A-10s over Kosovo (illustrations removed)

Coming off the tanker, we climbed out of the weather, leveled off at FL 270, and turned east towards Serbia. I contacted Sandy 41 (Meegs) on victor, and he told us to continue to the Bosnia-Serbian border. Meanwhile Sandy 30 (Buster) had located Vega 31 and had everything ready for the rescue—everything, that is, except the helicopters. We were still waiting on the two MH-53 Pave Lows and, as I learned later, an MH-60 Pave Hawk. Initially Meegs had not been able to get hold of them, and when he finally raised them he discovered that the helos, call sign Moccasin, did not have the fuel on board to execute. The helicopters had been airborne about as long as Buster had been. Instead of launching at the time I had passed through the CAOC, they launched 90 minutes earlier and had been holding in Croatia, just east of the Serbian border near the first set of wrong coordinates. Later I learned that the time passed by the CAOC had been given in local time instead of Zulu time (Greenwich mean time). Local, or Central European, time is two hours ahead of Zulu time in March, so Moccasin thought he was already half an hour late and requested permission to launch immediately. This simple mistake, by someone not familiar enough with combat operations to know that all times in combat are expressed in Zulu, turned the rescue into an all-night affair and nearly cost the survivor his freedom.

Buster aborted the pickup and sent everyone to his respective tanker—everyone but Joe Bro and me. The survivor, Vega 31, was concerned with the life of his radio’s battery and turned it off for 45 minutes while the helicopters refueled. Joe Bro and I were the only ones with gas, so our job was to monitor the survivor’s frequency in case he needed to talk to us. I set up a north-south holding pattern just west of the Serbian border, where we listened and waited. We were in dangerous territory, near the place where an F-15A had shot down a Serbian MiG-29 Fulcrum just two nights before. I focused my attention to the east, where the MiG bases were located. Although the weather over Bosnia was bad, I could see into Serbia and make out the lights from the villages and towns all the way to Belgrade. A thunderstorm was building over Belgrade, which prevented me from making out the lights of that city. As the minutes ticked away, I watched the weather rapidly deteriorate. It appeared that the clouds over Bosnia were now pouring into Serbia. A very low cloud deck was moving east, and I could see town after town disappear beneath a blanket of clouds. Why did Moccasin have to launch early? We’d have had Vega 31 out of there by now. There was no way an A-10 Sandy could fly beneath that cloud deck—nor was I sure that even Moccasin could still make it.

While I was contemplating such negative thoughts, Joe Bro added a new thought: “Hey, what’s that to the west?” I looked up to see two contrails heading our way. They had to be a set of friendly NATO fighters from the Bosnian CAP. We watched as they began to perform a classic pincer maneuver. I thought they must have been committing on some MiGs, although I hadn’t heard any warnings from Magic. It soon became apparent that they were really interested in us, as my radarwarning receiver screamed at me, and the lead aircraft began a descent and turned our way.

I was in no way interested in being a part of a friendly fire incident, so I turned to put the fighter on the beam and kept turning to keep him in sight as he converged within a mile. As the fighter continued to converge, I saw a bright flash coming from his jet. Thinking the worst, I immediately started putting out chaff and flares as fast as I could push them out. Joe Bro was behind me doing the same thing. I was relieved when I realized the fighter had only ejected a flare and had not launched a missile at us. When he came alongside me, I saw that it was an F-16CG. The pilot had on NVGs and had pulled up to identify us. Satisfied, he climbed and departed to the west, leaving Joe Bro and me to clean out our flight suits and refocus on the task at hand.

Meanwhile Sandy 30 had refueled and was heading our way. Buster saw the flares and wanted to know what was up. I calmly said that all was well, passed on-scene command back to him, and turned towards the tanker for my second refueling of the night.