To the Rescue
Crews recount snatching downed pilot during Allied Force...
Staff Sgt. Jeremy Hardy just had to look. Nobody wants to take one in the back. If you're going to take a bullet, you want to see it coming, right? So, Hardy craned his neck out the side door of the MH-60 helicopter to take a peek. He got his wish. But what he saw made him gape — a surface-to-air missile that looked like a flaming telephone pole streaking straight up at him. He quickly ducked his head back inside and stared straight ahead. "I'd seen enough," said Hardy, a 27-year-old pararescueman from Columbus, Ind. "and decided it's really better not to know."
Fortunately for him, his crewmates and a lone F-16 pilot trapped behind enemy lines, that surface-to-air missile and two more missed their target.
It was May 2, 1999. An F-16C Falcon, designated Hammer 34, had just completed a strike against Serb SAM sites near Novi Sad, when an enemy missile burst beside the jet, sending it spiraling downward. The pilot punched out, safely parachuted to the ground and radioed for help, while hiding in the brush. The Serbs wanted him in the worst way. A captured pilot from mighty America would make a fine trophy to parade in front of the international media.
The combat search and rescue crew at a nearby base in friendly territory had called it a night, dismissing their troops since they believed all NATO aircraft had returned safely from their missions. When the mayday came in, Hardy was playing cards and Lt. Col. Steve Laushine, an MH-60G Pave Hawk pilot and then commander of the 55th Special Operations Squadron, had just slipped out of his flight suit and into his sleeping bag.
Laushine and his men, based out of Hurlburt Field, Fla., belonged to a combat search and rescue team forward deployed in the Balkans. They sat ready to launch within minutes to rescue downed airmen fighting Serbian forces in Kosovo. For 45 days, they had practiced and planned. They had sketched out routes and rescue tactics for every conceivable location in the region. But they had yet to go on a real mission.
"You never want to see an American in danger, but you don't practice everyday as hard as we do and not want to get into the game," Hardy said. "This was the Super Bowl."
A split second after the confirmation came over the radio, crews dashed headlong down the long wood porch that stretched the length of the makeshift barracks and operations building to grab their go-to-war bags and "jock up" with body armor and survival gear. Soon after the teams agreed upon a rescue plan, three helicopters dusted off from the floor of the rugged valley and winged toward a lone pilot waiting and hoping miles away.
The plan was to fly an MH-60G Pave Hawk and two MH-53Js Pave Lows into bad guy country, confirm the pilot's location, retrieve him, and get "out of Dodge" before sunrise.
The only problem: There were hundreds, if not thousands, of Serbian soldiers gunning for them, trying to stop them dead in their tracks — literally.
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| Because of small arms fire, Staff Sgt. Jeremy Hardy (right), a pararescueman,
had only seconds to confirm the identity of the pilot before pulling him aboard
the Pave Hawk helicopter. Other rescue team members flying in the helicopter
that picked up the downed pilot are Senior Airman Ron Ellis (middle), a PJ, and
Staff Sgt. Andy Kubik, a combat controller. |
"We knew they were out to get us," Capt. Kent Landreth one of the mission's Pave Low pilots said, "so from the time we crossed their border, until we crossed back, we felt they were looking for us."
To make matters worse, the night sky was crystal clear, and the moonlight silhouetted the helicopters like revolving tin ducks at a carnival shooting gallery.
"We prefer to work in the cover of darkness," Landreth said. "We even prefer bad weather, because it restricts the enemy's view of us."
It may be more challenging for pilots to fly using night-vision goggles and instruments only, but it's certainly safer, according to Landreth.
Just over half way to the rendezvous location, the trio of helicopters rose over a ridge line and swooped down over a small farming village that was as dark as the surrounding forests. The darkness of the village seemed a little odd to Staff Sgt. Rich Kelley, the MH-60 flight engineer.
He remembered how his grandfather, who farmed back home, would normally be up by that hour making coffee and preparing for the day's work. They'd soon discover why this particular village appeared so lifeless.
