Wings Over the Gulf - Episode 2- In Harm's Way

[Music] this is the panavia tornado during the Gulf War this versatile multi-role aircraft flew with Britain's Royal Air Force the Royal Saudi Air Force and the Italian Air Force tornados were assigned some of the most dangerous missions of the war attacking heavily defended airfields in Iraq and occupied Kuwait Tornado missions required pilots to fly daring low-level high-speed attacks hundreds of miles behind enemy lines the assignment was dangerous some tornado pilots never returned [Music] in 1972 the British Aircraft Corporation joined forces with West Germany's Messerschmitt Volk L bloom and our Italian to form the Panay via consortium together the top aerospace technicians of the three countries created a two-seat variable-geometry airframe adaptable to nearly every combat mission [Music] panavia fitted their new jet with a full complement of computerized systems a powerful radar was installed in a high-level interceptor version of the tornado a navigation and attack computer allows the plane to fly as a deep interdiction fighter bomber the tornados twin engines and swing wings give it power and flexibility the basic airframe was deliberately designed to be adapted to different roles much like the US navy's multipurpose a6 the tornado f3 variant is an air superiority interceptor while the tornado gr1 is an all-weather bomber the gr1 can fly at 600 miles per hour 200 feet above the ground but standard tornadoes aren't equipped with laser target designators essential equipment for dropping precision bombs a new version of the tornado fitted with a laser designator was rushed into service during the Gulf War it flew alongside an equally new variant the tornado gr1 a the gr 1a is an all-weather reconnaissance plane that was used extensively to hunt for scud missile sites this is an electronic countermeasures ewg arming pod designed to confuse enemy hostile radars and then further to the right this is not a bomb this is in fact a 2250 litre fuel tank will extend our range when we carry two of these moving on to the fuselage of the aircraft of the tornado gr1 a the difference between the gr one and a gr 1a is that there are no guns mounted on this airplane instead we have internally mounted infrared reconnaissance equipment and it immediately visual is one of the sideways looking infrared sensor windows here and there is one on the right-hand side as well and within this fairing underneath the fuselage is a window which would open which is an infrared line scanner which will give us complete 180 degrees horizon to horizon coverage [Music] Britain's Royal Air Force is the principal operator of the airplane but at one time or another virtually all tornado pilots have flown together during NATO training missions generally these missions involve tornado f3s flying combat air patrol while tornado gr1 was practiced low-level high-speed strikes but when the Gulf War erupted gr1 pilots had to adapt quickly to a dangerous new environment one thing that helped ease the learning curve was the close-knit relationship of tornado crews like the teams who fly f-111s tornado pilots and Bombardier navigators developed bonds that helped them surmount daunting obstacles when Kuwait was overrun by Iraq tornado pilots and the rest of the British Expeditionary Force found themselves facing the greatest challenge of their careers they were deployed to the Gulf on August 9th 1990 less than a week after the invasion eventually 25,000 British soldiers were sent to the war zone Britain's Royal Air Force contributed 135 aircraft including 18 tornado f3 fighters 12 Buccaneer bombers 12 Jaguar fighter bombers and 46 tornado gr1 attack and reconnaissance planes during the go for the dozen RAF Jaguars flew 617 sorties flying combat air patrol and bombing missions to camouflage their aircraft in the new battleground the RAF changed the color of their planes from European green to desert pink this also helped differentiate British tornados from the Saudi and Italian models that flew during the Gulf War ultimately 31 nations deployed armed forces in the Gulf in the build-up before the war some predicted that the coalition would never hold together but the quick establishment of a central leadership kept anarchy at bay general H Norman Schwarzkopf became commander of all forces General Charles Horner led the coalition air campaign this is a team effort the second aircraft comes through the idea of having one air boss in charge of air operations in the war was new insofar as implemented in this war but it's been around for some time in fact it's been fundamental to the concepts for employment of air in Southwest Asia we've trained this way for years I arrived in the Gulf two days before the war started had I not had training with Americans using that the procedures that we actually adopted during the Gulf War it would have been very difficult such short notice to achieve the mission and to achieved it so oh well well it shouldn't surprise anyone to find that the British in the u.s. fighter squadrons are very similar and their approach toward war fighting is very similar but that's true of the majority of the members of the coalition we trained together and we practice together so to speak and so when it came time to fight the war together it was the same thing that we had spent a lot of years getting ready to do and we were able to do that and so whether it was the British or whether it was