War Stories Thread

[Danger41]

@argstarted the other thread about Gunships in Desert Storm and I recommended a war stories thread because I’m sure this group has some good ones. I’ll kick it off.

Decmeber 2, 2014 Nangahar, Afghanistan 

Flying Draco out of Bagram and a raid comes down that we’re going to support and run the stack for. We weren’t doing hits every night but by dumb luck, I’d been on a few as we rolled through the schedule. As some of you know, they’re usually a bit hectic at first when the helo lands and then it’s pretty chill as they make callouts and not much would happen so that was what I expected. We brief up, get out there, get everyone checked in and ready to go. We had 2 Vipers, a Gunship, a few RPA’s, Compass Call a ways off, and the helos that had a couple DAPs and 4 60’s. TOT hits, all the sensors are assigned and I’m looking out the window and I see multiple 12.7 and 23mm open up from all along this river bank/village that were covered up until we landed (1). We haven’t even made comms with the ground force yet and it’s a madhouse immediately. I vividly remember seeing tracers crisscrossing the village and then under NVG I can see airburst going off above the Gunship and behind where he was (shooting at the sound). The assault force gets out and are immediately under fire. I had some young guys running sensors and a pretty weak swimmer (that got much better but he was a 1st Lt at the time and somewhat weak) as our CSO who, in theory, should be running the show in this instance but kind of locked up a bit and was overwhelmed. I started directing sensors and getting directive to get people sorting and finding targets. We finally get the JTAC on the radio and I unload the situation to him (overly wordy and crappy comms) and he basically tells me to run it because they’re under fire (gunshots and yelling in the background). I had some very good Viper pilots (2 Patch wearers I come to find out) and had them tracking targets, RPA’s on ADA positions, and the Gunship in close on the good guys. I started working with the DAPs and we would find stuff and they’d kill it. Time goes on, we start thinning out targets, the assault force is clearing the northern village and it turns out to be a dry hole so they start moving about a KM south toward the secondary objective. As they move, it’s more of the same with the sensors except we split to help the Gunship escort the assault force and to find targets for the DAPs with the other. As this is going on, I’m starting to realize that the timeline has gone to absolute hell and we won’t be able to support this whole thing so I call back to our TOC and tell them to wake up the crew that would be flying the first line of the day to backfill us (2). Every jet there worked extensions and Tac C2 worked tanker reflows and all that. The whole team came together to support the guys on the ground and we didn’t get any push back. Incredibly awesome teamwork and proud moment for me as a member of the USAF. While I’m neck deep in trying to secure all that, the ground force is moving to the southern area and enemy fighters pop out of VC style spider holes and engage them from about ten feet. By the grace of God, no friendlies get hit and they kill the enemy and continue to move (3). They eventually make it to the southern compound and start to make call outs IAW the ROE. I’ve got two bingos (one for JBAD and one for BAF) and know I’m getting close to having to leave. I didn’t want to go to JBAD because I knew our MX flow at the time we didn’t have enough airplanes to backfill our backfill (jet happened to be in phase) if I went to JBAD but I couldn’t leave until we had another Draco because everyone else was gainfully employed and I assumed we’d lose the Gunship at Dawn (Spirit 03) and didn’t want the ground force to lose their comm lifeline. Personal thought at the time was that this would take until about noon the next day. About this time, my good friend and his crew that got shaken awake and scrambled check in on comms and I start filling them in. I’m doing a handover and they show up and match sensors and see DAPs killing targets under our sparkle and we hand that off (an easy confirmation haha). As they’re making it, I commit to BAF and know I’ll be landing at min fuel but that’s fine. We are about done and their radios all take a shit and lose crypto at the exact same time that an assault force member gets shot and the ground force calls for an urgent CASEVAC (4). Our backfill has no comms and the ground force is relaying the CASEVAC 9-line in rapid fire to my aforementioned weak swimmers who dropped their nuts and did a picture perfect job and made that happen to get the helos back for the exfil (5). My backfill gets one (of their 10) radios working and takes the stack and the situation over and we get out of dodge. I run the numbers and realize we will be at emergency gas when we land so I coordinate to zoom as much as the mighty Draco can and get into a glide profile to enter a 69 mile right base. I call the SOF (A-10 guy) and tell him to get everyone out of our way and he worked with everyone to clear it out for us. He does it and I get cleared to the numbers and land with 78 pounds of gas. I’ll never forget that number haha (it also went up about 70 pounds when I reset the counter on the ground so I didn’t shut down and get towed back). We shut down, get back to the TOC and things are still happening but long story short, we got everyone back a few hours later (6). I’ve never felt anything like that and I was absolutely jacked and when I landed and came down off of that, I couldn’t sleep for a long time and was antsy hearing about the fate of the wounded assaulter because I assumed he died based on how it sounded over the radio. When I found out he lived, I can’t explain the feeling of relief and flush of emotions that happened. He was sent to Germany and ended up being paralyzed, unfortunately but he’s alive today and sounds like he’s thriving. 
 

