WIX Archives

Re: Oh for Pete's sake

Posted by Randy Haskin on Mon Dec 22, 2003 12:54:09 PM

In reply top Oh for Pete's sake posted by Jim _angry right now_ on Mon Dec 22, 2003 12:09:09 PM

Interesting post, Jim. While I understand your frustration (I was pretty pissed about it when it happened, too!), your criticisms and accusations are both ignorant and misguided.

"Aren't the targets identified in the pre-mission briefings?"

No, as a matter of fact they're not always. The mission those guys were flying required them to fly into a hostile area, then find and identify targets themselves. They struck what they had ordnance on board to hit, then passed off targets to other bomb droppers.

Sophistocated intelligence is not omniscience. The combat environment is very fluid. Although the intelligence cycle is pretty good, what pilots are briefed is not always what they see when they get to the target. Since I don't get a live satellite feed in my jet, the intel can be hours old by the time I get to a target area. At some point a man in the loop has to make a decision based on what he sees laid out before him.

You need to understand that *if* intel had taken any time to study some overhead imagery of the airfield dispersal area on this particular day, their area of interest would have been on things *other* than preservation of old aircraft! They had a couple of higher priorities!

Plus, fragmentary orders ("attack" orders, if you will) are not so specific that they would say, "bomb the aircraft in revetments 11, 17, and 22, but don't hit the one in 16!!". Besides, even if the order did say that, there's no guarantee that the aircraft wouldn't have been moved by the time we actually physically arrived there to strike the target.

"That plane probably hadn't flown for nearly 40 years and it couldn't have been made airworthy to carry WMD--period."

That's an easy assessment to make at zero airspeed and zero G. Remember, the guys in the story didn't even know what kind of airplane it was. It's not like we were dropping bombs on an aviation museum, Jim. This was an active IZAF military airfield, and the Hunters and Furys in the story were dispersed in with MiG-23s, MiG-25s, MiG-21s, Su-17s, and Su-22s. We were not expected to identify by type each aircraft prior to destroying it, nor is that a reasonable expectation in that environment. There was a large volume of 37mm, 57mm, and 100mm AAA that was being shot back at us while we were flying in the area. These were military, fighter-sized aircraft dispersed at an active military airfield that we had been authorized to attack.

"And then some trigger-happy jet jockeys blow up a piece of history like they are in a video game."

I think you'll find that the people I flew with -- and the people I describe in that anecdote -- were some of the most highly-trained, highly experienced, and completely professional aviators on the planet. "Trigger happy" is one of the least apt descriptions of them I can think of.

Again, it is easy in retrospect to say, "that airplane wasn't a threat and should have been spared for it's historical value". At the time, these guys were performing their job correctly in a very complex and fast-moving envinorment.

As far as the "video game" aspect, how can I even attempt to explain that to someone who has not been there? It may look that way to you when you see the video on television, but the SAM and AAA fire we were seeing outside the canopy certainly ensured none of us who were actually there had any misgivings about what we were doing.

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