A-10s over Kosovo (illustrations removed)

I checked all of my switches. All the lights were green, and I was at the right altitude—everything was ready. “Taco One can be ‘in’ in 10 seconds,” I said.

“Continue.”

“One’s in hot!” I rolled to the left, slicing down out of the sky. Down, steeper and steeper, my nose pointed at the earth—green and brown earth replaced the blue sky in my windscreen. In the background, I heard Bumpy’s clearance. I rolled out, straightened my wings, and waited a few moments for the low altitude safety and target enhancement (LASTE) bombing solution to stabilize and indicate that I had lined up just right of the target. I had misjudged the winds slightly and had to compensate by adding about five degrees of bank. I clicked forward on the trim to reduce stick forces and attempted to relax—I tried not to jerk the stick or make any sudden inputs that might throw the LASTE solution and the CBU-87 canisters off target. Slowly, in seconds that were like minutes, the pipper approached the target. As it got closer, it seemed to accelerate. I resisted the urge to push forward on the stick to slow the pipper’s movement and make the weapons-release point easier to judge. If I had done that, I would have “bunted” the aircraft, fooled the computer, and caused the canisters to impact long of the target. Temporal distortion is normal during a diving delivery—it just seemed much more intense now that I was doing the job for real. I waited until the pipper was superimposed on the target, pressed the pickle button, and felt the two clunks as the two canisters left the jet and started their ballistic fall.

I pulled back on the stick, felt the Gs build up as I brought the nose up to 35 degrees of pitch, and then rolled into a slight bank to the right. I looked down and could see some of the flares I had expended trailing behind my jet; my left index finger persisted in hammering away at the flare button. I continued my right-hand climbing turn towards the sun while looking back at the target area. It seemed to take an eternity, and then I saw two small puffs when the canisters opened. Half a second later, the whole area along the tree line erupted in a beautiful shower of silver and white sparkles as the bomblets detonated. It reminded me of one of my chemistry labs when we had set fire to magnesium shavings. Only this was on a much larger scale. I looked away and scanned the ground for threats.

“Good hits, Taco,” came Bumpy. “Have your wingman drop his Mk-82s north of your hits. We’re going to clear you off on this target and look for some more targets.”

“Copy all,” I said. “Two, I want you in out of the west in one minute. One’s climbing for energy,” I directed on FM. I continued my climb, slowly ascending out of danger, and reached the relative safety of altitude. About a minute later, I was happy with my position. “One’s cover,” I announced.

“Roger, Two will be ‘in’ in 10,” Rip replied.

“Continue.” I replied and offset myself to the southwest, where I would be in a good position to monitor his attack.

“Two’s in hot,” Rip called, as he rolled in towards the target.

I scanned the area beneath him. He was clear, and his nose was pointing at the area that was still smoking from my attack. “Cleared hot, Two.”

Four seconds later, Rip was pulling back skyward, arching away from the ground. “Two’s off, switch error,” he said. “I was in singles.”

Great—neither one of us was at our peak today. It was a simple error, but because of it, Rip had released only one of his four bombs. He was going to have to make another pass. I looked down. His lone bomb impacted on the northern revetment, throwing dust high into the air. Neither one of us had gotten secondaries, although there was some black smoke coming from the southern revetment, which had fallen under my CBU pattern. Something was burning in there.

I checked the fuel. We would have enough for another pass and still have about 10 minutes to spare; no problem.

I looked at Rip, who was climbing, and then I saw something really neat. There were little white clouds underneath him that I hadn’t noticed before. They were small, like little cumulus bits of popcorn. Something wasn’t right—time slowed way down. Some of the clouds looked like they had little silver centers; then they’d disappear. Now more clouds were around him. Hairs stood up on the back of my neck—they were shooting at Rip! Instantly, it seemed time was speeding up again—just like the pipper was approaching the target. Only this was much more real, and yet—surreal. What do I say? I urgently fumbled for words as I pressed the mike switch.

“Taco Two, keep the jet moving. Climb! Triple-A beneath you.” I could now see that it was all bursting beneath him by a good 4,000–5,000 feet, so I was less worried. Rip started moving his jet a little more. The little clouds started to disappear.

“Say location.” Rip’s voice sounded controlled but worried.

“It’s stopped now. Let’s egress north. Keep climbing.” I responded.