The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Tip "Spike" Wight

Aircraft Flown: F-16 and F-117

Join us as retired Air Force Colonel Tip 'Spike' Wight shares his riveting stories from Iraq, including combat flying, leadership lessons, and extraordinary moments of heroism and humanity.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to the Flyboy Podcast, where we bring you just one thing cool flying stories. I'm your host, David Moore, and today I'll be talking with Tip White, Calsign Spike. He is a retired colonel in the Air Force, former commander of the 52nd Fighter Wing at Spangdalam Air Base Germany, former squadron commander of the 49th OSS at Holoman Air Force Base. And most importantly for our discussion today, he was the vice commander of the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing at Balad in Iraq. And we're going to focus our discussion today on Iraq. So with that, Spike, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Thanks. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

So we're going to talk about your flying experiences in Iraq and some general leadership experiences there. But first, set the stage for us. What years were you there? Where were you? And what was your job?

SPEAKER_01 1:07

I spent a significant portion of my career in the Middle East. Although, you know, it's funny when you come in the Air Force, I came in the Cold War Air Force, you know, we did a lot of talking about it, and then the Gulf War broke out and I ended up uh in Korea and missed that one. So you spent a lot of time wondering if you're ever gonna actually deploy to a combat theater. And then, you know, lo and behold, I spent a significant portion of the latter half of my career uh in Iraq and some in Afghanistan as well. That culminated uh uh in 2005-2006. Uh I was there as the vice wing commander of the uh Tuskegee Airmen, the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing, uh generating combat air power from the uh deployment location, actually, which is uh somewhat was at the time was a somewhat new com you know concept that we were actually in the combat theater and generating combat uh power from there. So vice wing commander, which meant uh I get to be uh Walter Middy. I I got to do just about everything that the wing did, including uh fly F-16s, both with the active duty and gosh, probably about 20 rotations of guard uh that came through since I was uh multiple qualified in both uh well actually in three blocks of the F-16, the block 30, 40, and 50s. Great experience, and really the highlight of my Air Force career was that year. I was the Vice Wing Commander, General Frank Gorrens was the uh wing commander, and uh we had a tremendous leadership team that were all deployed for a year. So about August of 05 to August of 06 was uh when I was there.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

So describe a typical day for us in terms of your duties and then a typical sortie.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Well, obviously I didn't fly every day. Anytime you're in a leadership position, that's not really your primary job. But I was the senior F-16 pilot, so actually I did a lot of uh first rides for folks deploying into theater and ended up having to do some combat check rides and various other things. So I was flying as uh an evaluator as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

That's a novel concept, a combat check ride. That's like double jeopardy. You got to both pass a check ride and fly in combat.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Yeah, it was a very unique situation, let's put it that way. We had a squadron that uh, shall we say had some challenges, and uh so they got stood down until uh they got checked out uh flying, and about the only uh evaluator at the level that was needed was me. So I flew a bunch of combat check rides with that squadron to get them recertified uh after there had been some uh, shall we say, challenges with uh ROE and target identification? So yeah, that was a very unique situation.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

You know, a a combat sortie is stressful enough, putting a flight examiner on your wing just as an extra benefit.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Who's also the vice wing commander? Yeah. No pressure, guys.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

No pressure.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

I didn't think so much about it at the time, but in retrospect, yeah, you're right.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Wow. So what's a typical day like as the vice wing commander at uh at Balad Air Base in Iraq? Uh, and this is at the height of the war, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Yeah, it was. Really, that's the cool thing. There was no typical day. You never knew what was going to happen. The fact is, General Gorens and I went off and we got into this uh where we were staying, we called it the Todd, the Tactical Observation Deck, where later in our tour we got where we were sitting up on that all, you know, for quite some time, drinking near beers, smoke, he was smoking cigars. I was taking mine secondhand, telling stories, and uh, you know, we had a list of about 735 dad jokes that we would tell to anybody that would sit still. It got to the point where we were like, you know, we should probably go to bed and go to sleep, because if we don't, there's gonna be like a class A or something and we won't be able to sleep for 72 hours. So that happened a couple of times. You know, nothing like you're running on about two hours of sleep, and then there's a class A, and you know, all kinds of uh excitement breaks out.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

A class A mishap for our listeners would be the crash of an airplane or a loss of life.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Yep, for sure. And in a combat zone, unfortunately, that happens occasionally. Although, amazingly, despite all the challenges of operating out of a uh airbase that's uh under enemy attack constantly, which you know the place was referred to as Mordoritaville, it just got routine.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Mordoritaville, okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

One morning uh I was taxiing out for the Dawn Patrol over Missoul. You know, I looked down and there's a 57 millimeter rocket laying on the taxiway. Then I've got a you know young wingman that uh one of his first sorties in theater, you know, I'm calling tower and they're like, hold short. I'm like, nah, that's a UXO. We're we're not gonna sit here in the blast radius because we didn't see it until we're almost on top of it.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Yeah, it's a it's a there's a missile sitting on the runway.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