his Saudis whether it was the UAE or whether it was the French there was a cohesiveness there that permitted us to do what we thought we could do without any deference to who was doing it and that's the important thing British forces were scattered across Saudi Arabia they operated out of an airport parking lot in de Ron and bases in Riyadh Tabuk and Bahrain the British found themselves living in desert tent cities and finished barracks it all depended on the luck of the draw wherever they were they worked alongside the other members of the multinational force this included some 425 thousand Americans and 137 thousand troops from Saudi Arabia Oman Qatar the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain as well as 7,000 troops who escaped from Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion Pakistan Czechoslovakia Canada Bangladesh Syria Argentina Senegal and Sierra Leone also sent in men planes and ships Italy sent in ten of its tornados to fly air superiority missions all together more than six hundred ninety five thousand soldiers from around the globe were sent against the Iraqi army which numbered close to a million the Royal Saudi Air Force flew both Tornado interceptors and bombers mirage f1s were flown by both friends and foes f ones from qatar joined f ones from the free Kuwait Air Force which flew with the Saudis I read stories about how the Saudis were not gonna perform well they performed superbly I remember one tornado mission the guy had to cut a runway he put every one of his bombs right down the centerline of the run certainly the example where the two mirages were coming towards the oil fields and the Saudi flight lead rolled out right behind them AWACS gave them a vector so the idea that one kind of air force is not as good as another air force is really not true you have great individuals in every Air Force and you have guys that have a little trouble getting up speed that's true of all air forces the key on how well an Air Force performs is how well your intelligence is and how well your command and control works in this case I think we had superb support from both [Music] Britten's tornado gr1s flu low-level bombing missions deep in Iraqi territory and they took the heaviest losses of all coalition aircraft the tornado force represented just four percent of Allied air strength but it suffered 26% of the casualties the problem was that the Iraqis had an awful lot of triple-a guns to defend their airfields and at night to see this solid wall of tracer go up was something that no one's ever really experienced before and very frightening and very distracting and although it probably wasn't that effective it certainly tends to take your eye off the ball [Music] when I suffered a lot of high a higher rate of losses than some of the other other airplanes partially due to the nature of some of the sorties we were flying and also we had a fair degree of bad luck as well and if you haven't got luck with you then obviously you're not going to survive all in make a big bang 22 25 of us killed every year in normal training accidents and to be honest the loss rates was no more than we would normally experience in peacetime especially considering the amount of flying and the type of flying that was being done very low-level very demanding training indeed during the build-up to the war so losing friends is something that's not new it's something we are used to I mean it never comes very easy and but it's something that's not unusual five tornado pilots were killed in action another seven were captured by the Iraqis and held as prisoners of war fortunately the war was short by March 1991 all Allied POWs were released to friendly forces another problem facing the RAF and all coalition pilots was the unusually poor weather in the Middle East as any pilot will attest things can get tricky when you're flying at night the weather was not beautiful desert clear blue sky weather there were a number of thunderstorms and with great turbulence now because this airplane is only a very small airplane and it only carries a limited amount of fuel all our operations involved there - are refueling with one of our tanker aircraft on some nights we were actually tanking in very very nasty thunderstorm and electronic storm weathers where the airplanes were being buffeted around quite significantly and all the pilots - a man did extremely well and to be able to make contact with the tanker aircraft and take the fuel but the major safety threat was still Iraq surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns so after losing five planes in the first week tornadoes were sent to higher safer altitudes the RAF claimed this was done not because of the high loss rate but because air superiority had been so quickly achieved that tornados no longer needed to bomb air strips but the fact remains that although the tornado is a versatile airframe it was not designed for medium level bombing nor had its crews ever trained for that mission dropping laser-guided bombs from medium altitudes was new to gr1 pilots who specialized in delivering their unguided Jaypee 233 runway denial munitions from treetop level but laser-guided bombs were also capable of blowing holes in a rocky air strips [Music] however jp2 33s create a much wider circle of destruction they carry 30 concrete cratering bomblets and 215 delayed fuse mines making air strip repair a hazardous enterprise switching to laser-guided bombs cut down tornado