Midnight Sunday 20 January 1991
King Abdulaziz International Airport
Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the high road to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.
—MARGARET THATCHER, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER
Being productive gives people a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that loafing never can.
—ZIG ZIGLAR, AMERICAN AUTHOR AND MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER
There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.
—SALVADOR DALÍ, SPANISH SURREALIST PAINTER
Unscheduled receivers were becoming common on almost every tanker mission. Tankers refueled whoever showed up on the wings. COUGAR, BUCKEYE, and BULLDOG tried to keep the refueling chaos to a minimum, but tankers were given mission changes on almost every flight. AWACS was just trying to put the gas in the right place at the right time, and tanker crews were pretty accommodating to the numerous changes that happened after they were airborne. AWACS always asked us how much gas we had available and moved us to meet forces going into or coming out of Iraq. Tanker battle managers moved my tanker and crew from one refueling anchor to another on the same mission based on the battlefield situation. My crew refueled fighters in one anchor, and then AWACS told us to move across Saudi Arabia to another. This common occurrence was one reason tanker crews were so good at handling dynamic and fluid battlefield situations. Tanker Kings, refueling planners from Riyadh familiar with each day’s ATO, flew on every AWACS sortie, assisting the airborne battle managers with all the refueling issues. As ATO changes happened, Tanker Kings smoothed out the rough edges of moving gas across the peninsula.
Most of the time.
The air war was in its fourth day. My crew was scheduled for spare aircraft duty. We took off only when another tanker broke. Spare crews were assigned additional duties, and that night was no different. Additional duties made for some very long nights. That spare duty shift ended Monday night, one of the longest days of my personal war. D-Right met us coming down the hall in tanker ops, a big smile on his face. If D-Right was looking for you and smiling, it wasn’t a good sign most of the time. He always had changes to the schedule. That night he just had additional duties for us, usually cocking on jets or taxiing back from Kilo Row fuel bladders.
“Good evening, spare crew! Your first mission tonight, should you decide to accept it, is to get into your truck and go out to Kilo Row. There’s a jet ready for taxiing back to ramp four.”
“Okay, Colonel, we’ll grab the keys and head out to Kilo Row. Let us get a brick.”
Every spare crew carried a brick, a walkie-talkie on which command post could contact us immediately.
“There are a lot of launches you guys will cover later tonight. No rest for the wicked!” D-Right said as we stopped by our lockers. Good; at least it wouldn’t be a boring night. I could maybe sleep a little in my seat during schedule breaks.
Kevin grabbed the keys for a Ford King Cab truck spare crews used for running around. The big King Cab trucks are potential hazards at night: no radio to talk with Jeddah ground, and only a single rotating yellow light on the top. Jumping into the truck, the four of us and two crew chiefs headed for Kilo Taxiway and the fuel pits. Three KC-135s stretched down Kilo Row. Tankers two and three still had hoses hooked up, so they were not full yet. The Kilo Row line chief told us the first jet was ready to go—“Just get in, start her up, and keep rolling to ramp four.” As I pushed the throttles up to get moving, Kenny watched the crew chiefs following behind us in the truck out his open window. Ramp four’s SOF told us to park quickly, as jets were leaving soon over the brick. Three jets had engines running and rotating beacons flashing ready to go.
After shutting down, Kenny ran through the cocking-on checklist so the next crew would just have to strap in, start up, and go. My watch said 0130 in the morning. Our boom spare jet sat on the first line of parked jets, placing it as close to the runway as possible. Spare tankers no longer sat in the runway 36 right hammerhead, because primary jets parked there when mission changes came over the radio, which happened a lot. The off-going spare crew said it had been another slow, boring shift. Coming up the ladder, Kevin was already talking to command post to see if there were any schedule changes from D-Right.
None.
Our first flight coverage started in twenty minutes; no need for engines running. Kenny tuned to BBC on the HF radio, and we settled into our seats for the night.
