Since I was not an AFAC, I coveted the sorties when I was scheduled as a striker because I could lead the mission and have more control over the outcome. On 30 April I briefed my wingman, Lt Scott “Glib” Gibson, like I briefed all the other missions. We were going to take the fight to the Serbs as Chili 11 flight. I had demonstrated my ability to find lucrative targets with some degree of success, so the AFAC assigned to my sector allowed me to perform my own reconnaissance, but I had to confirm the validity of targets with him before attacking. This day’s weather was forecasted to be “severe clear” over Kosovo. I was climbing up the A-10 ladder to enter my “office” and go kill stuff, when Maj Thomas J. “Bumpy” Feldhausen, the top-three supervisor, drove up and handed me a target photo, complete with coordinates. A “top three” designation is reserved for the squadron commander, operations officer, or another senior squadron member responsible for the execution of the day’s operations. The Brits had flown over a small compound southeast of Urosevac that morning and had taken a recce photo of some tanks parked next to a house. Once again, I couldn’t believe my luck. I could hardly wait to get across the Adriatic, hit the tanker, and get into theater to see if the tanks were indeed still there.
As I pressed into the area of responsibility (AOR), I called my AFAC and told him about the target area. Since he was busy with his own flight’s carnage and destruction, he cleared me to engage that target area. Glib and I circled the area at 15,000 feet and found the house and the tank. The tank was nestled close to the house, so the Maverick was the weapon of choice to prevent any collateral damage. I rolled and acquired the tank in the cockpit’s Maverick video display. It was white hot from sitting in the spring sun all day. I locked the target, waited for a valid weapons lock, and fired the missile. The Maverick roared off the rail like a locomotive, finding and destroying its target in a blaze of smoke and fire.
Knowing that tanks are usually not solitary creatures by nature, Glib and I searched the immediate area for more targets. Using the binos we could see tank trails running throughout the area. Once again, I noted something peculiar: a mound of hay isolated in a field, surrounded by tank tracks. Having lived in Germany for the past three years, I knew that German farmers piled their hay in stacks close to their barns. I never saw a single pile of hay just sitting in a field alone with no cattle. On my drives to work in Germany, I had watched the hay combines during the harvest season. The machines would pick up hay, “process” it, and drop the bundles out the back without stopping. This resulted in piles of hay in uniform, regularly spaced patterns, quite unlike what I was now seeing from the air.
I dropped down and took a closer look with the binos as Glib gave cover. My suspicions were again confirmed. The Serbs were trying to hide a tank under a pile of hay in the middle of the field. I clearly saw the turret sticking out from the hay. There was only one thing left to do. I rolled in with the mighty GAU-8 gun and put two 150-round bursts of 30 mm armorpiercing and high-incendiary explosive rounds into that tank. In classic Hog fashion, the gun vibrated the cockpit and rudder pedals and filled the cockpit with the sweet smell of gunpowder as the bullets found their mark. The tank went up in bright-red flames that shot 40 feet into the air, and it was still burning and cooking off unexpended rounds when we left the area 30 minutes later.
Glib and I continued our search of the target area; behind a building we found two square, green patches that just did not quite match the surrounding foliage and grass. I rolled in with my Maverick missile to get an IR image of what we were seeing. What started as a reconnaissance pass quickly became an attack as the Maverick’s imagery clearly showed two tanks concealed under a camouflage net. After I killed the first tank with a Maverick, I directed Glib to take out the second. He rolled in and took it out with a Maverick missile.
Out of gas, we reluctantly retracted our fangs and headed for home. The next day a fellow pilot on an AFAC mission saw the tank I had shot with the gun: the tank—with its turret blown off—was sitting in the field. For two days following the Brits’ discovery of this tank by the house, coalition forces found and killed numerous pieces of artillery and armor hidden in and around this target area. A picture is indeed worth a thousand kills. Once again, I learned that if something on the ground doesn’t look quite right, it’s probably a Serb hiding from the wrath of the Warthog. Thanks to my British war brethren for the great target.
Break Left! No, Your Other Left!
The first of May began like any other day in Gioia. I was scheduled to fly as Maj Kirk M. “Corn” Mays’s wingman on an AFAC mission around the town of Urosevac. Corn was not alone in his feeling of frustration in not being able to find great targets. The Serbs were getting craftier at hiding their fielded forces because the A-10s were locating and killing them daily. Secret funerals were being held in Belgrade so the Yugoslav public would not know how many of their boys were dying in Kosovo. The Serbs were digging in deeper, and we were getting better at discovering their secrets of concealment.
Corn asked me to lead the reconnaissance portion of the mission since I had succeeded in finding some lucrative targets in the past. We flew into theater and began working with the operator of a UAV who had spotted a tank and Serbian troops hidden in a tree line. I searched the area of interest with both binoculars and the Maverick seeker, but could not positively identify the target in question. Neither could I talk to the UAV operator directly because he was located too far from the AOR. Instead, I relayed my radio transmissions through the ABCCC. This process took a great deal of time and required us to stay in the target area longer than I had wished to positively identify the target. I rolled in and put three Willy Pete rockets close to the area I thought the UAV operator was talking about in hopes that the operator would see my smoke and confirm its position in relation to the target. Minutes later I got the confirmation from the UAV pilot via ABCCC that I was looking at the correct target. At this point Corn and I were rapidly approaching our bingo fuel for our next aerial refueling. Corn was coordinating a handoff of the target area with another two-ship of Hogs piloted by Capt James P. “Meegs” Meger and 1st Lt Michael A. “Scud” Curley. I was positioning myself to roll in and drop my Mk-82s on the troop concentration in the trees.
Just as I was about to roll in, I heard, “SAM launch, SAM launch” over the UHF radio. Looking east towards Pristina Airfield, I saw a volley of two SAMs followed immediately by two more. I was amazed at the amount of white, billowy smoke they produced and the rapid speed at which they flew in our direction. All four SAMs were guiding towards us. I began evasive maneuvers and called the SAM launch out on the very high frequency (VHF) radio that all four A-10s were using to work the target-area handoff. All four A-10s began a SAM defense ballet, the likes of which I have never seen and hope to never see again. The sky was full of chaff, and the world’s greatest attack pilots were maneuvering their Hogs like their lives depended on it—and they did! A SAM, the second launched, malfunctioned and detonated in spectacular fashion about 2,000 feet above the ground. From my now-inverted cockpit, I could feel the concussion of the warhead detonating in a blaze of orange fire. The other three SAMs continued on course in an attempt to thwart our attack against the troops massed in the forest below us.