He goes, What do we do? I'm like, Taxi quietly.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Hold your breath.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Exactly. So yeah, there was always good times with that. Lots of stories about that. Uh, you know, one night we're up on the Todd and uh a 110 millimeter uh rocket or mortar hit right next to the wing headquarters, threw dirt up over us and everything. And General Gorrantz and I look at each other. I walk over and look at the big smoking hole down there, come back, sit down, we go back to what we're doing. And it's about the 10-month period of the deployment. And he looks at me. He goes, Do you think we should go inside? I said, Nah, they can't do it again. So we sit there, and a little bit later he goes, George looks at me and says, Do you think we've been here too long? Oh, yeah, probably.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

So chances are when you're no longer reacting to the mortars, you've been there too long.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

You might have been here too long. Yeah, absolutely. But so the point being, there really was no typical day. I'd go in early. It depended on whether or not I was flying. Generally, because I had other wing duties, I would fly early. Flying at night would, you know, if I tried to do the night flights, uh uh I would just be out for the whole day and uh trying to recover. And I just, you know, I had to be awake during the day most of the time uh for the other wing duties. So I tended to fly early in the morning, which meant probably uh 3 a.m. brief or something like that, 5 a.m. takeoff, be over uh up over making noise over Missoul, you know, for a five-hour vol, come back, land, debrief, and then uh go do my wing duties. So get back and do whatever needed to be done in terms of paperwork or whatever the crisis was at the moment, go uh handle that, manage it by five o'clock uh-ish or so, go get some chow. And then in the evenings, I'd always go over to the theater hospital and uh chat with the wounded and chat with the uh doctors and the medics there, which uh those folks were just true heroes. And uh I have a little bit of a medical background. I was an emergency medical technician before I came in the Air Force, so that medical side of it always uh interested me. And so just going over there was kind of my give back piece in the evening. I don't know, three 3 a.m. or before to you know 10, 11 o'clock at night, and get up and do it. Like we General Gorrants and I decided we'd quit sleeping, we just called it going to take a nap.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

So you mentioned both day flying and night flying, and I'm I'm guessing uh the quarters where you were staying were not uh soundproof. So you probably heard jets flying all the time, day and night.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Well, between got one sound that was kind of continuous noise. Continually were flying, jets taken off. You know, we weren't too far from the flight line. So you've got the jets taking off an afterburner. Unfortunately, the enemy didn't think much about crew rest either. They'd lob in uh mortars periodically, and then we had the what's called the CRAM, the counter rocket mortars, little 20 millimeter Gatling guns with a radar hooked to them that was really good that would shoot at them and try to knock them down. And again, it's kind of uh I spent a couple weeks aboard a carrier, and it's kind of the same thing. It's incredibly loud and noisy, but after a while you attenuate to it, and uh it's just kind of background and you do what you're gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

So take us on a combat sortie, a typical combat sortie out of Ballad.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

There's the typical ones and then there's the atypical ones that were actually you know exciting because a lot of it, yeah, you're taking off and you're going to a killbox and going around at 20,000 feet flying a uh F-16, trying to point a targeting pot at a historical mortar point of origin to see if anybody's down there planting a mortar. Uh as you can imagine, the effective effective use of the F-16 for that is probably pretty low. So uh I don't recall ever seeing anybody, you know, Charlie running out there and sticking a mortar in the ground. And uh, you know, but we sure spent a lot of time looking. Uh or the the ones I loved were the army where they wanted us to basically be armed overwatch. So, you know, we would go up, make contact with a ground unit, and driving their uh uh MRAPs through Mosoul say, Hey, we're gonna go drive around and see if anybody shoots at us. Cool, follow us. Where are you going? So I have some idea. Don't know. So, you know, doing that for four or five hours was loads of fun. But uh the atypical ones were the ones that uh, you know, that are memorable that stick in your mind.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Tell us about some of those atypical ones.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

The routine ones were pretty mind-numbing, to be honest. But the atypical ones, you know, there's a couple that were uh pretty cool, you know, where you actually got to do something. Because again, the army at the period of the war that we were at, we didn't drop a lot trying to stop the rockets and mortars someplace, or uh, you know, following the army around as uh armed overwatch. But if we worked with the uh special forces that were over there, or if we worked with the Marines, then things would get pretty exciting pretty fast. And I won't talk about the special operations stuff uh for obvious reasons, but we did a lot of good work with them. You know, example of one that was fairly atypical, had a very experienced, I think he's probably an instructor, with a guard unit, but it was one of his first sorties in theater. We took off, we're scheduled to go up and do the standard killbox act, but we got re-rolled to support the Marines out west. They had troops in contact and the Marines were pinned down by a sniper, and they wanted us to go put bombs uh, you know, on the sniper. The problem was it was in Al Qaim, which is all the way to the west and right on the border with Syria. Right away I knew we weren't gonna have the gas to hang out very long, so that was one where I had to uh call up and move a tanker and get the tankers to head out west to support us. Since they were troops in contact and taking fire, we're going out there fast, you know, up to the stores limits of the aircraft, and uh which is burning a lot of gas, and you know, Iraq is not a small country.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

And uh and so how fast would you be going to get there as quick as you could?

