Page:A Concise History of the U.S. Air Force.djvu/84

 Air superiority came quickly, as Saddam Hussein ordered his air force not to compete for command of the skies. His plan was to absorb any air blows and force the Coalition into bloody trench warfare, in the "mother of all battles." Losses to Coalition attackers on the first night were limited to one Navy F/A-18. Considering the quantity and quality of the forces arrayed against Iraq, Hussein's withholding of his Air Force was perhaps appropriate. Coalition air forces shot down only 32 of 700 fixed-wing combat aircraft in the Iraqi Air Force (27 by the U.S. Air Force), although they destroyed many more on the ground. There would be no air aces in this war. Rules of engagement that allowed the firing of missiles at enemy aircraft beyond visual range aided Coalition success against the few Iraqi jets rising to do battle. Pressed by U.S. Air Force attacks on their protective shelters, more than one hundred Iraqi aircraft fled to safety in neutral Iran. The struggle for control of the air was primarily against Iraqi ground defenses, which absorbed many Coalition strikes. These included 122 airfields, 600 hardened aircraft shelters, 7,000 antiaircraft guns, and 200 surface-to-air missile batteries.

Never had the world seen such a variety of bombing targets and aircraft. Air Force crews dropped laser-guided bombs down air shafts in hardened buildings and on oil tank valves when Saddam Hussein ordered millions of gallons of oil poured into the Persian Gulf. They "plinked" tanks with laser-guided and electro-optically guided bombs and missiles. They carpet-bombed Iraq's Republican Guard divisions from high altitude in B-52s. Coalition aircraft, including more than 70 distinct types from ten countries, struck at command, control, and communications centers, bridges, oil refineries, air defense facilities, radar sites, nuclear weapon production facilities, chemical and biological production facilities, electrical production facilities, weapons production facilities, missile launch sites, ports, and others. There were plenty of targets. The initial INSTANT THUNDER air plan for the strategic bombing of Iraq identified 84 to be hit in less than a week. By the start of the air war on January 17, however, the Coalition target list had increased to 481, compared to the 154 of World War II's AWPD/1.

The most sensitive targets were in Baghdad, defended by the heaviest concentration of antiaircraft weapons. The world press observed Coalition strikes there and reported collateral damage and civilian casualties with special interest. General Homer limited these most dangerous and most critical attacks to Air Force F-117 stealth fighters flying by night and Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles striking by day and night. The stealthy F-117 Nighthawk fighters proved most valuable to Coalition success, bombing 40 percent of strategic targets in Iraq while flying only