Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign Page 2

  18 Iraq launches Scud missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia

  25 Air Force begins attacking Iraqi aircraft shelters

  26 Iraqi aircraft begin fleeing to Iran

  29 Battle of Khafji begins. Airpower destroys Iraqi force

  FEBRUARY 1991

  24 G day. Start of 100-hour ground battle

  26 Fleeing Iraqi forces destroyed along “Highway of Death”

  28 Cease-fire becomes effective at 8 A.M. Kuwait time

  PROLOGUE

  3 August 1990

  ON Friday morning of the August week in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait, Lieutenant General Chuck Horner was at 27,000 feet, cruising at .9 Mach (540 knots), and nearing the North Carolina coast. He was headed out to sea in the Lady Ashley, a recent-model Block 25 F-16C, tail number 216, that had been named after the daughter of his crew chief, Technical Sergeant José Santos. Horner’s aide, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Hartinger, Jr., known as “Little Grr,” was on Horner’s left side, a mile out, slightly high. Horner and Hartinger were en route to a mock combat with a pair of F-15Cs out of the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing (TFW) at Langley Air Force Base in Tidewater Hampton, Virginia: a winner-take-all contest that would match wits and flying skills. After that, they were all scheduled to form up and return to Langley AFB as a flight of four aircraft.

  It was a bright, clear day—a good day to be in the air. Horner felt the joy he always did when flying thousands of feet above the earth in a fast and nimble aircraft, an emotion that few others ever had the opportunity to experience. Part of it was the feeling of unity with his aircraft—the fighter was like an extension of his mind and body. The brain commanded and the aircraft responded, with no other conscious motions. In an air battle, a pilot had no time for unnecessary thoughts. He evaluated angle, range, and closure with his target, while keeping track of all the fast, nimble aircraft that were trying to drive him in flames out of the sky. He thought and the jet reacted.

  It was Hartinger’s turn to lead, to call how he and Horner would fly from takeoff to landing, and he had set up a two-versus-two air combat tactics mission—what fighter pilots call a 2v2 ACT—with the F-15s. Horner was looking forward to it. At Langley, he was scheduled to attend an aircraft accident briefing with his Air Force boss, General Bob Russ, commanding general of the Tactical Air Command. Accident briefings were never pleasant experiences, even when the accidents were proven to be unavoidable, so Horner was happy for the chance to “turn and burn” with the guys from Langley before he hit the painful part of the day.

  His policy was to try to maintain his combat skills whenever he flew his F-16. Even when traveling to an administrative meeting such as the one at Langley, he liked to make the trip worthwhile. It was a good way to stay up-to-date with the younger—often much younger—pilots he might someday lead into real battle.

  He was in his fifties, but he wasn’t too old to go up against an enemy. He could hold his own with most U.S. fliers; and those fliers were better than 95 percent of anyone they might meet. What he’d lost in eyesight and physical stamina, he made up for with experience and brains. Experience atrophied with disuse, however, and he needed to know firsthand not only that his combat skills were current and credible, but also what the younger fighter jocks were doing, what they were practicing—their aerial, radio, and shooting discipline and tactics.

  Fighter pilots are members of a very tiny, elite tribe, who also happen to be the most arrogant group on earth. Flying high-performance jets is a consummate art, and to be merely somewhere near the top of the food chain doesn’t begin to make it. They want to be the top. If there’s nobody around you left to beat, there’s still yourself. That means if a commander does not remain credible, a pilot may be reluctant to obey his lead. In war, failure to obey in the strictest manner can get people killed. So Horner felt he owed the people he commanded the duty to remain up-to-date in the use of his equipment, in tactics, and in understanding the stresses they faced.

