Op. Desert Storm - Jan. 19th.

[Benner]

Late in the afternoon (Washington time) the President sent the order to suppress

Iraqi SCUD launches and went directly to Al Karj for the F-15E's

v Iraqi Air Force flew 60 sorties, coalition passes 7400 sorties

v The weather lifts along the Kuwait-Saudi border as UK Jaguars launch five

missions of 8 x aircraft each into the KTO

v First daylight raids on Bagdad launched from Incirlik

... F-4G Weasels carried (4) HARM's each

... F-16C Weasels carried bombs

v French Jaguars again attack Ras al Qulayah ammunition dump

v 6 x Kills Recorded from one large daylight engagement

- Mentioned as the first "daylight" encounter with MiG-25 Foxbat's and

MiG-23 Flogger's reported in the area. The Foxbat's were heading for

a flight of F-16 strike aircraft. Foxbat was downed visually and

utilized Flares. Fox 2 was followed by a call for all friendlies to get out

of afterburner.

- A 4 v 6 daylight engagement for the 58th TFS of the 33rd TFW

(Eglin AFB): Pitts/Tollini/Underhill/Rodriguez flying F-15C's

- 1 x MiG-25 Foxbat by an F-15C Eagle, 33rd TFW/58th TFS

... Capt Lawrence E. Pitts

... 85-0099

... 1 x AIM-9 near miss caused ejection of pilot at over 700 kts

... 1 x AIM-7 KILL

- 1 x MiG-25 Foxbat by an F-15C, 33rd TFW/58th TFS

... Capt Richard C. "Rick" Tollini

... 85-0101

... AWACS alerted and ID'd the targets

... targets first tried to outrun the F-15's

- 1 x MiG-29 Fulcrum by an F-15C Eagle, 33rd TFW/58th TFS

... Capt Craig W. "Mole" Underhill

... 85-0122

... 1 x AIM-7 no motor fire

... 1 x AIM-7 KILL

- 1 x MiG-29 Fulcrum by an F-15C Eagle, 33rd TFW/58th TFS

... Cesar A. "Rico" Rodriguez

... 85-0114, Kill by Maneuvering Suicide

... Flying Low Cap along the Saudi-Iraqi Border at 2000 ft

... 2 x POP-UP Targets called by AWACS, 330° for 13 NM

... Rodriquez Flight Lead with Underhill as Wingman

... Turned and Locked-On to the Leader, 8NM at 10,000 ft

... By 5 NM, both are locked-up, but Rico has no RHAW Gear

... Rico "Beams" a defensive turn to counter any possible Alamo

... Mole is left in position to Fox, but it become clear that the

MiG-29's are trying to run down a flight of Navy A-7's

... AWACS calls "HOSTILE" and Mole takes a Fox 1 (AIM-7)

... As Rico turns back, he sees the fireball, calls SPLASH ONE

... The 2nd MiG comes into view and Rico begins to think that it

might be a US F-15 (twin tails), MiG starts a series of "S"

turns, working off lateral and pressing for the kill.

... In a series of turns Rico stays 3500-4000 ft behind and 40°

off its tail, intimidating him.

... MiG reverses course in a split "S", 9000 ft to 4000 ft

... continues to 1000 ft and tries another Split S which Kills Him

- 1 x Mirage F-1 downed by 1 x F-15C, 36th TFW (Bitburg AB)

... 525th TFS

... Lt David G. Sveden

... 79-0021

... 1 x AIM-7 HIT and KILL

... Head-On Day Shot

... Kill verified by CENTCOM and Officially awarded by TAC

- 1 x Mirage F-1 downed by (1) F-15C, 36th TFW (Bitburg AB)

... 525th TFS

... Capt David S. Prather

... 79-0069

... 1 x AIM-9 HIT and KILL

... Head-On Day Shot

F-4G 69-7571, 81st TFS, 35th TFW(P)

Time: 0255 Z

- Aircraft went down because of fuel starvation after small arms hits punctured fuel tanks.

Several landing attempts were made at King Khalid Military City which

was basically zero-zero at the time. On the 5th pass, the aircraft ran out of gas.

The crew ejected and were rescued.

