Dan Hampton - Viper Pilot

“STOIC Two is blind at eighteen K!”

Ten… eleven…

“STOIC Two come south and stay above eighteen.”

Twelve…

Up on my left wingtip now, I yanked the fighter back toward the city in a constant, five-G barrel roll and punched out a few more chaff bundles. Rolling wings level, I was pointed straight at the city and dropping through 15,000 feet. In the subdued green glow of the cockpit, my eyes flickered to the master-arm switch then to the HUD. A big cross was squarely in the middle, and I used it to point the jet and the HARM at the glowing spot on the ground where the SAM had launched. Shutting my left eye, I mashed down on the pickle button and the jet shook as the 800-pound missile shot off the rail. Instantly cranking up on one wing, I sliced back south in a six-G descending turn.

“STOIC One… Magnum, SA-3, Baghdad.”

There was so much shit down there that calling out an exact position would be a waste of time. We’d been ordered to stay ten miles outside the city, so I came around heading west to put more distance between us and the threats. If the first SAM had been able to guide, it would’ve hit me by now.

“STOIC Two is visual.” How could he not see me after that HARM launch?

“Fighting wing… stay locked.” Meaning he’d use his air-to-air radar to stay tied to me. I doubted there’d be MiGs tonight, but the sky was full of F-16s and F-15s if any Iraqi down there had a bravery attack. My four-ship was split into pairs, each operating independently. If you drew a north-south line through Baghdad, my Number Three man and his wingman had everything west of the line, and I had the east. MOXIE was also starting in a higher-altitude block, 25,000–29,000 feet, while I took 15,000–19,000. When the shit hit the fan, all of this would generally go out the window, but you had to start somewhere.

AT FIFTEEN MILES OUT, WE TURNED AND BEGAN ARCING northwest around the city. As we did, like thousands of flashbulbs going off in a dark room, the Baghdad air defenses came violently to life. Angry streams of tracers spurted up against the black sky. Rising from all directions, they flattened out against the stars before curving downward and disappearing. Bigger anti-aircraft fire, 100-mm and above, shot straight up in orange and red clusters before exploding. Yellows, greens, and even a few red tracers spat out from ten thousand guns and covered the city in a pulsating, multicolored net.

Neighborhood by neighborhood, from the outer suburbs in, went black as the power grids shut down. Searchlights waved across the sky, adding white to the Technicolor display, like something from a World War II movie. I could tell where the outskirts of Baghdad were by the SAM launches. Massive white flames briefly illuminated roads and buildings as more missiles ignited.

“Son of a bitch…” I whispered.

Yellow flashes began popping all over the city. American bombs. Ugly, mustard-colored detonations immediately changed to red and then faded—or mushroomed into bigger explosions if something flammable was hit.

Keying the Victor radio, I said, “Now we know why we had to stay ten miles outside the city.”

“STOIC One… this is Two. What the hell is that?” He sounded excited and I smiled. I’d seen this before.

“Cruise missile strike. Tomahawks.”

It was over in a few minutes and fires burned bright in dozens of places. Other missile impacts looked like dull red pimples on a black face as they slowly fizzled out. Then the Triple-A and SAMS started up again.

“STOIC One… tally missile launch… southeast Baghdad,” I added.

“MOXIE is tally.”

Even as I watched, the fiery plume got stubbier and I realized the missile was turning in our direction. Frowning, I pushed the throttle up and felt the jet accelerate.

“MOXIE One is tally one… no, two… spiked from the west.”

I looked and saw at least two more SAMs lift off from the center of the city.

“STOIC One… attacking SA-3 from the south.”

I went to full mil power and pointed directly at the launch site. Hesitating a half-second, I saw my camera was on, looked at the switch again, and checked the selected weapon. I closed my right eye this time and pickled.

A brilliant flash lit up the cockpit and left an orange smudge under my right eyelid. The jet kicked a little as the missile accelerated, and I fought the urge to stare. As the anti-radiation missile pitched up, I stared down at Baghdad, opened my eye, and pulled hard away to the right.

Even as I moved, the closest anti-aircraft fire shifted and began shooting in my general direction. They were aiming at the flash, which was precisely why you changed directions as soon as you fired. Another reason not to carry a HARM. But tonight it was all we had.

“MOXIE One… defending… uh… west. SA-3,” he added.

MOXIE One had never seen combat but was an experienced F-16 flight lead. In fact, none of the other members of this flight were combat veterans. Surprisingly, there were very few of us remaining who’d fought in either Desert Storm or Kosovo, though half our pilots had been into Iraq before, between the wars. So each four-ship was at least led by a combat veteran.

“STOIC One… Magnum SA-3… Baghdad south.”

I dumped the nose and picked up speed. Northeast-bound now, I was slowly arcing around the city. The 100-knot wind from the west actually helped, because it was trying to push me away from Baghdad, not into it. Up off the nose, there were lights on the ground from little towns, so I knew I was approaching the Tigris River.

“MOXIE One… updating three-zero-zero…”

“MOXIE Two is blind…”

I pictured it in my head. MOXIE was continuing to defend himself and was passing through northwest, or 300 degrees. His wingman had just lost sight of him—not uncommon at night, when you’re getting shot at—and was “blind.” I zippered the mike, then spoke, twisting around in the seat as I did.

“STOIC Two… Slapshot SA-3 bearing two-nine-zero…”

In the greenish-white circles of my night-vision goggles, I saw a gray shape glide across my tail and point northwest. Looking forward again quickly, I came around to the same heading, so we were running parallel to each other about three miles apart. From the corner of my eye, I saw the flash as my wingman fired another HARM at the site that was shooting at MOXIE.

“STOIC Two… Magnum SA-3!”

“Come off south,” I commanded immediately and watched him reverse his turn away from me. We ended up in trail, me behind him, heading away from the city. I crossed his tail, sent a data-link, and weaved back to the west.

“STOIC Two… come back right… one’s at right, two o’clock… three miles, low.”

I heard the tickle from his radar a few seconds later and saw the familiar Viper spike behind me. With radars, data-links, and night vision, I wasn’t too concerned about my guys getting lost. Looking back between Baghdad and the western blackness, where MOXIE was, I couldn’t see the missiles. I wasn’t optimistic that the HARMs had actually hit anything, but they might’ve forced the SAM targeting radars off the air.

“STOIC and MOXIE, push back to Alex.”

“Alex” was a pre-briefed rejoin point beyond the reach of most of Baghdad’s air defenses. I always briefed such a point in case we needed a safe place to get together. It was also used as a fallback position in the event of an aircraft emergency or radio failure. Floating comfortably between the unfriendly earth below and the stars above, I stared up through the canopy at the sky. The stars were brilliant, like millions of wet diamonds on a black quilt. Beyond number.

0535 IN THE MORNING OF MARCH 19, 2003. WE HAD JUST STARTED THE SECOND GULF WAR.