Afterburners Read online

  Afterburners

  AIR WAR #1

  THE INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY OF THE COMBAT FLYERS

  INCLUDES A SPECIAL FOREWORD

  BY THE AUTHOR

  William Robert Stanek

  RP MEDIA

  REAGENT PRESS

  Afterburners

  AIR WAR #1

  This Edition Copyright © 2015 William Robert Stanek.

  Original release © 2006 William Robert Stanek

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. Printed in the United States of America.

  RP Media

  Cover design & illustration by RP Media

  Cover photo licensed from ThinkStock

  Stanek, William Robert.

  Afterburners: Air War #1. The Incredible True Story of the Combat Flyers / William Robert Stanek.

  p.cm.

  1. Persian Gulf War, 1991—Personal narratives, American.

  2. United States. United States Air Force.

  3. Stanek, William Robert. Title.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR: WILLIAM ROBERT STANEK

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  THE AIR PLAYERS

  THE PACKAGE

  THE COMBAT CREW

  INNER SHIP’S COMMUNICATIONS

  FOREWORD

  JULY 1990

  AUGUST 1990

  SEPTEMBER 1990

  OCTOBER 1990

  NOVEMBER 1990

  DECEMBER 1990

  FRIDAY, 11 JANUARY, 1991

  MONDAY 14, JANUARY 1991

  TUESDAY, 15 JANUARY 1991

  WEDNESDAY, 16 JANUARY 1991

  THURSDAY, 17 JANUARY 1991

  FRIDAY, 18 JANUARY 1991

  MONDAY, 21 JANUARY 1991

  EVENING, MONDAY, 21 JANUARY 1991

  TUESDAY, 22 JANUARY 1991

  GLOSSARY OF TERMS

  TIMELINE

  About the Author:

  William Robert Stanek

  The author proudly served in the Persian Gulf War as a combat crewmember on an EC-130H, an Electronic Warfare aircraft. During the war he flew numerous combat missions and logged over two hundred combat flight hours. Additionally, he has nearly 1000 hours of EC-130H flight time.

  In his military career, he has always been at the top of his class—a two-time distinguished graduate, honor graduate, and unit technician of the year. His civilian education includes a B. S. in Computer Science, magna cum laude, and a Master of Science Information Systems with distinction. His distinguished accomplishments during the Gulf War earned him nine medals, including our nation’s highest flying honor, the Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross.

  His last station while in the Air Force was at the 324th Intelligence Squadron, Wheeler Army Airfield, Hawaii. His initial training in the intelligence field was as a Russian linguist. His language background also includes Japanese, Korean, German and Spanish. As a writer, he has always preferred book-length fiction and non-fiction. One of his essays on military life won a writing contest, earning him a cash award and the George Washington Honor medal from the Freedom Foundation at Valley Forge.

  His experiences in the Persian Gulf War changed his life and helped drive his successful career as a writer and entrepreneur. To date, he has written and had published over 150 books. His books are sold all over the world and have been translated into many languages.

  Author’s Notes

  Times and dates are included to provide a sense of chronology and are not absolutes. The notes in my journal had times referenced in Greenwich Mean Time (Zulu), which were converted to local times dependent on location.

  The events depicted in the story are taken from real accounts, my personal journal, and various other unclassified sources. Names have been changed to protect the privacy rights of those involved. Some aspects of the story have been dramatized to provide a more complete view of the air war.

  The Air Players

  Callsign

  Aircraft type

  Role

  Gas Station

  KC

  Refueler.

  Gypsy

  AWACS

  Airborne warning and control.

  Paladin

  F-15C Eagle

  Air support. CAP. MiG Sweep.

  Phantom

  RC-135

  Reconnaissance.

  Shadow

  EC-130

  EW/Communications jammer.

  The Package

  Nickname

  Aircraft type

  Role

  Buff

  B-52

  Heavy bomber.

  Eagle

  F-15C

  Air superiority fighter/interceptor.

  Falcon

  F-16

  Air-to-air, air-to-ground fighter.

  Raven

  EF-111

  EW, primary radar jammer, attack.

  Strike Eagle

  F-15E

  Deep interdiction; carries payload.

  Thunderbolt

  A-10

  Ground attack aircraft.

  Weasel

  F-4G

  EW radar jammer, attack, reconnaissance.

  Note: A suffix indicates the aircraft’s number as part of a group. Paladin-1 is the leader (Paladin Leader). Paladin-2 is his wingman. Paladin-3 is the next fighter. Paladin-4 is Paladin-3’s wingman.

  The Combat Crew

  Normal crew load is 13 (this can vary)

  Front Crew

  Nickname

  Full Name

  AC

  Aircraft Commander; the pilot

  Co

  Copilot

  Eng

  Engineer

  Nav

  Navigator

  AMT

  Air Maintenance Technician

  Mission Crew

  Nickname

  Full Name

  MCC

  Mission Crew Commander

  MCS

  (Pos. 5)

  Mission Crew Supervisor

  Positions

  1, 2, 3, 4

  Junior operators/ operators

  Positions 6, 7

  Senior operators

  Inner Ship’s Communications

  Channel

  Description

  Flight Crew Hot

  For emergencies. When pulled, it activates the headset microphone without having to key it. Also called Ship’s Hot.

