Dan Hampton - Viper Pilot

This particular morning, the Gamblers had three two-ships roaming about looking for trouble. We each took different killboxes and flew around trying to draw fire. When we found someone dumb enough to shoot, we’d mark the position and figure the best way to attack. This would depend on the battlefield, how many weapons we had remaining, and the terrain. Environmental factors were actually a big part of a Weasel attack. Like overflying water to avoid ground threats and using the sun’s position to interfere with enemy optical trackers. Some tactics hadn’t changed since World War I.

But urban Weaseling was tough. Too many hiding places for SAMs and mobile Triple-A, and the potential for fratricide of friendly units was disconcertingly high. To complicate things, sometimes our own grunts would shoot at us, unable to distinguish between Iraqi and U.S. aircraft. Moreover, ever since the Marines and Army had entered Baghdad, there’d been heavy street-fighting for days.

In fact, we were over Baghdad because just ten minutes earlier my two-ship had answered an emergency call for close air-support. FACING 43, an A-10 Warthog, had been hit by a shoulder-launched SAM. He had the dubious choice of landing at the newly liberated international airport or trying to limp back to a forward airstrip like Tallil—not surprisingly, he chose Tallil. But the jet couldn’t make it, and the poor guy ejected over Baghdad. Luckily for him, some 3rd Infantry Division combat engineers watched him float down and sent a squad to rescue him.

The pilot, Major Jim Ewald, quite rightly assumed everything around him was hostile until the grunts shouted, “Hey pilot dude… come on out. We’re Americans.”

It was all over by the time we got there, which is how I ended up stalking giraffes. “LAPEL… this is CHIEFTAIN.”

“Go ahead.” CHIEFTAIN controlled fighter activity for the Navy and Marines. Theoretically.

“Ah… we’ve got AROMA 31, two Hornets, inbound your sector at Angels ten and SNOOP 23 inbound at seven thousand.”

“LAPEL copies, we’ll stay west of the river.”

“Copy. KARMA is trying to reach you on Strike Prime.”

“Got it. Thanks.”

KARMA was the AWACS today, and he couldn’t talk to me because I was too low. That suited me fine. I sighed and pulled up over Muthenna airport in central Baghdad. No doubt he wanted to know my shoe size or some other vital bit of information.

In fact, he didn’t. KARMA ordered us up north about thirty miles to a suspected chemical-weapons facility. We found an entire complex guarded by tanks and armored personnel carriers. The other Gambler flights joined us, and we had a regular shooting gallery. I destroyed two tanks with CBUs and strafed a truck that made a break for the highway. He didn’t make it.

ELI 21 and TOXIC 25 both took turns bombing and strafing. Between the six of us, we accounted for seven tanks and four trucks. Storm’n Norman, who was ELI 21, also had a 20-mm round explode in his own gun barrel.

TWO DAYS LATER, ON APRIL 10, WE WERE BACK UP NORTH again, looking for mobile SAMs. Six CeeJays, divided into three flights of two, had started the day north of Baghdad hunting ROLANDs. This missile system was originally a joint Franco-German project and, with the history of love and cooperation between those two nations, you can imagine how that panned out.

However, it was fielded eventually, and Saddam bought about a hundred of the ROLAND II version back in the early 1980s. It’s an all-weather, short-range system with its own Pulse Doppler radar and optical tracker. Very quick and mounted on trucks, all-terrain vehicles, or tank chassis, the ROLAND was extremely hard to see visually or electronically. Iraqis would hide behind buildings or under overpasses to escape detection. They’d get target information from their own system, spotters, or air traffic control radars, then scoot out, lock and shoot, then scuttle back into hiding, like hermit crabs. Iraqi ROLANDs had killed a few Iranian jets, several British Tornado fighters, and at least one American A-10.

We’d put a Killer element (of the Hunter Killers) over the area at about 15,000 feet. Their job was to listen to the Hunters, develop a “picture” of the situation, and be ready to attack. The Hunters would then take turns flying low over suspected locations to draw fire. We called this “slapping the bull.” If a ROLAND, or any target, could be provoked into firing then, while the Hunters evaded the missiles, the Killers got a visual on the SAM and would swoop in to attack.

This was best done with six aircraft, called a Six-Pack, with the extra flight acting as spotters. The spotters would fly between the Hunters and the Killers and watch the ground. This was absolutely critical when hunting SA-6s, SA-8s, or ROLANDs. The spotters would also act as extra Hunters or Killers, if needed. A Six-Pack also gave us lots of flexibility with weapons and extended our time over a target by rotating flights back and forth to the tanker.

The communications involved were the simple “attacking-defending-shooting” contracts we’d used against the SA-3s on April 6. This was almost always done on a clear frequency, using plain English. Weasels don’t usually have the luxury of convoluted code words—and the delay inherent in using secure radios could be fatal. So we just talked. And it usually worked.

But not today.

“FABLE 33… this is ELI 63 on your Victor.” Storm’n had been leading the first six-pack that morning, and I assumed he wanted to pass a situation report.

The aerial refueling tracks had moved north now that southern Iraq was more or less subdued. I’d just come out of the track and was headed north toward the Alpha Sierra series of killboxes north of Baghdad.

“Go.”

“Two Dogs… found aircraft up at Balad, and we took out at least nine of them. We’re off target now, and I think you’d better come up here and see if we missed anything.”

Damn it . I frowned and shook my head in disgust. I was sure that Storm’n hadn’t left anything behind. Sighing, I replied, “Roger that… fifteen mikes.”

Nine aircraft. Targets were getting harder to find these days. I looked out at the now-familiar gray-and-black clouds that perpetually hung over Baghdad these days. Hussein and his psychopathic sons had fled the city, and no one knew where they were hiding. However, all bets were on his hometown of Tikrit, so the threats had to be cleared for the grunts to advance farther north. As a result, the Weasels were roaming up and down the 89 series killboxes along Highway 1. Balad was the biggest MiG base in Iraq, and it lay between the highway and the Tigris River about thirty miles north of the capital. We’d showed up there on April 2 and I’d destroyed seven aircraft that the Iraqi Air Force had left lying around. Apparently, Storm’n and the boys found some more.

Eighteen minutes after leaving the refueling track, I keyed the mike. “FABLE Two… Balad is right two o’clock low, twelve miles.” I then sent a data-link.

My wingman that day was a young captain who’d been brought in to work on the mission-planning team. Called “Chucky”—after the title doll in the horror movies, because he had red hair and tended to become satanic with a few drinks in him—he was a good pilot and had been a great help. As alluded to earlier, mission-planning truly sucked for guys that were used to being in the action, not watching it. But it had to be done right, so you grabbed top-notch guys from other squadrons to do it. They all volunteered, because otherwise they’d be left behind, and at least this got them close to the action. Close is usually as good as it got, but the 77th Fighter Squadron commander, Storm’n, permitted these guys to fly, too. This was partly because he was a good man, who knew the value of rewarding performance, and also because our mission-planning products improved drastically after the planners got some current experience.