9-11 Response, was F-15 grounding

I previously posted this as a reply on the original thread, but that thread
is getting so old I thought a bunch of interested folks might miss it, so I
thought I'd repost it as a new thread. I've taken the time to correct and
clarify some of the things I wrote in the original version.

Jay and perhaps some others seem to think that we should have launched every
available alert aircraft during the 9-11 attacks. I don't want to argue for
or against their points, but for consideration I do want to point out how
things were in West Germany during the time I was there from 1983-86. I've
already posted how few fighters NATO had on alert during the time, but what
some of you guys might not know is that the Warsaw Pact frequently sent
fighters across the border into West German airspace to test our reactions
two or three times a month or even more often at times. During each
incursion, only two NATO ZULU alert fighters were launched, sometimes from
Ramstein, sometimes from Bitburg, sometimes from one of the other bases with
ZULU Alert commitments. Fighters have only an hour or two's endurance
without air refueling, and it would be stupid to launch all of your jets at
once.
Imagine how vulnerable to attack we'd have been had all of our alert jets
been airborne at the same time, then they all had to land and had been off
alert status while they were refueled. I never heard if the Warsaw Pact made
incursions at more than one point at a time, I'm supposing if they had then
NATO would have launched sufficient ZULU jets to make intercepts at each
point, but certainly not all of the ZULU jets at once. It could be that
NORAD only launched a minimum of alert aircraft on 9-11 for the same reason.
If you look at a map that shows where Ramstein, Bitburg, Soesterburg, and
RAF Wildenrath (not Bruggen, Bruggen was the Jaguar base, Wildenrath had
the Phantoms. I was mistaken in my previous post.) were in relation to the
West-East German border, you'll see that our bases were on the far side of
West Germany away from the border. It took some minutes for our jets to get
airborne and cross West German territory to make the intercept. As our jets
got close, the Pact fighters would turn around and head back for their side.

Here's a story about one such intercept. I should mention that we launched
our alert jets at least once a day, usually for what we called TANGOs,
which were training sorties, not actual intercepts. As the Phantoms rolled
out onto the runway, they were told it was a TANGO, so when they took off
on Runway 09, they immediately made a left turn and came out of burner so
as not to overfly the city of Kaiserslautern and **** off the locals.
Actual intercepts were called ALPHA launches, and us groundcrew could
always know when it was an ALPHA because the jets stayed in burner and flew
right over Kaiserslautern heading east, still in burner for as far as we
could see them. Not all ALPHAs were for border incursions. Many were to
intercept civilian aircraft that were lost and heading for the East German
border, and for ADIZ violations. So, on this particular day, I had to be
at ZULU to meet our F-4Es as they landed because while they were coming
back to Ramstein after an ALPHA launch, one Phantom pilot had called in to
report a problem with their IFF interrogator. I needed to fix the jet as
quickly as possible after it had landed so they could put it back up on
alert status. As the crew were getting out of their jets they were
excitedly talking back and forth about what they'd seen. From what they
said, they'd been in IMC, and as they approached the Munich area, they had
a radar target which accelerated away from them, heading back over the
border at Mach 2.8 and accelerating. While they never got a visual ID, they
were certain it was a MiG-25.

One more story: I mentioned the pair of Luftwaffe ZULU F-4Fs that diverted
into Ramstein one day in late 1985. I should explain that the Luftwaffe
ZULU Phantoms were restricted by post-WW2 status of forces agreements to
TANGO launches. They were not allowed to do ALPHAs, unless an actual war
with the Warsaw Pact had started. So this one day, our ZULU jets launched
on a TANGO. It was a typical rainy German day, but not too bad as I could
clearly see the jets come out of burner and make their left turns. Later Job
Control announced over our maintenance radio net that the jets wouldn't be
coming back, they'd diverted for the weather and we needed to upload a
couple more F-4Es and get them over to ZULU ASAP. It was about that time
that the Luftwaffe Phantoms landed and were parked in our Restricted Area.
They were gone when I came back to work the next morning. I'd always
wondered what was going on, why our jets had to weather divert when it
wasn't that bad out, and the Luftwaffe jets had landed okay. I don't know
when our airplanes finally returned.

