23 years ago... Desert Storm started

Posted today by my 35th FW Commander in Desert Storm:

...23 years ago tonight, a young flight surgeon stood in his chem gear on the ramp counting off his friends as the squadron headed north...

 

My then wife and I were living in Ankara, Turkey - I was a civilian working at the Turkish Air Force HQ, on their F-16 project.

In the middle of the night, our phone started ringing - with stateside friends and family wondering if we were okay - if we were in a bunker or could hear the bombs...lol.

We had no idea what they were talking about. When I went to work the next morning, I was wisked away to the US air station there to be told what was going on.

 

Hard to believe that was 23 years ago - seems more like 10.

 

That was the sequel.

 

I was in Jr High and was home sick with something for the first couple days and remember watching it all on TV..... Excellent entertainment at the time.

Something like fifteen years later I was at your place in San Antonio taking pics taking a pic of you with guitar in hand in front of the Ferrari as you were headed out the door again.

 

I was at my cousins place, remember very vividly watching as they were reporting the Sorties begin..

This makes me feel so old... Miss the old days..

 

It is hard to believe it has been that long. I remember watching from my old apartment on Long Island, hoping that our Grummans would distinguish themselves. (The A-6s sure did, but the Iraqis wisely avoided the F-14s, who only managed to shred one Mi-8 helicopter!)

Memories:
- Night video from Baghdad, with explosions in the distance and streams of random AA fire in the sky, vainly looking for the F-117s that were dropping the bombs.
- Videos of real precision bombing; one I remember showed a bridge being blown up right after a lucky Iraqi had crossed in his vehicle!
- Norman Schwartzkopf's daily briefings, which often included said videos.
- Images of sand-colored M1 Abrams, with pennants flying from their aerials, cruising through the desert looking like throwbacks to 1942 in Africa.
- Utterly destroyed Iraqi tanks, barely recognizable as to what they had been, and undoubtedly bothering their Russian builders with their decrepit performance.
- After the war, seeing all these aircraft at airshows with nose art and mission symbols. I particularly remember a pink British Victor tanker with some lurid nose art.
- Touring the USS Missouri in Seattle, with its own mission markings, shortly before she was decommissioned for good.

And what kind of a name is "Wolf Blitzer" anyway?

 

When I saw this stuff start on TV my gut tightened and I felt terrible that " here we go again". I have hard memories of the start of WW2 and much harder memories of December 7th. My brother, two brothers-in-law, and I were in the WW2 thing and I have had three sons and two grandsons involved in the conflicts that followed. Thank God that we still have heroes in our midst who were on deck when Desert Storm started. Ya' gotta say THANKS! to them, that includes you, Russ.

 

I remember the months leading up to the war. All the pundits saying us military might will fail in desert against the battle hardened Iraqis. M1 Abrams with the turbine engines would grind to a halt from the sand; same with apaches. Our technology was made to fight in Europe not the desert. Newsweek was declaring we'd lose 100 troops an hour. Bush on tv giving saddamn (that's how he said it, because interpreted it was an insult) until January 16th or so to get out. A day or two later my brother and I were watching Knight rider, and tv went blank then to special report. Nothing but downtown Iraq lit up with aa fire. No sound of planes or bombs. Then maybe 20 minutes after that the explosions started happen. I knew than, that Iraq was in deep dodo. I knew as a teenager that us military tech vs 50's and 60's soviet gear would be an onslaught. Let alone fighting an army that is battle hardened in trench warfare from 1918.

 

I was in the Air Force in a C-141 maintenance squadron and that was the first night and only night I had to stay overnight on the base. Lots of uncertainty those first few days, but after the operation was over my AFSC was going to be rapidly converted to civilian contract since no one with my job in the entire Air Force ever deployed from their home base and by May my enlistment was up and to reenlist I would have had to change jobs.

 

I was at Vandenberg AFB for a meeting. We had been told by Space Command back in 4Q'90 that one more GPS needed to be launched to make the GPS constellation operational. That was accomplished late Nov. '90 and with approx. a month to check out the satellite, made everything ready early January.

 

I was in AFROTC in college. One of my fellow cadets was the son of Lt. Col. Steve Pingle who was commander of a F15E squadron that shot down a helicopter with a smart bomb.

 

My dad and I were at Hobby Airport waiting to board a SWA Flight to ABQ. Everyone was watching the tv and listening to Bernard Shaw at CNN. The program became more exciting as the reported flashes and sounds were becoming louder.

