We were not able to provide such basic needs as bathrooms, bottled water, and meals for the first three days—even so, I heard absolutely no complaints. For the most part, everyone was too busy and tired to worry about it, and I think just knowing the problem was being worked was enough for the majority. Everyone’s dedication was incredible. We had to order some people to leave work because we knew they had been there way over their 12-hour limit. Attitude was everything. I cannot say enough about the effort put forth by the maintainers—those on the flight line and those in support roles. Our liquid oxygen for the first day’s flying was courtesy of an innovative liquid-fuels specialist. Our equipment to fill the bottles was still en route. The specialist knew that Brindisi AB was just an hour or so down the road and he took all of our aircraft bottles and brought them back full. Had he not done so, our first flights on Monday would have not made it off the ground. It was this sort of dedication and creativity that kept us in the fight until our cargo caught up with us a few days later.
Once our equipment was in place, we began to settle into a routine. Our hotel was a 75-minute drive away. Adding two-and-a-half hours of driving to a 12-hour shift wasn’t the route we wanted to take. Once we resolved some initial scheduling issues and adjusted the shuttle schedule, the bus system worked great. It was definitely the way to go.
A typical day at Gioia was pretty fast paced. At the height of the air campaign, we were launching 16 aircraft on the first go and usually 14 on the afternoon go. We used a UHF/VHF-equipped Humvee as the production superintendent’s vehicle. This enabled us to talk to the pilots and “ops desk” to get aircraft status on the inbound so we could begin to line up the afternoon sorties and have technicians standing by to begin to work the inflight write-ups. We definitely had a full plate turning the aircraft from the first go to the second go.
Our configuration was typically four Mk-82 low-drag bombs, two AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missiles, 30 mm combat mix ammunition, 14 2.75-inch rockets, two AIM-9 air-to-air missiles, chaff/flare, Pave Penny pod, and an ALQ-131 electronic countermeasures (ECM) pod. Obviously, our crew chiefs, weapons loaders, and system specialists were all busy. They worked in-flight write-ups, conducted aircraft postflight inspections, loaded munitions, and refueled—all of this had to come together in about two hours and 30 minutes. Our production superintendents orchestrated the activity on the line, and the troops hustled each and every day of the campaign to make it happen. Both the day and night crews did a remarkable job of keeping track of the frag, necessary configurations, and CSAR alert. We scrambled our CSAR-alert aircraft on the nights the F-117 and F-16 were shot down, and again on several other occasions. We took our CSAR-alert commitment very seriously, knowing that lives depended on it.
We also had to watch each of our aircraft’s phase-inspection timeline. Each A-10 must undergo a phase inspection after 100 hours of flying time to discover and repair problems that might have been missed during normal preflight and postflight inspections. We flew about 75 total hours and accomplished one 100-hour phase inspection at Spangdahlem each day at the beginning of the conflict. As the demand for airborne CSAR alert, AFAC, and A-10 strike missions grew, we were soon flying over 100 hours each day. We knew this would quickly become a problem because we were “earning back” only 100 hours per day with our current flow of one aircraft through phase. We quickly elevated the options: we needed to cut back down to below 100 hours a day, perform contingency phase inspections, or bring in enough personnel and equipment from the combat air forces (CAF) to stand up a second A-10 phase dock at Spangdahlem. We chose the third option. Those who stayed behind at Spangdahlem to perform A-10 phase inspections were just as valuable to the effort as those of us who deployed. Without the hard work and long duty hours performing these vital inspections on our A-10s, we would not have been able to keep up with our NATO taskings. Again, it was truly a total team effort, both at home station and Gioia del Colle.
Daily sustainability issues were initially challenging. We had no Air Force infrastructure to support us. Our spares packages were sparse, and any parts coming into country via premium transportation (Federal Express and DHL Worldwide Express) were subject to Italian customs inspectors. This worked well Monday through Friday, but we had no customs support over the weekend or on Italian holidays. This became frustrating when a part hit the airport on a Friday afternoon and we knew we wouldn’t see it before Monday afternoon when the delivery would be made. This was the single biggest issue that we were not able to resolve during the conflict. We learned to live with it but didn’t like it because it was often the one part we needed to return a jet to mission-capable status. We did get the luxury of a twice-weekly rotator flight back to Ramstein for ECM pod and precision measuring equipment laboratory (PMEL) support. We also used this flight to get parts and other needed items from home station, especially those short-notice items.
Looking back, I can honestly say that the only reason we were able to maintain our hectic pace was the dedicated team effort by all involved. Although it was a “pilot’s war,” I was proud to witness the support of the Air Force ground team—flight-line backshop, munitions maintenance, supply, transportation, personnel, administrative, finance, contracting, and the list goes on. They were all there to provide support—and they did it well. Their behind-the-scenes efforts were key ingredients in the success of the A-10s supporting KEZ operations from Gioia.
Getting There from Here
Capt Kevin “Boo” Bullard
My memory of how the 74th FS got involved in OAF is a little hazy, but I think it all started with a planned deployment for the 81st FS to Kuwait. The boys from Spangdahlem were supposed to go down to Al Jaber AB, Kuwait, for a standard desert rotation to participate in Operation Southern Watch, also known as OSW. They were scheduled to arrive in Kuwait around late March or early April 1999, but there was a glitch in the plan.
By early March 1999, the 81st FS had been tasked to be on call for the situation that was brewing between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and NATO over the disputed region of Kosovo. There was no way the squadron could be on call and still meet its OSW tasking, so reinforcements had to be brought in. This is the point in time when the 74th got involved.
I guess I’ve heard about a million reasons why the 74th FS was chosen to participate in helping the Spang guys with their predicament, but I think it all had to do with geographical location and timing. Geographically, the A-10s at Pope were the closest to Germany, and it just made sense to me that we should be going. The 75th FS, our sister squadron at Pope, had just participated in an operational readiness inspection (ORI) for our wing at Moody AFB and had been on a pretty aggressive deployment schedule prior to the ORI. I don’t think our local leadership at Pope was willing to send the 75th guys after all their recent time on the road. That left us, the 74th Flying Tigers, to foot the bill.
The plan, at least the way it was briefed to us, was for the 74th FS to fly six or eight jets over to Germany to be the “on call” guys for NATO. At this time, NATO was fairly sure that Milosevic would capitulate and comply with all its demands, just like he had done in the past when threatened with military intervention. After we arrived in Germany, the 81st would then move out to the desert for a vacation in exotic Southwest Asia. The 81st could meet its OSW obligation and we could provide immediate help for NATO if needed. This sounded like a logical solution. The hard part would be to decide who would stay home and who would go to Germany.