losses but RAF pilots still praise the destructive power of the Jaypee 233 the tornado was always going to be used for low-level attacks against the airfield using the Jaypee 233 that is such a specialized weapon only the tornado can drop it it was always going to be used for that and there's no way you can drop that weapon from medium level so the path was clear we had to do that five tornadoes were lost during low-level attacks on Iraqi air bases but all of the Bombers were sent to higher levels the six reconnaissance tornados continued to fly high speed low-level missions for the duration of the war without a single loss I will say this the Brits were very courageous they took a lot of casualties and my hats off to him they never never missed a beat one pom pom two three four five six bags gone good hit splash I'm still [ __ ] it still shocking it still shocking it nice Roman I do the first tornado gr1 fighter-bombers sent to the Gulf weren't equipped with built-in laser designators so the RAF sent over a dozen Buccaneer bombers armed with pave spiked laser designators to mark targets for tornados gr ones carrying Paveway laser-guided bombs flew in three ships of two tornadoes and one Buccaneer Buccaneer navigators called the shots I was sent to go three weeks into the war actually because I was involved in a new project which was just coming into service at the time which was a new laser designation pod called tiled and it was still under development at the time so before we could take it out there we had to actually develop it and get it fit to work and prove it works before we deployed now tiled stands for thermal imaging and laser designation it was an experimental system rushed into service for the Gulf War five tornadoes were modified to accept the tiled five tile was successful though as with every new weapons system problems did arise because when you're fighting from the air you don't actually see much of the enemy you don't see them at all even when you can see the target charming you don't actually see people especially when you're going from medium level so you don't actually get the impression that you're fighting anybody at all in training we've practiced against targets [Music] just don't air fields or buildings out and around and to a large extent flying the war missions was exactly the same it didn't feel any different except for the fact there was LED coming flying up at me every now and again I didn't actually feel anything directly for or against you the Iraqis they were just telling us the job we had to do it's not like a soldier who gets more deeply involved in it actually has to fight going on all around him all the targets which were used during the position bombs race we're all military targets whether they be hardened their shelters or ammunition bunkers they were all designed to prevent the Iraqi war machine from operating effectively the bridge there's no such thing as a clean war you can't just take out the the targets without killing people or killing innocent people if you like but you can go a long way towards it by using guided weapons but they're expensive very expensive so you have to trade one against the other when cease fire was called on March 3rd the RAF had flown over 6100 sorties the largest number flown by any nation except the United States the five child tornados flew 72 successful sorties in 17 days the 6gr won a recon tornados flew 128 night sorties and the 46 British gr1s in the Gulf flew over 1,600 sorties there are a lot of people who say that airpower won the Gulf War I will trouble with that because air power is only one part of the land sea and air campaign I am very proud of the contribution that we made working together flying side by side and it wasn't only the United States Air Forces the Navy the Marine Corps the Islamic allies our European allies the French the British the Canadians we really pulled together as a team and I believe one of the reasons the war got over so quickly and so few casualties is because of the lethality and flexibility of modern airpower [Music] [Applause] the US Naval built up during the Gulf War was the largest such mobilization since World War two six carrier battle groups massed in the Middle East and the decks of those carriers roared non-stop the sleek f-14 Tomcats were perhaps the best-known planes on board and marine aviators were the other stars of the deck but the Navy's key asset was actually the oldest least glamorous plane on board a venerable a6 this late 50s design filled three crucial roles in the gold tanking electronic jamming and long-range attack streaking in from the sea a sixes were bold reminders of the deadly potential of power projection [Music] a sixes have rolled off Grumman aerospace corporation assembly lines since the late 1950s over the years the plane has gone from vacuum tubes to micro circuits it was designed to fly in all weather conditions both as a Marine close air support plane and a navy long range medium bomber flying complicated bombing missions requires a two-man crew as with f-111s which fly similar missions to aviators sit side-by-side pilot on the Left Bombardier navigator on the right [Applause] the first 86a intruder was delivered to the Navy in 1963 soon a sixes were being mass-produced and flying directly into front-line combat in Vietnam during the Vietnam War the Navy's new attack plane underwent years of brutal field testing [Music] today the a6 looks much the same as