Kelley peered out the right side with his finger on the trigger of a minigun, which has a nasty reputation for aerating nearly anything in its line of fire. He noticed flashes of light coming from throughout the village, and in particular, from underneath the Pave Hawk.
Out of habit, his eyes and gun sight moved in tandem. As he fixed his sight on an apartment building where more flashes appeared, he wondered if they were muzzle flashes or just lights that appeared to be flashing because of the helicopter's movement.
Then suddenly, "pop-pop-pop."
It was the unique sound of an AK-47 assault rifle.
Kelley instinctively squeezed the trigger and fired two bursts of fire into the complex. Simultaneously he alerted the pilot, "Ground fire, three-o'clock, break left!"
As the pilot banked hard left to evade the oncoming bullets, Tech. Sgt. Jack Gainer, the craft's left gunner, was poised and ready to get in the fight. Kelley's counterfire had silenced the attackers, and the telltale muzzle-flashes he expected to see disappeared. Though he thought he knew where the gunfire came from, he didn't want to take the chance of harming innocent people who may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He held tight and knew he made the right decision.
"They were definitely sitting and waiting for us to come," Hardy said. "And the idea they wanted us dead was pretty spooky. Once the bullets started flying, the anxiety level went up, but we really didn't have time to be scared."
With adrenaline pumping through their veins like oil rushing through the Alaskan pipeline, all three crews evaded the immediate threat and raced toward the pilot — focusing on what might lie ahead.
In the troop compartment of the Pave Low chopper leading the triad, Laushine served as mission commander. Watching a Global Positioning Satellite display, he was able to see exactly where they were and stay aware of the entire situation throughout the mission. A pilot with more than 3,300 combined hours in the MH-60G and the UH-1N helicopters, he naturally wanted to be at the stick. Instead, he huddled in the back to command the mission, calling his job the epitome of a back-seat driver. "I tried to stay out of the way as much as possible because I had a lot of faith in the people flying the helicopter. Every-one's safety was my main concern," he said.
As the helos closed in on the downed pilot's location, the pilot's wingman, circling above in his F-16, vectored in the helicopter. And when the Pave Hawk with the pararescue-men and a combat controller landed, the pilot scrambled out of the tree line. Meanwhile, the Serbs who tracked down their prize and had a bead on him, suddenly opened fire. But Hardy had not positively identified him as a "friendly," so he trained his M-4 rifle with an infrared scope on the approaching pilot, who immediately went "submissive."
Hardy had only seconds to identify the Falcon flier before hostile forces closed in. To make room for the pilot aboard the Pave Hawk, the crew kicked off a couple of boxes of Meals, Ready to Eat. "You could say it was a humanitarian mission, too," Hardy quipped.
Once the pilot entered the aircraft, Hardy, combat controller Staff Sgt. Andy Kubik and the other pararescueman, Senior Airman Ron Ellis, piled on top of him to protect him from any incoming ground fire. When the Pave Hawk lifted skyward, the words the entire armada was waiting to hear went out over the radio. "PC [precious cargo] is on board."
The small victories are short lived. Though having the pilot on board and uninjured added an incredible amount of energy to an already intense situation, the crew knew they still had to get home alive. And the rising sun was doing them no favors.
"I expected to get 'lit up' on the way back," Kelley said. "It was so tough escaping injury on the way in, I thought for sure the trip back would be even uglier. I was afraid we were only issued a one-way ticket." Incredibly, all three aircraft and everyone on board made it home safely.
"I think the amount of training we go through together really showed that night," Landreth said. "There was so much fluidity in everything we did, it seemed that every crew knew what the other was doing. The discipline that was shown is a great credit to everyone involved."
Added Hardy: "It felt good to be tested. It's boosted my confidence because I know I can do the mission when people are shooting at me."
Though the crews were lucky enough to shake hands with the rescued pilot and enjoy a few minutes of celebration before he was whisked off in an MC-130 to safer territory, the ultimate reward came months later when his wife thanked them in person. "When she hugged me and said, 'Thank you for bringing my husband home,' Staff Sgt. Barry "Bear" Bergschneider, a gunner on the lead helicopter, said, "That was the best part of the experience."
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