Carrier air wings heading home from Operation Southern Watch were turned around within hours, and the F-14 was about to prove itself as a long-range precision bomber
At 0846 hrs on 11 September 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 struck the north tower of the World Trade Center. On the other side of the world, the personnel of Carrier Air Wing Eight (CVW-8), aboard USS Enterprise (CVN-65), watched the aftermath in real time. The veteran carrier was in the final weeks of a six-month deployment. Two days earlier, it had handed over the Operation Southern Watch (OSW) patrol of Iraq to USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) and CVW-11, leaving Fifth Fleet control. CVW-8 had flown its fifth and last OSW strike on the night of 9 September, destroying a mobile Iraqi air-search radar. The ship was bound for Cape Town, a port never before visited by a US carrier, with an Equator crossing, rare for an East Coast carrier, on the itinerary.
According to VF-41’s CO, Cdr Brian Gawne, the mood aboard was one of accomplishment. The air wing had struck successfully and lost no aircraft. VF-41 was already thinking about its post-cruise move from NAS Oceana, Virginia, to NAS Lemoore, California, and its transition to the F/A-18F Super Hornet. The 11th was a no-fly day, the first in more than a month. Gawne entered the ready room just before 1600 hrs and was told an aircraft had hit the north tower. Minutes later he watched United Airlines Flight 175 hit the south tower: “Like everyone else in uniform, I knew that two aircraft hitting the World Trade Center was no accident.”
Enterprise’s CO, Capt. James Winnefeld, a former F-14 pilot, had a similar reaction: “Right then I thought, ‘we’re not going home’.” Within hours, the ship was ordered to reverse course. Winnefeld told the crew over the 1MC, and the 90,000-ton carrier swung through 180 degrees and headed back towards the Straits of Hormuz at top speed. CVW-8 Strike Operations Officer Lt. Cdr. Bill Lind was told by the Air Wing Commander, Capt. Dave Mercer, to stand up alert fighters immediately, including aircraft on the catapults with crews aboard. Ordnance was broken out and loaded, and crews were identified for possible retaliatory strikes.
Aboard Carl Vinson, which was two days out of Singapore and conducting routine training, VF-213’s CO, Cdr Chip King, had trapped back aboard minutes after the first impact. He was told what had happened and reached the ready room in time to see the second airliner hit on CNN: “At that moment I knew we would be involved in America’s response.” Carl Vinson was also redirected towards the Northern Arabian Sea rather than the Northern Arabian Gulf.
The Fleet at Home
At NAS Oceana, four Tomcat squadrons that would later fight in Afghanistan were caught up in the events:
- VF-102 (CVW-1): Its work-ups were almost complete, and its deployment aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) was brought forward by 48 hours from 21 September.
- VF-211 (CVW-9): The unit’s 11 F-14As were en route to NAS Fallon, Nevada, for strike training. They were turned back to Oceana and reached Fallon 48 hours later. CVW-9 completed a shortened workup and sailed aboard USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) on 12 November, about two months early.
- VF-11 and VF-143 (CVW-7): NORAD asked the Navy to help secure the eastern seaboard’s airspace, and Second Fleet ordered all available ships to sea. CVW-7 embarked its F-14Bs aboard USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67), while its F/A-18Cs went to USS George Washington (CVN-73). For 72 hours, the squadrons flew round-the-clock combat air patrols off the coast. Lt(jg) Joseph Greentree of VF-143 recalled that the skies were “eerily empty” with civil air traffic grounded. The planned COMPTUEX then resumed.
Identifying the Enemy
US intelligence quickly identified Osama Bin Laden as the perpetrator of al-Qaeda. Aboard CVN-70, VF-213 intelligence officer Lt(jg) Nate Bailey saw nearly every national collection asset shift its priority to Afghanistan, and the “requirements deck” followed. It was clear that CVW-11’s focus for the rest of the cruise would be that landlocked country.
Afghanistan was not entirely new to American air power. On 20 August 1998, TLAMs from Fifth Fleet warships struck al-Qaeda’s Zhawar Kili Al-Badr camp, 13 days after the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The missiles missed Bin Laden, and the CIA and FBI kept tracking him, with CIA Predator UAVs based in Uzbekistan playing a key role. A plan to remove the Taliban existed, but Pakistani sovereignty over the overflight routes from the Northern Arabian Sea could not then be resolved. CENTCOM staff officer Vice Admiral David Nichols later said there was political will under President Clinton to get Bin Laden, but little appetite for the political and diplomatic risk of changing how the US did business in the region.
