Down Low
We had just completed a loop through the west looking at some of the potential Scud hide sites. We came off the tanker for our second of three tours. We started heading north and got a call from the AWACS. They urgently vectored us to the northwest and gave us a secure frequency to contact a team on the ground. The team needed immediate help. We raced to the general direction, typed in the coordinates, and switched to the frequency. We tried to check in, but no one answered. As we got closer to the area, the weather deteriorated. The clouds were down below 10,000 feet and very broken. A voice comes on the radio with a lot of gunfire in the background. He's screaming the code word for being overrun. I could tell from his voice that he was running. He said they were being attacked by four trucks full of Iraqis with automatic weapons.

The friendly forces on the ground had split up into two parties separated by a couple of kilometers. The main party had about six people in it. The other had two or three. They were an LPOP, a listening post/observation post. It became apparent that we would have to go down through the weather. I saw a hole in the clouds and navigated down through it. I didn't know what to expect. My wingman, Capt. Tony Simmons, stayed high initially and then worked his way down shortly after and rejoined the formation. We broke out under the clouds about 4,000 feet above the ground. The terrain was extremely flat. I was nervous about being down in the heart of the envelope for all kinds of potential threats.

I made two circuits at 3,000 AGL to get familiar with the battlefield. I got my eyes on both of the friendly positions on the ground and located at least one of the enemy trucks, which was about half a kilometer away from the smaller group. I got clearance to destroy the first vehicle. The Iraqis must have heard my jet noise and abandoned it because it stopped moving. I flew over the vehicle and took a mark point to get my targeting pod slaved to its position. I was cleared hot by both teams, and they gave me a sensible attack heading. I started at 3,000 feet, but I felt too vulnerable just below the clouds. I wanted to get down in the dirt, but I couldn't since the weapon would not fuze that low. I dropped down to 1,000 feet, which is the minimum altitude for the bomb fuse arm time. I successfully tracked the vehicle, received a valid release, and performed a level, straight-through safe escape maneuver.

The guys on the ground said it was a direct hit. I then climbed up and was able to locate another vehicle that was trying to hide itself behind a stone wall in an estate. I got clearance to attack this vehicle and wheeled around about 3,000 feet. The bomb took out the wall adjacent to the enemy vehicle. The ground team indicated the attack succeeded in flushing this vehicle to the north. One soldier was running after it waving his arms. He got in and they took off for a short distance. Then they stopped and got out because they knew they must be targeted. I spaced my flight to the north to change my attack heading and to look for other vehicles. I found one and got clearance to engage it. As I rolled in, it took me steeper than fifteen degrees, so I aborted the delivery. I had only enough altitude below the clouds to do a ten-degree, low-angle, low-drag delivery. It was difficult to get enough separation from the target and still keep it in sight to remain on a ten-degree or shallower flight path. I dropped a bomb and damaged the truck, but didn't destroy it, so I went out in a different direction and came in from the east and got clearance to strafe. The ground forces reported the strafing attack successfully destroyed the truck.

All of this had taken about twenty minutes. After strafing, I pulled off and climbed up through the clouds. A little voice was telling me that I needed to egress the area, but the guys on the ground insisted that they needed the remaining truck destroyed. I elected to make one more re-attack. Thankfully, the clouds were breaking up a little and I was able to track the remaining enemy truck with my Litening pod from a higher altitude than before. I navigated through these scattered to broken clouds and was able to achieve a valid release with another laser-guided bomb. The video from my Litening pod shows the weapon impact the back of the truck. The bomb exploded, throwing the remnants of the truck into the air.

The burning wreckage made a good reference point for flights that arrived on scene after mine. All in all, I would say we destroyed several vehicles and got the job done. We were fortunate the Iraqis either had no shoulder-fired SAMs with them or at least they were unwilling to use them or it could have been a totally different story.
     — Lt. Col. Will Sparrow