Young Colonel Abdullah led their first combat sorties. Though these didn’t go perfectly, the pilots got the job done; they got better; and day after day, they joined the stream of Coalition fighters coming out of the air bases in the UAE and going forward to free Kuwait.

★ Perhaps the biggest hurdle Coalition airmen had to overcome was the fear of failure.

Even Saudi pilots had to face such fears—though they are among the most experienced in the world. Their commanding general, Behery, for example, had flown an F-86 on the national acrobatic team, and their Ambassador to the United States, Bandar bin Sultan, had been a skilled F-5 and F-15 pilot before his king assigned him to duties in Washington.

Even so, young Saudi pilots still had to confront the fear that every fighter pilot faces on his first combat sortie. And for the Saudis, the stakes were higher than normal. After all, the Iraqis were on their border.

The following story of one young Saudi pilot on his first combat mission is not atypical.

SOMETIMES IT TAKES A HERO

Imagine you are a young man who has caught the bug to fly.

Though you live in a nation that has not known war since its birth in the early days of the century, you join your country’s air force, and they send you off to fly the most wonderful airplanes, sleek F-5s and the awkward but powerful high-tech Tornado. You love the freedom of flight, and you are good at it, so there is the pride that comes from competence, and you are proud to serve your king and country.

It is not all easy. Some of your mates do not survive the hazards of flying fighters. You are often away from home, attending schools in the United States. And because you are a Type A personality, you put in more hours around the squadron than do some of the others. Still, it is an idyllic existence—until Saddam Hussein decides to rape Kuwait and threaten the safety of your nation, family, and home.

“Errr,” you think, “maybe being in the Air Force has some drawbacks. . . . Oh what the heck, we’ve been training for this for years. . . . Still, I wonder if I can hack it?”

Lieutenant Colonel Sultan Farhan Al-Milhim—our young aggressive Tornado pilot—loved flying, his country, his family, his base commander General Turki (who was his role model), and his God. Everything else was down in the noise level.

After the dust settled in August, the Royal Saudi Air Force got back into a training routine. Flying out of Dhahran’s King Abdullah Aziz Air Base, Sultan prepared to repel the Iraqi Army if it came across the border from occupied Kuwait.