During the opening days of Operation Desert Storm, one American F-16 pilot overcame incredible odds by dodging not just one surface-to-air missile fired at him, but six in a row — and all without the benefit of flares or chaff to help. Although today we often dismiss Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi military as hopelessly outmatched in this fight, footage captured from inside the aircraft offers a unique insight into the life or death struggle fighter pilots actually faced in the skies over Iraq.
From our vantage point some 30 years later, Desert Storm seems like little more than an appetizer for future conflicts in Iraq, and as such, it tends to garner less attention than more recent (and ongoing) conflicts in the Middle East. As a result, it’s easy to forget just how massive, intricate, and logistically challenging the Coalition’s speedy victory over Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime really was.
While there’s no question that the Iraqi military was outclassed in every appreciable way by the massive force fielded against it, Iraq was not without serious and sizeable defenses. Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, may have been one of the most heavily defended cities on the planet when Coalition aircraft first screamed across Iraq’s border on 17 January 1991. It may be fair to say that the Coalition Force’s victory was a foregone conclusion as the Gulf War began, but the tactical and strategic domination of the Iraqi forces was not.
For months leading up to the first day of the conflict, Coalition aircraft would fly in huge groups near the Iraqi border, ensuring that when the actual campaign began, massing formations of aircraft wouldn’t serve as notice to the Iraqi military. While this is an often-ignored aspect of the conflict, this massive coordinated display of airpower was an incredible undertaking in itself, requiring close coordination between military forces and their respective nations.
On the eve of the first day of the air campaign in Iraq, General Norman Schwarzkopf’s coalition had a whopping 2,430 military aircraft at its disposal. Keen to handily defeat his opponent, the American general began the Gulf War in the skies, with five straight weeks of airstrikes and combat patrols bolstered by naval bombardments that were meant to crush Iraq’s sizeable collection........