GR-1 Tornado ZA396/â€GEâ€, No 617 Squadron

Time: 1700 Z

Pilot: Flt. Lt. David Waddington, POW

Navigator: Flt. Lt. Robert Stuart, POW

Flt. Lts Waddington and Stuart took part in a night attack against Tallil Air Base. The two aircrew where the lead of the loft bombing element carrying 1,000 lb bombs to suppress AAA fire. They where flying at speed of 540 knots at an altitude of 200 feet using the auto-terrain following radar. When they where 3.5 miles from their target, they began their climb to deliver their bombs. Lt. Waddington spotted a Roland approach and attempted evasive action by making a left break. The missile detonated to the front right hand side of the aircraft. The pilot became unconscious so Lt. Stuart initiated ejection while the aircraft was at high speed. Both pilot and navigator sustained injuries during ejection and parachute landing. Stewart landed near the fence of the airfield in a ditch and was unconscious for ten hours. His right leg was crushed and so drew attention to himself to seek medical aid.

F-16C 87-0228, 614th TFS, 401st TFW (Provisional)

Pilot: Maj Jeffrey S. Tice, POW

- No. 4 in a flight of 4, on a strike package of 8, call sign Stroke

- was captured in an area west/northwest of Bagdad

by Iraqi Bedouins a few minutes after he landed

- F-16C package came under SA-3 attack, then SA-6's from a target area

being transited after a Hill AFB (388th TFW) strike group made an

attack, multiple SA-6's fired, assume he was hit by SA-6 that came

straight up at the aircraft from underneath.

- Tice was still configured with bombs, tanks, and CL Pod, and was turning to look for the missiles being called out by the flight. He had not

released his ordnance yet.

F-16C 87-0257, 614th TFS, 401st TFW (Provisional)

Pilot: Capt Harry M. "Mike" Roberts, POW

- No. 1 in a flight of 4, on a strike package of 8, call sign Stroke

- was captured almost immediately in an area south of Baghdad

- F-16C package came under SA-3 attack at a target SW of Baghdad

multiple SA-6's were fired, assumed that he was hit by an SA-3

jettisoned fuel tanks and was flying south when his aircraft failed forcing him to eject

- picked up immediately by Iraqi soldiers

F-15E 88-1692, 336th TFS, 4th TFW(P)

Time of loss: 2219 Z

Pilot: Col. David Eberly, POW

WSO: Major Thomas Griffiths, POW

Originally was to strike ammunition depots in the Euphrates Valley but was changed with the order to go after Scud launchers following the Scud attacks on Israel. Twelve aircraft from the 335th TFS where to attack at 10 PM followed by twelve more from the 336th TFS using cluster bombs and Gator mines. Flight leader was Lt. Col. R.E. “Scottie†Scott; Eberly and Griffiths flew as number three in the four-ship.

The mission began to go bad as Buick-04 was finishing with the air-to-air refueling and the flight was sitting in formation with KC-135s, waiting for their EF-111 and F-4G support aircraft to arrive. The support aircraft called in miles out from the rendezvous indicating they would be late. The F-15E flight leader decided to leave the tankers at their appointed time and radioed the support aircraft to join them in the target area as soon as they could.

Seconds away from weapons release, the F-15E’s warning receiver indicated they where being tracked by surface-to-air missile-guidance radars. Maj. Griffiths then released chaff in an attempt to blind and confuse the radar operators. Two SA-2 missiles streaked toward the jet and exploded below and to their left. As Maj. Griffiths released more chaff and Col. Eberly took evasive action, their aircraft was struck by a SA-2. Maj. Griffiths was about to let the rest of the flight know they where hit and aborting the attack when Col. Eberly ejected them. Col. Eberly suffered a neck wound and lost consciousness during his descent to the ground; he awoke when he landed and eventually rejoined with Maj. Griffiths. After the shoot-down, the crew performed escape and evasion for four days before being captured.

Edited March 12, 2007 by Benner

[PapaSmurf630]

Interesting reads Benner. Keep it up! Can't say I 'love' the kills but I guess that's war.

[Benner]

Interesting reads Benner. Keep it up! Can't say I 'love' the kills but I guess that's war.

well, I was editing the wording and various other things (it is basically copied from another website) but I can't be bothered to be spending too much time with editing. This one I basically just edited the part on shot down or damaged Coalition planes; the rest was ... whatever :)

[MKopack]

v First daylight raids on Bagdad launched from Incirlik

Great job Benner, just a couple of corrections for you.

Package Q, which was the first daylight strike on downtown Baghdad was launched from the Gulf nations as opposed to Turkey. The strike aircraft, made up of 72 F-16's (the largest single strike package of the war, and the largest in the F-16's operational history) were made up of aircraft from the 388th TFW (flying from the UAE) and the 401st TFW / 614th TFS (flying from Doha, Qatar).

F-16C 87-0228, 614th TFS, 401st TFW (Provisional)

Pilot: Maj Jeffrey S. Tice, POW

This information is correct, but it was Mike 'Mr.' Roberts flying this aircraft.

