30 years ago today, I launched off of USS America (CV-66(6) on one of the first missions of Desert Storm. According to my logbook, we got 5 hours airborne flying over Saudi Arabia and looking both into Iraq and into Jordan. America was not flying any strikes that first night – we had only arrived in the Red Sea the day before leaving Norfolk on the 26th of December 1990. Our Tomcat squadrons had been expected to lead a MIGSWEEP mission on the first night of hostilities, but it was not clear at that time when that would be. So it was not a given that we would arrive before the war had started or that we might have to maintain Desert Shield for many months after we arrived. On the 17th, I helicoptered over to USS Joh F. Kennedy for a series of briefings from “the old hands” on operating in this new environment.
It was like crossing into a whole different world. During the TRANSLANT, the ship seemed like it would on any other deployment – we flew most of the way across the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Entering the O-3 level on JFK was a shock when we saw folks walking around with no patches on their flight suits, people packing 9MM into their SV-2’s and wearing silver reflective tape with their blood type where their name tag should be.
On arriving on JFK, we were informed that :1) CVW-3 would lead the MIGSWEEP, and America would be relegated to flying “Red Sea CAP” to guard against any possibility that Jordan might join the war on the Iraqi side. and 2) The war was going to begin that night. Jordan joining the war seemed ( and was) a ludicrous idea at the time, but the knowledge that our aircraft were really going into conflict was and that the conflict was here was quite sobering. The Tomcat CO, who had to lead the strike planning team for the MIGSWEEP, was not happy about this change of plans, to say the least.
All in all, I flew almost 120 hours between 17 January and 02 March on both sides of the Arabian Peninsula. Not all of it was in the E-2; there were some KA-6D hops in that list too, which is a memory I will never forget. I also will never forget going up to the cockpit of our trusty E-2 to see the USS Wisconsin shooting 16-inch shells at Kuwait. Seeing the flames from the barrels from 21,000 feet on a clear night was amazing. I also had the privilege of flying into Riyadh on the day the ground war began, only to find I had left my gas mask back on the ship. I actually caught a brief glimpse of Norman Schwarzkopf as he was visiting the Air Operations Center.
It was an amazing adventure at the time – and it sure does not seem like it was 30 years ago, but alas, it is. I wish I had known then what I know now – the time before and after would probably have been so much better. But I was proud to have been a part of that trip.
America was the only carrier to operate on both sides of the conflict, starting the war in the Red Sea and ending up in the Persian Gulf a week before the ground war started. My last sortie of the war was controlling B-52’s into their targets and deconflicting them from other close air support missions.
Listed below is America’s chronology of that war from the USS America Cruise book. By the way – I was also on that first SCUD hunting mission listed in the list. (Slide your mouse to see both pages).
It sure does not seem that long ago.
