Heroic rescues have always made for pulse-racing stories, from the World War II pilots spirited out of hostile countries by resistance fighters to the American airmen yanked from Vietnam’s jungles by Jolly Green Giant choppers. Intelligence sources tell “Newsweek” that for Desert Storm, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf gave special-operations commandos orders from the start to set up escape and evasion routes (E&E nets) in Kuwait and Iraq with CIA help. Those nets have already gotten their first test: in the opening days of Desert Storm, Kuwaiti resistance fighters got a downed Kuwaiti pilot out of the country.
The Desert Storm pilots prepare for the worst. They get preflight briefings on secret collection points in Iraq and Kuwait. Airmen take along bare necessities in their parachute packs and seat cushions, including hand weapons, desert camouflage face paint, compass, maps and a first-aid kit. They also carry a small strobe light, pocket radio and flares to signal rescuers. And, of course, water. Desert Storm pilots stuff every empty pocket with four-ounce, silver-foil pouches of H2O. Some even carry baby bottles, which fit conveniently in flight-suit pockets. Pilots are told not to conserve water, but to drink freely so they’ll be clearheaded to look for more. They sleep during the day and walk at night. “We tell them, “Ration your sweat, not your water’,” says S/Sgt. Kevin M. Miller, who teaches a survival course at Fairchild Air Force Base.
Pilot-rescue tactics, first developed by the Germans in World War II, became highly developed in Vietnam. One in six downed pilots was saved–about 1,300 lives in all–at a cost of 71 rescuers. Warplanes and helicopters were routinely pulled off combat missions for searches–and the rescues in North Vietnam commonly involved more than 70 planes. Today’s missions can be carried out by as little as two high-tech, heavily armed helicopters.
Despite the military’s proud rescue history, Desert Storm soldiers face new challenges. Cover and concealment will be tougher than in Vietnam–it’s not a jungle out there, after all. “You’re pretty much out in the open,” says an Air Force colonel. Also, American special-operations commandos have had a more difficult time setting up E&E nets in Iran than in friendly Kuwait. But it’s not just the terrain that’s new. The brass had to reconstitute much of its rescue capability. After every modern air war, “the Air Force air-rescue forces are the first to go,” says Earl H. Tilford Jr., visiting professor of military history at the Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College. In the early days of Vietnam, air rescue was handled by the CIA’s Air America until the Air Force could build the squadrons axed after the Korean War. Likewise, after Vietnam, the Air Force de-emphasized air rescue, reasoning that its pilots would likely be shot down in Eastern Europe where they wouldn’t survive in the nuclear rubble. The service is still rebuilding.
The choppers will get a lot more work in the coming weeks. While the threat from Iraq’s long-range, surface-to-air missiles around Baghdad and other strategic sites has been largely eliminated, the short-range SAMs and thousands of antiaircraft guns have not gone away. What goes up must come down, and some of the things that go up will certainly come back down behind enemy lines. The challenge is to bring them back alive.