it did 30 years ago but inside it's a different airplane computer bombing systems and terrain-following radar have been added to give the a6 true ground hugging day and night all-weather capability the a6 sees target recognition of tach multi sensor or tram pod let's the airplane drop laser-guided bombs with great precision an important variant of the a6 went into service in 1970 the ea-6b Prowler jams enemy radar and communications it can also fire radar seeking harm missiles at hostile positions the ka 60 tanker plane is another a6 spin-off ka sixes refuel Navy planes and transfer gas from huge kc-10 tankers and deliver it to carriers below the a6 has been fundamental to the Navy and its interdiction efforts and again proved very valuable in this war we use the a6 like the 111 and the f-15es early in the war to attack targets such as airfields communication sites and then later we used them with precision munitions and also CB use against troops in the field in Kuwait so you're never in this war alone you're always working together one unit with another and it really doesn't matter what country or what service you come from you mix and match the forces so you have the most capable systems working together during the Gulf War more than 150 coalition ships patrolled the waters near Iraq more than a hundred of these ships were part of the United States Navy the six aircraft carriers in the Gulf region represented half the Navy's active carrier strength generally each ship has about 85 planes on station the aircraft carrier is their forward deployed kind of an offensive punch and it provides us with some very unique opportunities the a6 has got a unique mission and one but there's two aviators in it we can deliver those smart weapons we can carry an enormous amount of ordnance and even though that there's Air Force aircraft they can carry more than we can because we're forward deployed and we can go to places that they can't it gives us an opportunity to go out there and strike if we need to and gives us that opportunity that it just can't be equals with any other aircraft the Gulf War gave the Navy yet another opportunity to prove the worth of power projection when Operation Desert Shield became Desert Storm Navy and Marine pilots flew alongside the US Air Force and the rest of the coalition Air Wing in strikes across Iraq and Kuwait few intruder crews had previous combat experience in fact most a six pilots were younger than their planes the the hard part about combat is that you don't know how you're going to react when you see that situation it's not a game anymore and that can be very scary when you get to that case where it's not a simulator but it's actually a real missile or it's not you know a simulation it's actually triple-a you've got real bombs on young people are trying to shoot at you to kill you that's when you really wake up and say hey if I have not studied if I have not prepared you know am I really gonna be ready and you don't know when so you get to that situation and I think if you ask them deep down truthfully hey did you have doubts I'm sure every single guy had doubts if they said they didn't have doubts or lying for you give me a good story easy these ingot on flashing note knowing that why you subway [Music] aircraft carriers are floating cities where space is at a premium and all operations serve the needs of the flight deck deck activity is always frenzied but never more so than during wartime when pilots sailors and aircrew work exhausting shifts with little regard for the rise and fall of the son carrier life is extremely regimented and for good reason standing in the wrong place at the wrong time can be fatal the noise on deck is deafening crewmen communicate with hand signals intercoms and headset search colors quickly let you know who does what blue shirts keep planes from rolling off the flight deck red shirts handle bombs rockets and ammunition below the deck they ready the weapons that pilots take into battle an accident here can [ __ ] a ship so every action is checked and double-checked in wartime though the pace can be exhausting white and silver are the colors of safety men yellow shirts direct taxi traffic green shirts book planes up to catapults and everyone answers to the air boss the chief controller of flight operations no plane leaves the deck without the bosses approval the air boss is a veteran flyer and his word is long in the handlers room men weave toy airplanes on a replica of the flight deck this is the handlers table nicknamed the Ouija board we do board tells the traffic fuel ordnance and safety men the status of every plane on the ship when toy planes are moved on the board real planes are moved on the deck once in the air pilots are handed over to the carrier air traffic control center a dark chamber in the bowels of the ship non-stop electronic communication keeps crews in touch with their mother ships combat missions can be taxing but Navy pilots seemed to unanimously agree that landing a plane on a carrier deck in bad weather is far more frightening I had one where we were Manning up on the carrier is about 11:30 at night very very dark raining cats and dogs and there was a thunderstorm that for some reason was centered right on top of the ship and somebody said on the radio oh it's not that bad it's gonna pass her in a second I'm looking around it if these cats and dogs coming down in the flight deck thinking what are we doing you know and I was