Things started to go bad as Eberly and Griffith’s F-15, Buick 04, was finishing with the air-to-air refueling and the flight was sitting in formation with the KC-135s, waiting for their EF-111 electronic jamming and F-4G Wild Weasel SAM attack support aircraft to arrive. But these aircraft called in miles out from the rendezvous: “We’re going to be late” (again, the cost of last-minute changes to the ATO). This put the F-15 flight leader in a bind. He had to leave the tanker now if he expected to make the time over target listed in the ATO. If he was early or late, he would risk interfering with other aircraft. If he went in without the protection of the EF-111s and F-4Gs, he’d risk sending the F-15Es naked into the target. It was a tough call, but he made the best choice he could. The flight left the tanker at the appointed time, and he radioed his EF-111 and F-4G helpers to refuel and join them in the target area as soon as they could catch up.

Sometime later, Buick 04 was somewhere near the Syrian border, just seconds away from weapons release, their F-15 speeding as fast as they could push it. At over 600 miles an hour, time went quickly, especially for someone trying to build a radar picture of an ill-defined target; the tension was building. As Griffith fine-tuned his radar picture, gently moving the crosshairs fractions of an inch, the steering commands in Eberly’s HUD offset ever so slightly, and Eberly smoothly brought his aircraft to the new heading. All of this had been practiced hundreds of times before—except for one never-trained-for factor: Hundreds of people on the ground, equipped with a vast array of weapons, were intent on killing them. They pursued this purpose with passionate intensity.

The F-15E’s warning receiver started to chatter, then displayed the symbols that told both crew members they were being tracked by surface-to-air missile-guidance radars. Griffith tore himself away from his radar and activated the switch that fired an explosive squib on the belly of the jet. This caused thousands of chaff filaments to blossom in the air and—it was hoped—blind and confuse the radar operators on the ground.

Whoosh, whoosh. A pair of guided missiles, probably Vietnam-vintage SA-2s, streaked toward their jet and exploded below and to their left. Putting aside the attack, Griffith dispensed more chaff, and Eberly turned the jet to avoid more missiles. Suddenly there was a flash, and the jet shuddered as if it had struck a wall of water. Surprisingly, they heard no noise.