Dan Snow's History Hit - The Man Who Dropped the First Bomb on Iraq

Episode Date: March 29, 2021

30 years ago Maj. Gen. Greg "the beast" Feest dropped a bomb from his F-117 stealth bomber destroying an Iraqi command bunker which began the air war that would lead to the allied victory in the First Gulf War. He talks to Dan about this sortie and other experiences from over 800 hours of combat flying hours and his illustrious career in the USAF which led him to be head of safety including taking charge of its nuclear arsenal. Now retired, he also airs his robust views on how military power should be used and how politicians should get out of the military's way if they want to achieve success on the battlefield.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I've got Major General Greg Feast on the podcast. He's the man who, flying an F-117 stealth bomber, dropped the first bomb on Iraq 30 years ago. It was the beginning of the air battle that would lead to a ground war to liberate Kuwait in 1991. that would lead to a ground war to liberate Kuwait in 1991. His call sign is Beast and it was great to talk to Beast both about that particular sortie but also his career in the US Air Force which eventually saw him running the whole of safety for the US Air Force which includes a sizable nuclear arsenal. You think you've got a tough job? The beast has seen it all. In the course of a career, he flew five and a half thousand hours and 800 combat hours in Central America, but also Desert Storm, Iraqi freedom and enduring freedom. He has robust views

about how the military should be used, how politicians need to get out of the way. This was a fascinating conversation. I hope you enjoy it. If you want to listen to other podcasts we've done with Gulf War veterans, we're kind of marking the 30th anniversary. We've talked to Andy McNabb. We talked to General Sir Rupert Smith.

Please do so at historyhit.tv. You can install our podcast out the ads there. But you also get, while you're there, the Netflix for History. Hundreds of hours of history documentaries. I'm out this week making a few more of those hours. So there'll be plenty of new stuff for you to watch. In the meantime, though, everybody enjoy this chat with the beast. Greg, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Yeah, it's great to be here, Dan. I'm glad I have an opportunity to meet you. Well, I should ask because every time I've met an Air Force guy like you, I should ask, what's your call sign? Yeah, my call sign is Beast. I got that early on in my career and it stuck the whole time. Okay, Beast. Is there a story there or is it because it rhymes with your second name? It might have something to do with the rhyme, but it was given to me by my first squadron commander when I flew in F-111s. I flew with a guy that had been a football player at the Air Force Academy. We were crewed together.

He was very tall and they called him the Hulk. So I guess I became the beast squadron commander named me. Just briefly, you talked about the F-111s. When you joined and started flying those, it was a very different world. What task were you guys preparing for? Yeah, when I flew F-111s, that was my first assignment. And that was in the early 80s, 1980 to 82. Obviously, there was a Russian threat back then. So the F-111s, I was stationed at Upper Hayford, right outside of Oxford there in the UK. And our mission was to prevent the Russians from storming into Germany.

A ground attack role, a conventional role. You were going to be trying to bust up Soviet tanks as they advanced. Yes. Our mission was, we were a fighter bomber, so we carried bombs. And our mission was to do whatever was asked to prevent them from moving into Germany or wherever else. So when you first went into action, it was in a very different landscape against a very different opponent. Yeah, the Cold War was over. And when I flew the F-117 stealth fighter, I flew it in Iraq. I also flew it in Panama for just cause. However, there was no threat there. But then Desert Shield, Desert Storm was the first actual combat for the F-117.

The F-117 has become one of those kind of iconic aircraft that most people, it seemed they kind of only discovered it. I remember in the Gulf War, it didn't look like a normal aircraft. Did it feel like a revolutionary jump forward for you? Well, the first time I saw it was on a screen on a TV and they showed me a videotape of it and it didn't look like it could fly. It's not aerodynamic. However, the video also showed the aircraft flying. And so although it is not aerodynamic, it takes computers to fly it. It has a fly-by-wire system, but it does whatever the pilot asks it to do. It responds to our inputs. Computers, as I said, help it fly. But the only thing against it, it does not have afterburner. It's not a turning machine.

It's not a dogfighting machine. Well, yeah, because it's often said to be a fighter, but of course it wasn't, right? It was a ground attack. Yes, it was ground attack. And the fighter designation, I really have no idea how that came about. It's fighter sized. As we talked about, the F-111 was also not an air-to-air machine, and that was called a fighter. So I'm not sure how that came about. But yes, it was a bomber, not a dogfighting machine. So you had flown thousands of hours. When you finally heard there was a possibility you were going to go into action in Iraq, was there an excitement there? How did you feel?