At some point, it was announced the Pentagon had changed D. Shield to D. Storm. It was time to board the 737. We arrived in ABQ and drove to Santa Fe. We went snow skiing the next day.

After snow skiing we turned on the tv. Some reporter dressed up in chem gear claimed Tel Aviv had been hit by nerve gas. The networks claimed Israeli airplanes had just taken off to strike Baghdad. I mentioned to my father those airplanes probably do not have simple ordnance on the bomb racks. What is the point for slicks after a WMD attack ? I also said the Christian Fundamentalists must be going absolutely nuts with these reports .

 

I was in the old FBO at SEA (really just a trailer), watching it on TV while I waited for our passengers. I think we were flying the Merlin that day-- that would have been normal for our SEA shuttle in those days.

 

I was at Taif, Saudi Arabia in a $B+ group of Saudi hardened aircraft shelters when the horn went off. I was the ops officer of the 492nd TFS, part of the 48 TFW Deployed, flying F-111Fs. The squadron commander flew the first night and we waited anxiously because we were not sure how heavy losses would be. Luckily we lost none. I flew the next night, a TFR mission to an airfield just south of Baghdad with 2 x GBU-24A/Bs (2500 lb LLLGB). First of 20 sorties for me and about 80 hours of combat time. We did not lose any F-111Fs in combat and all but 2 of our sorties (~2600) were flown at night.

 

I was carving tiny oak(!) deer antlers for a gun cabinet.


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Was a Senior in HS and remember the breaking news of the war starting and the footage AA over Bagdad. Followed updates the best I could & still have countless hours of news broadcast on VHS. On the 29th, PFC Scott Schroeder -mutual friend among my co-workers at the time was among the first kia in the battle of Khafji.

 

I was on off-crew, just days away from flyaway to pick up our boat for an SSBN deterrent missile patrol, so watched a goodly portion of the opening on CNN in the barracks at Sub base Groton, CT.

 

First things first, thank you for your service.

Just curious, what threat were y'all most worried about in the F-111? AAA? SAMs?

 

I think it was the tanker that ended up gettin em.

 

I was a Flightline Expeditor with the 58th Fighter Squadron based at King Faisal Air Base , Tabuk, S.A. waiting for our returning F-15s to reload, re-arm and refuel. Our pilots shot down three aircraft that night and two more during the day.

Some interesting notes here: Coalition Air-to-Air Victories in Desert Storm

 

I was a sophomore in college, after serving as an enlisted Army infantryman, wondering what might happen to my buddies in the 101st. I was in the 11th special forces group (reserves) but didn't get deployed.


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Col. Ron Karp, I haven't hear that name i years, my old ops Commander at GAFB. I was there on the south ramp gearing up for war and suddenly I got a visit from a captain, first sgt, and Capt. Boyles telling me my Father had died and I was requested to go bury him on emergency leave. I took all 27 days of it and was still stateside when the war kicked off.

When the tracer fire was shown in Bagdad signifying the start up, I was sitting in a booth next to Bill Monroe and Glenn Duncan at the Bell Cove in Hendersonville, TN watching it on CNN after a set of fine Bluegrass picking. I turned and looked at Mr. Monroe and said, "I gotta go back to work".

I reported in at George and made it back to Bahrain to finish what we started and was damn proud of our flight crews and maintainers. Still my favorite job hands down was crewing those Weasels. A lot of responsibility, a lot of work and every bit of it gratifying.

I just joined a facebook group for the 37TFW and 35th and have been posting some photos lately. I used to lust after Col. Karp's Rolex GMT that his wife bought him. Years later I ended up with one just like it after being in a lucky position to acquire it. I hope Ron is doing well; I remember him telling us that our old Commander Larry Henry made his second star while this was going on. Now there was a good Kentuckian!

 

Nathan- We worried most about the SAMs early in the war, but once Tim's and Russ' Wild Weasels got going, the Iraqis became too scared to turn on radars by day 4. Only took a few AGM-88s to convince them. After day 4 we flew at medium altitude and tried to stay at or above 12,000' to keep above the 57 mm guns. On some missions the Iraqis would fire off 85 mm and 100 mm AAA and those would burst well above us. Great light show, but at night, little chance of being hit.

We had an SA-16 fired at us during one tank plinking mission at 12,000', but we easily outclimbed it since they max out at about 15,000'.