The microphone stayed on the table. And Aim 7 missiles, illuminated by F-15 radar, homed in on the Iraqi fighters and blew them out of the sky. Pennzoil 63 and Citgo 65, Captains Kelk and Grater from the 33d Fighter Wing’s 58th Squadron, got kills on the opening night of the war, shooting down a MiG-29 and a Mirage F-1. As the Iraqi blips faded from the screen, the AWACS control team on my left called out, “Splash two,” to a cheering crowd.

★ The plan unfolding that first night had worked, and all of us were uplifted. In retrospect, I think all the folks at home were also uplifted in those early days, as the reports of success vastly outnumbered the painful reports of casualties or mission failures. After the war, people who do not understand or take time to study this part of the battle, thought it was easy, that we easily seized control over Iraq. I will admit our people made it look easy, but it wasn’t, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Meanwhile, my immediate concern now was to keep our folks from losing their intensity.

At the 0730 shift change, even as I congratulated those who were going off duty and brought the oncoming day shift up to speed, I admonished both shifts not to let up. We had a long, hard battle ahead, and they needed to remain grimly determined. “Our job now is to worry,” I told them. “Our job now is to work longer and harder than ever, to be disciplined, be hard-nosed. Do not let the Iraqis up off the floor. Kick the shit out of them.” Then I tried to put a smile on their faces with the inane blessing, “Have a good day.”

And it was.

★ During the first twenty-four hours, we flew 2,775 sorties. We hit thirty-seven targets in the Baghdad area, of which most (about fifteen) were designed to sever communications used by the Iraqi military. The rest hit targets such as the electrical grid and the national headquarters of intelligence, the military, the secret police, and other leadership targets. We had about 200 sorties against airfields, 175 against Scud targets, 750 interdiction sorties against the Iraqi Army and its supplies, 436 CAP or defensive counter-air sorties, 652 offensive counter-air (these included the Wild Weasels and airfield attacks), and 432 tanker sorties. (The USMC called their AV-8 sorties close air support, but by definition that was impossible, since CAS takes place within the FSCL, and their sorties flew beyond the FSCL, which was the Saudi border.)

Our biggest day was February 23, when we flew 3,254 sorties, one-third of which (995) were interdiction in the KTO. Overall, we flew 44,000 sorties against the Iraqi Army, 24,000 sorties to get and maintain control of the air and protect our forces from Iraqi air attack, 16,000 refueling sorties, and 5,000 electronics warfare and command-and-control sorties.