur neighborhood of Baghdad, trying to kill Saddam. He hadn’t been there, and, knowing the war was lost, was now trying to escape the city via the helicopters.

And that wasn’t happening, if I had anything to do with it.

Scanning up the runway, I could see the taxiway and a large concrete apron. If there was a control tower, I couldn’t find it. If there were helicopters, I couldn’t see them yet, either.

6.1 miles.

I leaned back and centered the steering again. I’d have to drop my cluster bombs on the coordinates if I couldn’t see the copters with my eyes. Thumping the console in frustration, I bent forward one more time. Dropping on coordinates might work for a bridge or building, but the chance of hitting several small helicopters was . . .

“I’ll be damned.”

Tendrils of vapor were spinning in circles like an old-fashioned water sprinkler. Rotor blades . . . stirring up the heavy, humid air. There they were. Four helos, about a hundred yards apart.

Instantly, I tapped the button on my stick that changed aiming solutions. Continuously Computed Impact Point (CCIP) relied on my eyeballs, not coordinates. The bombs would go through the visual-aiming pipper now dangling downward in my HUD, like a pendulum.

5.3 miles.

Bunting over a little, I lightly touched the stick to put the pipper below the first two helos and pulled the throttle back a notch.

My right thumb hovered above the pickle button on the stick. Out of habit, I held my breath as the little circle with the dot in it kissed the nose of the first helicopter. Mashing down smoothly and firmly, I held my thumb in place. The F-16 rocked as both canisters of CBU-103 cluster bombs kicked off.

Shoving the throttle full-forward, I banked up hard to the left then came back to the right. Twitching my tail, so to speak, to catch any Triple-A or SAMs that might be coming up at me.

But we’d caught them by surprise and, due to the pounding Baghdad had taken, coordination between Iraqi air defense sites was becoming increasingly rare. So the Iraqis that had shot at us earlier hadn’t passed any information to these bastards. Flicking my air-to-air radar into the DOGFIGHT mode that would automatically lock onto anything it saw, I came off left toward the west and looked back at the airfield.

Several things happened at once.

The helicopters on the western edge of the concrete pad simply vaporized as my cluster bombs, each containing two hundred softball-size pieces of encased high explosives, detonated.

The other helicopter was untouched. And then every piece of Triple-A on Khan Bani Sad woke up and began shooting.

“ELI One is off . . . west.”

Zing’s reply was immediate. “ELI Two’s in from the east.”

Looking back, I could see the smoke drifting south with the wind, which was good. My wingman would have a clear look at the remaining helos.

“Push it up, Two . . . the other copter may bolt outta here.”

I damn well would, if several of my buddies had just disappeared in front of me.

“ELI Two . . . thirty seconds.”

He must’ve been cheating on the ten-mile arc. Didn’t matter now.

“ELI Two . . . your target is west of the smoke . . . west of the smoke . . . next to the runway. A single Hoplite with its rotor turning.” A Hoplite was a Soviet-made Mi-2 helicopter.

“ELI Two is tally the smoke . . . looking.”

“And Two . . . I’m gonna arc west of the runway and keep the Triple-A busy.
Don’t
come off west.”

The mike zippered in reply. I pulled the F-16 up about sixty degrees and rolled sideways to keep the airfield in sight. So, with my nose jacked up, I was now skidding sideways at about 6,000 feet above the northern suburbs. The Triple-A was still firing, but I thought they were having a tough time seeing my gray jet against gray clouds. However, I wanted them to see me and not my wingman, so I’d have to help them with that.

I put out a flare. Then another.

Eyeing the HUD, I let the airspeed bleed off to 400 knots, overbanked, and pulled down toward the ground. Coming all the way over on my back, I glanced to the west, to a bend in the river that looked like a big ear, and saw my bright orange flares drifting slowly to earth. There was also an SA-6 site marked on my map, which supposedly lived there. It was a very nasty SAM nest, so my eyes were everywhere.

But nothing came up at me. Accelerating toward the ground now, I tugged the throttle back a bit and rolled left to see the airfield. My flares had definitely attracted attention, and all the gunfire was arcing west toward me. Most of it was being shot visually, but I saw several Triple-A radar symbols on my threat- warning system. I could live with that. Just no SA-6s. I could die from that.

