The 18th of January, the second day of Desert Storm, had gone well. In the morning and then again in the afternoon we’d launched our pilots and jets north, to Kuwait and Iraq and – as a reporter said during the Falklands – I counted them all out, and I counted them all back. The Allies had lost several more aircraft today, but we were all relieved that the numbers of losses were much lower then the official projections, or those that we had discussed around the picnic table. Although the weather wasn’t as good over the theater as we’d hoped, the Iraqis were still being pounded around the clock by US and our Allies airpower and whenever the Iraqi Air Force decided to launch a sortie, it was generally a ‘one-way’ trip, courtesy of our Saudi based F-15’s. We all hoped that our guys would have their opportunity against the MiG’s and Mirages as well.

Tent City seemed a little odd though, being apart from the ‘action’ on the flightline, there didn’t seem to be much going on out of the ordinary – as if ‘the war’ didn’t really effect many of those who didn’t work on the aircraft and with the pilots. One change that there was in Tent City didn’t last long though, the chow hall (I know that it’s not the ‘politically correct’ modern name, but this is my d*mned story…) announced that the dining hours would be reduced and that there would be no more midnight meal, as they had been tasked with their secondary wartime roles. This didn’t go over well with our Wing Commander. Apparently the chow hall and its services personnel double as the morgue during wartime “My people are hungry, not dead,” he said as he assured the SVS commander that there would be four full meals a day and “Any time of the day or night that one of my flightline people is hungry, there WILL be something for them to eat, even if it’s just an MRE.” Anything for his people, I’d have followed him anywhere.

Once again we were in and out of our chem gear and masks quite often during the day and night. Several SCUD’s had hit Israel for the first time, and we were concerned about them retaliating, quite possibly with nuclear weapons as a response to a major chemical attack – which had the potential to break up the Allied coalition and put us in a pretty sticky situation with our host nations. I had dinner with a couple of the pilots one night as we discussed it and the fact the the prevailing wind pretty much headed our way. “If they did something like that to us and we had to evacuate back to Spain, I know where we could jettison a lot of bombs…” Fortunately cooler heads prevailed and the Israelis stayed out.

The jets were flying well, so my main job was decon. We prepositioned ourselves over at the Qatari parachute shop, which gave us a good place to wait prior to our runs out to EOR. We usually went out an hour before the acft were due back, giving us time to get suited up and to have our equipment ready. Now that I knew what to expect when I checked the swab, the inspections went quickly. Spirits were high, things were going well. After just two days, the war had settled into a routine. President Bush asked the American public to not get too confident, that there was a long way to go, but perhaps this whole thing was going to turn our easier than we’d expected. Time would tell.

It seemed that the only Iraqi target that hadn’t been hit in the first 48 hours was CNN’s Peter Arnett.

Mike

3.7 million pounds of ordinance, 1303 sorties, 42 days. The ‘Forgotten 1000’.
Visit the Lucky Devils in the Gulf War at: http://www.lucky-devils.net

Thanks for the link. I read about Stroke 1 in Vipers in the Storm by Keith Rosenkranz.

Thanks for the reply Viper01! Rosey (flying from the UAE with the F-16 unit from Hill AFB) was about 60 miles ahead of our guys when Tico and Cujo were hit. His site is http://www.vipersinthestorm.com

The late afternoon of 19 January found me, as the NCOIC of aircraft decontamination, out at the approach end of Doha’s 15,000′ runway. I’d made it a point on all of our previous missions to count each of the returning aircraft as they touched down. It was, as I recall, the first time our guys had come home with wing tanks jettisioned and I can’t even describe how it felt to come up two short in my count. I just kept hoping that they’d diverted for fuel or something, but when the aircraft turned short and bypassed the decon inspection to make a quick return to the ramp I knew that it wasn’t the case.

I had the decon deuce-and-a-half flying on the way back to the ramp (scary in itself as I had no military drivers license and my ‘normal’ ride was an MGB) and we arrived just as engines were shutting down. A lot of unrecorded records were set in the next few minutes as the aircraft were combat turned (simultanious rearm and refuel) just in case our guys could get back up there to help in the search. In the end because of the distance and the fact that more capable aircraft were already tasked and overhead they didn’t go.

The entire feeling had changed at the base, the war had suddenly become so much closer to all of us that stayed behind as we watched our pilots launch each morning and afternoon, not knowing, at that time, the fate of our two friends. I think we all had a completely silent dinner at the chowhall tent that night.

Visit the Lucky Devils in the Gulf War

Mike Kopack