  Since April 1987, Chuck Horner had been commander of Ninth Air Force, which supervised the Air Force’s Active and Reserve Fighter Units east of the Mississippi River. In that position, he also served as the air component commander for the Central Command, the United States military organization responsible for national security interests in the Middle East and parts of East Africa (except for Israel, Syria, and Lebanon). In 1990, Central Command was led by Army General H. Norman Schwarzkopf. It was Horner’s job as CENTAF Commander to work with his foreign counterparts in a region that stretched from Egypt to Pakistan and to plan military operations—air campaigns that might be needed should a crisis arise that endangered the interests of the United States. It was also his job to make sure that U.S. air units were combat-ready, and that the logistics were in place to support them during a rapid deployment in peacetime or war. And finally, it was his job to command air assets that had been deployed to the region—during the recent Iran-Iraq war, for instance, USAF E-3A AWACS radar aircraft had kept watch over Saudi Arabia in order to prevent the local conflict from spilling over the border. When Horner wasn’t visiting his assigned bases in the United States, he was visiting the nations in the CENTCOM area of responsibility.

  The job kept Horner in the air and away from home much of the time. Somewhat unexpectedly, he had discovered that he had a second home in the Gulf region. Over the years he had made many friends there, especially with other airmen, and as he’d grown more familiar with them, both professionally and as a guest in their homes, his respect for them had increased. He’d come to admire their ways, their differences from westerners, their pride in their own nations, and their reverence for God. In time he’d also come to love the nations that had given them birth, with their rich history, culture, and scenic beauty; he found himself devouring whatever books on them he could find.

  When these friendships developed, he had no idea how valuable they’d turn out to be later.

  ★ The two hats Chuck Horner wore—as Ninth Air Force and CENTAF Commanders—derived from a generally little-known but far-reaching transformation in military structure brought about by the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act. Goldwater-Nichols revolutionized the way the United States military services operate.

  Each of the military services has its own culture and traditions, its own sources of pride and ways of doing things, but these differences, in addition to the inevitable competition for resources and status, can easily get in the way of cooperation. Meanwhile, the speed—the tempo—of warfare grows ever faster; and war becomes more lethal. The U.S. military must be able to project massive, shattering force quickly from many directions—land, sea, air, and space—which means, among other things, that service parochialism is an expensive and dated luxury. The new military mantra is “jointness”—all the services must be able to work together as well and as comfortably as with members of their own organizations.

  Goldwater-Nichols aimed to implement “ jointness” by breaking the hold of individual services on their combat forces. All operational control was taken away and given to regional Commanders in Chief (Europe, Central, Pacific, Southern, and to some extent Atlantic, Korea, and Strategic) and functional Commanders in Chief (Transportation, Space, Special Operations, and to some extent Strategic and Atlantic Command). This meant that the services became responsible only for organizing, training, and equipping military forces. Once the forces were operationally ready, they were assigned to one of the Unified Commanders. Thus, a fighter wing in Germany no longer was controlled by the Air Force, but would logically be assigned to EUCOM, a destroyer off the coast of Japan to PACOM, a satellite to SPACECOM, and a stateside army division could be assigned to any of the unified commands.

  As the Ninth Air Force Commander, Chuck Horner worked for Bob Russ, the TAC Commander, who in turn worked for Larry Welch, Chief of Staff of the Air Force. As CENTAF Commander, he worked for Norman Schwarzkopf, who worked directly for Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. The Joint Chiefs of Staff could meet in Washington and advise
Colin Powell, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but neither Powell nor any of the service heads had direct operational authority over Schwarzkopf, unless Cheney wished it (as did, in fact, happen). Likewise, neither Bob Russ nor Larry Welch had operational authority over Horner in his role as CENTAF Commander.

  The new system created by Goldwater-Nichols was not universally popular in the Pentagon, but the people in the field loved it.

  ★ Meanwhile, the first week of August had been a difficult—and strange—time for the CENTAF Commander. In late July, when the Iraqi Army had begun massing on the border with Kuwait, he had put on alert the 1st TFW’s F-15C Eagles at Langley and the 363d TFW’s F-16C Fighting Falcons at Shaw AFB in Sumter, South Carolina, where he himself was based. On the night of August 2, a Wednesday, Iraq had invaded Kuwait, such a blatant act of thuggery that Horner had expected an immediate U.S. response. With Kuwait in Saddam Hussein’s bag, Saudi Arabia and the other oil-rich Gulf Arab states were very much at risk. Several divisions of Iraq’s powerful Republican Guards were poised in an attack posture along the Saudi-Kuwait border. Horner could not imagine how the United States could allow Saddam further loot. If sabers were to be rattled, then Ninth Air Force was likely to be the first one to get the call.