Al-Qaeda struck again on 12 October 2000, when an explosives-laden boat was detonated alongside the destroyer USS Cole (DDG-67) in Aden, killing 17 sailors. A TLAM strike was called off at the last minute when the CIA said Bin Laden’s location was unknown. A wider bombing campaign and an invasion were also considered, but President Clinton wrote in his autobiography that they were not feasible without a finding of al-Qaeda responsibility.
Linking al-Qaeda to 11 September took little time. Within hours, a Senate Intelligence Committee was told of intercepts in which Bin Laden’s associates reported hitting two targets. Three weeks earlier, Bin Laden had told a London-based Arabic magazine of a pending “unprecedented attack, a very big one”. With US forces at Defense Condition 3, their highest alert since the Yom Kippur War, Secretary of State Colin Powell said on 12 September that the US would hold accountable the countries that harbored terrorists. On 14 September, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz spoke of “removing the sanctuaries” and “ending states that sponsor terrorism”, adding that the US would “wage a campaign, not a single action”.
Planning Operation Enduring Freedom
On 12 September, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld directed CENTCOM’s commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, to prepare “credible military options”. CENTCOM, responsible for 25 nations from the Horn of Africa to Central Asia, would run what became Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Franks later wrote that plans existed to strike al-Qaeda and Taliban targets with TLAMs and bombers, but none for ground operations or for access agreements with neighbouring states.
Planners first favored a multi-pronged helicopter assault staged from Pakistan. Pakistan was reluctant, however, and the forces required would have taken too long to assemble. President Bush wanted a swift response, so Rumsfeld shortened the timeline and reduced the troops and aircraft committed, ruling out a full ground war. CENTCOM therefore chose to strengthen the anti-Taliban opposition, using air power and Special Operations Forces (SOF) teams.
The Taliban had held about 80 percent of the country since 1996. The opposition was split along ethnic and religious lines, and its strongest element was the Northern Alliance, with an estimated 15,000 fighters in the mountains near the old Afghan-Soviet border. Al-Qaeda had assassinated its leader, Ahmad Shah Masood, in a suicide bombing on 9 September 2001. The CIA had covertly supported him for years. On 1 October, Rumsfeld said that “unconventional approaches” were more appropriate than conventional armies, navies and air forces, and that the opposition’s value should be recognized and assisted.
That assistance would come mainly from carrier aircraft in the Northern Arabian Sea. The only other aircraft able to reach Afghanistan were B-52H, B-1B, and B-2A bombers, which could not secure the air superiority needed for C-17 humanitarian airdrops and SOF insertions. Only the Navy’s Hornets and Tomcats were close enough to provide fighter cover. Their route ran over the Pakistani coastline, with the carriers some 70 miles south of Karachi.
Building the Coalition
The Bush administration assembled a broad coalition. NATO invoked its mutual defense clause for the first time in its 52-year history, and Russia backed the effort and pressed Pakistan for intelligence and logistical support. A UN resolution calling for “urgent international cooperation to prevent and eradicate acts of terrorism” also helped persuade Pakistan to open its airspace and to provide bases for SOF and combat search and rescue (CSAR) forces, which US practice required before any air attack. On 21 September, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan offered bases for SOF, logistics, and tankers, though not for USAF F-15E and F-16 wings. Saudi Arabia approved the use of the new Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at Prince Sultan Air Base (PSAB), which had opened in early 2001. It had controlled OSW operations over southern Iraq for almost a decade and was staffed by all US services, with British and Australian officers on the operations floor. Only limited USAF tactical air support was available at first, as the nearest F-15Es and F-16Cs were in Kuwait and Qatar.
Gen. Franks briefed President Bush on 21 September. He said carrier aircraft could strike within 24 hours but urged a two-week delay while USAF tankers and AWACS aircraft deployed and the Pakistani CSAR and SOF bases were set up. Bush set the start of OEF for 7 October.
Two days earlier, Theodore Roosevelt had left Norfolk with CVW-1. According to a VF-102 junior officer, the carrier crossed the Atlantic and took part in Exercise Bright Star with Egypt. The ship’s rumored task, under Rear Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, was to watch the political situation in Syria and Egypt from the eastern Mediterranean while Enterprise and Carl Vinson began OEF. It stayed almost two weeks before transiting the Suez Canal.
