Dan Hampton - Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat

VIPER PILOT

A M EMOIR OF A IR C OMBAT

DAN HAMPTON

To my brother fighter pilotsand all who have seen The Elephant.

Nothing can compensate my family for the constant worry and sleepless nights my profession caused them; but I thank them all, especially my parents and beautiful wife, Beth, for their patience and forbearance.

There are only two types of aircraftfighters and targets.

D OYLE W AHOO N ICHOLSON , USMC

Contents

I WROTE THIS BOOK MYSELF . R ECONSTRUCTING THE COMBAT scenes in Viper Pilot wasnt difficultthey are forever etched in my memory. However, I confirmed every date, time, and call sign against actual flight data cards, mission reports, and intelligence summaries. These events have all been declassified and can usually be found, in one form or another, in open sources.

Classified information is not directly discussed, for obvious security reasons. This includes technical specifications about weapon systems, tactics, and aircraft capabilities. Where essential, real names of pilots do appear, always with the express permission of the individuals involved. Otherwise, pseudonyms or call signs are utilized.

Lastly, the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force has conducted its own independent review of this book and approved it for publication as originally written.

D.H.

March 24, 2003

Nasiriyah, Iraq

C MON... CMON... I GRITTED MY TEETH . F ORCING MY aching jaws to relax, I pulled the throttle back further and dropped the F-16s nose a few degrees toward the ground. As the Viper slid down into the dusty brown mess below us, I felt unaccustomed anxious twinges jab through my gut.

All Players, all Players... this is LUGER on Guard for Emergency Close Air-Support. Any CAS-capable flights report to LUGER on Indigo Seven... repeatany CAS-capable flights report to LUGER on Indigo Seven. Emergency CAS in progress. LUGER out.

I stared at the stack of mission materials on my knee. Id never heard of Indigo Seven, but I had a comm card that was supposed to have every frequency in the galaxy on it for a given mission.

Fuck it.

Another fucking freq I dont have. I swore at the idiots whod done the mission planning in the six months before the war. They drank coffee, sat on their butts, and generated an enormous amount of material, 90 percent of which was useless.

I knew some of them. Smart guys, but so utterly convinced they were correct that theyd failed to heed anyone elses suggestions. The results spoke for themselves. I didnt even have a decent large-scale map of Iraq, and no provision had been made at all for Close Air-Support missions (CAS). I was a Wild Weasel, a surface-to-air missile killerclose air-support wasnt our primary mission. But those of us whod fought the First Gulf War or Kosovo knew better. When troops on the ground needed help, any fighter available was supposed to be therefast.

FUEL... FUEL ... the green symbology flashed in the center of my Heads Up Display (HUD). Toggling it off, I quickly typed in a new minimum fuel number. A much lower number. It might keep the warning signal from bothering me, but it wouldnt put another pound of JP-8 in my fuel tanks. It was also a cardinal sin. If you didnt have enough fuel to finish your mission, then you returned to base. Simple.

Or not.

The Second Gulf War was in its fifth day, and a unit of the Third Battalion Second Marines had gotten cut off north of Nasiriyah in southern Iraq. Theyd called for Emergency Close Air-Support, which meant any fighters able to respond were to scratch their existing missions and race to the scene. It was literally life or death.

Operating under the call sign ROMAN 75, my four-ship (a flight of four fighters) had been immediately rerolled to try and save the Marines. Unfortunately, the biggest sandstorm in recent history was headed this way, and two other flights of fighters had been unable to get down through the stuff and find the grunts.

So I wasnt optimistic.

But this was war, and you did what you had to do.

ROMAN... ROMAN... this is CHIEFTAIN... say... CHIEFTAIN was the Marine unit that called for close air-support. The crackling radio erupted with the unmistakable popping of automatic weapons in the background.

I swallowed, hard. I knew what he was asking. Where the hell are you? Whats taking so long? Youve got to get here NOW or were all dead.

I licked my lips, feeling my tongue rasp over cracked skin that hadnt tasted water in nearly eight hours. CHIEFTAIN... CHIEFTAIN... ROMAN 75 is attacking from the south... sixty seconds.

Southern Iraq is ugly. No two ways about it. As I stared out over the vast Mesopotamian plain, I wondered, not for the first time, why we never seemed to go to war in pretty places. Lichtenstein or Ireland maybe. Bermuda.

Today it was just a tan mess. The jagged blue-green scar of the Euphrates River was muted, like someone had thrown a sheer brown cloth over it. Usually the earth east of the river, toward the Iranian border, looked green and relatively fertile. Now it was blanketed in shades of mud. The horizon worried me, since it had disappeared into a dirty-brown wall boiling up from the southwest, covering Iraq in an ominous shadow. Farther west, the sky had turned a dull black from the ground up to 50,000 feet. The sun was a faded orange smear, barely visible through the curtain of sand.

I glanced around the cockpit again. Adjusting a setting here, rechecking one there. Along the right console, way in the back, I had a canvas bag about the size of a shoebox. This held the aircrafts data cartridge and classified tapes. Once they were loaded, I used the bag for my water bottle, extra piddle packs, and some food. I unzipped it so, hours later, I could get inside with one hand. I always looked forward to snack time. Sort of a reward for surviving.

My fighter dropped through 7,000 feet, and I stole one more look at the ominous sky around me. The sandstorm was almost here. The front edge of it had rolled up from the southwest, obscuring everything in a tan haze. Id split off my Number Three and Four aircraft and just kept my wingman orbiting above the target area. There was no need for both of us to be down here.

ROMAN... RO...

There was panic in the Forward Air Controllers voice, and I fought back the nearly overwhelming urge to shove the nose forward and dive into the fight. I wouldnt help them by getting myself killed. If I could see the ground, it would be different, but the dust made an immediate attack impossible.

I keyed the mike and spoke clearly and unemotionally. I hoped a calm, confident voice would do them good, even if I hardly felt that way myself. Fighter pilots are great actors.

CHIEFTAIN... confirm no friendlies are on the road. Repeat... confirm no friendlies are on the road.

Affirmative! Affirmative... all friendlies... road... west of the road...

I zippered in reply, and as the dust swallowed the jet, I called up my Air-to-Ground weapons display and selected one of the two AGM-65G infrared Maverick missiles slung beneath my wings.

They were big. About 600 pounds each and able to precisely guide by tracking contrasts in the heat, or lack of heat, around a target.

Sonofabitch...

I was staring at my display, seeing what the Maverick saw, and it was crap. Completely washed out, like a TV station that had gone off the air in a cloud of brown static.

Four thousand feet... and five miles to the target. Not much time.

I quickly switched to the other missile. Same thing. Bastard...