Dan Hampton - Viper Pilot

STOIC 67 and MOXIE 71 were four F-16CJs originally tasked to be on station in Killbox 87 Alpha Sierra south of Baghdad. The old demarcation was called the Line, the 32nd Parallel, and this had just been rescinded so we could roam all the way up to Saddam’s front door. The main idea of this was to divert the Iraqi air defenses, including any MiGs, onto us, because we knew something the Iraqis had just figured out. The war was officially beginning tonight. In fact, it just had. Operation Iraqi Freedom. I realized I was breathing a little hard, and chuckled.

Flying at night was the best time to Weasel, in my opinion. Seeing the stuff that was being shot at you was the biggest advantage. Nighttime also made optical launches nearly impossible for the bad guys. Of course, defensive reactions were much more difficult, because you lacked the normal daylight visual cues. A pilot could fly through the green world of night-vision goggles, but that picture was often washed out by too much light. Oil fires, the moon, and any explosion would ruin an NVG picture for a few seconds.

There was also really no air threat at night. At least not in Iraq. Their MiGs were doing well to get off the ground during the day, and if they did fly at night, they’d be completely dependent on ground radar control, which we had targeted and decimated. Night was also better for escape and evasion. If you ejected, then at least you weren’t floating down in plain sight of every armed peasant within 50 miles. Tonight, 200 miles deep into enemy territory and trying to attract SAMs, this was a real concern.

Twelve years earlier, I’d been in these very skies, getting shot at by the same people. Economics, geopolitics, national defense, revenge… you could take your pick of any number of reasons why I was once again ordered north of the 32nd Parallel to kill Iraqis. The real reason was that both sides wanted a war.

Saddam Hussein, beset within by rebellious Kurds and increasingly disillusioned military officers, opted for the time-honored strategy of solving domestic troubles through an external threat. He figured that if he could provoke the United States into action, then other Islamic countries would fall in line and fight to throw us out. This was a predictable and naive approach. But then, Saddam was basically a street punk who’d risen to power by animal cunning and sheer ruthlessness. As with most dictators, he lacked a real grasp of the world beyond his own little arena and mistook his domestic dominance for global significance.

I’d always thought that the First Gulf War must’ve shocked Saddam. He’d been a U.S. ally during the 1980s. The Reagan White House had even removed Iraq from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list in 1982 so we could transfer dual-use technology to Baghdad. “Dual use” means it can be, and usually is, used for peaceful or military purposes. For instance, the same nuclear reactor that provides power also generates plutonium as a by-product. Plutonium is fissile and can be then utilized to produce nuclear weapons. Dual use.

Saddam Hussein had also received agricultural credits, weapons, and intelligence from America to support his war against Iran. His vicious rise to power had been generally ignored beyond the Middle East until the shah of Iran fell. The United States needed a new proxy to counter Soviet-supplied Arab nations, and Saddam wanted to be the man. He was even made an honorary citizen of Detroit in 1980—not bad for a fatherless thug from an ugly, dusty town in Iraq.

EARLY THIS VERY MORNING, THE CIA HAD BELIEVED SADDAM HUSSEIN and his two sons were spending the night at a secure complex in southeast Baghdad. Dora Farms lay just below a horseshoe-shaped bend of the Tigris River and less than ten miles east of the international airport. So, the detailed war plan that we’d all studied (OPLAN 1003V) was thrown entirely out in favor of this “hot” last-minute intelligence. The rationale was that if the Iraqi leadership was wiped out, then there would be no war.

Now we were past all the theorizing. My four-ship had been cleared north past The Line (the 32nd Parallel), and we were jabbing at the fringes of Baghdad’s air defenses. Armed with HARMs, we’d charge in by pairs at the outer ring of SAM batteries. As soon as we got spiked, we’d split apart and both run perpendicular to the SA-2s and SA-3s. By turning sideways, we made it harder for their radars to hold their locks so they had to stay on-air longer. This gave our systems a better chance of ranging them in and providing a targeting solution. It also decreased the SAM firing range considerably, as we weren’t closing the distance by flying directly at the site.

When we’d taken off four hours earlier, no one had a timeline on the Dora strike, since no final approval had been given. So we just hung around 200 miles inside Iraq, air-refueling every hour, until Washington and the Pentagon made up their minds—which they did at 7:12 P.M. Eastern Standard Time. Minutes later, a flight of F-117s, based from al-Udeid in Qatar, crossed into Iraq, awaiting clearance to drop four tons of bombs on Saddam’s head. A CIA asset inside Baghdad passed the word that the Iraqi dictator was inside his bunker, and at 5:31 A.M., Baghdad time, the southern suburbs rattled as the Dora complex suddenly disappeared. Utterly undetected, the stealth fighters headed back south, leaving the angry and bewildered Iraqis shooting at empty sky. And the Weasels.

Since then, armchair generals, strategists, and the “think-tankers,” who analyze things to death, have all gone back and forth on the Dora Farms operation. The supporters contend that a “decapitation” of the Iraqi leadership would have caused great confusion and likely prevented the war. I think they’re half-right. There would have been great confusion, but I think the Iraqis would’ve still fought. In fact, it might have even been a harder fight, with professional soldiers running the war and Saddam out of the way. Not that the outcome would have changed.

Detractors say that the attack forfeited the element of surprise and made the initial phase of the invasion more difficult. Again, half-right, in my opinion. I would suggest that our 450,000 troops and several hundred combat aircraft had somewhat clued in the Iraqi High Command that we were coming. Exactly when was problematic. And irrelevant. I couldn’t have cared less if the Iraqis knew the exact minute of our opening strike, because there wasn’t anything they could do to stop it.

In fact, after the Dora Farm strike, British and American ground forces moved north into Iraq and captured the Rumaila oil field. Splitting up then, the Americans moved northwest toward Nasiriyah, and the Brits headed northeast into Basra. More than thirty American special-ops teams, with their British and Australian counterparts, infiltrated Iraq that day.

It’s also possible that the strike generated enough confusion to disrupt whatever plans Saddam and his generals had made. These plans certainly included launching Scuds at Israel. If that had occurred, followed by Israeli retaliation, who knows what kind of a mess would’ve ensued. I really don’t think Syria and Egypt would’ve attacked Israel. At least, not with all of us deployed to the Middle East. This was Saddam’s big hope, of course, but, like so many of his other thoughts, it was nonsensical. Whatever else might have happened, the air strikes immediately following the Dora blast did knock the Iraqis off balance and put them on the defense from the beginning.

This is always a good thing to do to your enemy at the start of a fight.

“BEEP… BEEP…”

I glanced down and saw the “3” blink on my scope. But there were about six of them, and they were far enough away to not worry me.

Suddenly a string of explosions ripped through the darkness of downtown Baghdad. Maybe B-52s or more Tomahawk missiles from the Navy in the Gulf—I didn’t know, but the anti-aircraft fire became positively surreal.