with regard to these sites. None of these
aircraft were slated to enter Baghdad’s
airspace, as that was left to the F-117s
and cruise missiles fired from ships.
Three EF-111s were assigned to work
near Baghdad. They were the only
unarmed manned aircraft to fly that deep
into Iraqi airspace. Drummond says, ‘The
first three Ravens inbound flew separate
tracks towards the vicinity of Baghdad,
coming in from the south-west. AWACS
had a good picture of the Iraqi air situation
at this time and warned our crews that
bogeys [unidentified airborne contacts]
were airborne 46 miles in front of us. Our
jammers were flying about 400ft above
the desert at that time. Right after this, the
AWACS stated that the bandits [now beingpositively identified as enemy aircraft]
were now headed directly towards our
aircraft on intercept courses. The original
plan was to ingress as close as possible to
the greater Baghdad area while avoiding
the SAM threats and climb to a specific
height to begin the jamming runs. This
was in support of the F-117s that were
going to downtown Baghdad.
‘The third Raven, which was the
southernmost of the flight, quickly took
stock of the situation and decided to
pop a couple of minutes early to draw
away the bandits from the other two
Ravens that were working the northern
area. This was a gutsy call on the crew’s
part. Unfortunately, the enemy fighters
continued to pursue all three. RavensRaven scores first ‘kill’
On the opening day of the war, it was
believed that the first coalition aircraft
to have a brush with an Iraqi fighter was
a lone EF-111. The Raven crew was on
a stand-off jamming mission when a
Mirage F1 rolled in behind and launched
a missile. The Raven pilot went into a
steep diving turn and released chaff and
decoy flares, which defeated the missile.
They pulled out just a couple of hundred
feet above the desert with the Mirage
in hot pursuit. After a sharp turn to the
right, the Iraqi pilot tried to follow but
impacted the scrub in a fireball. It was the
first Iraqi aircraft downed in the war.
Hardziej recalls, ‘Three EF-111s were
the first conventional aircraft to enter
Iraq, with two to follow in the next strike
package. Each day, prior to the war, we
flew missions fully seen by enemy radar.
After refueling we turned towards base
and flew a low-level mission, at which
point they lost sight of us on their radar.
On the first night of the war, we flew the
same profile, but when we were out of
their radar range we engaged our TFR
and went ‘communication out’ and then
turned towards the Iraqi border for the
element of surprise. As we approached
the line, we could see the Hellfire missiles
hitting their designated targets. At that
point, we knew we were in a war.’
Timing was everything during those
first hours and it was executed to
perfection by coalition air power. Several
routes were selected to allow the fastest
ingress to key targets. The F-111Fs and
F-15E Strike Eagles were the key playersTop: This Raven
has been pulled
into one of the
hardened shelters
at Taif for some
maintenance
work following
a sortie over
Kuwait.
Dennis Hardziej
Above: EF-111As
head for home
over Saudi Arabia
after a long
mission.
Dennis HardziejGLORY DAYS // EF-111 IN DESERT STORM
70 July 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net
66-72 EF-111 Desert Storm C.indd 70 20/05/2018 11:23