This young pilot took off on a single-ship training mission at maximum gross weight in his F-15E (it was equipped with conformal tanks, which made it much heavier than the F-15C). Before coming to the Gulf, he had had an exchange tour with an RAF unit in Scotland. As it happened, the two units were now based together, which allowed the young pilot to conduct an intercept with an RAF squadron buddy, who was also flying in the local area on a training mission—the RAF Jaguar fighter at 100 feet above the ground and the F-15E at 10,000 to 15,000 feet. Since the F-15E’s radar could easily see the Jaguar, the young USAF pilot and his WSO attempted a stern conversion. In that maneuver, the pilot flies head-on to the target, then rolls on his back and pulls down until he can roll out behind his target, trading altitude for airspeed and G force for turn radius.

He almost made the final turn to pull out a few feet above the ground, but his tail scraped the ground three hundred feet before the final impact scattered the F-15E into thousands of burning pieces. The bodies were found in the wreckage and the final maneuver was observed and reported by the RAF pilot.

Horner was very upset with the wing commander, Hal Hornberg,50 because he had specifically told him no air-to-air. If he had found out that Hornberg had winked at the ban on air-to-air training, or that he was running a lax operation in which others were winking at these restrictions (which many thought unreasonable), then Horner was going to find another wing commander. To find out the truth, Horner brought in from the States one of the most honest men he knew, Colonel Bill Van Meter, and sent him to investigate. In due course, it was determined that the old relationship with the RAF squadron, and not the squadron and wing commanders, was to blame. Horner further believes that if Hornberg had himself found that this tragedy had resulted from his own inattention or lack of leadership, he would have asked to be fired.

The year before deploying for Desert Shield, one of Horner’s wing commanders actually did that after he had lost three aircraft (his wing had gotten infected before his arrival, and he had to reap the rewards of his predecessor’s failures). “Fire me, boss, and put me out of my misery,” he had said to Horner, whose answer was, “I’m too mad at you right now for these accidents, and so I am going to leave you in the job just so you bear the pain while you put a stop to this nonsense.” He fixed the wing and went on to be a two-star; he was always an excellent leader.