Vincent Laforet/The New York Times
Lt. Dewaine Barnes, who became a pilot
after learning about the Tuskegee Airmen,
is aiming to lead a team in combat.
Posted on 03/29/2003 8:17:08 AM PST by Pharmboy
Vincent Laforet/The New York Times
Lt. Dewaine Barnes, who became a pilot
after learning about the Tuskegee Airmen,
is aiming to lead a team in combat.
ABOARD THE U.S.S. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, in the Persian Gulf, March 28 — After all the briefing, the training, the flying, the waiting, the war with Iraq has not unfolded as Lt. Dewaine Barnes had anticipated.
The campaign started unexpectedly with the cruise missile strike aimed at killing Saddam Hussein. The dedicated air war, dominated by precision-guided bomb strikes, shifted within just days to a riskier scenario that focused on close air support for fast-advancing ground troops.
And, on Thursday, after days of exhausting missions over Iraq, with dangerous weather, fuel problems, and a shifting situation among ground forces, the young F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot had just dropped his first bomb.
Explaining how he felt about deploying weapons for the first time more than a week into the war, Lieutenant Barnes, careful with his words, started to say "disappointed," but caught himself.
"None of us here are war mongers," said Lieutenant Barnes, 28. "But I guess I wasn't expecting not to drop. It is, after all, a war."
The reaction of the young fighter pilot from Pensacola, Fla., was not unlike that of other pilots in this carrier's air wing who, since the war started, have been intensely focused.
For Lieutenant Barnes, who became a pilot to carry on the legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen, the black World War II squadron that paved the way for young pilots like himself, the desire to contribute to the war effort is as driven as much by personal goals as by a sense of duty.
The flow of battle has tested his entire squadron's flexibility. Early air missions were plagued by fueling problems, and four of the 12 Super Hornet jets in the wing were converted to tankers, to refuel the other jets so they could stay in the air longer. Most pilots have had to rotate on tanker duty, a role that Lieutenant Barnes called "less glamorous, but an important contribution to the team effort."
There have been several harrowing moments. Early on, Lieutenant Barnes came under heavy antiaircraft fire from Iraqi ground forces. Flying missions to patrol the no-fly zones over Iraq during the last several months, Lieutenant Barnes had faced defensive fire, but nothing with the intensity of the first few days of the war.
"Once the artillery reaches a certain altitude it explodes into fragments," he said. "And all of a sudden there is just a huge bluish-white flash in front of the airplane."
Flying close air support, where a commander on the ground talks the pilot to a target that is often near clusters of civilians or coalition forces, has added another level of danger.
Staying focused, he said, requires a high level of compartmentalization, where days revolve almost solely around missions. Backgammon games in the squadron ready room, a favorite daily activity just more than a week ago, seemed a distant memory.
Though he still makes time to e-mail his best friend, Lt. Isaac Shareef, who is a fighter pilot on the Kitty Hawk, one of two other American carriers in the gulf, their dispatches have been limited to short check-ins, just to make sure the other is O.K.
On a recent flight day, Lieutenant Barnes, like many pilots in his squadron, flew two missions, virtually back to back. The first started with a briefing at 7:45 a.m.; the second finished with a debriefing 12 hours later. His only down time was a 45-minute break to grab a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and refocus his energies.
"You're either planning, flying, sleeping or eating," he said, having just finished another peanut butter sandwich.
But he was quick to place his role in perspective. A recent sandstorm, he pointed out by way of example, had made for riskier flights than he or most other pilots here had ever flown.
"But relative to the troops on the ground, we don't have it bad," he said. "They're out there weathering the whole thing, not just the enemy but mother nature too, 24 hours a day. No matter how hard it is for us out there, we get to come back to the ship."
As the minutes passed, creating a space between another night's mission and the relative period of rest before the next round of flights, Lieutenant Barnes rethought his response to not dropping more bombs.
Bombs or not, he explained, the lessons learned in this first phase of war — crash courses in managing time, fuel and fast-changing combat situations — far surpassed anything he had experienced before.
"It's amazing how much can happen in just one week," he said, before leaving for a few hours of rest.
"The contrast could not be greater between the honorable conduct of our liberating force and the criminal acts of the enemy." - Pres. GW Bush, Mar. 29, 2003
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