★ “Chuck,” Secretary Cheney asked, with deceptive simplicity, “what about attacks against the biological weapons storage areas?”
Horner described the target, summarized the Army major’s position, and then described the attack sequence proposed by his planners and weaponeers.
While Schwarzkopf kept silent and Cheney asked questions to better understand the issues, Powell and Wolfowitz offered counterarguments, citing the white papers condemning such attacks.
It was difficult for Horner to argue with Colin Powell, his military superior, in front of Powell’s superior, the Secretary of Defense, even when he believed he was correct. Nevertheless (diplomacy not being one of Horner’s strong suits), he set forth his reasons, and Powell and Wolfowitz disagreed. For a time there wasn’t much progress, since Cheney was withholding judgment, and Schwarzkopf continued to maintain his silence (though Horner remembers a gleam in his eye that said he enjoyed watching the Air Force general sweat).
The impasse continued until Horner recalled the larger issues. “Yes,” he told himself, “this is a war against aggression. But it is also a war against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. And while our calculations may be in error, and some innocent Iraqi civilians may die from the fallout resulting from our attack, that would serve a useful purpose. The contamination of Iraq would send a signal, provide a lesson, to any nation contemplating building and storing those horrible weapons.” It didn’t take Horner long to lay out this new line of reasoning. Paul Wolfowitz quickly picked it up, and now began to find reasons to attack the storage bunkers.
As support for Horner’s position waxed, Powell’s opposition waned, until Cheney finally turned to Schwarzkopf and asked, “Norm, what do you think?”
“I think we ought to do it,” Schwarzkopf answered.
Nothing more was said, and the bunkers remained on the target list.
As it turned out, they proved to be a difficult nut to crack, buried as they were under extensive layers of dirt and concrete. The munition selected for the job was the I-2000 bomb (Mark 84 bomb class), which was designed for that kind of job. The I-2000 Mark 84 had a steel nose that would not fracture when it hit reinforced concrete, and its time-delay fuse was in the tail, so the bomb could penetrate before it exploded. Finally, unlike most bombs, which are dropped on a slant, the I-2000 was dropped from medium altitude (which gave the bomb enough kinetic energy to penetrate the reinforced concrete and its earth overburden) directly over the target (which allowed its laser to guide it to a near-vertical angle). The force this generated was sufficient to penetrate most reinforced bunkers.
In the event, when the I-2000 penetrated the biobunker, its explosion touched off an enormous secondary explosion, with a vast fireball and prodigious quantities of billowing smoke. What was stored in that bunker will probably never be known, but it turned night into day.
After the war, Horner researched the available sources to see if there was evidence of fallout of biological agents. Though he found reports of Iraqi guards killed during the bombing attacks, no evidence of deaths from biological fallout appeared (there have been reports of postwar civilian deaths due to disease, but these cannot be connected to the bunker attacks).
After the bunker issue was settled, Horner’s briefing was over, and he returned to his seat between John Yeosock and Stan Arthur at the back of the room. The meeting ended with a brief discussion of ground operations.
COUNTDOWN
The final weeks were a jumble. The buildup and beddown, as well as plans and training, were proceeding satisfactorily, though with lurches and hang-ups. To ensure that the executors of the plan had a say in its planning, Buster Glosson took the ATO around to the bases, briefed the commanders and crews, and ran one last sanity check on the tactics, the timing, and the force packages of various bomb droppers and electronic-combat support aircraft. Anything that looked unworkable was changed on the spot. Horner continued working his role as cheerleader and team builder, visiting the bases and the units, giving encouragement, laying on hands. Yet he always managed to find time to keep up his own flying skills, by combining visits to the bases with training sorties (he averaged four to six F-16 sorties per week).
