A-10s over Kosovo (illustrations removed)

An Mk-84 exploding is one of the most violent things I have ever witnessed. I can’t imagine what it is like to be near its detonation on the ground, but I never tire of being safely overhead and watching one explode. The entire hillside erupted as the F-16s dropped one after the other on the two artillery pieces. We thanked each other for the work, and Smokey and I headed back to the tanker.

It had been a successful morning so far. We got our fuel, and I was excited to get back in the fight. After being back in the area for no more than 10 minutes, I received a call from Magic, the ABCCC C-130. He said that the KEZ would be closing to facilitate the search for a priority target—a radar somewhere on the coast of Montenegro. I argued with Magic to allow at least one section of the KEZ to stay open. “Stand by; checking,” came the reply. Simultaneously we could hear what seemed like hounds being turned loose, as every Hog driver in the area jockeyed for position to get a crack at this target. It was no great mystery what we were going after. I had been in this situation twice before. The first was a night CSAR alert period that turned into a low-altitude, below-the-weather sortie searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. The second occurred about a week later—a day sortie in which they had also closed the KEZ down and turned the Hogs loose. That one ended with Capt Ron Stuewe suffering a gun malfunction with the target in his crosshairs. We were “zero for two,” and the CAOC wanted this radar badly. It was being used as the eyes of the enemy’s early warning system and covered the approaches over the Adriatic that funneled jets into Kosovo. They knew when we were coming and how many of us there were. Someone at the CAOC had the destruction of this radar on the top of his “to do” list.

Magic came back, “Swine 91, you are directed to leave the area. The KEZ will be closing in five minutes.”

“Magic, Swine 91. I’m requesting to leave the western half of the KEZ open.” There were already three flights headed in search of the radar, and I now had the entire western half of the country to myself. I didn’t want to go anywhere.

A new voice came across the radio, this one much older and much more perturbed at my request: “Swine 91, you are ordered to exit the AO. The KEZ will be closing in five minutes.” Good thing they were broadcasting this to the world over an open frequency. That was good enough for me and I started outbound. But I realized we were right near the target we had identified during our mission planning that morning—the one that was too good to be true. I altered my course outbound to the west slightly and spotted it—exactly like the picture and it certainly did look too good to be true. Somebody had to pay for those decoys though, and if I’m getting kicked out I may as well take the decoys with me. I relayed my plan to Smokey and we were in 30 seconds apart on the two, what appeared to be, tank decoys. Both passes were good and we rippled four Mk-82 500 lb bombs on each of the tanks. They weren’t very tactically significant targets, but those decoys had to cost at least 10 grand apiece. I thought it was a fair trade on that day, and I think Smokey agreed. Information in a subsequent Kosovo after-action report revealed that two tanks had indeed been found destroyed at those coordinates.

We headed south and came up on the frequency being used for the priority target. This was the same one that the two majors were going after when they got into trouble. They were diverted to go find and attack this radar and then got the free ride up to the CAOC for their efforts. After that happened, I swore to myself that I would never go after that radar again—yet here I was, headed for the coast, flying towards the unlocated SA-6 and SAN-4 missile systems. That radar had become a monkey on the back of the 81st FS. We checked in just in time to hear the talkon from Magic. To say it was confusing would be a gross understatement. In fact, we could hear the confusion from the other flights even though they weren’t saying a word. I don’t remember exactly what Magic said, but I do recall that it was one long sentence without punctuation—something like, “There are two castles one is in the water one is on the land with the distance between the two shores one unit go one unit south from the castle you come to a road go south on this road which puts you in between two roads that form a V which is open to the target area south along the road.”