Yes, that's me. Photo taken in our hangar in Doha.

USAF photo from Airman Magazine

F-16C 87-0257, 614th TFS, 401st TFW (Provisional)

Pilot: Capt Harry M. "Mike" Roberts, POW

This information is correct, but it was Jeff 'Tico' Tice flying this aircraft.

Here's my view of the 19th, from http://www.lucky-devils.net:

The Storm - Day Three

"Package Q" to Baghdad

January 19th, the third day of Desert Storm, began as a 'normal' day. My alarm went off in the tent at about 5am, then it was over to the shower tent for a cool shower, as our hot water heater had failed almost as soon as it was installed and the water, kept in a large rubber bladder, cooled quite a bit at night. Fortunately I wasn't driven from the shower this morning by another SCUD - it felt odd to carry your chem gear, mask and helmet down to the shower.

Back at the tent I put on the same woodland BDU's that I'd worn the day before. By this time most of us were down to only a few pairs of serviceable uniforms, and the laundry had a couple of days turnaround, so we didn't change too often. Uniforms took a beating on the flightline during the best of conditions, and the desert sand made it even worse. Supply hadn’t been able to get us replacements, and although I’d picked up a pair from – believe it or not, an Army Navy Store in Doha – I still had several pair that were just worn out. Once I had the BDU's, on I kitted up with the rest of my daily wear gear, my web belt with canteen, first aid kit, gas mask, my Fairbairn Sykes SAS knife (good for slicing MRE's and whatever else may need 'opening') about 10 each of the Atropine and 2-Pam self-injectors, I took my P-tab (nerve agent pretreatment) put my helmet on, and headed out for the day. First stop was over at the chow hall to pick up a case of MRE's. Most of us would get a case every day or two, because we normally couldn't get back for lunch, and so we would have a good choice of menus and no one would get stuck with the disgusting omelet with ham. Those of us who didn't get MRE's would pick up a case of water for the day.

It wasn't a long walk from Tent City over to the hangar and the flightline, not more than a couple of hundred yards. We'd always stop by and talk to our Qatari friend who manned the flightline checkpoint. Carrying an exotic looking (to those of us that were used to our M-16's) FN rifle, when we asked if he had been given ammo, he tapped his shirt pocket and laughed "Yes, five rounds. I'm not allowed to load them unless someone actually shoots at me."

Over at the hangar we completed our shift change with the night shift decon team. They would always make sure that we were gassed up and ready to go, so I took my M-16 and ammo and walked over to the phase dock to see how everything was going. Rumors were going around that there was a big mission today and as soon as the pilots were stepping from Ops we heard it, the "Target for Today: Baghdad". There was almost a sense of excitement in the air. While Baghdad was a long way away, and amongst the most heavily defended targets anywhere, our guys were going to take the fight right to the heart of the enemy. Once again we stood in front of the hangar as our pilots taxied away, and the ground seemed to shake as each aircraft lifted off.

We were busy back at the Phase dock where we were preparing to open back up for business. The Colonel told us that there were two options for the unit as far as inspections went. We could overfly the phases until the end of the conflict, at which time all of the aircraft would be grounded until inspections were completed, or we could do combat phases as we went along. Several guys asked what a 'combat phase' in fact was, unfortunately no one knew. So a group of us sat down and laid out exactly what we wanted a 'combat phase' to be. "How fast a turnaround do you think we can get on an inspection? We really can’t afford to have any jets down." It was difficult to say without actually attempting one, "How long do we have?" "At our current flying rate we'll go through our 150 flying hours roughly every 24 days." Twenty-four days, twenty-four aircraft. We had to find a way to complete a normally 3 ½ - 4 day inspection in a day...

Soon it was time to take a break from the planning and head out to EOR to prepare for our decon inspections on the returning aircraft. We loaded up 'Decon 1' and headed out down the ramp and across the hard-packed sand to the end of the runway. I put my chem suit on, keeping an eye to the sky looking for the jets, listening to the brick to hear if the MOC had an ETA, but the net was quiet, probably more quiet than normal thinking back. Soon the first aircraft appeared, with no overhead break, they were coming straight in. I counted each aircraft as I'd gotten into the habit of always doing and was several into my count when I noticed something odd "What's that under the wings?" it took another couple of aircraft before someone answered, "They've all blown their wingtanks, that's the mounts..."

From that moment I had a bad feeling about it and as I continued to count the last aircraft touched down "They're not all here. There are two missing." The bad feeling had gotten worse. I'd hoped that two had needed to stop in Saudi or Bahrain for fuel, but inside somehow I knew that it wasn't the case. As we waited for the aircraft to backtaxi to our position, they cut back across the runway, skipping our inspection, and were headed straight back to the ramp. "Everybody in the truck, let's go. Now."

