First Strike
Maj. Mark Hoehn was handed a set of coordinates and asked to find the target. It didn't take long for the F-117 pilot to figure out he would be going to Baghdad. The war, he thought, was starting. "I knew by the nature of where we were going that this was going to be significant," he said. Neither of the two pilots knew Saddam Hussein was the target. Within minutes, Lt. Col. Dave Toomey, the flight lead, and Hoehn were putting together their portion of the mission. On the flight line, maintenance crews and support people prepared the Nighthawks for a mission they knew nothing about. All they knew was they had less than two hours to get the aircraft airborne. "The maintenance area was a swarm of activity," Hoehn said. "They wanted to pull it off as much as we did. Those guys—maintenance, munitions, support—teamed up to make miracles happen."

The mission plan called for each pilot to drop two bombs on the bunker. The bombs—EGBU-27 Advanced Paveway III bunker-busters—can be directed to the target using either laser or satellite guidance. They were designed to burrow underground before detonating. The problem: The bombs were unknowns. They had only been tested once, and neither pilot had flown with them before. In fact, the Air Force tested the bombs in the United States just six hours before the crew began preparing for the mission. Fighter aircraft dropped the munitions in the same configuration the Nighthawks would use. The tests were a success.

With the planes loaded and the pilots ready, Ram 01 and 02 launched into the night sky at 3 a.m. toward Baghdad. At about the same time, a pair of Navy EA-6B Prowler crews flying patrol in the region was tasked to meet the Nighthawk pilots en route to Iraq. A couple of Air Force F-16s flying no-fly-zone missions were also called as escorts. Another Prowler, from the USS Constellation in the Arabian Gulf, joined the package as the seven aircraft met up with a KC-135 tanker to refuel the Nighthawks.

"We'd been in radio silence for most of the flight," Hoehn said. "No one knew what we were doing, and I hadn't said anything to Toomey because I was having problems with my communications setup. I had to talk through the boom operator to see if the mission was still a go."

The tanker dragged the pair toward Baghdad, then broke off and headed away. The EA-6 crews and F-16 pilots stayed with the Nighthawks a little longer, then peeled away to let the F-117s slip into Baghdad airspace. When the pair was about two hours from target, Navy ships in the Arabian Gulf and elsewhere fired a battery of Tomahawk cruise missiles. The launches were timed to reach Baghdad within minutes of the bunker strike.

Both pilots had wanted to get to the target before daylight, but the sun was already bleaching the desert sky a bright orange as it crept over the horizon. "At altitude, it gets very bright," Hoehn said. "That's not a good time for a stealth fighter. We needed to get to the target quickly." Toomey broke away from his wingman and headed down toward the target. As his fighter dropped under broken skies, Hoehn banked in and raced in from the east.

Both pilots released their weapons. The satellite tracking systems guided the bombs to a series of buildings in the compound. As the Nighthawks peeled off the target area, Hoehn could see flashes of light in his canopy as explosions tore the compound apart and the antiaircraft batteries started firing. Hoehn flew west out of Baghdad. Toomey also skirted out of the airspace as the Tomahawk missiles began hammering the city. They flew on, not knowing where the other pilot was or if the other had survived the attack. Because the planning timeline was so scant, the pilots had to find their own refuelers.

Toomey found a KC-135 refueling no-fly-zone patrols in the east and gassed up for the return trip. Hoehn linked up with the tanker that dragged the pair to Baghdad. The pair landed in the bright sunlight of a Southwest Asia morning. The first thing Hoehn did on landing was hug his crew chief.
     — Excerpted from "The First Shot" by TSgt. Mark Kinkade from the July 2003 issue of Airman magazine.