by Margaret Bone
Okay. VMAQ-3 was not exactly a study in "oh yea, we've done the seamless pre-deployment work-up stuff" when they left MCAS Cherry Point on 25 February, headed for Aviano, Italy, and the skies over Bosnia.
In what could be mildly termed your basic Saturday night massacre, about nine top members of the command had been "reassigned" to other duties just days before the deployment. Disembowlment's probably too strong a word. At any rate, LCOL Steve "Muddy" Watters was summoned to become the new squadron CO on 21 February, four days before leaving Cherry Point and five days before arriving in Aviano. He had time to grab the Rogaine and some cigars before takeoff, and spent much of the transLant time contemplating the mission and morale.
By late evening on the 26th, the new squadron had nestled into the homey environs of prefab Marine Tin City, the metallic sequel and next-door neighbor to the now-defunct Tent City. Tin City is arranged in a field near the runway at Aviano AB, making it not only noisy but also dusty. VMAQ-3 tinmates quickly settled into their new tins. Fortunately, the name tags on flight suits helped the transition. The squadron immediately began flying their EA-6Bs on routine ops into Bosnia, supporting Aviano's dozens of F-16s as well as the F/A-18Ds of VMFA(AW)-224.
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LCOL Watters |
With jet lag conquered, LCOL Watters surveyed the old canvas tent pitched between a culvert and Tin City that had served as an O' Club for VMAQ-4, the squadron Q-3 had replaced. It needed work, but it was a project near and dear to the hearts of the Thirsty Moon Dogs. The tent was quickly dubbed "Da Bone," and became a place to gather. The cheerful Air Force camp commandant, in a dazzling display of jointness, came up with a popcorn machine, darts, TV, furniture--all the stuff the Air Force considers subsistence and Marines consider luxurious, if not downright decadent. But hey, the price was right. And in a gesture sensitive to community relations, the squadron thoughtfully installed local wine on tap, served either chilled or at tent-temp.
The tent became a metaphor for the
squadron--taking things and putting them in place, building,
giving the Marines of Q-3 a place where friendships that are the
basis of male bonding could form, away from rank and squadron
shops. In the easy, lusty camaraderie of Da Bone, the routine
professionalism of doing the job in the air was enhanced on the
ground by getting to know the guy you play darts with, play poker
with, drink beer with. Literally and figuratively, the heart of
Q-3 became its wooden bar, a honey-colored marvel built by CWOs
Lenny Tippet and Merlin Nesbia with whatever was available at the
time. Shellacked and shined, it became the bridge to what was
essentially a new squadron. And from an evening haze of cigar
smoke somewhere along the bar, Muddy Watters kept punctuating the
atmosphere with his mantra, "You are the men."
With two weeks down, the Moon Dogs were about to come off the initial 12-on, 12-off schedule. By Friday, 14 March, the Dogs were anticipating their first liberty weekend. The squadron quickly picked up the lire conversion system favored by CAPT Tom "V.D." Dames ("divide by three, multiply by two ... it's close enough ....") and began to make its way to town in search of authentic pizza, local vino and the Italian discos they'd been hearing about.
When work stopped Friday at 1930, many had jumped on vans headed into Aviano in full pursuit of Italian culture, or were at the Air Force bowling alley on the other side of town.
"I was watching the Albania thing on CNN," said LCOL Watters, "and decided we might be called in. A warning order from Combined Arms Operation Center (CAOC) confirmed that a package of Prowlers and Hornets might be called to support the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The squadron discussed it, and had pods ready. Tactical Electronic Reconnaissance Processing and Evaluation System (TERPES, rhymes with, oh, 'Slurpees') and our S-2 indicated that Albania had an old system--Russian SA-2s, fixed, not mobile, with a poor low-altitude capability. There were three known sites around the airfield in Albania."
Operation Silver Wake was about to turn nasty. The 26 MEU(SOC) was helping evacuate non-combatants from Albania, probably the only country ever to collapse because of a failed Ponzi scheme. The straw that broke the camel's back came when some CH-46s and -53s from the 26 MEU Air Combat Element were flying near an S-60 site. Their Cobra gunship escort observed a man sitting in a chair holding an SA-7 Grail, a fairly serious shoulder-fired missile. That was cool until he stood up, shouldered it and aimed. The alert Cobra gunner rendered the missile, the guy and his chair all quite useless. At that point, the task force commander called for night ops, and the Aviano support package was tasked.
"We got 90 percent of our Marines back in the first hour and everyone back in less than two hours," Watters said. "When the jets were [spot]lighted with ordnance being loaded, word spread quickly. Vans were going through town picking guys up--they were waving down cars for rides back to the squadron. Everyone knew something was up."
VMAQ-3 launched on a verbal command, flying south to Albania with no tanker co-ordinates, no rules of engagement (ROE) and no primary radio frequencies established. They had to be in theater 30 minutes prior to the F/A-18 Hornets that would follow. A divert field had been established at Gio del Colle in case the tanker didn't show. Chaff and flare dispensers and the jamming pods had been reconfigured. The EA-6s carried HARM, too.
At 0030, CAOC issued the ROE, and by 0300 VMAQ-3 had been on station an hour. They launched aircraft again to start a "chain saw" to the tanker, now airborne. "We knew exactly what the sites would be doing from our TERPES shop," the CO commented. "We correlated the initial cuts to confirm the SA-2 was active, so we pre-emptively jammed six hours the first night. The aircraft was built for the SA-2 threat in Vietnam--it's very effective. We looked at HARM, but because of all the friendly emitters in the area, we didn't use it. We jammed instead. If missile guidance had been detected, we would have HARMed. But all we saw was acquisition and tracking radar."