SPEAKER_01 11:16

We were going, I think the stores limits at the time were uh 1.2 mock.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

So you're going supersonic to get there to get to the marines.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

You know, 1.19, whatever the stores limits were, we were right at it. We're going as fast, which you know, again, the F-16, we were in a two-tank configuration, but you're burning gas fast doing that. We were going as fast as we could to get out there. And uh I realized that uh as we were going, we're getting the nine line. They've before we've even gotten there, they've put us over on the uh tactical frequency. They're giving me a nine line, and I'm copying that while we're you know blasting out there.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

And uh just and a nine-line briefing, just for people who don't know, that's like, okay, from this point, go this direction for this amount of time. It's it's essentially your verbal description to talk you onto the target.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Yes, although they were doing abbreviated nine lines and we were dropping precision guided, you know, GPS guided munitions. So basically, here's the coordinates, here's the target description, here's where the friendlies are. That piece of it uh was the critical part and what you know ordinance and effects they were looking for. So I wanted to get my uh my wingman had more gas than I did. It was just the way things had worked out, and so I sent him directly to the uh as we moved the tanker. You just go ahead on out there, get on out there as quickly as you can, and I'll hit the tanker and gas up in case you know we have to stretch this thing out. Uh so we'll stagger the arrival. Meanwhile, I'll drag the tanker out there. So I joined up with the tanker, I sent him on out to to make contact with the the unit that was under fire and the the JTAG, join tactical air controller that they had. So he does that, he's got the nine-line, gets the read back, and I'm on the tanker copying everything down and following along, but I'm getting gas while he's doing it. And he comes along and they clear him hot to actually expend ordinance. And again, it was a real tight situation because the run-in that we were doing was like parallel to the border with Syria. So if he messed it up, either the bomb or the airplane was gonna go into Syria, which would have, you know, put us on uh CNN or something as an international incident and got brought a whole lot of attention. So we had to be super precise. So he does all that. It sounds good. I'm getting gas on the tanker, and then he comes off dry. I'm like, you know, uh, okay, what you know, maybe he screwed up the run in. I don't know what happened. And he said, now I'm gonna come around and uh try it again. So he goes through again, goes through dry. Now you can tell the voices on the ground, they're not pleased that we're on scene and no bombs are coming off the airplane. And uh so he comes back and tells me on our tactical frequency that the bomb his bomb is hung, and I immediately realized what happened. Again, first sortian theater, guard hadn't been flying with uh J DAMS, which was the joint direct attack munition or the uh precision guided munition that we were dropping. And in the mechanization of the F-16, you had to power on the bomb uh before you tried to drop it. If you tried to hit the pickle button with the bomb not being powered on, it would fire the battery that would burn, but the bomb wouldn't come off the aircraft and now it's hung. There was no way to get it off. So uh the uh first sorting theater, you know, go figure, and uh, you know, an actual combat mission with guys screaming on the ground. I tell him, forget it, come back to the tanker because now I know what's happening. He's not gonna be any good. So I've got enough gas to again, not your normal close air support procedures, but the guys on the ground are frustrated. I've read back the nine-line to him while I was on the tanker, and they clear me hot coming off the tanker. So that's one of those, you know, close the air fueling door, master arm, arm. And uh I had a bomb coming off in about 30 seconds after leaving the tanker, which was uh fairly amazing. So uh, and you know, because of the close proximity, I often refer to this as the longest 43 seconds of my life because that was the time of fall. And uh I remember, you know, it was this house that was amongst other houses, and uh it had a little rock wall around it and a tree, and then the house where the sniper was holed up. And at right, I mean, if the bomb goes, you know, 100 meters to the right, it's in Syria. If it goes 100 meters left, it's another house, and now we've got collateral. And so, you know, I'm just praying that in all the excitement I everything I did was right, and uh, you know, tracking it through the targeting pod, and uh finally, you know, the screen flashes and uh come back around after the smoke clears, and I can see that there's you know the the rock wall is intact, the trees intact, and the house is gone. So okay, you know, it's standard cast procedures. I'm like, all right, you know, to the ground fact, you guys got some battle damage for me, and they're like, uh, yeah, one enemy sniper KIA. That was one where we actually got to do it and then uh you know worked through through some uh fog of war, which which always happens.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

