Viper Pilot_ A Memoi..

I immediately pulled up and away from the launch. We did this at low altitude,
because the HARM left quite a trail and the enemy was quite capable of doing to
us what we did to him. That is, following the smoke back to the aircraft and
shooting it out of the sky.
Then the radios went batshit. The F-15s were talking about splashing MiGs,
more SAMs were off the ground, and several strikers in front of us jettisoned their
bombs as they reacted to an air threat behind them.
Behind them!
My head swiveled like it was on rollers. I tried to calmly scan the sky in
sections, as I’d been taught, but my eyeballs just bounced around. If there were
MiGs behind the lead group of our jets, then they’d be . . . here.
Suddenly, I knew what had happened. Some Eagle driver had seen our HARM
launches and thought they were air-to-air missiles! I chuckled, but it was
understandable. We’d never fired those things off in peacetime, and it must’ve
looked suspicious.
I quit looking at my air-to-air radar.
“RAZOR One . . . rolling in from the north . . . RAZOR Three, arc southeast for
the roll-in.”
The Mission Commander’s calm voice came over very clear—a true
professional. His flight acknowledged, and I glanced forward long enough to see a
whole flock of F-16s flip over on their backs and dive toward the ground.
A surface attack like they were doing was fairly straightforward. There would
be a route and separate altitudes, usually in 4,000-foot blocks, into the target area.
These would keep you clear of other flights attacking the same target.
Theoretically. The Initial Point (IP) was like the doorway. Systems would be
checked one more time, air-to-air radars would sweep for enemy fighters, and
countermeasures activated. Past the IP, a pilot would fly a specified heading and
distance to his “action,” or “roll-in” point. Here, he’d put the jet into whatever
weapons delivery parameters were needed to release, fuse, and detonate his
ordnance. It was all planned in advance and relatively predictable.
Wild Weasel attacks weren’t like that for the very good reason that air defense
sites were unpredictable, and mobile SAMs were just that—mobile. You can’t plan
specific attacks without fixed targets. So we needed something that could work “on
the fly” against most any threat.
“TORCH Three . . . defending SA-3 from the south!”
That was the other F-4G in our four-ship. I couldn’t see him but I did see two
more SAMs lift off. I was much closer now and could plainly see Mosul. The