Page 11 - DFCS News Magazine Spring 2015

On 9 November, 2001, even as the grim work of excavating thou- sands of American bodies from the wreckage of the Twin Towers in New York went on, a pair of Grumman F-
14B Tomcats was heading into Northern Afghan- istan. As part of ‘Operation Enduring Freedom,’ the determined effort to find and destroy the pro- terrorist Taliban forces, the U.S. Navy fighters from USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea were on their way to conduct armed recon- naissance of a suspected Taliban helicopter based near Kabul. Seated in the rear seat of the lead F-14B flown by Lt. Zachary Mosedale was Lt. (jg) Sara Stires of Billings, Montana on her first overseas deployment. While this mission was only one of thousands of sorties during the thirteen-year long campaign to end Taliban rule in Afghanistan, it resulted in the only time the Distinguished Flying Cross would be awarded to a female naval aviator.
Stires graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1998 and received her wings as a flight officer at NAS Pensacola. After training to fly the Tomcat with VF-101, she was assigned to VF-102, the ‘Diamondbacks,’ a strike fighter unit with a his- tory that goes back to 1953. The Diamondbacks were deployed on the Roosevelt immediately af- ter the terrorist attacks of 11 September, 2001. “When we received orders to deploy to the Mid- dle East,” Stires said in an interview, “I was sure that what we were doing was justified. The 9/11 attack had cost the lives of over 3,000 innocent people and we had to do something about it.” Stires, as one of the first female naval aviators to be deployed for a combat assignment was well aware there was some scrutiny on her. “I knew they were watching me, not because they were expecting me to screw up, but because I was a woman going into combat for the first time. I was a newly minted aviator.”
As the Radar Intercept Officer or ‘RIO’ in an F- 14B, Stires was tasked with operating the LAN- TIRN (Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night) pod to identify targets and guide the weapons load of GBU-12 500lb laser- guided bombs.
“On 9 November I went into the squadron ready room and was told that an enemy helicopter was sup- posed to be near Kabul,” Stires said. “Lt. Zack ‘Pot roast’ Mosedale and I, along with another Tomcat took off from the carrier, and after tanking, flew up the ‘Driveway,’ an aerial route over Pakistan, into Afghanistan.” As the two F-14s approached the capi- tal city of Kabul located in a valley, a web of deadly anti-aircraft gunfire reached out from the ridges. “I saw those tracers coming at us, but it didn’t really affect me. We were looking for the helicopter. I used the LANTIRN but never found it. Our controllers then told us to drop our ordnance in the area where the helicopter was supposed to be, but then we re- ceived a call that a large truck convoy was climbing the ridge towards Kabul from Mazar E Sharif. We tanked again and headed for the site. The light was transitioning from night to dawn and the LANTIRN display showed the trucks but no detail. The control- lers asked if I could see if it was a military convoy. All I could see on the display was that they were boxy trucks and they were moving at a high rate of speed up the road to the mountain pass. But for all I knew they were carrying food or something.”
Then Stires asked the controller permission to go be- low the hard deck of 5,000 feet for a direct view. That was low enough for the aviators to see that the trucks were indeed military. They were ordered to hit the convoy.
“When we moved in, I had control of the LANTIRN pod to guide the bombs in, but the pilot had to drop them. It was tricky. You have to judge the speed of the moving target and guess, based on how long it will take the bomb to fall, where that target will be when the bomb hit. I had to tell the pilot when to drop and then acquire the target and guide the bomb in. The better my guess, the more effectively my bomb could be steered.”
They missed with their first bomb. “I had the video recorder on for the first drop,’ Stires said, but after we missed I shut it off. Then we went in again, and we hit the lead truck dead on. But, wouldn’t you know it” she laughed, “I had not turned on the re- corder.”
Stires, still using the display saw tiny antlike figures running from the trucks into the rocks. “But then af- ter we made a pass, they came back. I remember
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The Lady in the Tomcat Lt. (jg) Sara Stires, USN By Mark Carlson
Volume 15, Issue 1 - Spring 2015