Captain Michael “Dozer” Shower (USAF)

493rd EFS “Grim Reapers,” F-15C
Operation ALLIED FORCE
MiG-29
24 March 1999
Call-sign: EDGE 61

Mike Shower graduated the United States Air Force Academy in 1990, and attended UPT at Vance AFB, Oklahoma. In 1993 he completed F-15C training, and was assigned to the 43rd Fighter Squadron, Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. Following this tour he was selected to attend the F-15C Fighter Weapons Instructor Course at Nellis. Upon graduation, "Dozer” was assigned to the 493rd Fighter Squadron, RAF Lakenheath, United Kingdom, in the summer of 1997.

Besides the multiple deployments to Incirlik to support Operation NORTHERN WATCH, I had also been on the ADVON (Advance Team) to Cervia AB, Italy, for one false alarm. On that trip in October 1998 I went with an out-going weapons officer, Maj Stu “Razor” Johnson. The entire squadron deployed; we had no idea if a war would kick off. In fact, the Serbians backed down, partially due to winter conditions in theater. The deployment only lasted a little over a month, and when they backed down everyone redeployed to their home bases. On February 19, 1999, I had just completed a BFM hop with another IP, Capt Ken “Heater” Griffin, when the Operations Officer (Ops O) met me at the door and told me to get my bags packed; we're going back to Cervia. Four hours later I was on an airplane for Italy, ADVON for the 2nd round.

A couple of days later the first 12 jets arrived from Lakenheath (we still had six jets deployed to Incirlik performing Operation NORTHERN WATCH; they would show up to Cervia a week before the war), and I assumed my flight commander duties; I was still helping our brand new weapons officer get up to speed, so I was fairly busy. The experience level in the squadron was very low, and there weren't many IPs; in fact, we had several brand new wingman, and even worse, several of our most experienced instructor pilots, including “Razor,” “Heater," “Tonto,” and a few others, had just PCS'd (Permanent Change of Station), leaving a big hole in our experience level. In one unusual aspect we were lucky; since we had just deployed to Cervia for the same drill, there weren’t many unknowns to deal with. As the weeks wore on I shuttled back and forth between Cervia, the CAOC at Vincenza, and the planning cell at Aviano doing the mission planning for F-15Cs. It was obvious that things were getting more serious, and the prospect of actually going to war was looming near. As we stood-down from training sorties a few days prior to the start of hostilities everyone knew that the time was close. Still, it was difficult to come back to the squadron and have to pretend that nothing was going on, or at least that I didn't have any “gouge."

One of the more interesting things from my perspective as the weapons officer was how much more attention the squadron was paying to academics during the last couple of days. Instead of the usual “oh well” attitude, guys were on the edge of their seats to learn more about SAM breaks, the survival radios, you name it; everyone knew their lives depended on this information, so it was a great time to be a weapons officer. Another very important factor was the great leadership we had in “BillyMac,” our Squadron Commander, who was also a Weapons School Graduate; he too had been there for the first deployment. He was a superb pilot, and incredibly calm throughout the entire deployment, and I was able to share details, ideas, and thoughts with him as we made plans, prepared, and flew missions—that was a great benefit, and made things much easier.

The day of 24 March was very surreal. Most of us tried to sleep until about noon, most couldn’t. Since it was March, and still pretty cold and not yet tourist season, our little resort town of Cesanatico on the beach was empty. The guys were bummed, since it’s a nude beach in the season! The pilots were in a four star hotel with a four star restaurant with outstanding per diem; all I can say is, if you’ve got to go to war, this was the way to do it! Everyone was restless, so about 20 of us head down and play beach football. In hindsight, this was pretty stupid, as any one of us could have broken something and been oil the schedule, but it was a blast, and was all about relieving the stress that we were all feeling. We played for a good hour and a half, got cleaned up and in uniform, got in our cars, and went to war. Strange how that stays so vivid in my memory.