  Listen

  For listening to Flight Crew Hot comms.

  PA

  The ship’s loudspeaker; only the front-end can talk on PA.

  Private A

  The mission crew commander’s channel, used to pass targeted signals to the MCC.

  Private B

  The mission crew’s channel, and for comms to the mission crew supervisor.

  Select

  Patch directly to other positions, like a dial-in telephone switching bank for general chatter.

  Ship’s Interphone

  Cockpit comms and comms to the front-end.

  FOREWORD

  May, 2015

  My accomplishments during my 11-year military career earned me 29 commendations. When I left the military, I was one of the most highly decorated in the command.

  My commander and supervisor loved it when I put on my dress blues and participated in the various parades and celebrations on base, especially Memorial Day, Veteran’s Day, and the 4th of July. I met a few presidents, including George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and a few generals, including Colin Powell and H. Norman Schwarzkopf, that way. And let me tell you, it was truly great to have presidents and generals shake my hand and meant it.

  With what’s happening in the world right now, it’s a good time to look back and reflect. I served
my country in foreign lands and during several tours of duty in combat zones, including two combat tours in Iraq. During the tour of duty I write about in this book, I flew on 32 combat missions from the opening days of the war to its end. In that time, there was never a day I didn’t look death in the face. Never a day I didn’t face AAA, SAMs and more as we flew our missions.

  Because of that service, I will always know that when the darkest of hours arrives I will not hesitate. When asked, I answered. When called, I went. When death stared up from the void, I did not fear. I gave because it was my duty and because I felt it was the right thing to do.

  I write about some of my experiences in this book, which was featured in a full-page review in the Journal of Electronic Defense and on NPR. Though a memoir, the book is largely a tribute to the men and woman I served with.

  As you read, I hope the book opens a window for you as big as the original experiences did for me. After combat, the world never seemed quite the same. The return to normalcy was a strange experience, never quite accomplished. I don’t, in fact, think I ever slowed down or ever quite touched the earth after those experiences. For it was afterward that everything in this world changed—that everything in this world became so clear. And afterward that I set my sights on the future and never looked back.

  Terrible experiences can change a person for better or worse. I’d like to think the terrible experiences recounted herein changed me for the better and opened my eyes to the wider world. As you read my story and that of those I served with, remember that I wrote this book as I lived it, when I was a much younger man than I am today.

  July 1990

  Summer in south-central Germany was calm and warm but not hot. Nevada, two weeks ago at the Green Flag exercise, had been hot. I powered down the windows, headed slowly down the kilometer-long stretch of road to the opposite side of the base. It was my first day back after a long operational exercise stateside. I was exhausted after the previous day’s 18-hour flight, but exhaustion was the norm for flyers and combat crew.

  Mustard fields separating the administration and flight line sides of the sleepy air base were in full yellow-green bloom. I stared out across the fields for a moment as I came to a solitary-looking stop sign. The stop sign, nearly a duplicate of the ones back in the U.S.A., was almost an oddity in this part of Europe. Most German road crossings sported yield signs—Germans didn’t want to fuss with having to come to a complete stop when it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

  To me it seemed everything in Germany was about speed. The Autobahn had no speed limits in most places. The BMW 728i I drove could purr along comfortably at 200 kilometers per hour. But this wasn’t the Autobahn and I came to a halt from a moderate forty-klicks.

  A narrow two-lane road spread out before me. If I turned right and followed the road, I’d end up in a country village. Quaint and picturesque, the village was like a snapshot out of another time, a photo from an old postcard. Left would take me down Snake Hill, a treacherous stretch of road with many twists and turns. Snake Hill in winter had claimed more than a few lives, but this was not winter; and I only turned left so I could lean right and enter the flight-line side of the air base through the back gate.

  A security police officer checked my identification card and waved me through. It was July the 25th. More than a thousand miles away, U.S. Ambassador Glaspie was visiting Iraq. Iraqi troops had been amassing on the Kuwait-Iraq border all month. Relations between the two countries were falling apart and the U.S. Ambassador was in Baghdad at Saddam Hussein’s request. The official word given to Saddam Hussein that day helped direct history—a history that probably would have played on with or without the discussions though no one will ever know for sure.

  I stuffed my flight cap into my left leg pocket and checked the zipper on my green nomex flight suit. I had to look good; I was entering the ops building, going straight to the director of operation’s office. It was the first stop of many.

  The director of operations, Major James Abernathy, was an old-school pilot who’d flown in Vietnam. He could be an S.O.B. when pushed but was well-liked and good at his job. I said my good mornings, trying not to interrupt the major’s conversation with Chief Master Sergeant Dwight James Hancock, aka Old Jimmie, as I checked distribution. Checking distro was a part of the morning routine.

