Page 12 - DFCS News Magazine Spring 2015

wondering ‘Why do they come back? They know we’re going to bomb the trucks.’
What the two Tomcats had bombed was a Taliban truck convoy attempting to retreat from their stronghold in Mazar E Sharif. On the winding mountain road over the pass to Kabul the trucks were sitting ducks. With the lead truck hit and burning, the following vehicles were stopped. Then Stires directed a second strike to destroy the last truck in line. “We started getting some AA fire, mostly small arms and stuff,” Stires said. “They were supposed to have some shoulder-fired SAMs but I’m not sure if they got any off at us. It was exciting but I didn’t really pay much attention to it. After the last truck had been hit we left the area to return to the ship.”
Soon more navy planes came in to finish the job in the wake of the departing Tomcats. Left behind were columns of black smoke rising from the de- stroyed convoy.
What neither Lt. Stires nor her fellow naval avia- tors knew was that the convoy was crucial to the regrouping and resupplying of a major Taliban and Al-Qaeda force in the region. Several trucks, a store of weapons and equipment and scores of ene- my troops were eliminated. It was one of the first major successes in the new war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
“Apparently it was a big deal to the commanding general. My C.O. told us that our attack was the first time an aerial attack had done serious damage to the enemy forces in the region.”
But that wasn’t the end. VF-102’s Tomcats flew over 5,000 hours in combat missions and dropped more ordnance than any other F-14 unit during 2001-2002. They were on deployment for 190 days, 159 of which were without a port call, a rec- ord in the navy.
They did earn a record three ‘Beer’ days, however.
When Stires stepped off the Roosevelt onto U.S. soil again she was a combat veteran. But she had- n’t yet known she and the other aviators of that mission were to be recommended for the Distin- guished Flying Cross. “The decision wasn’t based on me being a woman but because it had been a
successful mission. I’m sure me being female never really entered their minds.”
A year after the mission, Stires was in California, training on the new F/A-18 Super Hornet. One day she was told she would be awarded the DFC. “An admiral read the citation and pinned the medal on me,” she said. “It was nice and I was proud I’d done well in my chosen profession. The fact that I was a woman just wasn’t part of it. I was a naval aviator and did my job well. That’s what that medal meant to me.”
She holds the DFC with Combat ‘V’, four Air Med- als, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Med- al, and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal.
Sara Stires is now Lieutenant Commander Stires of the Navy Dental Corps, Department Head of the Washington DC Navy Yard Branch Health Clinic, a post she has held since 2012. While not nearly as ex- citing as bombing terrorist convoys, Stires says it is what she always wanted to do.
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Lady in the Tomcat cont’d
VFA-122 Instructor LT Sara Stires on Her F/A-18F Super Hornet
Mark Carlson
11985 Tivoli Park Row, #1 San Diego CA 92128 858-592-2677 markcarlson2222@san.rr.com