STEALTH FIGHTER DOWN

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

I was in no way interested in being a part of a friendly fire incident, so I turned to put the fighter on the beam and kept turning to keep him in sight as he converged within a mile. A bright flash burst from his jet and, thinking the worst, we immediately put out chaff and flares as fast as we could. I was relieved when I realized that the fighter had only dispensed a flare and had not shot a missile. The F-16CG pulled alongside to identify us. He then climbed and departed to the west, leaving Joe Bro and me to clean out our flight suits and refocus on the task at hand.

When Sandy 30 had refueled, I passed the on-scene command back to him and headed for my second refueling of the night. We found our tanker, Franc 74, holding in a sucker hole for us. Meanwhile, Buster had coordinated with everyone for the pickup, and Meegs had Moccasin in position. This time, it was the survivor who was not ready to execute the mission. Vega 31 had not come back up on the radio; he was nearly 10 minutes late now. Moonbeam relayed a message from intelligence sources that the Serbs were claiming to have picked him up. With the roller coaster of emotions we had been riding all night, this was by far the lowest point. For what felt like an eternity, we sat in silence and listened. Every minute or so, Buster called for Vega, with no response.

This just couldn't happen. We had worked too hard to lose him now. For more than six months, we had trained over Bosnia to develop and refine our skills at combat search and rescue in preparation for this moment. No way would we leave Vega at the mercy of the Serbs.

Buster made another call: "Vega three-one; Sandy three-zero."

"Sandy three-zero, this is Vega three-one." The roller coaster was on its way back up.

Buster's next concern was that Vega 31 had really been captured and that the Serbs were luring us into an ambush. Buster asked Vega another question from the ISOPREP, and there was a pause.

"If you do not authenticate that, we'll have to wait a little while." If Vega came back with the wrong answer, we would know that the Serbs had him. Vega answered the question correctly.

"All players, all players: execute, execute, execute." This was the call we had been waiting for all night. It was time to move the helos forward and get on with the pickup.

"Sandy five-one and five-two, I want you to come in and anchor 10 miles southwest of objective and provide mutual support until Sandy three-zero, three-one bingo."

"Copy, en route; 10 miles southwest objective now." Buster wanted us to move forward and hold southwest of Vega. They were flying on fumes and about to depart.

"Five-one; four-one and four-two are in trail on you." Meegs and Scrape had joined in behind us, and they followed us into Serbia.

"Sandy, Moccasin six-zero on PLS bravo." The helos were at last up on frequency.

"Magic, three-zero is going to have to RTB for gas. Moccasin, Sandy five-one now OSC." In reality, Buster was so low on fuel that he had to find a tanker or divert to Tuzla, Bosnia. He also informed Moccasin that I was the on-scene commander.