Air Crews Mix Humor, Teamwork at Italy Base

Some of the first bombs that U.S. pilots dropped on Yugoslavia carried personal messages scrawled with pink and red felt markers for its defiant leader, Slobodan Milosevic.

“Milosevic, this one’s for you,” was one.

Another was marked “air mail.”

“Knock, knock,” read a third.

“There were quite a few messages,” said Senior Airman Perry McCiver of San Diego, who loads bombs, missiles and other munitions onto Air Force jets. “A lot of them weren’t proper--stuff you can’t print.

“Anyway, it’s a secret,” he added with a laugh Thursday. “I’m not supposed to tell you.”

On the second day of the NATO bombardment of Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia, reporters visiting the busiest base involved in the campaign found a mixture of joking, focused teamwork and secrecy.

The mood of the 510th Fighter Squadron was cautiously upbeat; officers said that all of its F-16 fighter jets taking part in the first round of airstrikes had returned unscathed to Aviano Air Base early Thursday.

“If the aircraft is flying a mission and comes back safely, then I feel I did my job well, and I feel great,” said Tech. Sgt. Rosie Muniz, who wears a rose tattoo on her left forearm and maintains the F-16s’ sophisticated electrical system.

During the day Thursday, six F-16s took off from Aviano, their bubble-canopied cockpits angling sharply into a cloudy sky for a second wave of attacks. Reporters counted about 60 fighter jets, Stealth bombers and reconnaissance planes--nearly half the number stationed here--leaving base after dark.

U.S. and allied officials at the sprawling base at the foot of the Italian Alps, staging point for the air forces of six North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations, declined to give details about any missions.

Reporters were permitted onto the base for two hours Thursday to interview F-16 ground crews but not pilots. The crew members were not at liberty to discuss details about the missions.

Yet the men and women of the 510th, whose F-16 squadron is one of two in the U.S. Air Force’s 31st Fighter Wing, voiced a common conviction: Their effort to weaken Milosevic’s ability to wage war against ethnic Albanians in the separatist province of Kosovo is justified, despite the risks to allied pilots and civilians on the ground.

“It gives you a sense of pride because what you’re doing is actually something for other people,” said Muniz, a 38-year-old Persian Gulf War veteran from Racine, Wis. “It’s for peace.”

“We’re not here to destroy; we’re not here to kill,” said McCiver, 30, a hulking Vietnam War veteran’s son with a shaved head. “We’re here to help people [in Kosovo] pursue a life of liberty and freedom. . . . Human life is involved, and you like to hope that no one is there when our bombs go off.”

The F-16 is a highly maneuverable, all-weather fighting machine that can hit targets on the ground and engage enemy aircraft; one technician here described it as a “three-dimensional roller coaster.” Each F-16 at Aviano is emblazoned with the 31st Fighter Wing’s symbol, a flying sea horse, and its motto: “Return With Honor.”

According to 1st Lt. Matthew Boyd, a U.S. Air Force spokesman, most of the fighter wing’s pilots have flown peacekeeping missions not free of risk, but relatively few have combat experience.

After loading weapons into his squadron’s jets for the first round of strikes Wednesday, McCiver said he prayed for pilots and for all sides in Yugoslavia’s ethnic conflict. Then he slept--soundly, he said--as the pilots flew into battle.

“We try to put out a quality product with our aircraft and our munitions, and these pilots are our friends, our neighbors and our co-workers,” the airman said. “So we want to see them come back. We care about them.”