I was having a hard time staying awake by 0515. Kenny and Kevin engaged in idle gossip with the crew chiefs leaning against the nose tires. Both chiefs wanted to know what action we had seen and to answer their number one question: Had we been in Iraqi airspace? My crew had not at that time, but several others had. The BBC announcer spoke in the background about an RAF crew shot down on the first night of the war. I told the chiefs about my friend Rasmey, a B-52 BUFF pilot from Loring Air Force Base and a classmate at pilot training. He launched from Maine and flew across the Atlantic to bomb Mudaysis Air Base the first night. That information would have been nice to know Wednesday night, since Mudaysis was the number one threat airfield when we refueled John Boy’s Weasels. As he came off target, Rasmey told me an RAF Tornado GR1 at 550 knots and three hundred feet above the runway belched out JP233 runway denial weapons. Rasmey looked back as he pulled off his bomb release and saw the Tornado get hit hard by ground fire. Rasmey did not know if the Tornado crew made it out. A lot of Tornado crews got hit dropping JP233s. Combat myth, fiction, and rumor—boredom had officially set in. We watched KC-135s taxi by us and take off. Not one broken jet.
“TUNA boom spare, COYOTE Ops.”
Kevin turned around in his chair. “COYOTE Ops, TUNA boom spare, go!”
Kenny told the crew chiefs, “Heads up, ground, I think we may be launching. Get ready for start engines before taxi check.”
All of us thought the same thing: Hallelujah, the long night is over!
“We need you guys to come back into Ops. You will be replaced by another spare crew. Don’t wait for a changeover brief. You don’t have time.”
Kevin looked up at me quizzically. “COYOTE Ops, can you tell us what’s up?”
“There’s a scheduling snafu. A five-ship is on the schedule, and none of the crews are cell-lead qualified. You guys are. Come on in.” That told me that all five were brand-new crews, deployed to Saudi Arabia for less than two weeks.
Kevin answered, “Roger, on our way in.”
Sortie beats spare any day, and I was wide awake now.
Thirty minutes later, twenty KC-135 crewmembers gathered over a mission planning table, Kevin’s chart spread out for all to see. I began a cell formation briefing to BERRY POST, a refueling airspace in western Saudi Arabia close to the Jordanian border. A package of five Viper flights, eight in each flight, all named after dogs; four FALSTAFF Weasels; and two RATCHET Spark Varks needed gas after their bombing mission for their return to three bases across the peninsula. Manny, the western bull’s-eye, was 140 miles north of BERRY POST. H-3 Air Base, with MiG-21s and MiG-23s, was ninety miles away. All tankers retrograde when any MiGs were within eighty miles. COUGAR, the west AWACS, would control our mission, orbiting literally right above us. Iraqi Air Force Fishbeds, Floggers, and Foxbats were still active over western Iraq. Any calls beyond sixty miles southwest of Manny were reason to turn south.
Defensive maneuvers for five tankers would create a dangerous midair collision situation: my jet would head south 180 degrees. TUNA 51’s cell mates would turn ten degrees off 180 degrees, so number two would go ten degrees right, three ten degrees left, four twenty degrees right, and five twenty degrees left. Three other refueling orbits bordered BERRY POST, and they might be retrograding also. Iraqi Foxbats fly at 1,200 knots, so retrograding was risking your life so you might live. Remember, none of us had ever performed these defensive maneuvers in the air, so we would have to watch outside for each other. COUGAR could vector us closer to Iraq if the F-16s’ fuel situation was bad enough. I ended the briefing with “All other items are Jeddah standard,” a quick way of saying follow the Jeddah formation procedures all of you were tested on. Say something if you see something. Briefing over, all twenty of us loaded onto the bus for ramp four. All five aircraft took off around 0700 without any issues and headed northeast.
After we were airborne, Kevin called, “COUGAR, TUNA 51 flight of five, mission number 5751, checking in on white four heading for BERRY POST, authenticate delta mike.”
“TUNA 51, COUGAR authenticates november papa. Keep heading north and COUGAR will call your turn.”
Why did COUGAR need to call our turn?
“TUNA 51 copies; continuing north. Pilot, did you hear that? They want us to keep heading north.”
I did hear it. A lot of things ran through my mind: How far north will COUGAR take us? Farther north closes the distance between us and the Iraqi threats. Are the receivers held up in the target area? All five tankers are scheduled to give forty thousand pounds each, two hundred thousand pounds total. Each tanker has sixty-five thousand pounds available, 325,000 pounds total if the receivers need it. Thunderstorms popped up along the border last night, and a high cloud deck is above us; is there good visibility in BERRY POST? Saudi F-15s are the tanker CAPs out here. Is their commit criteria for killing MiGs identical to US F-15s’? I don’t know.
