Though by this time Moccasin 05 (the Jolly Green Giant rescue helicopter, flown by Captain Tom Trask) had returned to its forward operating base at Ar’ar just south of the Iraqi border, its crew had not totally given up the search, and they were monitoring their radio when Sandy 57 made contact with Jones, and later with the tanker. While the A-10s sucked gas out of the KC-135, they launched and headed north. Soon they were joined by the two A-10s.

On the flight north, AWACS controllers vectored them around Iraqi SAM sites in their path. Before long, they were talking to Jones.

The Moccasin 05 crew were going over rescue procedures with the Navy pilot when Johnson and Goff spotted an Iraqi radio direction-finding truck racing toward the pilot’s hiding place; and as Sandy’s 57 and 58 turned their attention to the Iraqi truck, Moccasin 05 swooped down on the pilot, his arms waving like mad. The A-10s rolled in and strafed the Iraqis with their 30 mm cannons, and, in Jones’s words, “the truck vaporized.” It had been close.

As Johnson pulled off the burning truck, Jones was jumping out of his hole in the desert less than a football field away and running to the waiting helicopter. It was a sight Johnson would never forget.

Though many people deserved praise that day, in the end it was the determination and guts of Captains Johnson and Goff that made the mission successful. Nearly nine hours after they’d climbed into them, the two exhausted pilots climbed down from their A-10s.

Months later, their country would reward Paul Johnson and Randy Goff for their efforts on what had started out as a boring day sitting combat search-and-rescue alert. Johnson received the Air Force Cross, the Air Force’s second-highest medal, and Randy Goff was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

The Jones rescue was difficult, but it worked. Too many CSAR missions did not come off so well. The most notable of these failures occurred on the night of January 19, when an F-15E hunting Scuds was shot down by an SA-2 missile.

THE ODYSSEY OF TOM GRIFFITH

Tom Griffith was a weapons systems officer, assigned to the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing, flying F-15Es, and first deployed in the rushed chaos of early August to Thumrait Air Base in Oman.

Still locked in his memory is the anxiety of mobility processing, when no one knew where they were being sent or what to expect when they got there. This was swiftly followed by the greater anxiety of imminent war, when he was handed a real gas mask and a real atropine injection pen (which protected against nerve gas).

In Oman, he endured the hot August days and nights, putting up tents in a dust storm, eating MREs until the kitchen tent was set up, sitting alert in a jet loaded with wall-to-wall cluster bomb units. August became September, and he endured that, too.