  For the next two days, Horner expected to hear from General Schwarzkopf, his Unified Command boss, yet so far he had not heard a word either from him or from CENTCOM headquarters at MacDill AFB in Tampa. Since the Iraqi army had poured across the border to Kuwait, there had been a truly eerie silence. So he had just kept to his schedule for the week as planned. On Friday, he flew off toward Langley.

  The radio broke Horner’s thoughts. Grr was calling for a “G” warm-up exercise, a necessary precombat discipline in the very hot and quick F-16s. Pilots needed to know that their G suits and other protective systems were working, and that they themselves were ready for the rapid onset of G forces. Otherwise there was the danger of a blackout and an unpleasant encounter with the ground. He put himself through a ninety-degree turn to the left at 4 Gs, then 4.5 Gs, as he pulled back harder on the stick grip in his right hand. He ran through a mental checklist: G suit inflating properly; breathing not too fast, not too slow, as he strained to force the blood up into his brain. No dimness in vision—the small vessels in the eyes were the first warning signs that the brain cells were being denied oxygen-rich blood. All was going well. He rolled out, then lowered the nose, and throttled at full military power as his left hand pushed the power lever forward as far as it would go. He quickly rolled into a ninety-degree turn back to the left. Six Gs this time, again running through the checklist, pleased that his fifty-three-year-old body could handle the pain and strain of the heavy G forces. Meanwhile, even as it squeezed his thighs and calves—forcing blood into his upper body—the rock-hard, inflated G suit felt as if it were trying to pinch him in two. Once again everything was in order. He rolled out, checked for Grr on the left. Their formation was still good. Now they needed only to cruise out to the east end of the ACM practice area and wait for the 1st TFW Eagles to show up.

  As they crossed the Atlantic coast, Horner’s jet almost imperceptibly shuddered, as single-engine jets always seemed to do when a pilot got beyond sight of land. He instinctively checked the gauges . . . all of them were in the green.

  Then the radio came alive.

  “Teak One, this is Sea Lion. Your F-15s have canceled and Washington Center asks that you contact them immediately.”

  Sea Lion was the Navy radar station at Norfolk, Virginia, that kept track of military training airspace out over that part of the Atlantic. In an instant, Horner knew what was up—a recall to Shaw. Grr called them over to 272.7 MHz, the proper UHF channel to contact the center controller, checked Horner in, and gave Washington Center a call.

  “Washington Center, Teak One. Understand you have words for us.”

  “Teak One, this is Washington Center. We have a request that you return to Shaw AFB immediately. Do you need direct routing?”

  “Roger, Washington. We’d like to go present position direct Florence direct Shaw FL 320,” that is to say, flight level—altitude—32,000 feet.

  “Roger Teak, cleared as requested. Squawk 3203.” Grr then dialed a setting into his onboard radar transponder, the transponder transmitted a code that was used to cue the ground controllers, and “3203” was displayed over their return blip on the Center’s radar screen.

  My God, Horner thought, stunned, as he and Grr turned back toward Shaw. It’s on. This has to be about the Iraqi invasion. A million questions roared through his mind: Have the Iraqis entered Saudi Arabia? How much force will we deploy? How fast can we get our Ninth Air Force squadrons in the air to rendezvous with the SAC tankers? How much heavy airlift is available to get our spares and maintenance people deployed to the Middle East? How do we get our pre-positioned tents, munitions, fuel, and medical equipment from their warehouses in Oman and Bahrain, and from the ships at anchor in the lagoon at Diego Garcia? And inevitably, How many young men and women will die?

  Thank God for Internal Look, Horner thought. Every second year the Commander in Chief of CENTCOM held an exercise in the United States in which his staff planned for a mock war. CENTCOM’s forces were then brought into the field to execute that “war.” The actual component commanders, such as Horner, John Yeosock of the Army, Walt Boomer of the Marines, and Schwarzkopf himself would deploy with their staffs and forces and conduct the kind of operations they might use in a real crisis. In the process, they learned to work with each other and to test the staff ’s and their own abilities, and the CINC was able to evaluate his team and learn how to use them and all of his forces to best advantage. In the intervening year the CINC would hold training exercises in the Middle East, where U.S. soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen could experience life in the desert and serve side by side with their Arab counterparts.

