A-10s over Kosovo (illustrations removed)

My first time in combat was one of my significant life experiences, as it has been for most military professionals. Our OAF stories show just how strange some of those combat experiences were. We had a close view of OAF combat, a closer one than some of our support teammates and fellow strikers who employed precision-guided munitions from relatively high altitudes. Their combat duties often kept them focused on interpreting their sensors and radarscopes, but we Hog drivers (and other FACs) watched with revulsion as Serbian atrocities unfolded before us. We spent most of our time putting eyeballs and ordnance directly on enemy troops whose identity we confirmed firsthand with our gyrostabilized binos.

The war was very real for our maintainers, who worked in shifts and hustled 24 hours a day to launch, recover, and reload our jets—and to repair the two combat-damaged Hogs. Some of our noncombat experiences, on the other hand, seemed unreal. Even when we were flying over the KEZ and working 12-hour days, we still slept in nice hotels, ate in restaurants, and sunbathed at the hotel pool.

Most of our pilots and maintainers had no previous combat experience. That included both colonels and both squadron commanders at Gioia del Colle, who received their baptism of fire over Kosovo. I will never forget Dirt Fluhr’s radio call on 7 April: “Hey, they’re shooting at us!” as we checked out a convoy of civilian and military vehicles northwest of Prizren. Our reaction that day was similar to many battlefield responses recorded in history—a warrior’s training takes over, and he acts aggressively and dispassionately to eliminate the threat immediately.

Many of our first combat experiences included shouldering the mission’s heavy responsibility and acquiring the “I’d better not blow this!”

syndrome. Maintainers understood and internalized the importance of preparing the aircraft, building up and loading the weapons, installing and setting the self-protection countermeasures pod, and loading and setting the chaff and flares—all of these systems had to work. Pilots experienced similar character-building pressures when they led young wingmen in combat, squeezed the trigger near a civilian village, and decided what got shot and what didn’t in a highly politicized conflict.

AFACs knew that the responsibility to find and accurately identify enemy forces was all theirs. They also knew that incoming fighters trusted them implicitly; they expected to be talked-on to only valid targets. Likewise, the fighters knew that their obligation was to hit valid targets only. Due to the unpredictable nature of locating and identifying the enemy, strikers would normally have to wait at their contact point until the AFAC could find a target. The strikers would often consume most of their available fuel and become anxious to unload their ordnance by the time the AFAC was ready to direct their attack on a target. Attacking quickly required that the strikers have complete trust in the AFAC. Not once did any striker question the validity of any target during the dozens of attacks I directed.

Okay, Two, Big Eyes Out!

1st Lt Allen “JAKS” Duckworth

“Okay, Two, big eyes out!” came the flight lead’s simple yet meaningful order. I was flying on Capt Jim “Meegs” Meger’s wing, and we were about five seconds from crossing the Kosovo-Albania border. This would be my first-ever combat mission. I had been flying the A-10 for only 10 months; not only was this my first combat mission, but it was also my first flight without a grade sheet. Less than two weeks earlier, I finished my missionqualification training, kissed my wife good-bye, and boarded a plane with Lt Glib Gibson, another new wingman. We were excited because we would finally join the rest of the squadron in Italy. We had heard many stories of the great time to be had in Aviano and expected to experience unbounded fun between flying peacekeeping missions over Bosnia-Herzegovina. Instead, as we quickly learned, we were going to war.

At first the A-10 was tasked for nothing more than covering CSAR alert and a little CAS alert. Since I was not a qualified Sandy, I was told that I would probably not be needed. Capt Buster Cherrey had pulled me aside prior to the first bombs falling and had given me the choice of staying in Aviano or going back to Germany, where I could get some flying, at least. I initially thought that I should go home, fly, and spend more time with Cheryl, my wife of only seven months. However, I finally decided to stay and help if I could. By the time I got back to Buster to tell him my decision, he had already decided to keep me there. Since the A-10 did fight, I was very happy with that decision.

So there I was—flying into Kosovo to find and kill a real