A-10s over Kosovo (illustrations removed)

Once connected to the tanker, I was able to talk to the crew on the intercom system. I felt a bit silly but asked, “Hi fellas, are you Esso 73?” As luck would have it, they were, and they asked if I was Ford 11. I guessed they had not received any help from the controllers either. This little exchange made me laugh. In spite of all our planning, our ability to continue with the rest of our mission came down to my plugging into the first passing tanker I saw and asking if it was ours. I then asked the most important question: “Do you have enough gas for two A-10s?” But as I was asking, I looked down and saw that they were already pumping, bringing out an even bigger grin. These guys knew why we were there, how important it was, and got right to it. This was how a war should be run. I had a smile the rest of the day. I took just enough gas to stay above my turn-for-home fuel. I then asked for, received, and passed the tanker’s radio frequency to my wingman. I cleared him to drop down and fill up. When he finished, I got back on the boom and took the rest of my gas. It may not sound like much now, but I chuckled about it all the way back to the border. In peacetime, I rarely got near a tanker unless I had talked to the controller, he had cleared me, and I had checked in with the tanker. On this day, the tanker crew didn’t care that we weren’t talking to them or even who we were. They had a job, and they did it. This war—like all others—was a team effort by all the little guys at the bottom—the ones who made happen those things that the people at the top talked about.

Their Last Gathering Maj Pete “Bro” Brotherton

Late one afternoon in mid-May, I flew an AFAC mission in southeastern Kosovo. Thunderstorms had built up in the area east of Urosevac where I had planned to spend my second push for the day, so I took my wingman further east into the Serbian Kumanovo Valley. On the whole we spent less time in that valley than we did in Kosovo. Old Milo had been preparing a layered defense within the valley in reaction to the possibility of an invasion. We thought an invasion was unlikely, but if he was willing to provide us targets, we were willing to provide him with incoming ordnance. The AFACs who flew there usually had good luck.

As we entered the valley from the south, I started looking in and around the fortifications at the southern end of the generally north-south valley. The Serbs had done more work since the last time I had visited. During my previous trip, I had stayed at the northern end of the valley near Vranje. My plan was to start in the south, head north, and search for targets as we went. The sun was getting low, and the shadows being cast by the valley’s western mountains on its southwestern floor were growing. Because the northern half of the valley was oriented northeast-southwest, the shadows up there would not cover the valley floor as quickly as they did in the south. We had plenty of fuel but would be able to stay only as long as we could see targets in the dusk. By working our way northeast, we could use the last bit of available sunlight.

Dawn and dusk, while the sky is bright and the ground dark, are tactically the worst times of the day for a fighter to strike a ground target. The darkness on the ground reduces the effectiveness of the Mk-1 eyeball, and many night-vision devices are not operable because of the bright light at altitude. Unfortunately, the folks on the ground have no trouble seeing an approaching fighter. These factors usually result in high risk and little success for those who attack targets under these conditions. We flew anyway to keep up the pressure on the Serbs. My wingman and I continued searching up the valley. We stopped once down south to check out a square object up against a house, but it was too hard to identify (ID) in the shadows. I decided to go directly to Vranje since there was still some light on the ground there.

We checked out an area about eight miles west of Vranje where I had found some targets several weeks before. Finding nothing there, we moved in closer to the city and spotted movement northwest of the city. I decided to investigate and could not believe what I saw once I arrived overhead. It was the largest gathering of nonrefugees I had seen during the war. On the darkening landscape I counted well over a dozen military vehicles, at least five of which were APCs, and 75 to 100 troops in three clusters. They were only about a mile out of town in a large field that had been chewed up by the vehicles. My first inclination while I circled overhead was to start bombing immediately. Then I saw some green vehicles parked in the area of the APCs that I could not positively identify as military. I did not want to make a mistake with a group this large. I needed help.