I had the decon deuce-and-a-half flying on the way back to the ramp and we arrived just as engines were shutting down where we heard the news that the two were down over Iraq. A lot of unrecorded records were set in the next few minutes as the aircraft were ICT (combat turned with simultaneous rearm and refuel)(the QA guys were told to stay in the hangar because they didn't want to see what was going on) 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.

Still pretty much in shock, four or five of us walked up to our Wing Commander, Col. ‘Jed’ Nelson, as he walked out of debrief and although I’m sure that he had a hundred more important things to do, he patiently explained what had happened. Mike 'Mr.' Roberts, whose son would be born in the next few weeks, went down over Baghdad and was feared lost and Jeff 'Tico' Tice was down in the desert between Baghdad and the Saudi border.

Within an hour we'd seen the HUD tapes taken during the mission. Mr. took a SAM amidships, his aircraft, 87-0228, just exploded. It didn't look as though anyone could have survived, but Col. Nelson said that he thought he'd seen the canopy come off as the wreckage descended, the first step of the ejection process, so there was at least a sliver, if only a sliver, of hope. Tico's aircraft, 87-0257, took a proximity hit and was sprayed with shrapnel. He struggled with the dying aircraft as far as it could take him, roughly halfway back to the Saudi border, when he was forced to make a controlled ejection. We felt pretty confident that if he could get hunkered down until dark there was a good chance that we'd get him back. We watched as 'ET' Tullia dodged at least 5 SAM's guiding on his aircraft with no operational chaff/flare, in the best example of defensive flying that I have ever seen.

While growing up, my heroes weren't baseball players or sports stars; they were people with names like Luke, Bader, Malan, Stanford-Tuck, Gabreski, Zemke, Olds and Ritchie. I'd read about losses and sacrifice, but now I felt like I'd been kicked in the gut. It was a long walk back to Tent City that night. I sat in the chow hall, just looking at my dinner, while at the table across from me sat Bill Hinchey, the crew chief who had launched out Tico, sitting alone. I felt as bad as he looked, and knowing Bill, I know that he felt much worse.

I hardly remember walking back to the tent. When I walked in, there was a loud card game going on at the table, everyone happy and carrying on. I wasn't in the mood, "Hey, have you guys heard that we lost two pilots today?" "Yeah, we heard, what can you do..." I crawled into my sleeping bag, rolled over and shut out the world. It was our roughest day in Qatar.

[MKopack]

From Lucky-devils.net:

To view of portion of the HUD tape from the mission, follow the link and look for the "Target for Today: Baghdad" page.

Mike Kopack

-----------

From the VTR tape of that day:

"Okay, SAM launch! Nose 5 low!"

(Air controller interruptions)

"Bank right! Bank right!"

"Okay, missed him."

(impact)

"Stroke One's a hit! Stroke One's a hit!"

"Stroke One took a hit! Stroke One took a hit!" "Status?"

"Okay, I've got a fire! I'm ah-stand by. Um, just south of steerpoint number seven. Still flyin'. And I'm headin' south."

"Copy."

"Okay, it we took a pretty good hit. I've got no engine."

In a speech at the AF Acadamy, General Welsh said:

"I want to tell you about two things I heard that I'll never forget.

The first one was during one of our missions in the Baghdad area. An F-16 from another unit was hit by a surface-to-air missile. Over the radio, we listened to the pilot and his flight lead talk as he tried to make it to the border so rescue forces could get to him. He'd come on every now and then and talk about how the oil pressure was dropping and vibrations were increasing. Then his flight lead would encourage him to stick with it.

This went on for about 15 minutes. Finally the pilot said, "Oil pressure just went to zero." And then, "My engine quit." Finally he said, "That's all I got. I'm outta here." The silence was deafening. I'll never forget those 15 minutes."

Col. Jerry Nelson, 401st TFW (P) commander, said wing pilots knew they might get shot down in combat. "But when it happens, there's really no way to prepare for it," he said. "When our pilots got shot down, it hit us hard. With everything we did, we remembered those two guys."

A ritual quickly developed. Before every mission, pilots stepping out of the operations building would slap the top of the door, above which is painted, "God bless Tico and MR." Fellow pilots called Captain Roberts "MR."

The two pilot's tactical call signs became the names for squadron flights. "Tico and Cujo flights flew every day," Colonel Nelson said. "They were with us all the time."

[jmel]

"MR" Roberts is now an IP here in Springfield with the 178FW. He still uses his "Cujo" callsign.

Jake