Basher Five-Two Read Free Page B

fingertip formation. We flew side by side, separated only by a few feet, and held our positions. This allowed Wilbur and me to make a visual inspection of each others aircraft, to make sure that there were no fluid leaks and that all external systems were working. We also tested our chaff and flares, both part of the F-16’s defense system. Chaff was a substance like tinfoil that was discharged from the plane to give enemy radar a false image to read. Flares were discharged to try to attract incoming heat-seeking missiles away from our planes.
    Everything looked perfect. Inspection over, we movedinto a formation known as tactical line abreast. As the wingman, I flew a mile and a half from Wilbur and about 2,000 feet above him. Wilburs role was to lead our mission and to be the eyes and ears of our two-ship element. My responsibility was to maintain the basic flight formation and to support Wilbur in his decisions during the mission. We were now at 27,000 feet and cruising at 500 miles an hour, an altitude and speed similar to those of a commercial jetliner. The only difference was, we were flying over unfriendly territory.
    Our flight pattern carried us over the lush, green boundary separating Croatia and Bosnia, just south of a city named Bihac. We were running into a fair amount of clouds, and the air was choppy, but we decided to establish our combat air patrol, or “cap.” We patrolled the skies by flying an oval pattern, similar to the shape of a racetrack, with each leg covering about twenty-five miles. Each oval took about eight minutes to complete, including making the two 180-degree counterclockwise turns. Flying the same pattern over and over might sound boring, but you never knew who would try to enter the no-fly zone. This was called our “vul” time, when we were vulnerable over hostile territory. A few minutes after we started our vul time, our radars showed a low-flying aircraft to the west, near the Udbina airfield. This was the stronghold of the Krajanian Serbs, and they were an aggressive bunch. Sixteen months earlier, despite NATOplanes protecting the no-fly zone, the Krajanian Serbs had boldly launched an air attack against Muslim sites in Bosnia. To show that we meant business, NATO pilots had had to shoot down four Serbian jets.
    The lone plane stayed clear of the no-fly zone, avoiding any hostile action by me.
    After about an hour of combat air patrol, we began to run low on fuel. The F-16 uses an enormous amount of fuel—a mixture of kerosene and gasoline, about 10,000 pounds for every hour and a half of flying. That’s the same as a car getting two or three miles to the gallon. Following Wilbur’s lead, I headed back over the Adriatic to meet our specially equipped Boeing 707 plane. This was our airborne gas station. While I “parked” on the tanker’s wing, Wilbur took a position directly under the fuselage of the 707. As we all flew at the same speed, Wilbur flipped a toggle switch to open his fuel door, which sat right behind his cockpit. At the same time, the operator of the 707 extended a boom and probe—like a gas hose—into Wilbur’s open fuel tank. Then it was just like any other gas station. The pump was turned on, and you waited until your gauge showed Full.
    After Wilburs turn it was mine, and I passed the seven-minute refueling time talking to the tanker crew on my intercom. I discovered one of the crew was a former “Juvat,” a pilot with the Eightieth Fighter Squadron in Korea, with whom I had served a tour of duty. We Juvats,past and present, were a tight bunch. We even had a squadron coin that summed up our close bonds. The coin read: “You will always be a Juvat no matter where you go.”
    “Audentes fortuna juvat,
” I called out to my fellow Juvat as I left the tanker. The Latin words were our squadron’s motto: “Fortune favors the bold.”
    For our second vul time, Wilbur led me slightly north of our last location, in search of better weather. Finding a