A-10s over Kosovo (illustrations removed)

It was a bright, clear morning. We approached our target from the southwest and visually picked up the revetted APC while we were still more than five miles out. We circled south to compare and confirm the target with the photo. I set up and executed a tip-in from the east. It sounds so simple, and sometimes it was if I could ignore the fact that I was being shot at. To get to that point usually took quite a bit of work.

This story really starts one and one-half days prior to that bright, clear morning. Our A-10 squadron was flying from Gioia del Colle AB, where several Italian squadrons, some British GR-7 Harriers, and we were based. The GR-7s occasionally flew with a reconnaissance pod and took pictures of areas of interest. The Brits were nice enough to share those photos with our intel folks. The photo for this mission came in one night while I was working a 12-hour top-three tour. Those of us who pulled top-three duty, especially the night tours, were not thrilled with the task. But this night we were lucky. Pictures of an APC and several other interesting targets came in just after dark, and I briefed them to all the pilots on the morning schedule. At the end of my tour, I went to bed knowing that the guys walking out the door to fly had several good targets. Like everyone who pulled a night top-three tour, I was given a day off to sleep and then scheduled in the first flight of the following day.

I arrived in our operations area at about 0230, sat down for the intel brief, and was handed a couple photos and the usual target list. To my surprise the same photos of APCs were still in the package. Intel said no one had reported hitting the target, so they were passing it out again. The weather had been poor in the area where the APCs were located, and the AFACs had looked for targets in areas with better weather. Although day-old target photos are often worthless, my wingman and I decided we would take a look since we would be the first planes in Kosovo and we hadn’t worked that area in many days.

When I studied the targets, including the APCs, I plotted them all on a large Joint Operations Graphic (JOG) map, drawn to a 1:250 scale, that I used in the cockpit to work the entire Kosovo area. I plotted the most promising targets on a smaller 1:50 scale map so I could get a good feel for those areas and accurately determine target coordinates and elevations. (While these maps are normally referred to as 1:50, 1:250, or 1:500, their scale is actually 1:50,000, 1:250,000, or 1:500,000.)

The elevations had to be converted from meters to feet, and the coordinates put in several formats to satisfy the various navigation systems used in the different aircraft we might control. We often did this while circling over a target, but it was much easier to do ahead of time on the ground. I then used a computer that contained photomaps of the area in various scales. With this I could look at each target area from different altitudes. Although neither the photos on the computer nor the maps were current, they gave us a good perspective of the surrounding area—the lay-of-the-land, so to speak. With this situational awareness, we could choose an attack axis that would give us the best chance of success while limiting damage to anything but the target. With our planning complete, I briefed my wingman on the plan to attack this target and search for others in our assigned area.

The flight to the tanker was quiet, and I was encouraged that the weather would cooperate. Our tanker track was over southern Macedonia, and from there I could see that the sky over our target area was bright and clear. We got our gas, departed Macedonia, and proceeded northeast into southeastern Serbia above the Kumanovo Valley. While en route to the tanker, I had tested my two Maverick missiles, and now I reapplied power to start what I hoped would be the last warm-up cycle for at least one of them. We headed for our target, which we expected to find just a few miles west of Vranje. The larger target area was easy to see from far off, and the APC came into view as we drew near. I checked with my wingman to confirm that he saw the target, and then I started to circle south to make a final check to ensure that we were at the right spot. I put the jet’s head-up display (HUD) in the proper mode for attack and checked the other settings. The scene below was surrealistic.