Well, all military personnel train for combat. And we had trained many, many years. I had trained as a fighter pilot for many years. As I mentioned earlier, I did fly the F-117 to Panama for Operation Just Cause. However, I dropped a bomb there and that was it. There was actually no action. There was no threat. So when we were told we were going to deploy over to Saudi Arabia for Desert Shield, the whole squadron was ready to go. Both 117 squadrons wanted to deploy.

We deployed initially in August and then a couple months later, the other squadron came over. But we were ready to do what we were trained to do. And we trained for many, many, many hours. And this was the goal, to actually employ the aircraft in combat. Were you guys nervous about the Iraqi air defense system, about interceptors? Very, very different, as you say, from being deployed in Central America. Was there concern?

Yeah, of course. All the pilots, we were told that the stealth characteristics would protect us. Engineers told us what our radar cross-section was going to be, that it would be very difficult for the Iraqis to be able to track us on radar. However, as you mentioned, it was the most heavily defended city in the world, Baghdad at the time. And there's always a lucky shot. When we took off that first night, we weren't sure what was going to happen. And actually, when we took off, the wing commander called in all the senior leaders that were still at the base and brought him in and said he anticipated we could lose up to 50% of our aircraft that first night. Wow. And presumably he would have seen losses above

Southeast Asia where there were significant losses sustained during that war. Yes, that is true. And it wasn't only our leadership, it was the civilian leadership also, the president, the vice president, they anticipated we could lose many of our aircraft. What's it like being told that half of you might not come back? Do you think, oh, gee, thanks, buddy, but we're going to go anyway? Or do you just think it won't be me? Well, actually, we weren't told that. The pilots, we took off and then the wing commander called in the senior leaders that were behind and said he anticipated we could lose those.

But it wouldn't have mattered. We were trained to do this mission. We were ready to go. And we trusted the engineers. And we trusted the F-117 that it would be stealthy and that we would survive. And survive you did, obviously. What was it like? Did the radar pick you up? Did the aircraft operate as you'd hoped? Yeah, well, that's an interesting story. I could tell you about that first mission I flew. We flew up to the Iraqi border with a tanker because we had to have a full load of fuel when we went into Iraq. And leaving the tanker that first night, I stealthed up.

And what that entailed was throwing a couple switches, but in particular, bringing in the antennas so I could no longer hear or talk to anyone. So I was out there by myself. I had a time over target that was nine minutes before H hour. I crossed into the Iraqi border. My job was to take out an intercept operations center. And these were the command centers that guided their fighters to attack our incoming fighters. So my job was to take out that IOC so that the non-stealthy aircraft could get in behind us. So I went into Iraq, concentrated on finding my target. Interesting thing was right before I dropped the bomb, it concerned me.

Do they really want me to drop this bomb and start this war? Because this was the first bomb that was going to be dropped. Little did I know that prior to me dropping this bomb that Tomahawks had been launched against Iraq and Apache helicopters had come in to hit the radar vans along the border as well. But when I hit that bunker, I watched the bomb go in. I watched smoke come out of the air vents, so I knew I had dropped it. Came off target and did a 180-degree turn to go up towards Baghdad for my second target. And as I looked back, I wanted to see if I had done any damage, and I wanted to watch my wingman's bomb hit.

He was one minute behind me. And looking back, I saw what appeared to be some sort of fireworks display and with all these red lights that were coming towards me. I had never seen AAA before. We had talked about it at different training missions. We talked about it at red flags and things like that flown out of Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. But I didn't realize until this moment that these were the tracers from the AAA, and they were shooting at me.

So my goal was to get out of that target area as fast as I could. And I threw the throttles up as far as they would go. There was no afterburner in the F-117, but I wanted to get well above 10,000 feet to get out of the heart of the AAA. As I came off target, I looked in front of myself and saw the sky lit up and I saw SAMs being launched. I saw AAA in the area where I was going. And my only concern now was, would they be able to track me? Would they be able to aim these SAMs or AAA at my aircraft? Or is it all just barrage fire? In retrospect, we now know that it was.