The flight line was completely still and quiet when we stepped to the jets—it was a somber moment. I’ll always remember handing my nametag to Sgt Donald Green, aircraft 159’s crew chief; I really don’t remember much of what was said-it was pretty emotional—but I think it included, “bring my jet back and you with it!” I taxied and took off first, since I was leading the first four-ship out; our package had a greater distance to travel before our push time. We took off at sunset, one at a time (it was a tiny runway), and I’ll never forget it, because there must have been 100 personnel lined up along the infield down the runway standing at attention when we took off—it sent chills down your spine. The line-up was myself as EDGE 61 and “Man-O” Steele as my number two. The second element consisted of “BillyMac" as number three, with “Dirk" Driggers on his wing. We used most of the squadron during the first 24 hours, including our newest wingmen. “Dirk" was one of these, with only a few hours of night flying in the Eagle, not long out of RTU, and here he was in the first four-ship, at night, and at war over hostile territory—it was great! While they were nervous, they did a fantastic job hangin' in there. In fact, I was most impressed throughout the entire conflict by how well our young pilots performed. They followed their training to a “T,” and in many ways performed better than 'us" more experienced pilots did.

"Cricket" Renner was leading the 2nd four-ship to takeoff. My four-ship was tasked to protect a "U.S.-Only" package consisting often F-ll7s, two B-2s on their combat debut, four F-l6CJs, and two EA-6Bs over northern Serbia. “Cricket" had a coalition package of aluminum (non-stealthy) aircraft pushing first into the Kosovo province and southern Serbia. In his flight were “K-Bob” Sweeney as number two and “Rico" Rodriguez as number three, with "Wild Bill" Denham on his wing. Both "K-Bob" and “Wild Bill" were also very inexperienced in the Eagle.

The northern push w as considered the “low-observable stealth” package, and since it was U.S.-Only, the NATO AWACS was not well informed of its presence, purpose, or composition. This was not great planning or coordination on the coalition leadership's part. Out of many painful lessons learned, a few were that you might not want to plan that the war will only last a few days, and it might be wise to bring in everything you need to fight—like a U.S. AWACS to control your U.S.-only packages! In fact, when I checked in with the AWACS. they said in effect “Who are you?,” so we were off to a rough start, and this had a significant impact on our mission. The package marshaled over Hungary, and then was to push south through Serbia towards Belgrade. The B-2s were moving from south to north throughout the country, so they were really under everyone’s protection during the mission. The F-117s were doing their “spider routes,” going all over to their various targets in north Serbia. Our plan was to sweep the area as two two-ships separated by about 25 miles, then set up two CAPs just north of Belgrade facing south. This would keep us out of the SAM rings, but give us good coverage of their known MiG bases. I was holding down the western CAP with two, while three and four held the east CAP. With all this going on, and NATO AWACS not being in the loop, it made for a real mess.

Since we didn't have night vision goggles (NVGs) yet, our formation within the elements was about a five mile trail for the wingmen. They maintained this using the radar, air-to-air TACAN, and the IFF (Identify Friend or Foe) interrogator, as well as having built in altitude deconfliction between aircraft. Since we were a little short of AIM-120s, some of the aircraft had six AIM-120s, and some had four -120s and two AIM-7MHs. All had two AIM-9Ms, three bags of gas, and full chaff and flare. My aircraft had the two AIM-7 configuration, along with the AMRAAMs.The heavier AIM-7s were on the front stations, with the AMRAAMs behind them and on the inboard wing stations.

We pushed first, about two minutes in front of the CJs as planned. This gave us room to pump cold once, and not run over the CJs. It was a crystal clear night; we could see all the way to the southern end of Serbia. The lights of Belgrade were right there to the south. Since we knew the timeline, as the Time On Target (TOT) for the initial wave of cruise missiles came close, I had the whole flight look south at Belgrade. We could see the orange glow of the explosions as they hit various targets. Then it was our trun, and we pushed south.

We were in the mid- to high 30s, and the CJs were in the 20s. The F-117s were below them, and the B-2s came through WAY above everyone. This gave us some concern, having JDAMs (GPS-guided bombs) coming down through us, but it was “big sky theory” in such a tight airspace. We were really stuck; we didn't know where they would be, we had no way to see or avoid them, and we had to stay close to the MiG bases. I had briefed the F-l17 weapons officer that if we engaged low targets we would shoot and dive through their block. He said he was fine with this, after all, it's a Big Sky Theory-you'll hear more about this later!

