"My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.
On my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein's ability to wage war. These are opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign."
These were the last words I remember before heading out to my ill fated mission. It was a dark gloomy night in Al-Udeid Airbase, Qatar. My pilot and I were tasked to conduct strikes deep in Iraqi territory, striking key surface to air missile sites (SAM). There were two other F-15E strike eagles with us that night, we would have the call sign "Rocketeer" which was the nickname that my squadron I was assigned to had.
At 12:30 am Arabia standard time my aircraft callsign "Rocketeer 2" took off from Al-Udeid airbase and disappeared into the night sky. To prevent the enemy from preparing we had kept all communications to each aircraft to a minimum meaning that only emergencies would be reported on our radios.
Thirty minutes into our flight we had already crossed into southern Iraq. Before hitting our targets we were required to do a FENCE check which requires us to check if our communications, Chaff/Flare systems and navigation equipment were working properly.
"Rocketeer 1, Check if our flares and chaff are working" my pilot radioed to our wing man.
"Rocketeer 1 flares are working to move on to chaff". Since both out wingman's systems were working they would now check ours.
"Rocketeer 2 Flare check" called my pilot
"Positive I see flares now move on to Chaff" radioed our wingman. "Rocketeer 2 Chaff check". "Positive Chaff is working"
After completing the FENCE checklist my pilot turned out our navigation and formation lights to be more stealthy. I then start to prepare my heads up display (HUD by turning it on to max brightness and max contrast. By doing this I get a view of the terrain in front of me. This feature allows me to accurately distinguish between water and land as water is a bright
green while human structures are green and black.
Suddenly the bright lights of Baghdad appear in front of us. I start to arm the air to ground munitions and bring up the air to ground radar. The ground radar springs to life moving back and forth scanning the terrain.
Our aircraft start to steer into a designated waypoint my pilot input into the flight computer. I then bump up the radar distance to 40 miles. The second and third waypoints start to appear, the second is designated as a circle and the third is a triangle.
I input the third waypoint and changed it to a high resolution map. It took the radar about 10 seconds to create a scan of the area the waypoint was at. I then switched it targeting mode to lock on to the SAM sites . I confirmed it with a press of a button.
Moving on the right side of my computer I start to select which bombs to use. Pressing armament then selecting air to ground. I select the GBU-57's which is a guided bomb.
I circle back to the menu and go into the targeting pod menu which is already set up with the waypoint from earlier
"We are ready to drop munitions" I called out.
I keep a hold of the target and DOOM! We struck the SAM site leaving a massive crater in the middle.
We then circled back and locked another SAM site using the same method. BOOM!
We had struck another target. We then repeated this 2 more times.
By this time we certainly knew that the Iraqis had already noticed us and I was right about it. A ping echoed in the cockpit which was a sign that we had been locked by a missile.
"DIVE DOWN TO THE DECK" I exclaimed .
We dove down to 1000 feet or 300 meters above the ground at more than 800 miles per hour or 1290 kilometers an hour . Suddenly two more missiles locked on to us and the cockpit wasn't a ping noise, it was an alarm.
"Break right!" I frantically shouted. I was deploying large amount of Chaff and Flates to confuse the missiles which had worked in our favor. The first missile flew right by us and hit the ground. The second missile did the same but behind us.
"I am picking up a third missile break left!" Continuing to deploy large numbers of Chaff and Flares. It was too late though the missile struck the underside belly of the aircraft sending a large amount of shrapnel into the cockpit.
I felt a deep pain hit my head and back. My eyes closed . This all occurred in a matter of seconds. I never woke up from that.
I do not know if my pilot ejected or he died with me in the fireball.