Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 10, 1991 TAG: 9102100088
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: EDITH M. LEDERER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: IN CENTRAL SAUDI ARABIA LENGTH: Long
"It's almost like the starting gun goes off and you cross the line," said Capt. Alan Miller, who led a flight of four F-15C fighters.
The hundreds of planes along the Iraqi and Kuwaiti borders were poised to hit key communications and military targets by surprise in one staggering blow.
It was planned for five months and patterned after "Red Flag," the toughest of air-war games, which American pilots had been flying for years over the desert at Nevada's Nellis Air Force Base.
"They had flown this mission before," said Col. Hal Hornburg, commander of the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing Provisional and Miller's boss. "They just hadn't flown it in Iraq."
The arrayed air power ready to clear the skies and drop bombs literally through specific rooftops, skylights and command post doors represented the most formidable concentration of Western military technology.
This was the battle plan: Twenty U.S. Air Force F-15C air-to-air fighters would sweep the skies while radar-evading Air Force F-117 stealth fighters, F-15E and F-111F fighter-bombers, Navy and Marine A-6E attack bombers, British Tornado jets and Saudi F-15s attacked targets in Iraq and Kuwait.
"It was one massive, coordinated strike," said Miller, 32, of St. Louis. "At the start of the war, they had a time-on-target window of 30 minutes.
"I knew from previous planning that that first 30 minutes of the war was going to be pretty intense, for us and for the Iraqis as well, because it was simultaneous attacks everywhere throughout their country."
Aircraft from bases throughout Saudi Arabia began crossing the border at about 1:30 a.m. (5:30 p.m. EST Jan. 16).
First in were about two dozen F-117 stealth fighters, with the vital assignment of knocking out Iraqi communications. F-15C air-superiority fighters - Miller and his colleagues - made up the next wave.
"We were supposed to be the tip of the spear," he said. "Our tasking was . . . to sweep with 16 other F-15s in pretty much a wall across the border and up to Baghdad and come back out.
"It was to provide air superiority from the very beginning so that all the strikers could go in - the strikers that did not have the benefit of stealth. The F-117s could all go in unopposed from counter-air forces."
Iraqi warplanes circling near Baghdad apparently feared taking the Americans on. They fled. The American planes roared toward Baghdad, with nothing to stop them, Miller said.
While the F-15Cs flew high over wispy clouds that partially concealed the landscape, the next wave - 22 F-15E fighter-bombers - screeched in at low altitude, with a pair of EF-111s along to jam Iraqi radars.
Scores of U.S. Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from warships around the region added even more punch.
Capt. Mark Alred, 33, of Tulsa, Okla., led the first group of six F-15Es and his squadron commander, Lt. Col. Steve Turner, 41, of Portsmouth, Va., the second group.
U.S. Army helicopters were assigned to knock out three Iraqi early warning radar systems along the border at the moment the strike force headed north.
"As we approached this one radar, about 25 miles from it, I watched this thing blow up in front of me," Alred said. He roared past at ground-skimming altitude and 500 mph.
"It was very eerie to be flying in their country for roughly 40 minutes before we got to the target, and knowing that all this time we're in Iraq and getting ready to destroy something that belongs to Iraq," Alred said.
The first bomb demolished an important communications building near the Tigris riverbank in downtown Baghdad.
Col. Alton Whitley, head of the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing, said his stealth planes also put bombs through the skylight of a command bunker.
For Alred's plane, the target was a Scud missile launching site in western Iraq.
Maj. Bill Polowitzer, 36, of East Hartford, Conn., was the weapons systems officer in the backseat of Alred's F-15E.
"Bill and I felt like they didn't know we were there until the bombs hit the ground," Alred said. "We flew across the target and dropped these 12 canisters of bombs. As we're pulling off the target - it's about 35-40 seconds later - we figure it's just about enough time for everybody to wake up and figure out what happened."
The darkness below exploded in a cascade of anti-aircraft fire.
"We estimated somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 to 80 triple-A [anti-aircraft artillery] guns about one to two miles north of the target, and every one of them was just streaming red bullets up into the air," Alred said.
It was like huge "Fourth of July waterfalls," he said, "where sparklers are coming off in a great display, except this stuff is going up 5,000 or 6,000 feet and then coming back to the ground."
Iraqi gunners also launched surface-to-air missiles.
Two planes behind Alred's had to fly through the deadly fireworks while "I'm looking back over my left shoulder at this waterfall of triple-A hitting the ground. I saw No. 2's bombs hit . . . and then I got to worrying about No. 3.
"Being the third person to fly across with all this stuff coming down, it really concerned me," he said. "We finally see his bombs hit, but we still haven't seen his airplane because we've got all the lights off.
"I couldn't stand it any more, so I keyed the radio and said, `Three, are you still with me?' "
He received a brief "Yes."
That was the only break in radio silence until the strike force returned to Saudi air space.
by CNB