Commentary
In January 2003 we were deployed to Incirlik AB Turkey in support of Operation Northern Watch. Most of us had a pretty good inkling that Saddam Hussein was getting tired of the 12 years of the Northern and Southern No-Fly Zones established in the airspace over Iraq, and that things were going to turn back to combat operations once again. That feeling came true with the opening salvos of Operation Iraqi Freedom just a few months later. But enough scene setting.
This story revolves around this picture. Sorry it’s so grainy. It was taken on film by a disposable camera, then printed, and it has been copied and printed again. That’s yours truly in the cockpit of an F-16, being pulled out of a hardened aircraft shelter to go out on a combat sortie. Fun side note—there were nuclear weapons stored in special underground vaults in those shelters. You might think that we’d have been nervous walking on top of nukes but we didn’t give it a second thought….