It was a dangerous game. I was trying to get shot at by what I knew was there, while not sure what else was tracking—or waiting until I got real close before shooting. This was the essence of SAM killing—Wild Weaseling. “You’ve gotta be shitting me,” indeed.

The airspeed made the jet shudder. Raw power. Without taking my eyes off the ground, I blended the roll with a pull back up through the horizon. Straining against the Gs that pressed me into the seat, I stared at the airfield. If the last helo took off before Zing got it, then I’d kill it with a Sidewinder missile. I doubted my air-to-air radar would be able to pick up something so slow against the trucks and tanks moving around down there, so I needed to keep my eyes on them.

I was just about to data-link a position request from him, when the center of the northern taxiway blew up. It looked like someone had placed a giant shotgun a foot off the ground and pulled the trigger.

And the other Hoplite disappeared. I never saw ELI Two and neither did the Iraqis, so maybe my flare-dropping antics kept them busy. In any event, the helicopters were dead. Maybe Saddam, too, I thought.

But I doubted it. That would be too much luck for one day.

“ELI Two’s off north.”

“Nice job, Two. Arc northeast above six thousand . . . ELI One is in from the southwest.”

He zippered a reply. I slammed the throttle forward, yanked the fighter over, and dove down to 5,000 feet while he climbed up above 6,000 feet. This kept us clear of each other and gave the Iraqis headaches.

I swung around in a lazy circle toward the Tigris, the airfield now behind me and most of Baghdad before me. I did this to get some room for my next and last pass on the airfield—and so I wouldn’t be belly-up to an SA-6.

Focusing on the river bend, I could see lots of military buildings, straight lines, and revetments, but nothing that looked like a SAM site. I’d take the chance. Now, five miles directly west of the airfield, I rolled the fighter up again and attacked.

No guesswork this time. I knew exactly where to aim. There was one serviceable hangar beside the shredded runway, and I reasoned that if there were spare helos, then that’s where they’d be. One more pass with the cannon, and we’d get the fuck out of here.

Suddenly, a string of bright orange balls dropped out of the gray sky. They were going down, not coming up. Flares . . .

I grinned under my oxygen mask. It was Zing doing for me what I’d done for him and trying to attract attention. Good man.

4.1 one miles.

I could plainly see the mess we’d made of the airfield. Fires glowed beneath the oily black smoke that only came from burning machines. Up a bit higher, the smoke changed to a lighter gray and spread out, like a widening ripple on a pond. The entire oblong smear was drifting slowly south.

But there was the runway. I angled a little left, held it a few seconds, and then came back to the right. The hangar was now clear of the smoke and I pushed the throttle up. Switching to the
GUN
symbology, I lowered the nose and concentrated on aiming. Off to my left were flashes from Triple-A, which had to be from Baqubah, another airfield, about ten miles north of me. A few remaining guns on Khan Bani Sad also opened up, generally in Zing’s direction, but I knew he was far enough east to be clear.

At 3.4 miles, I cracked the throttle back a notch, noted that my decoy was transmitting, and lined up the steering cues. I put the pointing cross at the top of the HUD on the center of the runway, and the gun pipper on a road south of the field. Bunting forward, I held the picture and flew straight at the hangar. As I descended, the pipper inexorably moved up toward the long, low rectangle of the hangar.

Three thousand feet.

Almost there . . . I pressed lightly on the stick to adjust the steering and the pipper came up through a row of straggly trees just behind the hangar.

Twenty-six hundred feet. Pipper coming up . . . almost . . . twenty-four hundred feet. The pipper skipped over the trees, touched the base of the hangar doors, and I squeezed the trigger.

“BUURRRPPP.”

The jet shuddered violently as the cannon fired. Twenty-millimeter shells spat from the gun port behind my left shoulder and streamed toward the hangar. I released the trigger and began to pull up and right away from the airfield.

“BEEP . . . BEEP . . . BEEP . . .”

My eyes instantly swiveled to the radar warning display.

“6.”

Directly behind me and very, very close!

Mother of God . . .

The nose came up through the horizon and I rotated the throttle outboard and shoved it forward. Thirty-six thousand pounds of thrust kicked in with the afterburner, and the fighter leapt forward.