Moments & Milestones: Trophy Mission
Honors for a risky bombing run.
- By George C. Larson, Member, NAA
- Air & Space magazine, November 2011
A 2010 flight of two F-15Es (here, a Strike Eagle in Afghanistan earlier this year) saved the lives of 30 coalition troops surrounded by 100 insurgents.
USAF/MSGT William Greer
At a National Aeronautic Association awards dinner in November, the U.S. Air Force’s Mackay Trophy for the most meritorious flight of 2010 will be presented to four officers. On the afternoon of April 6, 2010, Lieutenant Colonel Donald Cornwell led a flight of two F-15Es in support of a combined allied operation in Afghanistan. Lieutenant Colonel Dylan Wells, Captain Leigh Larkin, and Captain Nicholas Tsougas, the other participants on the mission, filled out the two aircraft’s crews, operating as Dude 01 and 02.
The flight of two was on its way east out of Bagram Airfield in eastern Afghanistan when controllers called to change their direction: A developing troops-in-contact situation required the aircraft to fly west. A team from a joint special operations task force was encircled in the town of Bala Morghab (a known transit point for insurgents in northwest Afghanistan), and a rapid-response force coming to extract the team had been halted by an explosive device.
In the 40 minutes he estimates it took to cross Afghanistan, Cornwell busied himself with tanker support details, reserve fuel calculations, and divert options, while Larkin, his weapons system officer, or “wizzo,” worked the radio to establish contact with ground commanders. A B-1 bomber was on station but unable to help, and a layer of thick clouds obscured the ground, ruling out helicopter support.
Cornwell, who had flown with the F-15E’s low-altitude navigation and targeting infrared for night (LANTIRN) system and had used its terrain-following radar (TFR) during training in Alaska, used it again on this mission. With Larkin calculating a minimum safe altitude, Cornwell flew the TFR to make low, noisy passes while deploying flare countermeasures over the area of operations in a show of force. At the sound of the jets, the insurgents held their fire temporarily, then resumed, evidently figuring it was just noise.
The insurgents were holed up in fortified fighting positions, and the F-15s were low on gas. An Air Force tanker had moved its orbit closer, so the Dude flight was able to get fuel more easily. Larkin had been hammering away on the satellite link to get clearance to drop bombs close to friendly forces. After programming the precision weapons and obtaining clearance, Cornwell and his wingman dropped their ordnance. “[Ground commanders] told us as we were checking out of the area that we had good hits on all the targets,” Cornwell recalls. The insurgents were forced to abandon the town.
“I could not have been more excited afterwards,” Cornwell says. “I was tense. The first thing we did was call to find out if anyone [friendly] died. We didn’t find out for sure [that no friendlies had died] until the next day, when we got an e-mail from an intelligence officer who went through the town.” The night after the mission, Cornwell couldn’t sleep, so he ran off some energy on a treadmill. “You get into elevated states,” he says of the post-mission buzz.
He’s proud of the flight that won the Mackay Trophy. “We did a good job and did it with excellent teamwork,” he says. He gave special praise to Larkin for her handling of a tough situation. Now Cornwell is retiring, but he won’t be far from the fighter world: He’ll be training F-22 pilots as a contractor.
Comments (2)
Way to go boys! I was a Crew Chief on F-15 tail number 73-113 back in the late 80s-early 90s. Glad to see this jet still tearing it up.
Posted by Rick Deckard on September 19,2011 | 02:35 PM
Good job done, Thanks. I remember while serving in USAF
& working in a NATO outpost H4, 934th. The 89s would come
up every so often to check out a sub sighting or Russian Bomber. I was very near Artic, Northwest Iceland. The 89s
were no match for the Mig used at that time, yet they would
still come up to check things out. They were Stationed at
Keflavik. I watched the F 100s drop bombers as a spotter
also, our pilots just about hit the target everytime. The
Vietnam pilots missed almost too often. In my spotters
tower, I heard one go boom from my rear, it hit 50 feet
from my tower in back of me. One hit right next to sheep
ranch. That was near Clovis NM. My favorite airplanes will
always P 38 & F 89, maybe thanks to LC Cornwell, F 15 is now
a favorite, too.
Posted by Ronald Wilder on November 4,2011 | 05:04 PM