Preparing the Air Wings
CVW-8 and CVW-11 had given little thought to Afghanistan before deploying. Bailey said their focus had been the Northern Arabian Gulf and that the country’s subject matter expert in the air wing’s intelligence department had been a very junior sailor. By the end of September, everyone had become an expert, studying Soviet-era accounts, imagery of fixed SAM sites, and the history of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Both air wings sent senior aviators to PSAB to help draft the Master Air Attack Plan (MAAP). VF-213’s executive officer, Cdr Anthony Giaini, flew there by C-2 on 15 September. The plan took more than a dozen drafts, as intelligence and guidance on the campaign’s objectives were slow to firm up. Giaini credited Pakistan, whose territory the aircraft had to cross, and Britain, which had an exercise under way in Oman and big-wing RAF tankers already in theatre, as essential: “we couldn’t have fought OEF without the help of both nations.” The Navy cell at the CAOC was led by CVW-8’s DCAG, Capt Dave Newland, who later flew combat missions as a RIO with VF-14 and VF-41.
Back on Enterprise, Lt. Cdr. Bill Lind received the MAAP in late September, together with Capt Mercer, Capt Newland, the squadron COs and other staff, in a secure area of the Carrier Intelligence Center. They signed multiple forms, were given sealed packets and opened them in unison. Lind described the plan as “as large as it was audacious”: a campaign centred on air power, with full tanker support, AWACS coverage from over Pakistan, and a target list covering not only Taliban and al-Qaeda command and control but nearly all military equipment and potential sites in the country. It would let US naval air power off the leash as it had not been since World War 2. A career of half-measures in the 1990s left him wondering how much would actually be executed.
At unit level, crews worked to ensure the CAOC allocated enough fuel, AWACS control, electronic warfare support, and the right ordnance. Bailey briefed VF-213 on the threat. The air-to-air threat was fewer than 50 MiG-21s and Su-22s. The SAM threat was unknown, with fixed sites around the main centres but doubtful operator proficiency. He considered heavy AAA at high elevations, such as mountain passes, the greater danger, as in the Soviet occupation. He also supported targeting, breaking the CAOC’s prioritised list into target folders using TARPS imagery. All his nominations were approved, which he described as a “surreal balance” between being aggressive and recognising that real people were on the ground.
The Tomcat’s Redemption
The 33 Tomcats of the three fighter squadrons in the Northern Arabian Sea were to be central to the campaign. The F-14 had already shown its bombing ability in Operation Desert Fox (December 1998), Operation Allied Force (spring 1999) and the later OSW years. Its “finest hour” would come in OEF, when its firepower, targeting systems and especially its range were fully used.
This was a reversal of fortune. A Cold War interceptor built to repel Soviet bomber raids, the Tomcat had been a poor fit for Desert Storm in 1991. Its crews lacked the systems to meet the strict rules of engagement autonomously and relied on USAF E-3 AWACS aircraft for clearance to fire. Flying patrols over the Northern Arabian Gulf, far from the action in Iraq, they claimed a single Mi-8 helicopter in the whole war. Budget cuts then led to the decommissioning of ten frontline Tomcat units. The A-6 Intruder was also retired early, in the mid-1990s, leaving the Navy short of all-weather precision bombers.
Grumman had given the F-14 a bombing capability in the 1960s, though the Navy never specified it, and bomb tests had been made as early as November 1987. Photo-reconnaissance came only in the early 1980s with TARPS. After Desert Storm, the fighter community looked to diversify and sought a targeting pod. Modest funding secured through Commander, Naval Air Forces Atlantic, in autumn 1994 bought the off-the-shelf AAQ-14 LANTIRN pod, developed by Martin Marietta for the F-15E. By March 1995, a test aircraft was dropping laser-guided bombs, with better infrared imagery and accuracy than USAF F-15Es and F-16Cs, thanks to the RIO’s large Programmable Tactical Information Display (PTID). The first fleet pod was delivered to VF-103 at NAS Oceana on 14 June 1996, when Secretary of the Navy John H. Dalton declared “The Cat is Back”.
The Navy version, the LANTIRN Targeting System (LTS), dropped the navigation pod and improved the targeting pod. It had embedded GPS and an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), computed weapon release automatically, and presented cues on the cockpit displays. It also gained a masking avoidance curve display and, eventually, a north orientation cue and a 40,000 ft-capable laser receiver. In the early stages of OEF, only VF-213’s F-14Ds and VF-102’s F-14Bs had the upgraded laser. VF-14, VF-41, and VF-211 used the original pods, with a laser fire limiter at 25,000 ft. The 40,000 ft pod proved its worth by allowing LGBs to be used above threat altitudes in Afghanistan’s high terrain. The LTS also generated target coordinates from its FLIR, and a later software update, T3 (Tomcat Tactical Targeting), made them accurate enough for JDAM, JSOW, the CBU-103 Wind-Corrected Munitions Dispenser and other GPS-guided weapons.
