STEALTH FIGHTER DOWN

Flight Journal, Feb 2005 by Haun, Phil "Goldie"

A TENSE COMBAT SEARCH AND RESCUE

AVIANO AB, ITALY, DAY 4: MARCH 27, 1999. So far, so good, if you can call flying a seven-hour mission and holding over the Adriatic behind a KC-135 in an A-10 while a NATO airborne armada wreaks havoc over Serbia "good." But flying nighttime airborne alert was a great mission compared with what most of my squadron mates were doing; they were either sitting ground alert or just watching the war go by from the sidelines. Our A-10s-among the most lethal war machines ever created-had so far only been tasked with providing Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) as "Sandys." It was our job to respond to any jet that was shot down and to orchestrate its pilot's rescue from overhead. So far, none had been shot down, so our work was slow.

THAT NIGHT, I WAS SCHEDULED TO FLY THE graveyard shift. My wingman Capt. "Joe Bro" Brosious and I were to take off at midnight. By the time we made it from the hotel to the squadron, all NATO strikes had been canceled because of bad weather. The Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) had pulled "Sandy 30," our first two-ship of A-10s, and had put Capts. John "Buster" Cherrey and John "Slobee" O'Brien on ground alert.

I turned my attention to more promising work. In two days, our squadron would lead daytime attacks on the Serbian army in Kosovo. I was in charge of planning those attacks, so I drove to the other side of the Aviano runway to Wing Intelligence. I had just begun to look through some images of Kosovo when an airman in the room yelled, "An F-117 has been shot down!" But that couldn't be right! All strikes had been called off for the night. We didn't even have Buster and Slobee airborne. I later discovered that although the NATO strikes had been canceled, the shot-down F-117 had been part of a U.S.-only strike.

Someone handed me a yellow Post-it with a scribbled set of coordinates, the pilot's name and his rank. I raced back to the squadron just as Buster and Slobee were stepping to their jets. I gave them the information and talked strategy with Buster for about 30 seconds. We decided to have the Special Ops MH-53J Pave Low helicopters launch when the second set of A-10s reached the tanker. "Sandy 41," flown by Capts. Jim "Meegs" Meger and Rick "Scrape" Johnson, was to contact the helicopters, update them on the rescue plan and escort them to the survivor.

I craved more information. I figured that the F-117 had to be a Black Sheep from the 8th Fighter Squadron because they were the only F-117s in town. I grabbed Lt. Scott "Glib" Gibson and sent him to the 8th to get as much information as he could. Glib quickly procured copies of the pilot's call sign, "Vega 31," route of flight and, most important, his ISOPREP (Isolated Personnel Report). The ISOPREP contains personal data known only to the pilot-information he won't forget even under duress. Glib got it to the flightline and into Buster's hands right before takeoff.

Meanwhile, I was performing my cat-juggling act back at the squadron. I asked Intelligence to pull maps and plot the survivor's coordinates. I was relieved when I saw he was within 20 miles of the Bosnia/Serbia border and well clear of major threats. The CAOC was on the phone and wanted to know our plan. I relayed the time we wanted the helicopters to launch and asked them to muster as many air-refueling tankers as they could. Gas equals time in operations such as this, and there was no way to know how much time we would need to complete the mission. The F-16CG (Block 40) and F-16CJ (Block 50) squadrons had each volunteered an additional six jets. Thirty minutes after our notification of the shootdown, I gave the most important briefing of my life by informing the F-16 pilots of their roles in what would be the largest CSAR since the Vietnam War.

The F-16CJs were to be our SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses) for the mission; they carried the high-speed anti-radiation missile (HARM) to prevent the radar-guided surface-to-air missile (SAM) belt around Belgrade from shooting us down. I wanted the F-16CJs to launch asap to join the eight F-16CJs already airborne in the original strike package. I decided to keep the F-16CGs with their targeting pods and laser-guided bombs on ground alert in case we needed them; from Aviano, they could hit the lines of communication within an hour.

After the briefing, Joe Bro and I powwowed before we stepped to our jets. Our call signs were "Sandy 51" and "Sandy 52," and our job was to support Sandy 30 by swapping with the on-scene command to keep a Sandy with the survivor at all times. I did the preflight inspection of my A-10. The jet was configured with two AGM-65 D model Maverick infrared 500-pound air-to-surface missiles, seven white-phosphorous (willy pete) rockets, seven night-illumination rockets, two AIM-9 air-to-air missiles and 1,150 rounds of 30mm shells for the gun. I wasn't carrying any bombs, but Meegs and Scrape had CBU-87 cluster bombs if we needed them. I climbed into the jet, and while checking my cockpit prior to takeoff, I heard Meegs relaying on the victor radio (VHF-AM) that Buster had contacted the survivor and had an updated position for him. My heart sank as I pulled out my map and plotted the new set of coordinates. Vega was south of Novisad and just west of the suburbs of Belgrade in the heart of Serbia! Donning our night-vision goggles, we took off and left the clear Italian sky behind as we climbed to altitude and into the goo of thick clouds just 20 miles out. Not until flight level 290 [29,000 feet] was I able to start sublimating the ice that now covered the seekers on my Mavericks and AIM-9s.