On or about February 27, 1991, I flew my last mission during the 100 hours of Desert Storm. This mission was an insertion of two M119A1 towed 105 millimeter howitzers, their M998 Humvee prime movers, ammo and gun crews. This mission was flown with CPT Cantey/CW2 Anderson in aircraft 24162, CW3 Hutchings, CW2 Kempf (Me) and our crew on 23780. The mission departed Forward Operating Base Cobra (FOB Cobra) as a flight of two.
Each helicopter was loaded with the cannon entering into the aircraft first gun tube forward. The cannon was loaded so far forward in the aircraft that the end of the gun tube was in the cockpit between the pilots. Then the Humvee was backed into the cargo bay. A Humvee had about two inches clearance all the way around the vehicle. Since you couldn't open the doors there was no easy way for the driver to exit the vehicle. The Humvee was positioned so that in the event of an emergency, the driver could climb out his window and then out the side window of the aircraft.
The rest of the gun crew loaded from the front cabin door into the helicopter and we 72 rounds of 105-millimeter ammunition was stacked on the ramp. In route to the pickup zone (PZ), we came up along a flight of five Blackhawks (String of catfish) loaded with Infantry going the same direction. They were flying about 130/140 knots and we slowly flew past them keeping them on our right side. I remember being abreast the lead aircraft, looking over at the pilot of the lead Blackhawk, I smiled and waved, then nosed the aircraft over and accelerated to about 155 knots and left them behind as we flew to our PZ. We never missed an opportunity to show a Blackhawk we were faster and more powerful.
CPT Cantey/CW2 Anderson (162) were lead and CW3 Hutchins/CW2 Kempf (780) were chalk 2. The mission was to place these two guns at a grid northwest of of Kuwait along the Iraqi border roughly 30 Miles northwest of Kuwait City in support of XVIII Airborne Corps operations in the area. Mark (Hutchins) was flying 780, I think CW2 Anderson was flying 162 and CPT Cantey navigating, I was navigating using the GPS since it was mounted on my side of the console.
Like all our desert mission navigation, even with the new Global Position Systems (GPS), navigation was difficult. In this case, we were targeting nothing more than a spot in the sand. The while I was navigating, monitoring the GPS system and our Omega backup, I noticed that lead had both overflown the target grid coordinates and had now had turned left toward the northeast. Mark and I were discussing the situation and whether our navigation was accurate when I spotted the bombed out hardened hangars of the Al-Basra Airfield. Al-Basra is located along the Euphrates River and was several miles north of our intended destination, in enemy held territory.
I radioed to the lead aircraft and the discussion went something like this:
780: “Lead this is Chalk 2. Do you see those hangars at 2 o’clock?”
162: “Roger, I see them.”
780: “Would you mind if we turned around? We don’t own that real estate yet.”
The discussion became a bit more urgent moments later when our anti-aircraft radar detectors started lighting up. We turned around and discussed the situation. Since I had a better idea where we were at on the map I guided us back to the landing zone (LZ) Grid where we landed.
Unloading the Humvee’s turned out to be a problem. The LZ was sand for a change and we’d sunk in it about 9 inches so that the cargo ramp not drop low enough to allow the Humvee to be unloaded. To deal with this we “Knelt” the forward part of the aircraft lifting the rear of the aircraft a bit with the rotor system to give needed clearance. The gun was then unloaded in short order by the gun crew and they moved off a couple hundred feet to give us room to takeoff.
As soon as we were unloaded, I took the controls and we stayed the lead aircraft as Mark told me to hightail it back to FOB Cobra. I did exactly that as I sped accelerated to 170 knots for the 1st time ever while piloting a CH-47. (It was the max airspeed for a D-Model Chinook). Getting painted by air defense radar (ADR) had us rattled as the Iraqis had radar guided anti-aircraft missiles. Since we were paranoid of some unwanted (Missile) attention I flew the next 20 or so miles sands about 10 feet off the flat desert sands.
We were so low and so fast that we created a rooster tail of dust behind us over 100 feet tall. I didn't care if anyone saw the rising column of dust as our concern was missiles. Radar guided missiles could be avoided if you were close enough to terrain to mask your presence. Since there were no hills or valleys to be found, low and fast (I chose really really low) was the next best thing. We really wanted to get away from that radar! Once clear of the area, we climbed back to normal cruising altitude and headed to refuel at FOB Cobra.
Shortly after our return to FOB Cobra the end of hostilities was announced. The war was over and I was sitting in the desert in Iraq.
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