Navy’s Top Gun Pilots Proud, and Envious, of Cohorts in War

In the vernacular of Top Gun pilots, there is only one phrase that sums up the early air strikes against Iraq: “Kick butt.”

So far, this is a pilot’s war. And pilots at Miramar’s Top Gun fighter pilot school and at North Island Naval Air Station will tell anyone prepared to listen that flying more than 2,000 sorties and losing only a handful of planes is, well, awesome.

Or, as some young gung-ho Top Gun aviators say, it is “Sierra Hotel,” which is an informal code for a profanity bearing the same initials.

“I got in trouble in August by saying that we would clean up . . . but that is exactly what we did,” said Capt. Jay (Spook) Yakeley, the commander of Carrier Air Wing 14, which returned from the Persian Gulf last month aboard the aircraft carrier Independence.

Miramar-based F-14s operating from the San Diego-based aircraft carrier Ranger, now in the Persian Gulf, are providing fighter cover for attack jets involved in the bombing of Iraq.

“We did extremely well--I would have expected much more attrition,” said Capt. Bob Canepa, chief of staff for the Pacific Fleet’s Commander Naval Air Force, who flew 235 missions during the Vietnam War.

At Miramar Naval Air Station’s Top Gun Navy Fighter Weapons School, made famous in the motion picture starring Tom Cruise, pilots gravitated to the televisions where CNN is constantly playing. They cheered when film was shown of targets being bombed by U.S. planes. “Right on!” some shouted.

It was not a “boola-boola,” or an attack jet hitting another attack jet--the maneuvers that they practice. It was, however, a pure and simple bull’s-eye--an air to land hit. And, when the announcer spoke of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, some jeered and called him “Saddam Insane.” For these fighter jocks, the downing of planes is an inevitable but not a devastating side to combat.

Because pool reporters have been allowed access to Air Force personnel in the Middle East, Navy aviators have not shared much of the spotlight--a fact lamented by some of San Diego’s pilots.

“All we are seeing is one branch of the armed forces. When everything comes out, you are going to see there were a lot of forces,” said Capt. Robert L. Ellis Jr., the skipper of the Independence.

Ellis, who flew more than 200 missions in Vietnam, and other pilots are frustrated to miss out on what appears to be America’s biggest air war. Throughout their careers, they have trained for an operation like this one. Almost instinctively, they yearn for a piece of the action--like hunting dogs hearing the sound of the horn and the cry of the fox.

For Ellis, as well as Yakeley, the disappointment is particularly poignant because they came so close to being in the Middle East during conflict. The Independence returned to its home port in San Diego on Dec. 21.

“Professionally, we would have liked to have been there until the end--I envy my colleagues,” said Ellis, a father of three. Having watched films of air attacks reported in the news, Ellis explained: “It’s as awesome as anything I have seen in Vietnam. I can imagine what they are going through--the elation.”

In the action against Hussein, there are two phases, according to Ellis. The first was stopping his advance, which the Independence helped do when it sailed into the region. The second is “putting him back in his box.”

Standing near a Miramar runway by a bevy of parked F-14 Tomcats, Yakeley puffed his chest and squinted as he tried to explain the sensations of a pilot as he flies a combat mission.

“As the pilot and crew gets ready for a mission, there are butterflies in their stomachs even though this is something that they have certainly trained for,” Yakeley said. “In your heart, you feel comfortable and confident, but there’s that nervousness, that adrenaline before you go into combat. Once you’ve launched and are on your way to the target, that will disappear.

“All you think about is the mission at hand. After you’ve debriefed, you say, ‘Wow, this is it. ‘ “

In the cockpit, there is an almost overwhelming stream of information, Canepa said, “it gets very intense. Warning indicators come on, lights, loud noises. It gets extremely distracting. You learn how to just pay attention to the most important indicators.”

Canepa was intercepted by a reporter just as he entered a cinema to see a screening of “Flight of the Intruder,” a movie about Navy pilots in Vietnam. Though eager to see the film, Canepa described the rigors of combat with an aficionado’s delight.

When ordnance whistles through the air, “if it’s your first combat, you believe every bullet or missile is aimed at you. You have to make sure you don’t get foolhardy or think you are invincible,” he said. “And, if you put a lot of time in the cockpit, it wears on you.”

He and other pilots on the home front can scarcely contain their pride in the American aviators’ performance during Operation Desert Storm. And these days, the young as well as the older pilots seem to have a swagger in their walk.

“It’s looking good so far,” Ellis said, “as Tom Cruise would say.”