The Mission to Sarajevo

While I was deployed in Kaposvar, Hungary, my unit (Alpha Company, 5-159 AVN) flew support missions throughout Bosnia/Herzegovina, Slovakia and Croatia in support of the NATO peacekeeping Implementation Force (IFOR) mission there. It was a tense time because one of the most dangerous things you can do is be a “Peacekeeper” in the middle of two warring factions. In this case, it was only an 800-year conflict, so there was nothing to worry about (yeah, right!). One of our standing orders was to never land in a field. Always land at a pre-approved landing site and if you had to land in an emergency, to land on a paved road. The issue was land mines. The Balkans is/was one of the most heavily mined locations on the planet and our command didn’t want us playing mine detector with 25-million-dollar aircraft.

I was Pilot-in-Command on a mission to Sarajevo. In 1984, this had been the jewel of the Olympic games and it is was a sad sight in 1996. Civil war had not been kind to the city or its residents. The flight to Sarajevo was the furthest south I’d ever flown into to Balkans and one of the longest missions in distance from base I’d flown (280+ nautical miles to the south of Kaposvar). Cargo and passengers of some sort, all internal and overall a pretty interesting flight terrain wise. A long flight where we had to carefully navigate through the valleys using out IFR (I follow roads) flight path giving credence to our guidance on places to land.

Aside from the scenic beauty of the countryside, the flight down to Sarajevo was uneventful. Once we exited the valley from the north, we contacted Sarajevo tower and let them know we were inbound for landing. The international airport is on the south side of the city and we’d been briefed to land approaching from the west, radio contact with the tower confirmed our landing instructions. Part of the reason for these instructions was that just past the end of runway 12 is the border with Serbia whom the Bosnians were warring with at the time. This became evident when we could see shell explosions just past the departure end of the runway and I radioed the tower about the situation. They calmly replied that they were at the maximum range of the Serbian mortars and they were just making a statement and that he airfield itself was “Safe”.

I made our approach and landed on runway 12 and taxied up to the terminal. They have two jetways and I was directed to park between them. (For an international airport, it is small.) I was feeling uncomfortable there and seeing six-foot walls of sandbags encircling the terminal didn’t give me a great feeling of security. We quickly unloaded cargo and passengers so we could refuel. (Seeing the refueler wearing a flack vest was also unnerving.) Once we were topped off, we loaded return cargo and started up for our trip home.

I radioed the tower for taxi and takeoff clearance, and I received a strange request for our departure route. “Would you guys mind flying down ‘Sniper Alley’ on your way out? We want to show a military presence.” (Sniper Alley referred to the main highway that runs east and west through Sarajevo.) I was “assured it was safe” and I reluctantly agreed with this slight deviation on the flight path home. As we flew over the city at about 500-feet, we saw some incredible sights, like a hotel that was 17 or so stories tall, with the first 8 floors burned out, but lights on and people staying in the upper floors. Bizarre. We then turned north over the Olympic stadium which was being used as a field hospital and headed into the valley leading to the northwest. The crew was all excited about this part of the journey until we saw the graveyard on the end of the ridge of the valley’s southern hillside. Over three-hundred thousand graves from the base of the hill to the top of the ridge. For several minutes, we didn’t say anything just absorbing the impact of that sight.

We were lucky to be from a place that hasn’t seen that kind of violence on that scale since 1865. Civil war is war at its nastiest and we’d had a vivid reminder of just how lucky we’ve been in the past 150 years. It was a somber and uneventful flight back to Kaposvar, but one I’ll never forget.