A-10s over Kosovo (illustrations removed)

We started searching for targets in an area that intel had said the Serbs were using as a vehicle-refueling point. Surgeon put me in a high-cover position as he scanned the area for the refueling point. My job was to keep an eye out for AAA or SAMs fired at our formation. I continually rolled up to check beneath our jets and change my heading. While I was in a right-hand turn looking out the right side of my cockpit, I saw something flash on the ground. I was in the perfect location to catch the morning sun’s reflected glint off the windshields of two westfacing parked trucks.

I called Surgeon on our FM radio and told him what I saw. He asked that I give him a talk-on, so I described the area around the trucks. He could not break out the vehicles and wanted to make sure we were both looking at the same place before we dropped our CBUs. He told me that he was going to roll in with the gun, and I realized that this game was real.

Surgeon squeezed off a healthy burst of 30 mm bullets that hit just to the west of the trucks. As he pulled off target I focused on the ground, ready to call break to Surgeon should the Serbs start firing. Surgeon pumped out four self-protection flares when he pulled off, and the bright red flares contrasted with the muted greens and browns of the background.

I told Surgeon where his bullets hit compared to where I had seen the trucks. He told me that he was going to roll in with his CBU. He entered a 45-degree dive-bomb pass, pickled, and pulled off; his bomblets also hit just west of the trucks. He climbed back to altitude and told me to set up for a rip-2 pass with my CBU-87.

I checked and rechecked my switches. My fuzing was set, and I had green ready lights. I checked my bomb-pass parameters one more time and then committed myself to the attack. “Two’s in,” I called and then started my roll in, accelerating towards the ground.

“Two, come off dry to the south,” Surgeon called me off. I broke off my pass, pulled out of my dive, started my climb to the south, and began punching out flares. My heart was racing. What did I do wrong?

Surgeon told me that he wanted me to roll in from the southwest to avoid the SA-6 that was active to our northwest. When I reached altitude, I checked my switches one last time. Now I was nervous. This would be the fourth pass on the same target. Everything that I’d read and heard from experienced guys said to never hang around a target too long. How long was too long?

I cracked my wings and rolled down the chute. I was completely focused on those two trucks. The lime green pipper slowly tracked up my HUD; I pickled and felt the thumps of the munitions leaving my jet. G forces pushed me heavily into my seat as I pulled hard on the stick during my safe-escape maneuver. I climbed, pumped out flares, and changed my heading so that I could look back over my shoulder to watch for my impacts. The bomblets covered an area as big as a football field, and in the middle of all the sparkles I saw a large, orange flash.

“Did you see that Two?”

“Affirm.”

“Those are secondaries.”

“Two copies.”

Surgeon set up for another attack while I held in a highcover position. He rolled in and dropped his second CBU on the target. A thick, black column of smoke started to form. We moved on to western Kosovo.

Surgeon called the FAC covering the west side of the KEZ to see if he had any targets for us. Surgeon stressed that we had four Maverick missiles left. He really wanted to shoot a Maverick on his last combat sortie here. But the FAC did’t have any targets and we were low on gas, so we headed home.

As we left Kosovo, Surgeon told me to look back at the target area we had worked. I rolled my wings and pulled the nose of my jet around to get a better view. From 20 miles away I could see the dark column of smoke reaching up to the sky. No one could have survived all that.

That was the first of my 18 sorties in Kosovo and typical of what it took to find and kill two fuel trucks. I became a flight lead a few rides later and flew most of my sorties as an AFAC. As such, I had to follow the ROEs closely, a requirement that continued to frustrate us throughout the campaign. We had to call Italy for CAOC approval to attack targets if they were within so many miles of the border of Albania or Macedonia. The ROEs put most vehicles off limits, and only those painted army green were considered valid targets. When those two ROEs were established, ABCCC repeatedly broadcast the detailed restrictions in the clear over an unsecure radio. Afterwards, we saw hundreds of white and yellow vehicles driving throughout Kosovo every day. The Serbs had to have been laughing at us while they shook those cans of spray paint.