Wing Wave
The night of the first strike was quite memorable. Everyone from the launching shift stayed over to make sure the jets got back. The pilots flew over the next morning and did a little wing wave for everyone below. Everyone was leaning over to see if the weapon bay was empty. Seeing the traps come down and an empty weapon bay on the F-117 was definitely exciting.
     — Amn. Shelly Lagania

Iraqi Navy
We were patrolling with our P-3 near an Iraqi gas and oil platform on the first night of the war. We saw the only real Iraqi navy ship afloat. It was next to a wreck from the first Gulf War. We called the Combined Air Operations Center and they sent an AC-130 that was returning from an overland mission to take out the Iraqi patrol boat. Unfortunately, we did not have any weapons on board on that particular mission.
     — Lt. Cmdr. Chris Saindon

Fire Hose
We were on a counter-Scud mission in western Iraq with our F-16s the first night of the war. The night was overcast. With my NVGs, I could see the lights above Baghdad as the bombs exploded from the initial strikes. A mile to my north, tracer rounds shot into the air like a fire hose.
     — Lt. Col. John Reed

Hat's Off
My hat's off to our soldiers on the ground, whether they are special forces or infantry. Making radio calls with bullets racing by your cranium is a much different experience from being above the whole situation in a fighter.
     — Maj. Mark Lantz

Record Strength
We deployed more U-2s, flew more sorties, and deployed more people. We were in Iraq in greater depth than we'd been anywhere else in the history of the airplane. Still, our operations tempo was so high that we had very little room to recover if someone got sick and went on nonflying status.
     — Maj. Cory Bartholomew

H-Hour Prelude
Before H-hour, or "shock and awe" as the news called it, we pressed well north of the thirty-second parallel to support the anti-Scud war in the west. The surface-to-air threat was relatively minimal with spurious triple-A and the occasional ballistic missile. On the opening night of the major air assault on Iraq, our two-ship of F-16CJs were supporting some F-16C+s thirty-five miles or so west of Baghdad about ten minutes before H-hour was to begin. Sure enough, we got the call to support some of the CJs near Baghdad with a couple of our four HARMs. We supported that push into Baghdad and continued with our support of the F-16C+s out west at the same time. We were in the right place at the right time that night.
     — Capt. Matt Allen