CVW-8 Prepares
Enterprise was the first carrier on station off Pakistan and spent more than three weeks circling while CENTCOM planned. Cdr Gawne said strike planning for the immature Afghan theatre started from scratch. Over Iraq, crews had had charts, planning tools, imagery and the experience of nearly a decade of OSW flying, but there was not enough imagery of Afghanistan. The CAOC needed up-to-date photographs of airfields, SAM and AAA sites, barracks and training camps, and from late September it authorised VF-41 and VF-213 to fly TARPS missions over the country. VF-14 had no TARPS capability.
VF-41’s Lt Marcus Lopez flew escort on the first sorties, about a week before OEF, over south-eastern Afghanistan. They entered “high and fast” and were not opposed. The flights helped plan tanker tracks and collected ELINT on SAMs and radar-guided AAA, with a Prowler monitoring the Afghan response. Tanker support limited VF-41 to Kandahar. CVW-8’s VS-31 Vikings and VS-29 for VF-213 towed the Tomcats and Prowlers close to the border and held on the Pakistani side while they topped off, before replacement tankers met the package on its way out. VF-41 RIO Lt. John Kelly flew two or three TARPS missions a day at 20,000 ft, with the long-range KS-153B camera taking stills of assigned coordinates. He felt almost no one in Afghanistan knew the jets were overhead, and the RHAW gear detected only the odd search radar. Photographer’s mates pulled film canisters while the jet was still winding down, and prints were rushed to the admiral, CAG staff, and the CAOC. The squadrons also flew CAPs for USAF RC-135V/W Rivet Joint and US Navy EP-3E ELINT/SIGINT aircraft. Both air wings flew mirror-image strike missions along the new “driveways” through Pakistan, to be strictly followed once the war began, with identical missions flown over open water.
From 3 October, all three Tomcat units flew round-the-clock CAPs along the Afghan-Pakistan border as the first big-wing tankers arrived. VF-14’s Lt. Cdr. Van Kizer logged a 6.5-hour flight on 4 October in aircraft “204”, which ended with his 200th career day trap. After refuelling from an S-3 and a KC-10, he capped 15 miles south of the border for five hours. MiG-21s were reported airborne in Afghanistan, and the Tomcats were vectored towards them, coming within 10 nm of the border. The USAF AWACS then told them to disengage, as permission to cross the border would require hostile intent. Two VF-213 F-14Ds relieved them. On the way home, around 110 miles from the ship, a hydraulic pressure light began to fluctuate. He lost the combined side hydraulics, blew the landing gear down, and landed with an OK 4-wire pass after “the longest flight, and most butt pain” of his F-14A career.
CVW-8 had by then been the night carrier for about a week. Rear Adm Henry Ulrich, commander of the Enterprise battle group, had told CENTAF his air wing would take the midnight-to-noon slot, and Rear Adm Thomas Zelibor, commander of the Carl Vinson group and of Task Force 50, accepted. The switch began two weeks before OEF. Waves launched at 2300-2330 hrs, 0200 hrs and 0400 hrs, each recovering after about six hours, the first in darkness.
On 4 October, the CAOC told the air wing commanders to brief their COs on the opening phase. VF-14’s Cdr Bruce Fecht said CAG Mercer gave direction on strike packages, targets, and plans. VF-213 would cover the northern high-altitude targets because of its 40,000 ft pods. CVW-8 would also take three high-altitude targets in the second wave, aimed at Kandahar, a site to the southwest, and Kabul. CVW-11’s F-14Ds would lead the first carrier strike, with Cdr Chip King as mission commander. King called the F-14D the most capable platform in the Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps for that mission, given its range, two sets of eyes, communications, Link 16 JTIDS (installed only in the D-model), and ability to capture target imagery before and after an attack and transmit it to CVN-70 in real time.
After almost four weeks circling the Northern Arabian Sea while Pakistani clearance, CSAR, tanker and AWACS assets and the MAAP were settled, VF-14, VF-41 and VF-213 were eager to start. On 7 October 2001, they prepared to play their part in the opening campaign of the Global War on Terror.
This article is from the book “F-14 Tomcat Units of Operation Enduring Freedom” by Tony Holmes, available here.
