WEBVTT

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Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg
Corumbus. Our guest in this edition.

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It's retired US Air Force Chief Master
Sergeant Bill Walter. He served as a

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gunner aboard an AC one thirty gun
ship and was part of Operation Eagle Claw,

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which attempted to rescue US hostages in
Iran. He was also highly involved

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in Operation Just Cause in Panama,
specifically at Rio Hato Airfield. He also

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served in operations in Granada, El
Salvador, Desert Shield and Desert Storm,

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Somalia and Bosnia. So a lot
to get to, Sarah, Thank you

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very much for being with us.
Thank you. Where were you born and

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raised? I was born in Olivia, Minnesota and raised in a farming town

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in Minnesota, Burn Island in Fairfax. A graduate from Fairfax High School.

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Very small farming community up there.
Any history of military service in your family.

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Yes, my dad was in the
Navy, was a CB in the

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early fifties and he did four years
and then got out. Why did you

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join the Air Force? Well,
seventy six. It was post Vietnam,

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the Vietnam warri I just entered about
a year prior to that, and I

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was looking for something to do.
And there was this high school counselor that

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said, don't discount the military.
Guys should think about joining the military,

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and I thought that was something I
wanted to do. Was not a real

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popular thing. Joined the military in
seventy six, let me tell you,

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But that's what I want to do, and I'm glad it's probably the best

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decision I ever made. How soon
were you with the AC one thirties.

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Well, I went to basic training
and all that stuff, as as everybody

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knows, I went. My first
job was actually weapons loading on F four

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fighters in Germany. For two years, I volunteered for gunships. In nineteen

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seventy eight. I arrived on Herbert
Field for AC one thirty duty in November

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of seventy eight. You've literally written
the book or books, i should say,

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about the history of the AC one
thirty from nineteen seventy three to twenty

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ten. Why did you love it
so much? Well, it's really kind

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of hard to explain. I guess
the gunship community is pretty well connected,

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and once you get in it,
you pretty much stay in it, So

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I'm not to an outlier. Most
people, once they get in a gunship

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community, they stay there for their
entire career. I was lucky because I

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started out at such a low rank
and I made rank, went all the

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way through, managed to stay for
twenty six years, which is not common

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in the military, but it certainly
was common for us. Why did I

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I like being part of the crew
AC one thirties as a crew airplane.

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Everybody on an airplane has an important
task to do. And it might sound

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a little bit cliche of this year
only as good as your weakest link.

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That's absolutely true. On the AC
one thirty, everybody does their part.

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It's fourteen person crew. It takes
a lot of coordination with that. There's

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two pilots up front, flight engineer, fire control officer, navigator, the

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electronic warfare officer and illuminator operator,
and five gunners. So it takes on

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the two censors excuse me, I
our censor and television sensor. So a

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lot of stuff going on on a
gunship. Is there a particular because there's

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different caliber guns? Of course on
the gunship, was there one that you

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preferred or were assigned to most often? Well, we're all trained on all

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the guns, although and then there's
always one person that's called the lead gun

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that is like the floor supervisor that
coordinates all the gun crew activities. My

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favorite gun actually was the forty millimeter
because it's World War Two vintage and we

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were still running it and it's just
a whole lot of fun. It's mechanically

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complex. So the gunner's job on
the gunship is, believe it or not,

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not to shoot the guns, but
to maintain and load and clear the

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guns. Now, granted, we
could fire in manual mode, and we

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have done that before, accuracy suffers, but really who shoots the guns on

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the original gun ship is the pilot
and what we call the pylon turn It's

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people can research that if they want. I don't think we need to get

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it into too heavy on this interview, but it's a very crew coordinated effort.

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These later models, the sensor operators
could fire the guns with pilot's consent

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through the fire control system, which
is basically a computerized fire control system that

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compensated for errors. Bottom line is
a very accurate system, and our altitudes

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ran from anywhere when I was flying
anywhere from fifty five feet on up to

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ten thousand feet above ground. Let's
talk about some of your missions now,

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starting with Operation Eagle Claw, talking
about the role that AC one thirties were

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supposed to have in that mission.
Right, there's a lot of people.

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I guess it's common knowledge now that
AC one thirties were involved, but it

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was tamped down for many years because
it was a rescue mission. We were

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Night two. For those that study
history know that the infill infiltration was Night

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one and the accident at Desert one, but they don't really follow what was

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supposed to happen on night two and
Night two was the actual rescue. And

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there was well over a thousand people
involved in that operation all told, and

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a lot of that activity was to
happen on night two. I was on

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crew number four, which was the
backup spare that filled in for any of

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the three primary airplane, so we
had to know all three different missions we

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had. The first, Pappy Gallagher's
crew was supporting Delta Force at the actual

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Embassy compound fire control or excuse me, a fire support for Major then Burris,

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who was our Delta fires guy.
Then we had Bubber young Blood that

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was at his crew was at the
Mayor bad the Extraction Airfield, which is

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about thirty forty miles outside of town. Then we had another Colonel Cara,

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then Captain Cagle had the downtown airport, so we had pretty much everything covered.