There's always fog of war.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

So that was a a non-standard one. Now, the the real the funniest story is uh another non-standard one where I was fragged for, you know, they called it XCAST. So uh you're going up close air support, you're heading up to a kill box, and then kind of whatever you get tasked for. But uh after I took off, I got re-rolled, i.e., changed to another mission by the uh the combined air operations center. And so I get a call right after we've taken off, contact Chaoq, you've got a mission change. They said, Hey, we need you to proceed to a different killbox out west. So there's a uh, I think it's called a JLens, uh, so an observation balloon for one of the marine uh forward operating bases that got away.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Well, so it's a friendly balloon, come loose.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Yeah, it's uh a balloon that had a whole bunch of uh observation equipment on it to protect this forward operating base, and some of that stuff was highly classified. And wouldn't you know it the way the winds are blowing, they're heading toward Iran. So they wanted us to go shoot down this balloon before it went into Iran. You know, you get that task, and they're like, head to this killbox, you're looking for a balloon, and we want it, you know, the desired effect is shoot it down. It's like, okay, Frank Luke, here we come. So my first thought is we were heading over there, and again, I had a uh young wingman, inexperienced, and uh not many sorties in Iraq, if any. I can't remember if he'd actually been on any or not. Uh not a lot of time in the jet. My first thought is we're never gonna find this thing, you know, a balloon in the middle of it. How the heck are we ever gonna even find this, you know, balloon in this this killbox? And uh so we head over there, and right on the horizon, there it is, there she blows. A white balloon. Like, no way. It looks like, you know, dirgible, big tail, and everything. I was like, okay, but the problem being we have no idea how big it is, you know, and this is nothing we had ever trained against, you know, balloon shooting. So no idea, you know, you can't get a uh radar signature off of it, so you can't lock it up. You there was no heat signature per se, so this is gonna have to be a gun engagement. So I'm talking with the uh JTAC on the ground, you know, asking him if I've got clearance to engage this thing. And uh he's like, Well, I can't see it. So it says it's on you. And I was I was a forward air control airborne, I was a FAC A. So I was FAC A qualified. And uh so I'm like, all right, fine, you know, I'll take control. I've got it. So I'm looking down and we're right over Lake Tharthar. So I thought, well, if we're ever gonna shoot anything and not worry about where the bullets hit on the ground, now's the time. We're over the top of Lake Tharthar. And again, I thought, how tough can this be? So I thought I'll let my wingman go ahead and take it and you know, have the glory. You know, did my fac A routine and cleared him uh to engage. In he went. And you see a trail of smoke, and the balloon's still flying. So I cleared him for another pass and the same result, and a third pass. And then he goes, Hey Lead, I'm Winchester, which meant out of ammunition, and the balloon's still flying. So I'm like, oh crap. So, all right, said go to the tanker. I got this. So I roll in, and uh, of course, I had done as a weapon school instructor in 422, I'd spent a lot of time with the F-16 gun symbology, so no problem there. Rolled in and uh did exactly like we trained, you know, about 3,000 feet out, fired a good uh second and a half burst or so, and uh watched as the balloon continued flying. Came around, did another pass, and good reposition, and balloon's still flying. Two thoughts occurred to me. Number one, A, we don't know how big this balloon is, so I don't know how far away I really am from this thing. I don't know what range I'm really shooting at. And then because I can't get a radar lock, so I'm doing all this just kind of off the stadiometric ranging symbology that we had. And so then it occurs to me these things are designed to be shot too, because they float above fobs, and so they've got chambers, and you know, it's not like the dirt of the Hindenburg or whatever that's gonna burst on fire. So uh it occurs to me that we're really gonna have to hit this. One or two bullets probably ain't gonna do the trick. And I look down, and in all the excitement, I've only got about you know, maybe 10 or 20 rounds left myself. And I'm thinking, oh great, well, I'm gonna be the laughing stock of the AOR now. So I call the chaos back. I'm like, hey, you guys got another two ship that you can send out here? Like, nope, you guys are it. And so, you know, all the thoughts are running through my head. Well, let's see, we can't use an AMRAM because there's no radar signature, and that'd be a waste anyway. Can't use a sidewinder because there's no heat signature. So I got to thinking, well, maybe I should go by and light the burner and see if I catch it. No, that's a stupid idea. Don't do that. And so then it occurred to me that you know, all our training was done with a non-cooperative aircraft that was trying to fight back and get out of your gun sight. And it occurred to me that this balloon ain't going anywhere. We know the balloon's not going to shoot back and it's not really running that fast. So I decided, you know what, with these last few rounds I have, I'm gonna make, you know, go in there till I see the whites of its eyes. So I slow down basically to stall speed, put the gear down, got the the on the F-16, the trailing edge flaps extend when you put the gear down. So I'm coming in at essentially landing speed. I wait till it fills the HUD up. I was like, all right. And I fired what I had left and I saw the balloon shake this time. You know, you can see it jitter and shake, and so I knew I'd hit it. I pull off and it's still flying. So now I'm like, well, hmm, the best I can do is track it and at least see where it goes, and flying circles around it, waiting for my uh wingman to come back from the tanker. When all of a sudden it has the decency to fold up and collapse and fall into Lake Thart. So thank goodness. All right, mission accomplished. So I get back to land, you know, called in the Battle Ames report, and I had targeting pod video and I'd marked the location of it. So and actually, I think the Marines did actually go up out and get a boat and go out and fish it out of there and get it back, so that was good. But uh when I landed and taxied into my parking spot, my boss is out there to meet me, General Gorrons. Now that's fairly unusual.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

