Viper Pilot_ A Memoi..

ig part of a Weasel attack. Like overflying water to avoid ground threats and using
the sun’s position to interfere with enemy optical trackers. Some tactics hadn’t
changed since World War I.
But urban Weaseling was tough. Too many hiding places for SAMs and mobile
Triple-A, and the potential for fratricide of friendly units was disconcertingly high.
To complicate things, sometimes our own grunts would shoot at us, unable to
distinguish between Iraqi and U.S. aircraft. Moreover, ever since the Marines and
Army had entered Baghdad, there’d been heavy street-fighting for days.
In fact, we were over Baghdad because just ten minutes earlier my two-ship had
answered an emergency call for close air-support. FACING 43, an A-10 Warthog,
had been hit by a shoulder-launched SAM. He had the dubious choice of landing at
the newly liberated international airport or trying to limp back to a forward airstrip
like Tallil—not surprisingly, he chose Tallil. But the jet couldn’t make it, and the
poor guy ejected over Baghdad. Luckily for him, some 3rd Infantry Division
combat engineers watched him float down and sent a squad to rescue him.
The pilot, Major Jim Ewald, quite rightly assumed everything around him was
hostile until the grunts shouted, “Hey pilot dude . . . come on out. We’re
Americans.”
It was all over by the time we got there, which is how I ended up stalking
giraffes. “LAPEL . . . this is CHIEFTAIN.”
“Go ahead.” CHIEFTAIN controlled fighter activity for the Navy and Marines.
Theoretically.
“Ah . . . we’ve got AROMA 31, two Hornets, inbound your sector at Angels ten
and SNOOP 23 inbound at seven thousand.”
“LAPEL copies, we’ll stay west of the river.”
“Copy. KARMA is trying to reach you on Strike Prime.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
KARMA was the AWACS today, and he couldn’t talk to me because I was too
low. That suited me fine. I sighed and pulled up over Muthenna airport in central
Baghdad. No doubt he wanted to know my shoe size or some other vital bit of
information.
In fact, he didn’t. KARMA ordered us up north about thirty miles to a suspected
chemical-weapons facility. We found an entire complex guarded by tanks and
armored personnel carriers. The other Gambler flights joined us, and we had a
regular shooting gallery. I destroyed two tanks with CBUs and strafed a truck that
made a break for the highway. He didn’t make it.
ELI 21 and TOXIC 25 both took turns bombing and strafing. Between the six of