Many Navy pilots getting first taste of combat

The Washington Post

ABOARD THE USS CARL VINSON — Navy Capt. Chuck Wright let loose with the 500-pound laser-guided bomb and watched with some amazement as the MiG-21 parked on the end of the runway in Kandahar blew up.

"Remember when you watch the movies and you see the explosions that they have with the big fireballs and smoke coming up?" Wright said Wednesday. "It looked kind of like that. It was pretty wild."

Monday night was Wright’s first time in combat, even though he is a 22-year veteran naval aviator who flies F-14 Tomcats and F/A-18 Hornets, and who serves as deputy commander of the air wing assaulting Afghanistan from the deck of this carrier.

Wright is not alone. Of the 101 pilots in Carrier Air Wing 11, only 10 to 15 had experienced combat before, commanders said. Relatively few Navy pilots now flying had fought in previous conflicts such as the Persian Gulf War or in the Balkans.

"The first time you look down and see (antiaircraft fire), it really gets your blood running," said Wright, 44. "But then you realize, ‘Hey, they don’t have my name on it, so it’s going to be all right.’"

The ride back to the carrier for Wright and the radar intercept officer in the back seat of the F-14 was far less tense. "I was eating a peanut butter sandwich that I had taken along … and he was killing a cockroach that had got into the cockpit somehow," Wright said.

As the Vinson continued to launch combat missions over Afghanistan on Wednesday night, wing commanders are putting a priority on getting as many pilots as possible used to combat operations to better prepare them for whatever battles lie ahead when the United States launches the next phase of the war.

"Every pilot in this air wing needs to experience that tension. They need to get it over the first time," Wright said. "We want to make sure that everybody that has potential for … getting shot at gets that done before the other guy gets real smart."

The experience of a 28-year old Hornet pilot who saw his first incoming fire while flying somewhere over Afghanistan on Monday night was not unusual. "I was eating Twizzlers when the 57mm (antiaircraft fire) started coming," said the pilot, Ken, who like most personnel on the ship cannot be fully identified under Navy media ground rules. "It was surreal."

Officers aboard the ship say they expect to continue flight operations over Afghanistan indefinitely, though even the admiral commanding the Vinson battle group said he does not know what comes next.

"I couldn’t tell you if I’m in the middle right now, or at the end," said Rear Adm. Thomas Zelibor. "It’s a continuing mission. It’s something that’s going to take a long time."

"You want to take the fight to the adversary, and having air superiority is an important part of that," Zelibor said, adding that the carrier aircraft would need to "ensure we have air superiority for whatever missions may follow after that."

In the event of a ground operation, carrier aircraft would be called on to provide close air support for troops or to protect special forces units and helicopters.

Such missions, which would likely require pilots to fly at lower altitudes and linger over dangerous areas more than they do on bombing missions, could expose the pilots to significantly more risk than they now face, officers aboard the ship said.