They never show up with good news.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

On the ramp to meet you when you are the boss out here, but I thought, well, the whole balloon shoot down that's pretty unusual. And it's been a while since anybody fired the gun on the F-16 anyway. There and uh so it's like, okay, maybe he's just coming out to pat me on the back. So I I climbed down out of the jet. He's like, Hey, Spike, did you just shoot down a balloon? Well, yeah. I said, Yeah. He's like, by what authority? I said, Well, we got retasked by the chaos to go over there and shoot it down. He's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. But who controlled the fire? So, well, I did. I'm a fac A. The ground fact uh couldn't see it anymore, so uh he passed control to me. So I did. He goes, Yeah, because that's the problem. He goes, You actually needed an air weapons controller. Well, it wasn't attached to the crowd. I'm like, oh, never thought of that one. So he goes, Yeah, the bad news is the three-star from the chaotic called, and I have to ground just so I got grounded for shooting down the balloon. That wasn't for long, but you know, and the boss did make me a nice, you know, Frank Loop balloon killer thing, and they painted a balloon on the jet. And so then I got thinking about it and go, hey, air-to-air gun kill. F-16, that, you know, it's like the first at the time I was the only active duty uh F-16 guy with an air-to-air gun kill. So I'm like, okay, hey, this is something I need to get credit for that, you know. So we had a wing historian. I go to the historian, go, hey, don't I have to run, you know, uh claim kills through you and you run them up through the Air Force uh historical channels and do all that? He's like, Well, yeah, yes, sir, you do. So, all right, well, here's my video, you know, here's proof that I shot it down, here's all that. So a few weeks later he comes back, goes, Hey sir, sorry, your request is denied. I'm like, What? What do you mean, denied? He's like, Well, it would be fratricide. It was a friendly balloon. So we don't give credit for shooting down on our own. So, yeah, there, there you go. The great balloon shoot.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

The good news is you shot it down. The bad news is it was just a friendly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

Yeah. Well, the other thing, interesting, and this goes to training. My wingman, we found out later when I reviewed his tape. We had done all the spin-up, you know, his unit had done all the spin-up to go over there, and all we were talking about was strafe. Nobody ever thought about using the gun air to air. So he had never shot the gun air to air. And when he was shooting at the balloon, he was in the air-to-ground mode. You know, just that's what he trained. And so it didn't even occur to him, you know, that's probably not going to work. And of course it didn't. That's uh points to training. But uh, one other side note, but you know, I'd mentioned being a fac A. When you work with the Army and you checked in as a FACA, they kind of go, okay, great. At least the guy knows, you know, does some of the JTACs and stuff. They say, well, when you check in as a FACA, we know you're experienced and you know close air support, so we kind of call you, you know, CAS Plus. We can give you something tough, but we're not going to pass control. And they never did. I I probably flew of my 80 combat sorties, I probably flew 75 of them or so with the great majority with the army. But when you checked in with the Marines, they had a whole different perspective. It's so funny. You get so used to checking in as a fact A and they go, Yeah, cool, great. Uh all right, go go put your targeting pot over here and stare. The one day I take it off, and we got re-rolled out to the west again to support the Marines. And they had troops in contact, and it was out west of Baghdad. And uh I checked in, and you could hear the gunfight going when I checked in uh on the frequency. The Marine JTAC was a Marine FAC A actually uh in a helicopter that was uh controlling the fires. And I checked in as a FACA and he goes, You're FAC A Qual? I'm like, Yeah? He goes, Great, I'm low on gas, I gotta get out of here. Okay, the guys on the east, those are the friendlies, the guys in the west, those are the bad guys. Gotta go. And all of a sudden I'm in the middle. I got a cast stack and a live, you know, thing going down there. I got troops in contact and uh I gotta start controlling fires. So that was one of those. We we go from academic to the practical exercise in about 10 seconds. So that was a uh a drool cup full for sure. So that was the one time I actually got to control fires as a facet. So other than you know, the great balloon shoot down.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

I understand you occasionally ran into a little bit of bad weather over there. What's the what's the worst weather you've landed in in Iraq?

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Yeah, well, take a taken off in. Let's start with that. Uh you've heard of a Haboob?