Arriving at BERRY POST’s refueling control point, we orbited and waited. (If you haven’t noticed, tankers wait a lot.) Ten minutes later, COUGAR called with news.
“TUNA 51 flight, the package is on its way out. Turn northwest to facilitate join-up.”
Kevin answered, “COUGAR, TUNA 51 flight coming northwest. Pilot, come three zero zero.”
I twisted the autopilot knob under my right hand, and the jet started a gradual left turn as I pushed all four throttles up for refueling airspeed of 315 knots.
COUGAR called out, “TUNA 51 flight heading three one five for join-up,” as our speed stabilized at 315 knots indicated.
“Roger, TUNA three one five heading.” Switching over to the interphone, Kevin said, “Pilot, Nav—that puts us about fifteen miles south of the border.”
“Roger, Nav.” All of us were nervous being this close to the border.
SPANIEL 31, the package commander, radioed on boom frequency, “TUNA 51, flight SPANIEL lead on A/R primary how, copy?”
“SPANIEL, TUNA has you loud and clear; how us?”
“Loud and clear, radar contact on our nose twenty-one miles. All SPANIEL chicks check noses cold.”
Noses cold check means for the eight Viper pilots to make sure their master arm switches were off, putting the safety on all forward-firing weapons—mainly the AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles on their wingtips. One Viper pilot had inadvertently fired an AIM-9 during a mission when switching between weapons modes.
Within minutes forty Vipers, four Weasels, and two Spark Varks joined the TUNA 51 flight. Fifty-one airplanes moving at 315 knots in a five-mile-long, 2,500-foot-tall group near the border. SPANIEL flight came to us, four on the left, two on the right, and two on the boom hitchhiking. FALSTAFF 43 and 44 joined wide left. The blue contact light came on, and Kenny started pumping gas. All Vipers carry ECM pods on centerline pylons because of the SAM threats, which means that they can only be filled using one refueling pump, at 1,500 pounds per minute. Their smaller fuel pipes couldn’t handle more pressure; the backflow generated by using two pumps would trigger a pressure disconnect, releasing the toggles. The first Viper came off the boom, and his wingman was on twenty seconds later. Hitchhiking works; it cuts boom cycle time by two-thirds.
COUGAR’s next radio call scared us all.
“COUGAR has contacts, Manny two four zero for fifty-seven, medium altitude, heading northwest.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, with no increase in the pitch of his voice and no emotion. Contacts meant more than one. Kevin plotted the bull’s-eye call and found that the contacts were southwest of H-3 main, seventy-three miles away. I started to turn south.
“COUGAR with contacts, now Manny two four five for sixty-three, medium altitude, now heading southwest.”
Were they intercepting us? Moments later, COUGAR broadcast, “COUGAR declares friendlies off Manny near H-2.” I wanted to choke whoever was in the back of COUGAR broadcasting those radio calls.
Each SPANIEL took around 4,500 pounds of gas, spending three minutes on the boom. Once full, the SPANIEL flight rose above us and headed east toward Al Minhad in the UAE. A train of F-16s followed him. SPANIEL gave one last piece of instruction to COUGAR before leaving.
“COUGAR, SPANIEL. There’s a lot of work to be done up there; still a lot of targets at thirty-two fifty-five north, thirty-nine forty-four east.” It was the H-3 Complex and its four airfields.
FALSTAFF 43 immediately moved toward the boom. In a few seconds, the contact light was on again. FALSTAFF wanted full tanks because they had other missions to cover, taking eight thousand pounds apiece. Looking at FALSTAFF, I thought it was ballsy to go back into Iraq with only one HARM on FALSTAFF 44. I had no idea how many HARMs FALSTAFF 41 and 42 had.
We orbited from west to east fifteen miles from the Iraqi border for over forty minutes. Scheduled fuel transfer was supposed to be forty thousand pounds from each tanker. Kenny pumped 52,500 pounds into ten fighters. COUGAR cleared us for home, and I turned for Point Bravo, Jeddah’s VFR entry point for approach to the runways. Kenny and I pulled the throttles over the hump, shutting the engines down at 12:15 p.m.
