Good story from Mousse, a buddy of mine flying off the Theodore Roosevelt CVN 71 in the Med. Thought you might enjoy. Have a pretty good war story from last night. Was fragged as the strike lead for last night's insertion of some 1000 paratroopers into Northern Iraq. Our mission was to provide close air support for the guys as they were hitting the ground. Per any military operation, it didn't exactly go as planned. My strike package consisted of a dozen strike fighters loaded tothe gills. In fact, the cat shot was the heaviest I had ever been shot off the boat. I had rallied the forces in eastern Turkey, waited for the C-17s(who were also loaded to the gill....with troops) and then took the package in country. The overall resistance was actually pretty spectacular to see under the night vision goggles and I can honestly say that I gained a hell of a lot of respect for the Army guys who were jumping at low altitude out of those perfectly good airplanes. And doing it into harm's way. There was about as much triple "A" as I've seen since being out here directly going in their direction. That's where the Hunters come in. We were operating in the vicinity of the drop when we got thecall from "higher authority" that our mission had changed and tocontact the AWACS who was controlling the entire north of the country. I contacted him and he passed that we were retasked to take our package "a bit further south and prosecute two targets of interest". He passed the coordinates and target description sand asked us to meet a certain "time on target" (TOT). Things happened extremely fast from that point and I gathered up Prowler (electronic jammer) and three other Hunters to go "downSouth". I then quickly passed targets to each member and then pushed out to meet our TOT. The trek south took some 15 minutes and it was clear that where we were going was more heavily defended than any where else(outside of Baghdad) that we had been before. The heavy flak and triple A was coming up from all directions and we were continually jinking to offset the threat. Fortunately, no one was tagged prior to the release of their ordnance and the section of aircraft to my east reported that they were flowing back north. That's when the "fun" started. My section had just released our ordnance on an SA-3 site in western Tikrit and was starting our turn back to the north when a"voice of God" as I like to call it, came up and said, "SAM Launch, vicinity of XXXX". I looked down at my moving map and guess who was EXACTLY where that voice called the launch at? It only took about 3 nanoseconds for me to start defending and roll inverted to pick up the incoming threat. Sure as ****! There it was right below and left of my wingline. I made calls to my wingee who still hadn't gained sight of the incoming missile and talked his eyesonto the threat. As a side note, I have to admit that my voice sounds like a girl (did I mention that Frenchy's a *****?) on the tape and it's obvious I'm sucking the seat cushion into my ass. Just when I made a counter Defensive maneuver I picked up another launch about 1000meters from the first site that had shot. Great, two missiles coming my way, two aircraft maneuvering like crazy within a mile of each other, and every Republican Guard in Tikrit getting a show above them of two guys shucking and jiving their way outta there. The missiles fired went stupid at about the same time that I was really getting into it. I called out that they weren't guiding(obvious when they went pure vertical) and gave my wingee a heading to turn to so that we could leave this "hornet's nest". I was actually considering not looking out the window anymore and just pressing straight ahead. Upon looking around (I couldn't help it), it was clear that we created quite a stir down there as every gun in the city was pointed up and firing. We managed to climb back up into the moronosphere and left the show behind! In hindsight, it's amazing to me how quickly things went from the proverbial "milk run" to "hell in a hand basket"! I suppose Iwon't ever let my guard down again when flying above people who want tokill you. A lesson for all of us. After tanking for the third time of the night (one of 6 tankingevolutions over the 7 hour flight), I re-rallied the forces and looked for more tasking. Each of us still had enough firepower on board totake out most small towns in America. We then were tasked to help outthe guys we had really gone out there in the first place for: those1000 "Armies of One". All of us were assigned to take out artillery pieces the rest ofthe night in direct support of the troops on the ground. Was a sight to behold seeing so much metal flying around the Iraqi countryside and knowing that it wasn't going to be used against our troops. Well, I could ramble on for days, but will save more for later. Hope everything's great at home. Miss all of you and hope to see you all before the year's out! Mousse..! ..out.
