I craved more information. The F-117 had to be a Black Sheep from the 8th FS, the only F-117s deployed at Aviano at the time. I grabbed Lt Glib Gibson and sent him to the 8th to get as much information as possible. Glib quickly procured copies of the pilot’s (call sign Vega 31) route of flight and, most importantly, his ISOPREP card, which contains personal data that only the pilot knows and won’t forget even under a lot of pressure. A pilot reviews that information prior to each combat sortie. Glib, acting on his own initiative, made the important decision to drive out on the flight line to give the ISOPREP-card information to Buster right before takeoff.
Meanwhile I was performing my cat-juggling act at the squadron. I had intelligence pull maps and plot the survivor’s coordinates. I was relieved when I saw that he was within 20 miles of the Croat-Serb border and well clear of major threats. CAOC personnel were on the phone wanting to know our plan. I told them the time we wanted the helicopters to launch and that they should muster as many air-refueling tankers as possible. Gas equals time in operations such as this, and there was no way to know how long it would take us to complete this mission. The F-16CG (Block 40) and F-16CJ (Block 50) squadrons had volunteered an additional six jets apiece for the mission. Thirty minutes after first notification of the shoot down, I was giving the most important briefing of my life, informing the F-16s on their roles in what proved to be the largest CSAR since Vietnam.
The F-16CGs carried targeting pods and could drop laserguided bombs. My intention was to slow down the Serbian army’s search for Vega. I selected the intersections of major lines of communication, near where I believed the survivor to be located, as potential strike targets. Still, I was concerned about the availability of gas on the tankers and didn’t know when we would need the strikes, so I decided to keep the F-16CGs on ground alert until we needed them. From Aviano they could hit those targets within an hour. As it turned out, we never launched the F-16CGs because low-level clouds over Serbia would have made it impossible for them to see their targets and the initial survivor coordinates proved to be in error by more than 40 miles.
The F-16CJs carried the HARM and had the “Wild Weasel” defense-suppression mission. It was their job to keep the radar-guided SAMs in the belt around Belgrade from shooting us down. I wanted the F-16CJs to launch ASAP. Those six jets would join the eight F-16CJs already airborne that had been a part of the strike package when Vega 31 was shot down.
I concluded the briefing in 20 minutes. Joe Bro and I then powwowed and updated our information before we stepped to our jets. Our job was to support Sandy 30. My individual call sign and, since I was the flight lead, our flight call sign was Sandy 51; Joe Bro’s individual call sign was Sandy 52. Joe Bro and I planned to come off the tanker with a full load of fuel just as Sandy 30 flight would be reaching its bingo fuel and required departure for the tanker. We had no idea how long the rescue would take. Using this strategy, Buster and I could swap out being the on-scene commander and ensure that a Sandy flight would always be with the survivor.
Joe Bro and I stepped just as Buster and Slobee, Sandy 30, were taking off. I thought that the timing should work well. Meegs and Scrape’s two-ship, Sandy 41, would get airborne in another 30 minutes. I performed the preflight inspection on my A-10. The jet was configured with two IIR Maverick air-to-surface missiles, seven white-phosphorous (also known as Willy Pete) rockets, seven night-illumination rockets, and 1,000 30 mm rounds for the gun. We were not carrying any bombs, but Meegs and Scrape had CBU-87 cluster bombs if we needed them. I climbed into the jet, and, while performing my cockpit checks prior to takeoff, I heard Meegs relay on the victor radio that Buster had contacted the survivor and had an updated position for him. When I pulled out my map and plotted this new set of coordinates, my heart sank. Vega was south of Novisad and just west of the suburbs of Belgrade—in the heart of Serbia.
My heart was pounding a mile a minute as I took off from Aviano AB. This base in northern Italy, located at the foot of the Dolomite Mountains, provided a spectacular view at night, particularly when I put on my NVGs. The weather was clear, with a big full moon overhead. Unfortunately, the weather did not remain clear for long. Twenty miles south of the field I entered very thick clouds as I continued my climb to altitude. Looking at my wing, I could see that I was picking up some light rime ice. Though not dangerous to flight, the ice was degrading my weapons as it covered the seekers on my Mavericks and AIM-9 air-to-air missiles. I continued my climb to flight level (FL) 290 to get above the clouds and start subliming the ice off my missiles.
Magic, the call sign used by the crew of the NAEW, gave me a vector to the air-refueling track. I sent Joe Bro over to a separate frequency to contact Moonbeam for an update. Moonbeam was the ABCCC EC-130 aircraft that also served as the airborne mission coordinator during CSARs. It had responsibility for coordinating with the CAOC and Magic to ensure the timely flow of all the resources the CSAR operation needed.
Except for the icing and the survivor being in the suburbs of Belgrade, things were going pretty well. However, I was in for a shock when I keyed the mike to transmit on my UHF (uniform) radio—it was dead. I desperately tried to reset it by switching it off and on. Nothing. This was not good since the UHF was my primary radio and the survivor had only a UHF radio. In frustration I beat on the radio trying to pound it into life. Nothing.
I was over Bosnia—cruising at 300 knots in silence. I turned my radio off, raised my eyes up to the stars above, and prayed, “Lord, I’ve never prayed to you like this before, but I need your help like I’ve never needed it before. There is a man on the ground out there who needs me, and I can’t help him if this radio won’t work. Lord, I need you to fix this radio, because I can’t do it by myself.” I gently turned the radio back on and heard the angelic voice of Magic, wanting to know why I hadn’t responded to his radio calls.
Under my breath I said, “Thank you, Lord,” and keyed the mike to respond. Once again the UHF radio went dead. The A-10 carried three radios: UHF, VHF-AM, and FM. The UHF and VHF radios have good range, but the FM was good for only a few miles and useful only between jets in the same flight. I called Joe Bro on our interflight Fox Mike: “Two, my UHF is dead. I need you to talk to Magic.” I left my UHF off for a couple of minutes and then turned it back on. I could hear Joe Bro talking to Magic. At least I could monitor UHF. This was going to be painful but workable. I could hear what was being said on the radio, but I had to call Joe Bro on Fox Mike and have him relay my calls on UHF. This just proved what the Rolling Stones said: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you’ll get what you need.”
We continued to the tanker track located over the center of Bosnia. The A-10 was not designed for high-altitude flight. Loaded with munitions, we could not refuel above 20,000 feet. Fortunately the KC-135, Franc 74, was at FL 200. Descending out of FL 290, I picked up Franc going in and out of a broken cloud deck. We pulled in behind him just as he reentered the clouds. My refueling went without a hitch, but Joe Bro had trouble opening his air-refueling door. He had some icing around it and couldn’t get the handle to move. I still don’t know how he did it. We were flying at night, in the weather, and he was on the wing of that KC-135. While still flying the aircraft, Joe Bro unstrapped from his ejection seat to get better leverage on the handle and somehow forced the air-refueling door open.