Anyways, I felt like I earned that 1/20th of an Air Medal.
 

1. Turns out one of our Afghan allies let his Taliban buddies know we were coming and they decided to try to make this a Blackhawk Down scenario.

2. We didn’t have a backfill and a 4 hour gap from when we would land to when those guys would takeoff for the first line of the day to coincide with sunrise. The LPA and junior enlisted that were awake and running our graveyard ops absolutely killed it getting those dudes prepped, getting them food, etc. I was incredibly proud of those folks that didn’t whine or complain at all and just made shit happen. Draco standard.

3. https://www.army.mil/article/147892/1st_battalion_75th_ranger_regiment_honors_its_heroes 
 

The dudes that got the Bronze Star with V were for this part.

4. https://www.socom.mil/fighting-on-to-the-ranger-objective
 

The Rangers that got Silver Stars above in 3 were for this part. True heroism.

5. Army helos were sitting at level 1 at JBAD and were there in minutes. They earned DFC’s for this deservedly so.

6. Later on I heard from that intercepted comms said something like “how are they finding us? They’re killing us and we can’t see them.” Over 25 EKIA and a great mission for SSE overall.

 

[filthy_liar]

That's badass. The rangers that got SS on that mission, meh.  You guys were badass,

[filthy_liar]

You guys need t0 read that over and over

[hindsight2020]

BAMF story. Good thing I dealt with my combat cred inadequacies years ago. To wit, and take a page from a certain POTUS:

Tumon Bay was my Vietnam. 

[filthy_liar]

I don't think Danger has combat cred inadequacies.  I think he's a badass that has done badass stuff.  And I appreciate him posting his stories here.

[Swizzle]

Once upon a time, over the Atlantic Ocean, just offshore from the Outer Banks, an air-to-air kill was logged, a balloon. The end…or was/is it?

[filthy_liar]

No value for badass combat experiences anymore?  Good grief, I crave hearing those experiences.  I don't like listening to the Covid combat experiences.  Or the TikTok combat experiences.  Can we not have a thread for real badass combat experiences?

 

[Danger41]

10 hours ago, hindsight2020 said:

BAMF story. Good thing I dealt with my combat cred inadequacies years ago. To wit, and take a page from a certain POTUS:

Tumon Bay was my Vietnam. 

With all your PIT and UPT experience I’m 100% certain you’ve had more risk to life and limb than I did in all my deployments. 

[filthy_liar]

Ok not withstanding the tards' comments above, can we get some more war stories.  Thought this would be easier...

[filthy_liar]

Danger, do you have any more stories?

[hindsight2020]

6 hours ago, filthy_liar said:

I don't think Danger has combat cred inadequacies.  I think he's a badass that has done badass stuff.  And I appreciate him posting his stories here.

I never said he did, you inferred that. I said I did.

 

 

5 hours ago, Danger41 said:

With all your PIT and UPT experience I’m 100% certain you’ve had more risk to life and limb than I did in all my deployments. 

Not where I was going with it,  but you are probably correct, statistically speaking. 2,586 instructional sorties as of last week... with an ASD of 1.14 #oof.  3,100 IP/SEFE combined AETC hours, 2,100 or which are in the fatality-laden MDS in question. 4,200 total AF time, if you add the grey jet time. And still 4.5 years of flying duty to go to active retirement.

So yeah, that's a lot of fingertip at 2-4* bills (*you'll have to wait til my retirement to hear the declass number lol).  Fair amount of close calls, To say nothing of all the funerals of direct co-workers(2), and students (2) in the last 6 years than I care to share on this message board. 