SPEAKER_00 26:17

I have.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

The for anybody that doesn't know, it's an apocalyptic dust storm, and over there it's red. It's like, you know, they always talk about the nuclear brick red cloud. That's what it looks like. It's just brick red solid, and the dust is so fine. You know, if you're on the ground, it goes through every crack in every building and just seeps through everything. In the jet, it polishes up the fans real good. But apparently we could fly in it. But uh, there was uh a day that uh we knew the weather was gonna be really bad, that there were thunderstorms all around the base. And uh when I went into brief, you know, we looked at the weather forecast and we go, well, this is gonna be a weather cancel. And again, it was a wingman who was on his you know checkout ride in theater. So they're like, Well, sir, why don't you go ahead and go brief him? He can at least learn something from the brief. So we went and briefed it up, came back to the ops desk, uh, you know, said, Well, are we canceled yet? And they're like, Well, you know, it wouldn't hurt him to go out and do the pre-flight. Go ahead and go ahead and step to the jets and go through the pre-flight. You know, just give us a call before you start. And so we do that and call back in and uh say, We canceled yet. And they're like, Well, Chaoq actually says, go ahead and taxi. I don't expect you to take off, but go ahead and taxi. And uh, I'm like, okay, has the weather improved any? Because literally our weather brief was thunderstorms are ringing the base. There is no way to take off without going through a thunderstorm. And if you haven't seen the F-16's uh technical manual, there's a chapter about prohibitive maneuvers and one of those intentional penetration of a thunderstorm.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

So there you are at the end of the runway.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

Yeah, and so we taxi out. There's no way we're gonna launch, thunderstorms ringing the base, and so we get to the end of the runway. I call back in and uh say, hey, you know, we coming back in anyone who wants to taxi back, and like, uh no, chaok directs launch. Say again, chaok directs launch. And I'm like, okay, you understand that there is no way for me to take off without going through a thunderstorm. They we understand that chaos directs launch. I'm like, get the chaok on the radio. I want confirmation. They understand in order to take off, I will have to penetrate a thunderstorm. Confirm that they are aware of that. So they do get on the radio. Chaok is aware of the weather situation, chaos directs launch. You're the only two ship in Iraq. And the divert at the time, the divert with the nearest divert was Israel because the weather was going down, so we're taking off knowing that we can't come back. And I'm looking over at my wingman, his eyes are about, you know, big as plates. Say what? The good news was I'd flown F-16As and we used ground map radar for thunderstorm, you know, avoidance. And so I was like, well, all right. So I knew how to use the radar. I was like, all right, we're taking off a trail, lock on to me, and just hang on. You know, you remember that chapter in the dash one about thunderstorm penetration procedures?

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Out the window.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

Yeah. Well, it's a you know, if you unintentionally enter one, here's what you're supposed to do, which is basically run the seat down, turn up the lights, and you know, hang on. Here we go. So we launch into this thing, and no kidding, as soon as we take off, we're uh, you know, I'm in the middle of it. Use the radar, and I'm kind of staying away from the worst cells. Somehow we e-nair away through, you know, get out away from the thunderstorms, and he's still back in radar trail. Climb up to, I think I went up to about 35,000 feet, couldn't break, never broke out of the weather. And then that's when we realized the fuel and the situation, the base had closed down because the haboob had come over the base and visibility was like, you know, 10 feet and uh with the dust storm. So we're like, well, we can't go back there, and uh, the nearest divert's Israel, so we had to join on the tanker, which that was an experience because we're in severe weather and the visibility's crap, and you know, like there's a certain range where you're not supposed to go inside without visual on the tanker, but I got there and you couldn't see the tanker, and so it was back to the F-16A model where you just did 10% of your closure and just edged on in there. You know, we do it at night with before night vision goggles and all that, and uh just edge on in there, and that's what I did. And uh so got up on the tanker and we just we stayed there for seven hours, just going on and off, cycling on and off the tanker because they they needed a two-ship airborne to in case somebody needed a bomb drop somewhere through the clouds. So we were the only two ships, so uh we spent seven hours doing that. Then the fun part, because there was no, I mean, there's no place to go.

SPEAKER_00 30:45

I mean, literally the close wait a minute, but before we get to that, I want to go back to the tanker for a second. You couldn't pick it up visually, so you had to close in to the tanker using the radar only. At what point did you pick up the tanker visually? How close were you?

SPEAKER_01 31:03

About a hundred feet, you could kind of see it emerge out of the gloom, and you could kind of tell there's a uh you know a shell of something there. That's my wingman. You know, he got to a thousand feet and he's like, you know, hey lead, I'm not seeing the tanker. I go, Yeah, I know. Use 10% of your V sub C and keep coming. At about 100 feet, you'll kind of get an idea where it is. I'm sure he'd never done that before either. So, but and you had no choice. There wasn't any other gas station anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

Okay, so now you've been flying around Iraq for seven hours. Yeah. And then what?

