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 upgrading, and we knew, pretty much, that as soon as they
 got their operational capability that we would go back
 over either to replace the 336th, or to augment them.
 Around the beginning of December, they said we were going
 to go over sometime in early January or late December
 and we were not going to replace anyone...it would just
 be a further buildup. And of course, when we got closer
 to the date, and the airlift schedule settled down, we
 deployed on 27 December and flew non-stop from Seymour
 Johnson to our base in Saudi Arabia. It was about a 17
 hour mission; it was a long flight, but all 22 airplanes
 that took off from here, all F-15Es, made it over there,
 and we were in place in Saudi Arabia...two F-l5E squad-
 rons. In the beginning, the first couple of weeks, since
 a lot of guys hadn't flown over there...of course, the
 first couple of days we were just getting over jet lag,
 and we-had to build up our tents since it was a brand new
 air base. There was a lot of construction of living
 facilities going on. Then we started flying, getting
 guys used to flying over the sandy terrain, because it
 is a lot different and can cause some problems as far as
 depth perception and judging how high you are above the
 ground. There was a time deadline, as we knew the l5th
 of January was the U.N. deadline for him (Saddam) to
 comply with the U.N. resolutions. Even though we hadn't
 heard anything, the feeling was that everyone wanted to
 be ready to go by that date. We flew some day sorties
 and then we flew some night sorties and on the l5th of
 January we stood down and were basically waiting to get
 the call. We'd had a briefing before that, the game plan
 for the big picture of how we intended to fight the war.
 General Glosson (Brig Gen Buster C. Glosson), briefing
 us at this time, had no idea of when we would get the
 execution order. We woke up on the l6th of January, and
 since we'd been flying nights, it was kind of late, dur-
 ing the middle of the afternoon. They said, "We've got
 the execution order and you can go on back to bed"...
 which nobody did, that I know of the targets for the
 first night had all been pretty much pre-planned, so
 people had had time to work on them. My mission that
 first night was fairly uneventful. We went up, went
 across....it was a total tactical surprise, they had no
 idea we were going to come and it was some good planning.
 We were able to take out all their early warning radar
 so when the bombs hit them they were very surprised. So,
 I flew that one night, and the next night I was supposed
 to fly...but the airplane wasn't ready to go. I flew the
 third night, again, against a generally benign target.
 Basically there was just some triple A (antiaircraft
 artillery) in the area. And then the night I was shot
 down was the fourth night of the war. It was my third
 mission. We were going after a SCUD missile storage area
 that was up here (pointing to a map) by the city of A1

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