Now the pressure was on Tom Lennon and his Aardvark pilots of the 48th TFW (P). The weapons, GBU-15s, had small wings, which allowed them to glide to their target from some distance away. Their guidance was provided by a radio control signal generated from another F-111 (its WSO received a television picture from a TV camera located in the bomb’s nose). As the bomb flew closer, the ground image grew larger, and the WSO could fine-tune the placement of the crosshairs with a small control stick in his cockpit—all this while the bomb was flying at nearly ten miles a minute, leaving no room for error during the final seconds of flight. Meanwhile, the F-111 pilot would put the aircraft on autopilot, watch the television screen to judge how well his WSO was doing, and hope he didn’t spot antiaircraft fire or missiles. During the final microseconds of the bomb’s flight, the target image would swell to take over the entire screen. Then the screen would grow dark picoseconds before 2,000 pounds of tritonal in the warhead went off. All in all, a very tricky operation requiring a great deal of training, planning, and skill.

This particular mission involved four F-111Fs fragged to deliver two GBU-15s. The number three and four aircraft carried the bombs, while the number one and two aircraft carried the radio relay pods that received and transmitted the radio signals to and from the bomb.

As it turned out, when the first bomb was released and the number one WSO began fine-tuning its heading, for some reason his radio relay got interrupted and he lost contact with the bomb. Instantly, he mashed the radio button and called out that he had to abort the drop—but fortunately, the number two WSO had been monitoring the drop and immediately transmitted “I’ve got it,” and proceeded to guide the bomb to the exact place where the first valve was buried.

Except for the hitch, the mission went as planned—two bombs dropped, two valves destroyed, the oil pipeline shut down . . . and a very happy Norman Schwarzkopf and Chuck Horner.

★ We have already mentioned Iraqi fire trenches—ditches dug in the desert and hooked up to existing crude-oil pipelines and pumping stations. When the invasion came, they were to be filled with oil and set on fire.

Though of all the Iraqi assaults on the environment, this one offered the greatest potential military usefulness, it remained an assault on the environment, or, as Chuck Horner puts it, “I will admit that war is not the place to preach ecological chastity, yet only a criminal or fool goes around pumping crude oil about the landscape.”