‘Ghost Riders’ of Stealth Fear Only ‘Golden Bullet’

Ghost riders of the night, they flit like coal-black bats over Iraq listening to hard rock and fearing only the “golden bullet.”

F-117A Stealth jets carried out the first raids on Baghdad, protected against Iraqi defenses by their bizarre angular profile and radar-absorbent coating.

The pilots, flying by night and sleeping by day, call themselves ‘Ghost Riders,’ some listening to heavy metal music on their radios as they fly into combat.

Their main danger on the opening night of the war came from friendly aircraft unable to detect the Stealth jets over Iraq.

Since then, the primary danger has been what the pilots call the golden bullet.

“That’s the aimed or unaimed bullet that you run into because there are so many bullets,” said a lieutenant colonel named Greg, a pilot from Roseville, Mich.

Iraqi gunners send up a wall of antiaircraft fire and surface-to-air missiles over Baghdad, most of it apparently random, the pilots said.

“They fired more bullets than I thought were ever made in the history of the world,” said Greg of one night flight.

“If you turned a room into the world’s biggest popcorn popper and try to walk from one end to the other without getting hit, that’s what it was like. You just have to think invisible and keep on going.”