Surprisingly, not every second was filled with demands. During free moments, he read military history (provided by Dr. Dick Hallion, the USAF historian) to see how others had done the job he was now doing. Two he especially remembers were The Sky Over Baghdad, about the RAF in post- World War I Iraq, and Eagle Against the Sun, about the war with Japan. He learned there that MacArthur’s relationship with his air chief, Kenney, was very like his own with Schwarzkopf (both CINCs knew the importance of air to their overall combat plan, and both trusted their airman to carry out the right air strategy).
Finally, there was a round of official dinners with cabinet ministers, princes, heads of state, near heads of state, and other high-level people—somewhat daunting for a boy from Iowa, yet also a source of pride and a visible sign that he was moving up in the world. And in truth, important work was accomplished:
A dinner at the Crown Prince’s palace found Horner seated between the Saudi Ministers of Petroleum and Finance, both men educated in U.S. business schools, both extremely personable, both working hard to keep the wheels of the Coalition turning; and Horner needed help from them. In August, the Saudi government had agreed to pay for jet fuel, but no one in August had envisioned how large U.S. forces would grow. Later, the Ministry of Finance was reluctant to fund the rapidly increasing fuel bills from the Ministry of Petroleum; and the Ministry of Petroleum was therefore reluctant to refine and ship the jet fuel Horner’s increasingly large air forces were using. It was already costing $20 million a day to keep up air defense CAPs and conduct rehearsal training, and the costs were only going to grow. Over dinner, at Horner’s urging, the Minister of Finance agreed to send the money to the Minister of Petroleum, so he would send the jet fuel to Horner’s bases. (During Desert Storm, Saudi Arabia became a net importer of jet fuel, with an average of forty tanker ships per day inbound to the Kingdom.)
Horner had another problem persuading the Saudis to allow the staging of B-52s at Jeddah (where facilities were large and modern enough to handle them).
Saudi leaders were reluctant to allow large bombers—especially large bombers whose original function was to deliver nuclear weapons—to be based on their territory . . . and worse, near Mecca. Fighter-bombers and transports were another thing. The Saudis were used to fighters and transports taking off and landing at their bases.
At Prince Sultan’s horse farm about a mile across the highway from the international airport, Horner was able to engage Khaled on this issue.
Always sensitive to the likely Saudi reaction, he crafted his request carefully: “I know you don’t want to do this because of the impact it can have on your people,” he told the Prince, “but I need to base the B-52s closer to the enemy, so I can get more sorties out of them than if they have to fly all the way from England or Diego Garcia. If you’ll let me put them at Jeddah the first night of the war, and operate them out of there afterward, I will redeploy them out the day after the war ends. And besides,” he offered, “during the war there will be so much going on, the people won’t notice them.”
Prince Khaled bought this argument, and he and Horner reached an agreement. The bombers would land at Jeddah after their first combat sortie, then fly the rest of their combat missions into the KTO from General Mansour’s military facilities at King Abdullah Aziz Air Base (the military part of Jeddah New). And Horner kept his side of the deal: the big bombers departed immediately after hostilities concluded.
Each dinner was different. Some were in embassies, some were in desert tents, some were in palaces. At some there were women; at others they were absent. Some went very late; others broke up early. At all of them, Horner drank orange juice, even though at embassy dinners there were normally liquids not readily available in the Kingdom.
And for Horner, not all of his
performances were shining.
At an American Embassy reception—trying to play the slick insider—Horner suggested to the AT & T regional manager that the telecommunications infrastructure in Iraq and Kuwait might sustain damage if war broke out, and he might want to think about shipping switching equipment, cable, and other equipment to replace it. “Actually,” the regional manager informed him (punching a large hole in his vanity), “the replacement equipment is already stored in warehouses around the region, awaiting installation after the war.”
★ In December, Horner had to sweat. Tony McPeak, the new Air Force Chief of Staff, nominated him for the job of DCINC, or Schwarzkopf’s deputy, to replace USAF Lieutenant General Craven C. “Buck” Rogers (Rogers, who was scheduled to retire in the fall of 1990, did not deploy to Riyadh).