I stayed in tanker ops for a while to talk with D-Right and find out how things had been going. He reported that Jeddah’s tanker wing was doing very well, with few maintenance breaks.
D-Right had a BUFF update when I sat down in the Vault to help mission plan sorties. My night of spare duty would now stretch into two, my longest night. Jeddah’s BUFFs had used so many bombs that the ammunition storage area was running out! 1709th leadership had a problem; within a day, Jeddah’s ammo dump would be empty. The only place close by with a large weapons storage area was 2,800 miles southeast on the island of Diego Garcia, another B-52 base, but the ammo ship from Diego Garcia was not scheduled to arrive for two days. Do you think tanker guys would let an opportunity to rub the bomber guys’ noses in their shortcomings pass by?
Nope.
This illustrates why KC-10s are so effective in their dual roles as refueler and airlifter. The only way to solve the problem was to send KC-10s to Diego and airlift bombs back—to reload Jeddah by airmail.
The four airlift missions bringing bombs to Jeddah were a KC-10 “Gucci Bird” combat first. D-Right showed me the paperwork planners had filled out for carrying live ammo in the Guccis’ cargo compartments. Paperwork for things that go boom in a tanker is a hassle but mandatory. Two Jeddah KC-10s took off for Diego Garcia later in the evening to load twenty pallets of Rockeye cluster bombs in each jet. Each Gucci Bird returned from Diego and taxied directly to the BUFFs’ parking apron on the east side of King Abdulaziz International Airport the next morning. Bombs left the Guccis’ cargo compartments on K-loaders, were forklifted onto flatbed trailers, and moved less than three hundred feet to the waiting empty BUFFs. Bomb loaders prepared and hung the Rockeyes right from the flatbeds. The BUFFs took off into the night with twelve bright-white Rockeyes under each wing, just like the STINGRAY flight of F-15E Strike Eagles had a couple of nights ago during refueling, dark night . . . white bombs.
Two more Gucci Birds arrived with twenty more pallets the next afternoon, and Diego’s ammo ship arrived a day late, carrying twenty thousand bombs in its holds. Bomb caskets lifted out of the ammo ship were loaded onto flatbeds, covered with canvas tarps, and trucked through the streets of Jeddah to the BUFF weapons storage area. I wondered what the citizens of Jeddah thought seeing a convoy of tarp-covered dark-blue US Air Force flatbeds driving through their city. Did they know what was under the canvas? No one seemed to care, though, as this went on for several days. The KC-10 community got a big “atta boy” from the BUFF leadership, and they continued dropping bombs on the Republican Guard throughout the rest of the war.
Stepping on the bus at around 2200, I was exhausted but happy. It had been a long night, stretched into two. My crew had accomplished just about everything you could do in the KC-135 during this twenty-four-hour period. We had taxied full KC-135s from fuel pits to the parking ramp, cocked on jets so other crews could hop in and take off, spared launches of other combat missions, and finally got to fly a mission to within fifteen miles of the Iraqi border. Observing KC-10s fulfill their dual role as both refuelers and airlifters moving bombs from Diego Garcia to Jeddah was historic; it had never been done, to our knowledge. Looking across the ramp the next afternoon and watching palettes of Rockeye bombs coming off the Gucci Birds and being loaded onto the BUFFs for night missions was rewarding. Jeddah’s tanker wing was doing just about everything tankers could do in combat operations from one airfield. Everyone’s sense of job satisfaction was really high.
I have worked thirty-six-hour days during my career. Coming back to my room and slipping into bed exhausted but satisfied was one of the great things about flying tankers. I’ve talked to many people who have jobs they hate, and I don’t understand it. They find no satisfaction in what they are doing. I’ve often wondered why these people don’t leave those unfulfilling positions to find something that will give them better job satisfaction. Working under the stress of an unfulfilling job is a terrible feeling. Fortunately, I’ve experienced this only once. For almost twenty-five years, I got to fly the airplane of my boyhood dreams all over the world in peacetime and in combat. I’ve also flown in other planes, such as the F-15 and the RAF VC-10. There were many days when I came home with an overdose of job satisfaction. If I were standing in front of you, I would tell all of you to find something that gives you tremendous job satisfaction. Don’t stay in a place where you hate walking through the front door. There are too many opportunities out there now for you to find the immense job satisfaction I received from being a tanker pilot.