  Remembering my flight helmet, which was getting fitted with a new mask, I backtracked to Life Support, which was closed. Heck, it was early, so the wasted stop didn’t bother me too much. As I hurried down the long central hall of the ops building, I passed two large vaults that served as SCIFs. Mission planning and briefings were held in the SCIFs. No mission for me today, so the SCIF wasn’t one of my stops.

  I cut through the crew lounge, eyed the cases of Bischoff piled next to the cooler. Unlike some of the crewers who had come in several hours ago from a mission, I had the good sense to know that it was too early for beers.

  I filled a thermos with coffee. Took a quick sip. It was strong. No cream. No sugar.

  Outside the ops building was a long barbed-wire fence. Behind it were a group of buildings and the hardstands for the unit’s aircraft. I showed my flightline badge to the SP inside the guard shack; displaying an access badge was a requirement inside the flightline. The guard buzzed me in.

  A single four-engine turboprop, the great Herk, was parked on the second hardstand. The C-130 was one of the Air Force’s truly great workhorses. During its lengthy tenure in service, it had done and seen it all.

  It was a tactical aircraft that was readily modifiable to do any job. As an AC-130, it was the Gunship—one of the most deadly close-air support birds in the sky—and it had proved itself many times during attack, reconnaissance, and close-air support missions. As the KC-130, it was a capable aerial refueler. During Vietnam the C-130 had been used to drop the Daisy Cutter, a specially designed bomb used to clear landing zones for helicopters in dense jungle.

  A payload of bombs was nothing compared to the payload delivered by the EC-130—the great Gray Lady. The EC-130 was one of the Air Force’s most capable and trustworthy Electronic Warfare platforms.

  The grace of the Gray Lady wasn’t in her payload. She wasn’t a B-52 or an F-15. She didn’t deliver a payload of rockets or bombs. She was a silent killer and a giver of hope, just as powerful as the Mighty Buffs and just as lethal as a Screaming Eagle.

  EC-130’s had been in every major confrontation since Vietnam and were battle-proven in Beirut, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua and elsewhere, but few knew they even existed. She was a modern marvel. As the EC-130H, she could cripple anti-aircraft artillery batteries, surface-to-air missile units, ground troop movements and fighter pilots by blocking their communications and signals emissions. As the EC-130E, she conducted psychological warfare on the enemy, delivering a payload of fear to our enemies and hope to mistreated peoples. She was the one aircraft fascists and dictators feared more than the B-52.

  I glanced at the tail number of the EC-130 parked in the hardstand. It was the same specially configured bird I’d flown back from Nevada in after the combined exercises. In that bird, I was truly an airborne commando, combat crew through and through.

  We had tested out her new capabilities in the Nevada desert and raised more than a few eyebrows, but the invitation by General Kingston to come play war games in the desert had a hidden agenda. Washington brass wanted to shut down the EC-130 program in Europe. Modern warfare equipment was expensive; and the politicians didn’t always understand the need for high-tech, high-cost platforms like the specially configured Gray Lady I looked at as I stepped on by.

  The main question seemed to be what was an entire wing of air and support crew doing in Germany flying “training” missions. It was an excuse to close the base, save the Air Force and the good old U.S.A. millions each year. The Washington brass knew the “training” missions had little to do with training. Soviet fighters didn’t react to “training” missions and I had seen more than my share of Soviet fighter pilots out
the window.

  My team had flown every day in Nevada during the exercise—sometimes jarringly, teeth rattlingly low to the deck as we raced into the mission zone, other times making the turboprops whine and screech as the pilot showed off countermeasures. By the time we made that final transatlantic dash I was more than ready to come home to Germany.

  Even as I entered the plain green prefab building that I worked in, I could hear and feel the roar of engines. The sensation that I was soaring at 30,000 feet hadn’t gone away. It was flyer’s lag, the feeling that you are flying even when both feet are planted firmly on the ground. It’d go away in another day or two—if I was lucky.

  All members of the group had day jobs that were different from their jobs in the air. My day job was to run Crew Scheduling. Key perk: I knew every flyer in the unit by name, grade and skill.

  I sat down, went through the papers in my inbox. A few newbies had come in since I’d been gone. They’d have to come back through scheduling if they wanted to fly. No one flew until they had a sit-down with me—it was a policy requirement and not because I had big brass balls.

  It was 09:00 by the time I got a chance to update the Big Board, a two-week planner that listed the unit’s missions and the crews assigned to each mission.

  A standard mission had five front-end and eight back-end crew. The front-end crew—pilot, copilot, navigator, engineer, and air maintenance technician—were responsible for the plane and its systems. The back-end crew—mission crew commander, mission crew supervisor, and six specialists—were responsible for executing the mission, whatever the mission might be.

  The Big Board was decidedly low-tech but I preferred it to computerized tracking. Crew assignment changed often. Flying the zone was stressful and sustained high-levels of stress meant people got sick more often than was normal. When crewers got sick, mentally or physically, they were put on the Duty Not Including Flying (DNIF) list until a flight medic took them off of it. And DNIFs were only one of many reasons crew assignments changed, which meant being able to see the status of every crewer at a glance was not only valuable, it was often a requirement.