Moments after oil started spewing into the Gulf, CENTCOM intelligence had located and debriefed the engineers who’d operated the Kuwaiti oil-storage area before the war. From them came estimates of the amounts of oil that could be dumped (a lot!) and suggestions for ending the dumping. It quickly became clear that the situation was more serious than anyone had realized. Already the spill was many times greater than had been released by the Exxon Valdez tanker accident in Alaska. Something had to be done, and soon, and air was the only force available to do it. Chuck Horner immediately had his targeteers working on the problem. The strategy they came up with was straightforward. They would torch off the oil slick and shut down the pipelines the Iraqis had opened.

Needless to say, the subject came up at General Schwarzkopf’s 1900 meeting. Schwarzkopf asked Horner two questions: “What is required?” and “When can we do it?”

The plan devised by Buster Glosson’s Black Hole wizards called for USMC AV-8s to drop phosphorus flares into the oil slick and ignite the floating crude oil (the flares were normally used to light up the battlefield at night for close air support). Then F-111s would strike the two valves that controlled the outflow of oil. Their destruction would cause the pipeline to switch into its failsafe position, and various manifold controls would seal it off, making it inoperable. Though the pipeline could be repaired, such repairs were considered beyond the abilities of the Iraqi Army.

The AV-8 mission was fairly simple, and did not involve significant enemy defenses; but the F-111s were dropping their bombs from medium altitude in daylight, to ensure they could visually find their aim point in an area very well defended by optically aimed guns and heat-seeking missiles. It would not be easy.

“We can accomplish both missions tomorrow,” Horner told Schwarzkopf.

“I’ll get back to you,” the CINC replied.

All the next day, they waited, but no word came out of the CINC’s staff. Torching the slick was itself environmentally risky. Would a sea of fire spread to shore, where tons of black goo had already washed up? Wouldn’t nature’s own—admittedly slow—cleanup process be ultimately better than a big, soot-producing burn? Though Horner doesn’t know this for sure, such questions were doubtless being asked in Washington. The answer: a “go ahead” for the mission to set the slick on fire never came.

However, early on the afternoon of the twenty-sixth, the “go ahead” came to the TACC for the F-111 strike. The time on target was for three and a half hours later.