Yeah, it was barrage fire. That night, I made it home. All the other pilots made it home. We had no damage on any of our aircraft. Other coalition aircraft had battle damage from being hit. I didn't fly night two. I had mission planned and I was thankful because I didn't want to go into that high threat area again for a while. But I flew night three and after the first four nights, everybody realized stealth technology worked. Our aircraft were coming home every night without any battle damage. And throughout Desert Storm, we flew 1,271 sorties and never got hit. There was always the thought that the lucky bullet could hit us. There was a lot of AAA, a lot of barrage fire, and we were required to fly below 10,000 feet in the target areas due to the software of our bombs, the GBU-27, the

Bunker Buster, which you may have heard about. It was a 2,000-pound bomb unique to the F-117, but it could only be delivered below 10,000 feet. So anytime we went into a high-threat area, anytime we went into Baghdad, we were below 10,000 feet, which is the heart of all AAA. And of course, meanwhile, the good old RAF and their tornadoes were flying at 200 feet, getting knocked out of the sky, doing runway denial operations. And we've had one or two of those guys on this podcast. I bet you weren't too jealous of that, John. No, no.

Thank goodness for the RAF. They had the runway busting up a mission. They flew only 200 feet. I thought they were lower than that. But yeah, they did an awesome job and thankfully we didn't have to do it. Is it true that yours happened to be the first bomb that was dropped during the war? Yes. So as I mentioned earlier, I dropped the bomb nine minutes before H-hour. H-hour was the official start of combat. And my job was to take out that

IOC before the non-stealthy aircraft crossed the border, because this was the radar site where they would target their fighters in to hit our fighters coming in to Iraq. And so this bomb was the first bomb drop. But again, it wasn't the first shot fire. Tomahawks had already launched and Apaches had already shot up some radar vans along the border. You've subsequently held very senior jobs in the Air Force, kind of general, hung out in Congress. You had young men flying back then. Were you thinking about the politics and you being first and the nature of the war, or was your mind just full of the job in hand? It was a job in hand. All of us trained for combat and there hadn't been any major conflict since Vietnam. So we had trained for many, many years. Our job was to do what was

asked of us. I flew the stealth fighter at the time, so it did a great job during Desert Storm. But no, I did not consider the political ramifications of any of this as i said when i pickled off that first bomb i knew that was going to start a major conflict but that's what i was told to do and that's what i did listen to that's those histories i'm talking to the beast more after this romans gods spartans the wars of alexander the great successors in incredible entirely necessary detail the ancients podcast it's kind of like dan's show except it's just ancient history we've got the leading experts we've got the big topics from ancient Vietnam to the fall of Rome. Subscribe to the Ancients on History hit wherever you get your podcasts.

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during those weeks the rest of the world became obsessed with for the first time these kind of videos that showed your bombs dropping with extraordinary precision into enemy targets obviously none of that came as a surprise to you but were you interested in how the rest of the world just suddenly started developing this obsession with this new generation of weapon system? Yeah, that's a good point. And I told you, I flew into Just Cause and in Just Cause, there was really no threat. It turned out they wanted us to drop the bombs in fields. They wanted the Panamanian defense forces to give up without a fight. And so they didn't want us to do any collateral damage. They didn't want us to take out any barracks and things like that. So after the fact, no one was supposed to know that the 117 was used.

The only reason we were used was because we had that GBU-27 that rarely failed, that always went where we aimed it, and they didn't want any collateral damage. But after the fact, it was leaked out that we were there and nobody could understand why did you use stealth fighters? There was no threat. Why did you reveal this aircraft in this combat mission when it wasn't really required? And the reason it was used was because we would hit our time over target at exactly the right time. We displayed that to the other forces ahead of time because once we dropped these bombs,

the SEALs, the Deltas, the Rangers were all going to be dropping into the same fields that we hit. And if we were late, we would be causing problems for them. So when Desert Storm came about, we were happy to prove to the world, not only the American people, but the world that the stealth fighter was a valuable asset. And we wanted to show them what it could do. You ended up flying above Iraq a second time. And was that different? Operation Iraqi Freedom was later in my career. Yes, it was way different. The coalition had established air dominance. So there was no

air-to-air threat there. There was no ground threat against us. Our job was just to support the ground troops in Iraq, our coalition ground troops, and to monitor what was going on over there and make sure that the Iraqis were doing what they were supposed to do. But we could fly around and do orbits and circles and not get shot at during OIF. During Desert Storm, there was this sense, again, the wider public, everyone became an armchair general, how air power had become the dominant force on the battlefield, just like artillery had become during the First World War, and everything was going to be solved by application of air power.

Things didn't kind of turn out like that, did they really? I mean, the ground component has still really mattered over the last 20 years. There are varying opinions of that. Desert Storm was 43 days and it was a five-day ground war. People say we have to have boots on the ground to take territory. I think the air power that the coalition displayed set the groundwork for those troops to come in for those last five days. And without pounding the Iraqis for those couple of weeks, they wouldn't have had the success that they did.