When a joint position like DCINC came open, the service chiefs were asked to nominate one of their generals for the job. McPeak knew that Schwarzkopf liked Horner, that they worked well together, and that the current DCINC was an Air Force general. If Horner was the DCINC, he reasoned, he could then put another general in CENTAF, which would leave the Air Force well represented in CENTCOM.
“Bad thinking,” Horner reasoned. “Worse, it’s crazy. Nobody in his right mind wants to be deputy. The deputy handles all the issues the CINC doesn’t want to fool with: he’s the one who gives boring speeches, hosts minor guests at headquarters, attends all the meaningless meetings. And in meetings when the CINC is present, the DCINC is supposed to sit there and say nothing. When the CINC is out of town, he runs things, but God help him if he makes a decision not previously discussed with the CINC.”
And so Horner pleaded with McPeak. “Don’t do this to me, General,” he told him. “It’s a thankless job. You are not in charge of anything, and can only influence the CINC in private, which I’m already doing as CENTAF. And look—I know this sounds like big ego—but I don’t know where you’re going to find anyone better prepared to command CENTAF. I’m more operationally astute than most, I have more command experience than any of my contemporaries, I know the Middle East and the Arab military leaders, I’ve been working war in the Middle East since 1987, and the CINC is not likely to give a new guy the confidence that I have built up over the months.”
McPeak, a hardheaded man, resisted these pleas, but to Horner’s immense relief, Schwarzkopf agreed with him; and Colin Powell wanted his own man, Lieutenant General Cal Waller, in the job. Waller, a big, easygoing man, known for his common touch, would be a counterweight, some thought, to the far more imperial Schwarzkopf.
And so Schwarzkopf kept Horner as his air commander, and Waller became DCINC . . . and immediately stepped on a media land mine, after the manner of Mike Dugan.
Current plans called for the massive relocation west of VIIth Corps and XVIIIth Corps for Schwarzkopf’s Left Hook—but only after the start of the air campaign, to prevent Iraqi reconnaissance aircraft from discovering the surprise Schwarzkopf had in store for them.
After reviewing these plans, including detailed analysis of the difficulties the corps faced in moving, Waller concluded that the two corps would not be in position to attack for several weeks after the air war started.
This led to the following exchange:
“Will the Army be ready to fight on the U.N.’s, and now President Bush’s, January fifteenth deadline?” a reporter asked.
“What’s so important about being ready to fight on the fifteenth?” Waller answered.
He was technically correct. It was not important for the Army to be ready to fight on the fifteenth, it was important for them to be ready to move west, so they could fight where and when the CINC decided.
Unfortunately for Waller, his response implied that President Bush’s deadline for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait was a sham.
Needless to say, there was little joy in Washington when the headline broke: “CENTCOM DCINC ASKED, ‘WHAT’S SO IMPORTANT ABOUT THE 15TH?’ ”
Afterward, General Schwarzkopf took heavy—and hardly welcome—hits from his superiors, and Cal Waller never really regained the CINC’s confidence, or had much influence in the upper circles in Riyadh. The resulting fallout ended Waller’s shot at a fourth star.
One good result of the flap was the cancellation of media interviews. Horner had better things to do.
★ Christmas came and went—or C+140, as it was jokingly called in the desert. If C day was the first day of the Desert Shield deployment, then C+1 was the day after that, C+2 the next, and so on until C+140—December 25. In the event, it was a lonely, miserable time for American servicemen and servicewomen in the Gulf. They desperately missed their families. “Have a merry C+140” didn’t quite do it. The good news was that everyone knew the climax was coming very soon.
New Year’s Day followed. And for Horner, the rest of January was a blur.
By the end of the first week in January, people were leaving Riyadh, the normally bustling traffic-clogged streets were almost deserted, and weather over Southwest Asia was worsening. It would prove to be the hardest winter in years.