scared I mean that was scared and down to two miles and just pouring down rain you can't see the ship can't see the ship Adam out there it is land and I'll tell you what that's uh it's an eye-opener that's an eye-opener typically you'd come back from a an overland mission and your heart had been racing you've got the adrenaline pumping you get over the Gulf and now it's an opportunity for you to relax well especially if you're coming back there at night when you get about 50 60 miles away from the ship and that adrenaline starts pumping again it's always difficult to get on board at night flying at high subsonic speeds 200 feet above the desert floor might also look difficult but it's not thanks to terrain following navigation systems but during the Gulf War intruder pilots flew at much higher levels than they were accustomed to often above 10,000 feet this helped them survive flak and surface-to-air missile attacks I'm sure every guy that's in this hangar can tell you there were times where he saw a missile coming up and you don't know for sure if it's guy denied you or not you're going to be able to pick up that missile visually and you don't have a choice to take the chance of whether or not this guy and you're gonna have to maneuver to defeat it and the same thing with the triple-a good buddy of mine in in ba 65 was hit the triple-a one day when I was flying we went and run the food on his airplane and and basically did a you know an airborne check out to see how much damage there was it ended up being a hole in his wing but the size of a large chair that you could slide through and we followed that airplane home and watched him land at a divert field he unfortunately could not see the hole because it was near the outside portion of the wing and was blocked by some wing structure he was talking about trying to lower his flaps and slats except no no no don't do that so again the danger was out there no matter how easy people thought it was you could run into danger a number of airplanes shut down by the Iraqis was low but it did happen it was extremely difficult Jeff was a sight of VA 35 at the time and it was my previous squadron I had flown some with Jeff I knew everyone in this squadron and just prior to our first mission into Iraq is when we had gotten word that some of those airplanes a6 is up the Saratoga had actually been shot down it was a difficult time I could say that the night before that first mission I laid awake in bed for quite a while just thinking about thinking about exactly what was going on with Jeff what were his thoughts and what specifically what's happening to him in future Wars pilot losses will be reduced by using weapons such as the tomahawk land-attack missiles 290 70 lambs were fired from battleships and submarines at the most heavily defended targets in Iraq at least two were shot down but the rest flew some 600 miles at Heights as low as 100 feet before hitting targets smaller than a garage door t lambs are the metallic face of modern warfare [Applause] given the mission of the a6 the crew coordination is very important and that's what gives us the advantage over other airplanes is that the interaction that we have between the two crew members specifically during the war the pilot as we'd be approaching a target would basically be flying an unpredictable flight path so he'd be been in the airplane back and forth while the the BN the Bombardier navigator would have his head inside the hood trying to pick out the specific radar blip as the pilots doing that that lazy maneuvering back and forth to evade the radar systems that are on the ground he's looking for the missiles he's looking for the trip away and then that the BN is sweetening up the targeting solution and then there's there has to be good crew coordination talking back and forth the status of the system where the threats are what you're actually seeing out there when to be in hands-off from the radar to the flare that he does have a good track he's got good laser indications but the pilots got good indications on his screen that he's releasing the weapons and then as they're coming back off target again that both crew members have their eyes outside the cockpit they can talk back and forth pick up the threats maneuver the airplane to keep might of harm's way I see something hard will you fly with one other guy primarily you get to the point where you can communicate using mic clicks and glances and and not have to verbalize it becomes very very close very very coordinated and that's what makes us airplanes question and that's what makes it work so well I think that the the whole experience was much easier than we thought it was gonna be however we unfortunately lost and airplane loss to prove a matter of fact the pilot was my roommate so one day you've got a roommate and the next day you don't so yea the war was easy but it was not without cost intruders usually flew in groups of four and dropped both laser-guided bombs and unguided gravity bombs laser-guided bombs were the weapons of choice but poor weather over Iraq often made it impossible for laser designators to lock onto targets on poor weather days a six es dropped cluster bombs and other unguided munitions [Music] we do intruders were also sent out to stop Iraqi naval vessels carrying anti-ship missiles and sea mines those things are difficult because they're moving targets it's not like a land target that you say hey I know where it is today I know