On base, Marine troops cammied their faces in a show of support, a spontaneous gesture not lost on the officers. And, no small task, support personnel kept the aging, parts-hungry Prowlers up.
The first EA-6B returned to base about six hours and three mid-air tankings later. During each, the Prowler took 8,000 pounds of fuel. The second Prowler returned at 10 Zulu, and by then a night-ops time window had been established. Every night for the next seven days, VMAQ-3 used three of their available five aircraft to fill the requirement of one Prowler on station.
After the first night, the site didn't radiate, and who can blame them? "We ran barely feet wet," said Watters, "because their SA-2 rings extended over the coast." Most aircrews had 40 to 70 hours of flight time during the week. It came down to which crew was the most rested.
Next door, VMFA(AW)-224 was running at full speed on the first night as well. Squadron CO LCOL J.A. "Jaws" White launched 10 of his 12 up jets. "We got the verbal at 2130 and were airborne at 0030," White commented. "We just blew the dust off a plan, found enough people to launch and carried HARM and some LGB 500-pounders. Later we added AMRAAMs."
The F/A-18Ds flown by -224 are Lot 17s, the newest, and carry APG-73 radar and a tightly coupled global positioning system. The Bengals know they are flyin' mack-daddy jets. Amazingly, the Hornets flew 42 sorties (six-plus hours each) in four and a half days, accounting for a hefty 250-plus hours flight time. A section (two aircraft) launched each time.
By the morning of 18 March, the F-16 Vipers were finally participating in the fray. Fighters from the 510th based at Aviano managed to escort some unarmed Serbian Super Galebs and an Albanian MiG-17 out of the area, a feat that made the front page of the base newspaper, cross-hair photos and all. Actual direct fire was pretty much limited to the former guy and his chair.
Back at Da Bone, word quickly passed that the Moon Dogs had been blessed with ... well, a unique jamming mission. Pope John Paul II would be celebrating Mass in Sarajevo, and intelligence had determined that threats to his safety existed.
The Popecraft carrying the Pontiff and his Popemobile would be protected by two Prowlers on station with one on backup, and they would provide escort in and out of the country. The Moon Dogs would orbit and then follow behind, not penetrating the five-mile "Holy Bubble" around the Popecraft. Additionally, F-16s and Spanish EF-18s would provide CAP, with Apaches taking the air below 5,000 feet. It was a mission with worldwide implications if it failed, and Q-3 was keenly aware of its critical role. But on the other hand, nobody's been shot down since Vietnam when Prowlers were on their case.
Perhaps in an effort to relieve pre-mission stress, a board appeared in the squadron with blank spaces under the caption, "Top Ten Reasons the Pope Requires SEAD" (Suppression of Enemy Air Defense). Only hours later, it was filled with various scrawled handwriting to include: Big Hat is Radar Reflective; Pope Needs Better HVAA (High-Value Airborne Asset) CAP than the Vatican Can FRAG; Popecraft has No ECM Capability; We Jam for Him, He Talks to God, We Get Parts; To Jam the SA-666; Double-digit SAMs Scare God, Too; Flying Nun Down for Phase Maintenance; and Halos Give Off Big Heat Signatures. There were more.
By late afternoon, "Holy Humor" was making its way onto the Internet. Various Top Ten lists were conceived, and the operations were soon being labeled Holy Smoke, Guardian Angel, Immaculate Interception, Provide Pontiff, Prevent Holy Ghost, and the like. Callsigns were converted to the Priestly Prowlers, Holy Hornets, Vatican Vipers, Saintly Stratotankers and Apocryphal Apaches. In terms of the printed word, it was as close to Jihad as such an ecumenical, joint group could get.
The Pope returned to Rome and the Moon Dogs returned to Da Bone too late for the planned Blues Brothers party ("we're on a mission..."), but were thankful anyway. Their next project was resurrecting all the old Sonny and Cher songs in time for a visit from the now Honorable Sonny Bono (get it? Bono? Da Bone?), a congressman who would officially spend a few days at the air base. The Q-3 "band" was actually holding organized jamming, a first for them. CAPTs "Chip" Campbell, "Sponge" Latorre, LT "Munster" Munsell and CWO "Kriegs" Kriegshauser made up for on drums and guitars for what was missing vocally. A Cher look-alike contest was threatened.
Then an elite Air Force B-1 crew made the pilgrimage to Da Bone several nights to pay its respects. The tent was becoming a kind of Marine Mecca for the bubbas. After disappearing respectfully into the cloud of cigar smoke at the bar and emerging later as new men, they became quite emotional about their mistake at not having gone Marine Corps. They left velcro-backed BONE patches (Get it? B-One?) as tokens of their esteem. A television crew from Wingspan Aviation News showed up to film Marine Air at Aviano, and the producer was named--yeah, yeah, you guessed it--Bone.
"All this
bone-ness. It's karma, man," said Muddy Watters. Maybe so,
but Q-3 is back, man, because that tent holds more than cold
beer, killer hot sauce and wine on tap. Marines, missions, morale
and motivation have permeated the air of Da Bone as surely as the
cigar smoke has, or perhaps because of it. The Moon Dogs are
back, man, and they are howlin' and prowlin'.