SPEAKER_01 31:37

And by the way, that's interestingly, the one sortie I used a piddle pack on. I never used one sortie. I was like, okay, I give up. And 500 combat hours, uh, 80 sortie. That was the one fiddle pack usage. But uh seven plus hours later, Kirkkook, which was one of our diverts, finally came up to 100 feet. I mean, because this dust just hangs in the air. So, and I'd never flown into Kirkkook. My wingman had never flown into Kirkkuk, obviously. It's like his first sortie in theater. So we're going into Kirkkook, strange field, at night, after seven and a half hours. You know, they had an ILS, but now we're gonna fly this thing down to minimums. Uh yeah, so that was sporty. We we managed to, and there was like a another runway short of that, too, that you could have bit off on. And it was a pretty sporty approach. So flying that thing down to 100 feet, landing, and you know, and still when you landed, you know, the dust is still hanging in the air and combat diverts, so now we got nothing, you know, because you'd sanitize before you flew a combat sortie. So we had to go over to the BX and buy like toothbrushes and underwear. That's pretty funny. So uh yeah, standard sorty. But here's where the next thing comes from that ties into, you know, I I think the statute of limitations has probably run out. So the next day we have to we get tasked, we're gonna fly a combat sortie from Kirkkuk. It's not just take off and go back to Bila, they're not gonna waste the jets. So you you've got an ATO sortie that you're gonna fly.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

And you still had weapons on board.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

Oh, yeah. We hadn't we hadn't done anything, you know, for seven and a half hours other than practice air refueling a lot. So we're gonna we get a uh ATO task sortie. We're planning for it, deployed conditions, let's just say. So everything is pencil and paper, and so I pull some alignment coordinates off the uh approach plate, you know, get squared away and are mostly coherent after yesterday. We take off, and you know, it didn't occur to me at the time, but we take off runway heading, and both of our INS is dumped. Clearly, I had done a little fat fingering and didn't quite get the alignment coordinates right. So we're both taking off. It's like, my NS dumped. Yeah, so did mine. So now we've got to do in-flight alignments, which require you to fly straight and level for you know a period of time until the uh GPS platform could ring in and uh get the uh INS aligned. We're flying straight and level, you know, getting in the checklist and working all this and get my wingman on board, doing all that you know stuff. It doesn't occur to me we're still flying runway heading. Well, if you think about it, all Saddam's runways were aimed toward Iran for obvious reasons. And so I look around at some point. I pulled my head out of the checklist and my platform started to come up. I look around and I'm seeing mountains that I'd never seen before. And so I'm like, yo, two, turn off your GPS and your IFF. And he's like, What? Just shut everything off and follow me. So we split us, took down about, well, you know, whatever the allowable floor was, and we head back away. We've gone. So we're gonna fly this way for a little while, and we popped up, turned on our IFF again, checked in with Kayak. Hey, we're here. So no telling where we actually were, but let's just say.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

You know, I haven't I've never seen these mountains before. I wonder where we might be.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

Oh, so yeah, that that might not have been.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

One might say you were just ahead of your time.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

Yeah, that's right. Very true.

SPEAKER_00 35:04

So tell us about the rest of your experience there at Balad, as you know, you're leading these young men and women out there uh in Iraq.

