As the Dark Eagles moved unseen and unheard above, CNN reporters Bernard Shaw and Peter Arnett were discussing what had happened. As they spoke, Capt. Paul Dolson placed the cross hairs of the targeting system on the fourteen-story Al-Karak telephone and telegraph center. The plane's bomb door opened and a GBU-27 LGB fell free. Millions of people gathered around television sets heard this exchange:
Shaw: "We have not heard any jet planes yet, Peter."
Arnett: "Now the sirens are sounding for the first time. The Iraqis have informed us — [static]."[513]
At that instant, the GBU-27 punched through the Al-Karak's roof and destroyed the communications equipment, cutting off CNN. Within five minutes of the 3:00 A.M. H hour, Marcel Kerdavid had destroyed the Al-Kark communications tower, Capt. Mark Lindstrom dropped an LGB through a roof vent on the new Iraqi air force headquarters, while Ralph Getchell struck the National Air Defense Operations Center, and Lee Gustin bombed Saddam Hussein's lakeside palace-command center. As the first bombs exploded, the F-117 pilots saw antiaircraft fire rise above the city.
Major Jerry Leatherman, following one minute behind Dolson, dropped his two GBU-10 LGBs through the hole blasted by the first bomb. Unlike the GBU-27, which was designed for attacking hard targets, the GBU-10 had a thin casing and a greater blast effect. The two bombs gutted the building. As his plane cleared the area, he looked back and beheld the wall of fire he and the other pilots had flown through. He said later, "There were greens, reds, some yellows, and you could see little white flashes all over — the airbursts… [The SAMs] move[d] around as they were trying to guide on something, whereas the tracers would just move in a straight line. The 23mm… looked like pinwheels the way the Iraqis were using them… it looked like they'd just start firing them and spin 'em around."
The F-117As sped away from Baghdad. Some, with both bombs expended, headed home. Others headed for their second target; Kerdavid bombed the deep National Command alternate bunker at the North Taji military complex. Its thirty-feet-thick roof proved too much even for a GBU-27, and it remained intact. More successful were attacks on a communications facility at Ar-Ramadi, the SOCs at Taji and Tallil, and an IOC at Salman Pak.[514]
Between 3:06 and 3:11 A.M., as the F-117As left Baghdad, Tomahawk cruise missiles began striking leadership targets, such as Ba'th party headquarters, the presidential palace, electrical power generation stations, and chemical facilities in and around Baghdad. The Tomahawks directed against the electrical plants shorted out power lines, and all over Baghdad, power went out, not to be restored for the rest of the war.
At 3:30 A.M., the disrupted air-defense network began picking up a huge attack force heading directly toward Baghdad. Comments by air force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael J. Dugan in September 1990 had indicated there would be a raid on Baghdad by nonstealthy aircraft between F-117A strikes.
General Dugan was fired for the comments, but the Iraqis still expected such an attack. As the planes neared, the radars came on and the SAMs were prepared to fire.
But they were not airplanes; they were decoy drones. And behind them were navy A-7s and F/A-18s and air force F-4Gs with HARM (high-speed antiradiation) missiles. The HARMs both destroyed radar sites and intimidated Iraqi air defense radar operators to stay off the air.[515] Even as the Iraqis were attempting to deal with this, the second F-117A wave was closing on Baghdad. It was led by Colonel Whitley. The flight toward Baghdad was a "sobering experience." He later recalled, "At 100 miles plus, you could look out there following the horizon of Baghdad, and it looked like a charcoal grill on the 4th of July." The glow was the continuous firing of nearly four thousand antiaircraft guns.[516]
At 4:00 A.M., the second F-117A wave restruck the air force headquarters and the National Air Defense Operations Center. Other targets hit were the IOCs at Al-Taqaddum Air Base and Ar-Rutba as well as leadership and communications facilities from the Jordan border to Kuwait.[517] In all, the two waves had dropped thirty-three bombs and scored twenty-three hits.
The third wave followed shortly before dawn. Their targets were chemical and biological weapons storage bunkers. The late hour was selected because sunlight would reduce the danger from Anthrax spores. As they approached their targets, a weather front moved into central Iraq, with thin clouds at 5,000 feet. The F-117A's bombing system required a clear view of the target or the LGB would lose its lock. Of the sixteen bombs dropped, only five were hits. These targets were considered less important, but it was a preview of the bad weather that would plague the bombing campaign in the weeks ahead.[518]
As the F-117 pilots turned for home, their mood was somber. They knew they had won a victory, but they were sure the cost had been high. Captain Rob Donaldson said later, "I came out of there on that first night and went 'Whew… I survived that one!' But on the way back, I really thought that we had lost some guys due to the heavy volume of bullets and missiles that were thrown up in the air."[519]
At Tonopah East, the ground crews awaited the planes' return. The first wave landed at night, while the second and third came back after sunrise.
One by one, the returning planes were counted.
Every one returned.
As the tapes of the strikes were reviewed, it became clear that something remarkable had occurred. In World War II, the RAF had sent huge armadas of bombers on night raids against Germany. Despite years of bombing and the loss of thousands of aircraft and crews, the RAF was never able to knock Germany out of the war, or even win air superiority.
Now, a handful of planes had faced an air-defense network that dwarfed that of Berlin in 1943-44, struck at the heart of the enemy capital, and emerged without a scratch. Each plane's load was a fraction of that carried by a Lancaster bomber, but the results far surpassed all the years of area bombing the RAF had carried out at so heavy a price.[520]
The Iraqi air-defense system died that night; with the headquarters hit and the IOCs and SOCs damaged and out of action, the individual antiaircraft guns and SAM sites were isolated. The operators were unable to operate their tracking and fire control radar, for fear a HARM missile would destroy them. Units in the field had limited communications with each other and with higher command. Electrical power was out in Baghdad. The three F-117A waves, the Tomahawk attacks, and the decoy raid, tightly interre-lated in time and space, had left the Iraqis unable to inflict significant losses on Coalition air operations.[521]
The ultimate result of that night of thunder was this: in every war, there comes the time when it becomes clear who will win and who will lose. In the Civil War, it was the Battle of Gettysburg; in the Pacific in World War II, it was the Battle of Midway; in the Gulf War, that was the moment.
The ground fire that greeted the F-117As on the second night was described as perhaps the most intense of the Gulf War. Lieutenant Colonel Miles Pound said, "They knew we were at war that second night and they had every gun manned. And they were more than willing to use them." The last ten minutes before the target commanded the pilots' full attention. They could not afford to think about the lethal fireworks outside. Pound explained later, "My own technique was to run the seat down, so I wasn't distracted by what was going on outside. The lower you get in the cockpit, the less you can see outside. I would reduce the amount of distraction to the absolute lowest level and just concentrate on my target."[522]
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