I just wanted to clarify I was not being facetious about your combat story. I meant it unironically when I said it is a BAMF anecdote. I'm just a REMF living vicariously by comparison. The only thing I was mocking was my own career (I've earned that right after all). Apologies for any confusion, inflection in humor doesn't always land in written format. Cheers. 🍺

 

Edited February 5, 2023 by hindsight2020

[Standby]

2 hours ago, hindsight2020 said:

So yeah, that's a lot of fingertip at 2-4* bills (*you'll have to wait til my retirement to hear the declass number lol).

Just the other day I was telling someone about your student that tried to do a NH recovery by rolling out and attempting to Immelmann at the top of the block. 

[Danger41]

4 hours ago, hindsight2020 said:

I never said he did, you inferred that. I said I did.

 

 

Not where I was going with it,  but you are probably correct, statistically speaking. 2,586 instructional sorties as of last week... with an ASD of 1.14 #oof.  3,100 IP/SEFE combined AETC hours, 2,100 or which are in the fatality-laden MDS in question. 4,200 total AF time, if you add the grey jet time. And still 4.5 years of flying duty to go to active retirement.

So yeah, that's a lot of fingertip at 2-4* bills (*you'll have to wait til my retirement to hear the declass number lol).  Fair amount of close calls, To say nothing of all the funerals of direct co-workers(2), and students (2) in the last 6 years than I care to share on this message board. 

I just wanted to clarify I was not being facetious about your combat story. I meant it unironically when I said it is a BAMF anecdote. I'm just a REMF living vicariously by comparison. The only thing I was mocking was my own career (I've earned that right after all). Apologies for any confusion, inflection in humor doesn't always land in written format. Cheers. 🍺

 

I know you were saying and I didn’t take offense in the slightest. I was also not being facetious with saying you’ve done a ton of risky flying, REMF or not.

Anyone else have a story to share?

[brabus]

2 hours ago, Standby said:

Just the other day I was telling someone about your student that tried to do a NH recovery by rolling out and attempting to Immelmann at the top of the block. 

Got to get that inverted spin training in somehow!

[BashiChuni]

danger didn't you guys find the 23mm and kill it before the helos flew over it? my memories are hazy...but i remember watching the absolute chaos unfold in the TOC.

there's also a story about 3 x u-28s working a crazy stack one night that deserves to be told...one day...

[filthy_liar]

I've got one.  Not as sexy as Danger's, but then again he is Danger and I'm a filthy liar.  Sep 04 2001, pager goes off.  Even back then pagers were outdated nerd hardware.  But we had to carry it.  It was a standard recall.  So I roll into Benning at about 9 pm.  About 30 hours later we start dry rehearsing an assault. No jumps, just walking the objective.  I kinda had in the back of my mind what had happened, but I wasn't putting two and two together.  The next night I'm on a flight to Bragg.  Now the light started going off.  Couple of nights later I was on a plane to Masirah Island.  Never heard of it.  Got there, it was desert.  Couple of nights later we were jumping into what was reportedly a Taliband compound.  That was Oct 19, 2001.  Life moved fast back then.

[BashiChuni]

Masirah island is straight outta iron eagle movie set. Interesting place

[HossHarris]

36 minutes ago, BashiChuni said:

Masirah island is straight outta iron eagle movie set. Interesting place

But at least the dates all check out. 

[filthy_liar]

I think if you google it today CNN reported it on the 20th of Oct.  Plus the whole half hour ahead thing.

[arg]

50 minutes ago, BashiChuni said:

Masirah island is straight outta iron eagle movie set. Interesting place

Fun fact. The Herks that left there in 1980 headed to Desert One all weighed about 195,000. Herk guys will know.

[filthy_liar]

arg do you have a desert one story that you're holding out on?

[arg]

1 minute ago, filthy_liar said:

arg do you have a desert one story that you're holding out on?

I was on gunships, so, no. 

[filthy_liar]

Well you just opened up the well.  Gunships eh?  Do tell.  And you Gunship bros have an awful lot to tell when it comes to war stories.

[arg]

5 minutes ago, filthy_liar said:

Well you just opened up the well.  Gunships eh?  Do tell.  And you Gunship bros have an awful lot to tell when it comes to war stories.

Dude, I told a couple of gunship stories in the 32 years ago thread. I'll update that in a couple of weeks.

[SurelySerious]

Dude, I told a couple of gunship stories in the 32 years ago thread. I'll update that in a couple of weeks.

She doesn’t read well, it’s not her fault.