We had just gotten to the southern end of the CAP point and were getting ready to set up our counter-rotating CAPs when I hear the call “Splash one MiG in the south" relayed via AWACS. This was the luckiest guy in the world. “Rico," who now had his third MiG kill (two in DESERT STORM); he had just killed a MiG-29 that drove right at him—single AIM-120 to a fireball about 10 miles from Kosovo's capitol, Pristina. So we were pretty tired up now, as we knew they were flying. We had questioned whether they would fly or not, and now we knew the MiGs were up. We were running 10 mile legs in the CAP, and we had been in country for roughly 6.9 minutes. I turned south again for the first time and, just like that, at 35 nm, there's a blip on the radar. I lock him up, and he’s doing 150 knots at 1,500 feet, climbing out from their airfield in Belgrade, Batajinica. I call everyone, “Heads up, contact out of Batijinica." There’s no ID or AWACS calls yet, and I break lock and go back to search. A short time later the radar shows him northbound, so I lock him again at 25 miles, our briefed lock range. Now he's at 10,000 feet going 400 knots.

Unknown to me until after the sortie, most of my radio calls on my main radio were unreadable. The radio was jamming itself, but I didn't know it; there was no feedback in the headset, and all we heard when playing the tapes together after the sortie was silence on everyone else's tapes, while I was jabbering away on the radio on my tape. So almost all of my contact calls, IDs, shots, etc. were not heard by anyone but me. This will turn out to be a huge factor in the chaos that ensues.

By 17 miles I have an ID that this is a bad guy, and I call it out. I talk first and shoot second, just what you're not supposed to do. So I call, "Hostile, Hostile, FOX 3" and take my first AIM-120 shot at 14 miles. I made sure the AIM-120 was active, and then thumbed to and shot an AIM-7. No kidding. I've always wanted to shoot an AIM-7, and that big ol' Sparrow comes off, WHOOSH! I'm looking down into the lights of Belgrade so I can’t see anything, but I was able to follow the missile motor for awhile. I’m ramping down from 37,000 feet the whole time. At about six miles, and just after the AMRAAM times out, the target turns right, directly into the beam. This could have been triggered by several things. He could have gotten indications of my radar lock. The AMRAAM could have exploded near him but not damaged him, who knows, but he does maneuver into the beam. So now he’s maneuvering when the AIM-7 gets there, and it apparently misses also.

Now I’m at 5.5 nm, look-down, when I shoot another AIM 120 and call, “FOX 3 again." I’m at about 20,000 feet, and he’s at about 10,000 feet and I’m diving. This missile comes off and goes about straight down, and I'm diving and turning left, looking down and trying to follow it. The MiG then comes out of the beam in a climbing left turn towards me, kind of breaking up and into me. Maybe he got spiked, got a call from his GCI, or just looked up into a dark sky and saw the missile, but we end up about eight or nine thousand feet apart, and he’s almost directly under me, head to head aspect. I pick up a spike (I have no idea where it came from—I never looked), and at the same time I’m glued to the missile motor when it turns into a fireball. Of course, I’m supposed to be in AUTOGUNS and clearing for other bad guys. Instead, I’m in a steep left turn staring at the fireball, thinking, cool! I don’t see an ejection, but there was a lot of stuff coming off the aircraft, and I watched it impact the ground. We found out later that the pilot actually survived, which I was really glad about. My goal was to shoot down the aircraft, to eliminate a threat to our aircraft; you really don't think about killing the other guy. In hindsight I was glad to have only shot down the aircraft—he had a wife and kids too.

The Yugoslavian press claimed that the only MiG pilot to be killed was shot down by their own air defense SAMs. There are a lot of conflicting reports, though. The pilot flying my MiG wrote a long article about his short flight, and it even had his picture. It’s been “edited" by a very sarcastic U.S. fighter pilot, and it’s hilarious. He claims to have had three missiles shot at him; how he figured that out I’ll never know—maybe he guessed, but he was spot-on.