  In the early days after the founding of CENTCOM, it had been feared that the Russians would attack south through Iran, thus attempting to make real a long-standing, indeed, pre-Soviet dream. Early CENTCOM plans, consequently, had been aimed at stopping such a move. By November 1989, when General Schwarzkopf had taken over CENTCOM command, the Soviets were not about to attack anywhere, so CENTCOM had had to look for a new mission. They didn’t have to look far. After the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq had been left with a huge, well-equipped, well-trained, and seasoned military force and an astronomical debt. How do they pay off the debt? Norman Schwarzkopf asked himself. They go where the money is: south, into Kuwait, and if they are really ambitious, into Saudi Arabia. As a result, General Schwarzkopf had directed that the 1990 Internal Look exercise take off from the premise that Country Orange (read: Iraq) had invaded some of its Gulf neighbors. Thus, early in August of 1990, when Iraq actually followed the Country Orange scenario, Schwarzkopf and his staff had a considerable head start on the planning needed for a U.S. military response to the invasion of Kuwait.

  ★ All these thoughts got shoved into the back of Horner’s mind when Shaw AFB appeared under his nose. They were about 1,500 feet up; Grr guided their airplanes over the runway without slowing down. Horner took a quick glance at the airspeed displayed on the windshield’s heads-up display; they were on the initial approach at a screaming 450 knots.

  They were going to make a pitchout—a loop laid on its side—that would bring them down to runway level while they slowed down to landing speed. It was not an especially difficult maneuver if the pilot didn’t mind pulling a lot of Gs and working to maintain the same altitude and spacing as the other aircraft in the flight as he rolled out in the landing pattern. It was something like driving down the street at 250 mph in formation with other cars going the same speed, then making the corner together. Of course, the leader wants to keep the maneuver tight, with the guys behind him in tight, so he doesn’t want to make the turn too loose, or else everyone else in the flight will spread out, and the landing will be inelegant. Inelegance is not an option.

  The downside to mak
ing the turn too tight is to spin out and crash.

  Horner felt the extra Gs needed to slow down in the pitchout force him down into his seat, then he took a little extra spacing on Grr in the event Hartinger turned a wide base. He wanted to save enough room to cut inside of him if Grr got wide on final approach, but still not overrun his aircraft. As usual, though, Grr kept the base leg tight, just outside the runway overrun. Horner grinned, put the gear down, lowered the nose sharply, and pulled the F-16 around with the stall warning sounding a steady noise in his headset. It was about 11:00 A.M.

  After they landed and parked, José Santos, their crew chief, approached the aircraft, a worried look on his face. He figured they’d returned because of a mechanical problem, which would be a slap in the face for him. José disappeared for a moment to insert the ground safety pin into the emergency hydrazine tank that powered the F-16’s electrical systems and hydraulics if the engine failed. When he emerged, Horner gave him an OK sign, and his worried look changed into a relieved grin. After that, Horner ran through the engine shutdown checklist: inertial navigation system off, throttle off, and canopy up.

  All about them, the ramp was silent. Shaw had been ready for two weeks to go to war, so local flying was at a minimum.

  As soon as Horner climbed down the ladder, he told José to get the jet ready to go. He suspected he’d be on the ground only a short time. Meanwhile, Grr came running over. Horner told him to file a flight plan for MacDill; then he shrugged out of his G suit.

  It’s hard to look anything but rumpled when you shed a G suit, but this was not a problem for Chuck Horner. For him, rumpled was normal. He had a comfortable, but not pretty, bloodhound face; sandy, thinning hair; and a bulldog body. He looked nothing like Tom Cruise or Cary Grant, or any other Hollywood fighter-jock image. On the other hand, Horner moved with great verve and dash; he had an easy, infectious laugh and a wicked wit; and inside his bloodhound head was one of the sharpest, quickest minds inside the Air Force or out. He liked to play the Iowa farm boy, but he’d come a long way out of Iowa.