Horner reflects:
As the war drew near, I could see the change in the pilots. Now when I visited, they seemed more mature, more sober in their outlook. No more whining questions. They’d had their innocence baked out of them in the hot sun, dulled by the night combat air patrols, scared out of them by night practices and by large-scale rehearsal missions in the increasingly bad weather. They knew now they were going to war—an event they’d trained for all their professional lives and feared they’d never experience. They were going from the practice field to the Super Bowl. Some would not make it, yet they were not afraid. Neither was there much joy (though there was laughter)—a condition caused not by the threat of war but by loneliness and separation from loved ones.
No longer were we carefree, fun-loving fighter pilots.
On 15 January, I wrote my wife,
“This may be my last letter for some time. My mental attitude will likely be such you won’t want to hear from me anyway. Some days lately I could puke. There are so many people who have no clue about air, people who are jealous because we have the predominant act in this circus. They spend all their time trying to get their two cents in at the expense of getting the job done.
“I try to keep our operations stable and work to stay above the petty crises, because I know that when the shooting starts, the nervous Nellies will run away.
“Forgive such a shitty letter, but we are entering a big game and I have a thousand details to attend to. Perhaps when the rest get doing their wartime thing, I’ll have more time. Till then, know in your deepest secret place, I love you so very much.”
III
The Thousand-Hour War
8
Storm!
CHUCK Horner tells what happened next:
I arrived in the TACC shortly after 0100 on the seventeenth of January 1991. The war, scheduled to start at 0300, Riyadh time, was moments away.
The January 15 U.N. deadline had come and gone. Even the added teeth of President Bush’s threat—“Evacuate Kuwait or face military action”—had produced no concrete results (though there’d been a flurry of diplomatic activity). This didn’t surprise me. I was sure Saddam wouldn’t back down, if for no other reason than he had dug too many trenches, piled too many sandbags, and poured too much concrete in the desert. He must have figured he held a winning hand, which had me worried about an ace up his sleeve. Yet how could he, I’d asked myself over and over, when we hold all four aces?
President Bush had sent a message to General Schwarzkopf: The start of the liberation of Kuwait is up to you, but make it as soon after the fifteenth as possible. The CINC had in turn delegated that responsibility to me. And I had chosen the early hours of January 17 as the best moment to launch the aerial assault.
This plan was based on a single factor. On that date would occur the least possible illumination in the night sky—no moonlight. Our F-117s were virtually invisible to radar, but
they were visible to Iraqi fighter pilots; and they were particularly visible against the backdrop of a moonlit sky. They were attacking the toughest, most heavily defended target ever struck from the air—Baghdad. We were going to give them every possible advantage.
★ Knowing that I’d get very little sleep in the next days, I’d gone home to the USMTM compound next door at about 2100 that evening to try to sleep . . . until midnight, anyway. But sleep did not come. I was too keyed up, too tense. I lay there in the empty apartment (Yeosock and Fong were working at ARCENT and my aide Hoot Gibson had gone to Al Dahfra to fly in combat), trying to get some rest, wondering what I had forgotten, wondering what I had missed that would cost the life of a pilot. Sure, I knew some would die, but I wanted to be certain I had not made the mistake that cost them their lives.
There had been no last-minute phone calls to General Schwarzkopf, or to anyone else. These would not have been appropriate. We didn’t want an increase in communications traffic to tip off the enemy that something big was in the works, though I am sure they expected something after the fifteenth.
Shortly after the deadline passed, wheels had been set in motion. And on January 16, B-52s from the 2d Bombardment Wing of the Mighty Eighth Air Force, armed with conventional air-launched cruise missiles (CALCMs), had departed Barksdale AFB, Louisiana (an event duly reported on CNN). The Mighty Eighth would go to war once more, this time under command of the Ninth Air Force. Quite a turnaround from the days of SAC rule. Seven B-52s were to fly a round trip of 14,000 miles in thirty-five hours (the longest combat mission in history) and fire thirty-five CALCMs at eight targets—military communications sites and power-generation and transmission facilities.
Why send B-52s all the way from Louisiana?