“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

III

The Thousand-Hour War

Chapter 8 - Storm!

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.