Fast forward to about 7 or 8 years ago. I was at the Manitowoc, Wisconsin
airshow, and there were a couple of A-10s from the Battle Creek ANG unit on
display. The pilots were standing by the jets talking to people, and one of
them, a Lieutenant Colonel, looked very familiar to me. Turned out he had
been a Phantom Phlyer in the 526 TFS at Ramstein while I was there, and we
started talking about the good old days. For whatever reason, I mentioned
that day when our jets diverted and the Luftwaffe jets landed instead, and
he told me the rest of the story. Someone high up at NATO had decided to do
something about all of the incursions by Warsaw Pact aircraft, so they came
up with a plan. They launched out our ZULU F-4Es on a TANGO, and at the same
time TANGOed the Luftwaffe ZULU F-4Fs from JG 74 at Neuberg, which is a bit
north of Munich and much closer to the East-West German border. All four
Phantoms joined up and swapped callsigns, and landed at each other's
airfields. The 526 TFS jets were immediately refueled and put on alert
status at Neuberg in the Luftwaffe ZULU barn. Sure enough, a few days later
a Pact MiG-23 flew across the border into West German airspace. But instead
of Ramstein or Bitburg launching their alert aircraft from all the way
across Germany, the pair of 526 TFS F-4Es came up from Neuberg, between the
MiG and the border. The LtCol told me the plan was to shoot down the MiG on
our side of the border, but only if they could be sure that the wreckage
would fall away from any towns. The F-4Es were under Ground Controlled
Intercept control, but there was some glitch and they were not given
permission to fire. So one parked himself at the MiG's six-o'clock while the
other pulled up alongside the MiG and they escorted the MiG back to the
border. He told me there were no further Warsaw Pact incursions after that.

One other thing I'd like to point out for Jim, who seems to have a problem
with the ANG holding the alert commitment in CONUS. He seemed to think this
was a bad idea because, he thinks, the ANG doesn't have enough full-timers
to generate a large number of aircraft if there were an attack. Chew on this
info... During my time at Ramstein from 1983 to 86, during the Cold War,
Reagan's saber rattling, the attack on Libya, NATO's equipping with Pershing
2s and GLCMS and all the tension that caused with the Soviets, we worked
three shifts Monday through Friday. The F-15 units were cut down to two
shifts, days and evenings since they didn't have as much maintenance
required on their aircraft. USAFE cut us down to two shifts in late 1985
too, I was on second shift and worked a number of 16 hour shifts trying to
get the next day's jets all fixed, since there was no midnight shift to take
over. When we got the jets done, we went home and from that moment there was
no one on duty in our unit for those hours until the day shift showed up at
6 AM.

During the weekends and holidays, we had a skeleton crew of one maintenance
specialist from each specialty, plus four crew chiefs if memory serves. We
worked 12 hour shifts during weekend duty, from 5 AM to 5 PM. From 5 PM to 5
AM we had no maintenance people on duty in our Aircraft Maintenance Unit.
Our main duty on Weekend Duty was to launch out and recover the few F-4Es we
had going on cross-countries. We also finished up whatever work there was on
the next Monday's jets that were on the flying schedule. I don't know how
many pilots had weekend duty as Operations worked out of a different
building, but I'm guessing very few if any were there after 5PM. Without us
being there, it wouldn't have mattered even if there were pilots on duty. As
a reminder, an F-4E can't launch out without ground crew, since Phantoms use
external start carts (AM32A-60) to start the engines. Not that it would've
mattered anyway, since none of the jets were armed with anything but the
nose gun. Had there been a "bolt out of the blue" attack, ZULU would have
been on their own until sufficient maintenance and weapons people could be
called in to start loading out the jets and we had aircrews on hand to fly
them. No ****.

I'm quite sure the Soviets were well aware of that too. We communicated
with each other and Job Control with Motorola hand-held radios which
weren't encrypted. Any Soviet spy could've been stationed off base,
monitoring our radio traffic and known everything that was going on. USAFE
was well-aware of the spy potential, we were given an "OPSEC" training
course as part of our unit in-processing that discussed the fact the
Soviets were most likely listening in on our communications and that we
should be careful not to discuss anything classified.
Zulu at Ramstein was manned 24-7 by two pilots, two WSOs, and four crew
chiefs. The aircrew members and ZULU qualified crew chiefs rotated the
duty, which is exactly how the ANG does it. When the 86 TFW at Ramstein
began converting to F-16Cs and Ds, six ANG F-4D Phantoms, their ground
crews and aircrews were brought over to Ramstein to take over the ZULU
commitment. There were two jets from Minnesota, two from North Dakota, and
two from California. At any given time, they had two up on alert status and
the other four flew local training sorties.
Anyway, the point I was going to make is the ANG has full-timers manning
their alert aircraft, plus full-timers conducting day-to-day operations.
During nights and holidays they have probably as many people on duty as we
did at Ramstein. If there would be indications of hostilities, they'd do
exactly what we'd have done at Ramstein: recall all off-duty personnel,
and get ready to fight the war. The ANG has always done extremely well,
and often won, in USAF competitions such as Gunsmoke (gunnery and bombing)
and William Tell (air to air), and ANG and Reservist trash haulers have
freqently won or placed very highly in Airlift Rodeo competitions. Having
been both Air Guard and Active Duty USAF, I personally have no problems
with the idea that the ANG and AFRES have taken over a good portion of air
defense, transport and tanker missions from the USAF. I don't belive Jim's
criticism is warranted.
Scott Wilson