And I know that they are appreciative of what air power did for them. They were not getting bombed from above because of the coalition air power that was over there. There's no doubt about that. I just mean in more recent kind of counterinsurgency style operations, and you talk about Operation Iraqi Freedom. Is there a frustration if you've got such dominance in the air that you can't achieve the result that you want on land when you're sitting up there in support and it's a messy, political, difficult situation on the ground

that's less easy to solve by dropping bombs? Yeah. So now that I'm retired, I'll voice my opinion here. There's too much political oversight of what goes on during conflicts now. If you leave it up to the military, they'll take care of the mission and they'll achieve the objectives. The problem started during Desert Storm, as you mentioned. Every night we gave our videotapes to the targeteers, the intel community, and they went up to Riyadh and headquarters looked at those tapes. And some of that is what was shown to the world. It was the videos that you saw. Well, because the political environment, because those people realizing what they could see,

The political environment, because those people realizing what they could see, they wanted to be involved now. And so every time a mistake is made, any time there's collateral damage, people get upset. Well, as you know, during World War I, World War II, and all previous conflicts, many, many, many people died. And there was a lot of collateral damage. And now the big concern is collateral damage. And so there's a hesitance to send in air power to do the job because they don't want to see collateral damage that will make it into the media. If you remember during Allied Force, there was an F-16 that was taking out a railroad bridge, and this video was shown to the world. And once he released his weapon, a train came across the bridge.

So the train was destroyed. Again, there was a lot of concern on why that train was hit. That pilot did not drop a bomb on a train. That pilot was told to take out a bridge, railroad bridge, which he did. However, now, every time there's an issue with collateral damage, it makes the news. So you sound to me like you're a bit of a Curtis LeMay man. It's a war is hell, so let's punch hard and get it over with as soon as possible. Well, I think we all learned during Vietnam that having too much oversight causes conflicts to go on for a long, long time without mission success. And as I mentioned, I think if you let the military leaders do what they're supposed to do, let them do it, conflict would go a lot faster and objectives would be met a lot sooner.

Because obviously I have lots of historians on here, often civilians, the problem with Afghanistan and Vietnam and all these things. You think it's because the military were restrained from just unleashing all-out warfare? I'm not saying all-out warfare. I'm saying there's too much monitoring of what's going on. During OIF, every time the Air Force dropped a bomb, it was analyzed by hundreds, if not thousands of people to make sure it went exactly where it was supposed to. Whereas, as you know, in a ground battle, tanks and artillery are shooting out there and nobody's analyzing what's going on

because you can't, right? And there's a lot of collateral damage that happens during a ground fight as well. But I think there's too much monitoring of what's going on in the air today. And that's true for all the countries that are involved. This is a difficult thing to ask a bomber pilot, but are there any military problems that can't be solved by you guys up in the air? I mean, some of them surely are intractable, you know, combat in a built up area or rural insurgencies. I mean, does air have its limitations? Well, sure. Counterinsurgencies, coin operations where you need special ops people to go in. Sure. Now, even special operators go in with air support. They have air assets that they utilize that some people don't even know about.

They have air assets that they utilize that some people don't even know about. So having control of the air over any fight matters. A ground troop has not been bombed from the air since before Korea. It's been a long time. It's been in the 50s. So having control of the air matters. Air superiority, air dominance matters. Because then when you have to send in troops on the ground they don't have to be worried about getting hit from above now technology has changed so obviously

today satellites play a role air weapons could be launched from the ground and things like that but controlling the air matters what about unmanned do you think that you were that young man over Baghdad 30 years ago, sweating? Do you think you'll be one of the last generations of bomber pilot in that position? How soon will have a role. As you mentioned, if you can send one of them into a high threat area and prevent a pilot from getting hit, that's a good thing. However, drones can't do everything, at least not today. The technology isn't there. They can't decide that this bomb will not come off last second because the target doesn't look right or because there's something in a target area that we don't want to hit. So I think manned aircraft are going to be around for quite a while, but unmanned is part of the future. Thank you so much, Beast, for coming on this podcast and talking to me. I know you had a job in nuclear safety as well. I'd love to one day ask you about that. There's lots I could ask you about,

but thank you for telling me about your experience over Iraq 30 years ago. All right, Dan, it was a pleasure talking to you and good luck to your show. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country,

all were gone and finished. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, a bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money, makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review. I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather. The law of the jungle out there. And I need all the fire support I can get.

So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome. But if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.