where it's gonna be tomorrow and because they're constantly moving they're difficult to find and they're difficult to attack towards the latter stages of the war with the depth of the water you'd get situation do you have a sunk boat out there somewhere in the Gulf and you get a radar blip and you go up there to investigate expecting it to be a target and here it's something that's already sergeant still sticking up above the water but not all a-sixes word carrier-based Marine Corps pilots flew intruders and prowlers from land bases in Saudi Arabia during the peak of Operation Desert Storm 93 thousand Marines almost half the active duty force were in the Gulf area marine intruders flew close air support and interdiction missions to protect the soldiers on the ground the Marines brought 20 a 6e intruders and 15 ea-6b prowlers to the Persian Gulf like their Navy counterparts marine a six crews brought a variety of weapons to bear against hostile forces but marine pilots have closer ties to ground troops than other aviators their number one priority is to do whatever they can to aid and protect Marines on the ground [Music] but whether flying from land or sea a sixes proved that an old design is not necessarily an outdated design I think the reputation that we have the capability that we have with this airplane is just superb everybody here in this hangar that would tell you that they'd like a replacement for the a6 it is old it's been around since the early 1960s and they've done a good job with improving it you know the internal systems changing the software giving us additional capability but to have something such as stealth technology other technology to the internal components would only make us more survivable however given the package that we have to work with it's an exceptional platform we always marvel at what the f-18 guys four systems in their airplane and they've got some very neat things some very state-of-the-art capability that we don't have and again yeah we like to have a new airplane everybody would like to have a new airplane but again given the jet that we have I think we do very well and I think if you look at the overall picture our performance in Desert Storm was fantastic you know in our squadron alone nine airplanes we dropped 1.2 million pounds of ordnance and Desert Storm and that's that's a lot of bombs [Music] [Music] from January 17th to February 27 Navy and Marine pilots flew some twenty six thousand combat and support sorties after the war the Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney said in a crisis overseas the first thing somebody asks is where is the nearest aircraft carrier certainly carrier mobility was a critical factor in August 1990 when the USS Eisenhower and the USS independence raced to the Gulf after Iraq invaded Kuwait the Swift deployment of Navy carriers combined with a prompt arrival of Air Force f-15s might have been the reason Iraq did not continue its push into Saudi Arabia sea Power also might have helped dissuade Iraq from carrying out its threats to use chemical weapons against soldiers and civilians the United States let it be known that its carrier battle groups might be equipped with special weapons the military's polite term for nuclear arms it is unlikely that the coalition would have permitted the use of nuclear weapons in the Gulf but if thousands of Arabs Israelis and Americans had died in a nerve gas attack opinions could have changed in any event just the threat of nuclear arms seems to have had a chilling effect aircraft carriers let the united states quickly respond to crises in the Gulf War Naval Aviation played a crucial part in the coalition victory all three have you shut down your engine that's the negative my enemy job Roger put it a little bit at the right there - clear - clear the tax way I think I'm pretty well clear right now it's a heart thank and we're up you got the hotels on the right Little Harbor oh that's far too safe there's two cars of lifting but on with my final stop then I cut the line threes board that's gonna be them right there here's you play the bundle chair Oh I'm going to lock up the trailing f1 here sure I appreciate that it looked like the F ones are climbing now you see there 21,000 feet now you see who this is uh-huh there's the trailers right there [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] tell you one - Victor Victor Victor 15 is our big restriction it's our Victor what three all right Cathy let's go Victor three some push call five stage it goes to our four kids out for you I wonder what searching okay it got your life clear now if a new week and not readable say again okay still run across ice x21 you up [Music] [Music] cherry [Music] now complete your cleaner which like the last guys of the group are right there that's about [Music] [Music] egos left nine o'clock [Applause] who's that right there [Music] okay on top Roger that there's that Poor's also hi hey to shut them all these breath cabbie that offset right [Applause] later [Music] [Music] No [Applause] a vigil [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you don't think the message there - got to go - yeah [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] okay looks good [Music] okay ready ready [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Tim Corbett

Views: 211,734

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Id: lgbULfvJZT0

Length: 56min 15sec (3375 seconds)

Published: Mon May 25 2020