A-10s over Kosovo (illustrations removed)

The weather was the biggest unknown. The forecast for the ceiling on the Adriatic changed several times during the night, but the one I believed that we all had settled on was broken at 4,000 feet. “Broken” denotes at least five-eighths cloud cover—unless the clouds are very thin, it is practically impossible to find and attack a target from above. To attack the Flat Face in that weather meant having to descend through and attack from below the 4,000-foot broken cloud deck. Doing so would directly conflict with our altitude ROE. General Short’s exact words on ROEs were seared into my brain, and his voice was still ringing in my ears from my trip to Tirana three days before. Never in my life had my understanding of my superiors’ direction been so lucid. Our current ROEs limited our altitude to no lower than 5,000 feet to identify a target and to no lower than 8,000 feet during our attacks.

The following is an example of what Clausewitz meant by “fog and friction.” Worried about the weather, Sped, Stu, and I had all independently checked it several times during the two hours from the start of mission planning to the pilots stepping to their aircraft. It was several days later before I was able to piece together each of our differing perceptions of the weather and the ROEs that applied to that night’s hunt for the Flat Face radar. I was convinced that the definitive forecast was for a 4,000-foot broken ceiling, which would require the CAOC’s approval to deviate below the ROE-established minimums. I told Sped, “Confirm for me that we have been cleared to go below the weather.” On the other hand, Sped, who was getting his weather information at the CAOC, was convinced that the ceiling was forecasted for 8,500 feet and saw no conflict staying within the current ROE and operating “below the weather to either identify or attack the radar.” Stu, the flight lead, had received several projected ceilings during the planning process from our Gioia del Colle forecaster and stepped with the conviction that the forecasted ceiling was at 2,000 feet. So when I told him, “Go below the weather,” he believed that meant he was cleared to operate below 2,000 feet.

There is one recollection on which Stu and I differ. I had required Stu to brief the flight’s attack plan to me in detail since I was clearing my guys to descend to low altitude at night, over water, and in potentially cloudy weather. Their plan called for a first pass using Mavericks and, if unsuccessful, a second pass at 2,000 feet for a level CBU attack that Sped and Stu had worked out over the phone. I approved the plan, with an additional restriction of maintaining at least 2,000 feet above the water since three of the pilots in the flight had not yet completed training at night below that altitude. If they encountered weather at 2,000 feet or below, they were to abort the mission and return home. Stu did not recall my 2,000-foot restriction and therefore interpreted my clearance to “go below the weather” as clearance to descend to any tactically safe altitude. I’ll leave the details of the mission to the stories in the chapter, but the unsuccessful attacks on this night occurred below 2,000 feet.

When the four intrepid aviators returned from their unsuccessful sortie, they identified the weather as the reason for their lack of success. They did not mention altitudes—there was no reason to mention them since they had adhered to the altitude ROE as they understood it. “Flat Face fever” hit the squadron. All of the pilots eagerly listened to tales about that night’s mission and hoped they might have a shot at the radar. A couple of days later, each of the same four pilots found himself leading an element when Stu spotted the infamous radar from medium altitude on the way home. He received CAOC clearance and shifted the entire KEZ package to the west to provide SEAD cover. Once again, there was a low-weather deck. Based on their experiences during that first night attack and their mistaken belief that to kill this radar they had been given an exception to the normal altitude restrictions, they flew another attack below the “real” ROE altitude. On this mission, Stu’s gun malfunctioned just as he lined up the enemy radar in his gunsight. We all listened raptly to their mission debrief.

Col Al Thompson (40th EOG commander), Maj Scratch Regan (74th EFS commander), Lt Col Coke Koechle (81st EFS operations officer), and I were the normal ROE gatekeepers at Gioia. Perhaps this sounds like a scenario from The Emperor’s New Clothes, but none of us had heard about anyone flying below 2,000 feet during that one night mission against the radars or below standard ROE altitudes during the day missions. We learned afterward that those altitudes were well known to the line pilots, who “assumed” it was an approved exception to the ROEs for that target.