SPEAKER_01 35:14

That really is what made the whole experience so memorable. It wasn't just the flying. Most of the uh airmen that came through were on a somewhere between four and six month rotation. At the time, I think they were one doing the active duty was doing 120 days. Guard was doing 30-day rotations, so you know, you got to see a tremendous cross-section of the Air Force. I was just impressed constantly by the quality of it. And here's an example. You know, one morning as I'm going out for my Dom Patrol over Missoul, and it's you know, briefed up, it's probably 3:30, 4 in the morning, something like that. And I get out to my jet, and there's a crew chief there who's been working, you know, long before I got there to get the jet ready, and you know, he's got sweat stains, and he it's hot and it's dusty and it's dirty, man, it's noisy, and he's been jumping into bunkers with uh, you know, border attacks and all that, like we all did. And uh he jumps up when I approach the jet and pops me the sharpest salute. It was like, you know, honor guard, you know, at uh at a medal of honor ceremony or something. I mean, he was just the sharpest airman I had ever seen, just popped me this sterling salute, and he just, good morning, sir. How are you? And I was like, wow. I was like, okay. I said, Well, I'm I'm probably not as good as you are from the sound of it. I'm like, man, you must be getting ready, about ready to uh go home if you're in that good a mood or you just got here. And he's like, Oh, it's like, well, sir, you know, that's the rub of it. He's because I've been here, yeah, they're making me go home in like 10 days. I'm like, making you he's like, Oh, sir, I love it. This is just great. You know, I'm doing what I want to be doing, and uh if they'd let me stay, I'd stay as long as we need to. I'm like, wow, okay, well, appreciate it. And so great, you know, pre-flight, launches me out, super professional. Go out, fly my Dom Patrol over Missoul five hours later, you know, come back, same crew chief, a little more sweat stain, a little dirtier, taxis me in, step out of the jet, bam, pops me the same salute, and uh hands me a cold water bottle. I'm like, wow, thank you. You know, it's like you're really impressive. So, you know, thanks for your service and thanks for being here. And, you know, so I go in, do my debrief, and then, like, you know, I told you earlier, then I go about my wing duties and uh so get to the paperwork and all the other stuff I had to do. Yeah, got to be about chow time. I went and had chow and did my usual evening run over to the uh theater hospital. It's seven or eight o'clock at night now. I'm walking through the hospital, and I noticed as uh there's an airman with his back to me that sweeping out one of the operating rooms. And you know, I say operating room, don't get too excited, it's a tent. Uh the theater, level three theater hospital is a bunch of tents stuck together. You know, think think mash on steroids. So he's sweeping this thing out, and uh, I'm just kind of watching this, and I he kind of turns to the side and I look at him, I go, Hey, wait a minute. You know, you know, aren't you the young man that launched me out this morning? He pops to attention and oh yes, sir, I am. You know, I'm like doing some math and going, okay, that was about like 4 a.m. And it's like nine o'clock at night. I'm like, why are you over here? You know, he's like, oh, sir, you know, because uh I just come over here and volunteer because I just don't feel like I uh do enough out on the flight line, and so I come over here to give back. I'm just like, where do we find young men and women like this? It's just amazing. And you know, 20,000 of those great young men and women I got the privilege to serve with over there, and that that's what made it so great was just the focus and the we didn't have disciplinary problems, you know, all the stuff you have in garrison, you just didn't see over there. I mean, nobody's going out clubbing and getting, you know, a DUI in downtown Ballad. So, you know, it just didn't happen. So, but the most memorable thing to me, again, focused on the theater hospital. There was a uh suicide bombing in downtown Ballad City. And unfortunately, you know, the bad guys detonated the a car bomb at a local market. And then, you know, in the evil ways of those uh folks, they went out and went screaming through the town and said, Hey, there's a bunch of people killed by this bomb. Come help, come help. Gathered everybody up and secondary explosion. So there were 200 dead, 200 wounded uh at this bombing. And we were the only available medical facility. The call went out over the you know, command net was all personnel with medical uh experience report to the uh OR immediately. I'm an EMT. It's like, all right, plus on the vice wing, I was like, I better go see what the heck's going on. When I first got over there, it was like it was like what you see on MASH again. We had two helipads and there were choppers stacked up at least five deep, waiting to land. So as soon as one had dropped the patients and take off, another one would immediately stop down. They had tents set up where they were doing triage as they were coming off the uh helicopters. Like what you've seen on MASH, only five times worse. I will tell you the surgeons and the nurses and the trauma teams there did 72 hours straight of surgeries. And these weren't on American soldiers, these were on Iraqis, and just watching that and the care and the focus, and I mean, you know, I stayed there with them. It's like, you know, whatever you guys need, and your you know, connection with the wing. And there were times where they were like, hey, you know how to suture, get in here. And so I did some did some medical stuff too, based on my training. The thing, the most poignant thing that I remember about that, other than just these surgeons being on their feet for 72 hours straight, and they're coming out of one surgery and re-gloving and going back in for another, and they'd stop and they'd drink a Gatorade and eat a snack, and boom, they'd be back in again. And again, just caring for their fellow man. And what really brought it home, and my favorite picture that I have uh to this day, I stayed over there for 72 hours plus, and as I wandered through the hospital and just going into everywhere, I walked into one area that was dark, and it was the morgue. I didn't realize I'd stumbled into the morgue, and obviously there were quite a few occupants, shall we say. I saw over in kind of a corner a surgeon leaning over, and uh he there was a patient laying on a Gurney there, and he was holding his, you know, holding his hand. And so I saw that and I kind of left for a little bit and I came back and they were still in the same position. And I finally asked the don't know if he was a doctor or a nurse, I don't know the specialty of the uh person that was there. But I said, What's going on? What are you what are you doing? Because he's still standing there holding this guy's hand. And he said, Well, unfortunately he he's about to die. Um he said, but I don't want him, nobody should die alone. He said, So I'm gonna stay here until he passes. And he did. He stayed there for eight hours, and I have a picture to this day of the American's hand on top of the bloody Iraqi hand and a rosary wrapped around both of them. Boy, that chokes me up. And it just it's that kind of caring and focus that our great American service men and women took uh over there. And so I say to be have been a part of that in any form or fashion uh is just was that's why it was a highlight of my career.

SPEAKER_00 42:16

Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us. I really appreciate it, Spike.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

I can just see that scene for him to stay there for eight hours and hold that guy's head. He never moved, as far as I could tell. And every time I came back there, he was in the same position. I mean, to do that for just it wasn't an American soldier, it wasn't any relative. That was just another human.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

Yeah. Tip, thanks so much for being with us today.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

Truly my honor. Uh enjoyed it. Uh had the privilege to go serve with a ton of great American men and women. I'm glad I got the chance. And uh glad I can share that and uh hopefully uh inspire someone else to uh serve as well.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

Thank you. You've been listening to the Flyboy Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by our parent organization, the Flyboy Lab. The mission of the Flyboy Lab is to elevate awareness and appreciation of aviators, their service, sacrifices, and contributions, and hopefully we've fulfilled that mission today. New episodes of the podcast drop every Thursday morning, and you can find previous episodes on our website, theflyboypodcast.com. Until our next sortie, push the mock. Use the vertical, and fly safe.