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Our job was to support Delta Force
for the rescue, use minimal force

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necessary. We didn't want to go
in there and just mop up on anybody.

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That wasn't the intent. The intent
is to keep these big crowds that

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are obviously not going to be happy
with us being there once they find out,

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to keep them away from our rescuers
and the hostages until they were extracted

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to the soccer stadium and then out
to the extraction airfield. So that was

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the task of the AC one thirty. Lots of moving parts in that mission,

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lots of moving parts. But as
we say, we never got tonight

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two because the crash at Desert one. But how do you practice for something

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like that, I mean, being
ready to do what you just described.

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Is there a way to simulate that
effectively? Well to a certain extent,

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the physical aspect of doing it,
like climbing up to the altitude and so

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forth. We first trained for a
different mission. We weren't on the rescue,

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but we were the first US Air
Force aircraft that were assigned to the

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at that time called Operation Rice Bowl. And they named it Rice Bowl on

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purpose as a deception tactic, so
nobody would really put together that we were

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going training up for retaliatory strikes on
Iran, which is what we really we're

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doing. We were to attack the
cracking towers of the Aubadon oil refinery there

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on the border between Iraq in Iran, and they had some troubles of their

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own at the time, so there's
some really weird tactics that we had to

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use because they didn't want to fly
and over Iran. Well we didn't want

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to do that either, so we
had to do partial orbits and so forth,

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and it didn't work out too well
because we knew one thing for sure

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that if that mission was to go, there was probably no hope ever to

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rescue the hostages. Was that was
retaliatory had they begin to kill off any

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of the hostages, That's what that
was about. It never went either.

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So let's move to nineteen eighty three
and Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada. Eight

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missions. You were part of and
support of that action. What did that

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involve? Well, that was a
surprise. Grenado was something that was supposed

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to be an in and out we
call a milk run that really we were

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going down there to rescue the American
and some other foreign students that were being

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held against their will in the college
campus down there grand As. It's a

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medical university, And yeah, we
went in. It didn't The planning cell

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was so short because they had a
blood coup essentially that happened on the island,

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and nobody was prepared. Nobody expected
anything was going to be happening in

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that part of the world. And
also it was a big surprise. So

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we had less than ten days to
do planning and execute the mission. And

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I would say that things didn't go
really well, but I can tell you

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from the command and controls perspective,
it was very difficult because nothing was put

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together very accurately. It was all
ad hoc, it was all temporary,

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and there was not a lot of
communications. The people that made that mission

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work were the snuffies, the grunts, the airmen, the sailors and marines

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on the line, the people that
were doing the mission adjusting accordingly, and

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the mission was a success. Two
of our aircraft, to be very beginning

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to suppressed the Triple A and aircraft
artillery sites. That was Kuban's crew and

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Clem Twyford's crew. I was on
another crew that came up later on that.

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We had support missions on night two
and three, and by about day

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five or so, everything was pretty
much back to normal. And then maybe

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five or six days after that we
went back return to her word, so

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not much resistance by the time.
Now, pretty much after that first couple

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of days, it was pretty much
done and all the students were evacuated.

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When we come back, Retired US
Air Force Chief Master Sergeant Bill Walter tells

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us about his reconnaissance flights of our
Central America up and then we'll focus intently

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on his service at Riojato Airfield in
Panama during Operation Just Cause in nineteen eighty

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nine and the role the gun ships
played in that military action. I'm Greg

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Corumbas and this is Veterans Chronicles.
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus.

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Our guest in this edition has retired
US Air Force Chief Master Sergeant Bill

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Walter. He served as a gunner
aboard AC one thirty gun ships in operations

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ranging from the attempted rescue of US
hostages in Iran to Grenada and eventually Desert

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Storm Somalia and Bosnia. In a
moment, he will take us into great

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detail about his role and his gunship's
role in Panama at Riojato Airfield as part

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of Operation Just Cause in December nineteen
eighty nine. But first he tells us

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about his work flying reconnaissance missions over
Central America in the night eighties and how

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we saw conditions for Americans deteriorating in
Panama. That actually that mission started just

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a few months before Grenada. At
the time, there was not a whole

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lot of night vision capability in the
US. We the gunship were kind of

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cutting edge. I look at it
now and I go wow, it almost

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seems like dinosaurs stuff that we had
back then compared to now. But it

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was cutting edge technology then we could
see at night. We could videotape everything

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we do. We videotape. When
we're shooting, it's videotaped. When we're

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surveilling, it's videotaped. And as
the old tax three quarter inch videos that

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used to be real calmon And so
our job was to go down there and

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monitor guerrilla activity FMLN gorillas in El
Salvador. And I guess it's okay to

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say it now that we were actually
monitoring both sides, the friendly side and

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the gorilla side to monitor the activity. So we would fly these missions out

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of Howard Air Force Base in Panama. They're ten to twelve hour missions,

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all nighters. We'd take off about
the time the sun went down, and

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we'd fly three hours to get up
in country, tank up on fuel,

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aerial refueling prior to going in.
We go in there, we had these

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well they call targets, they're actually
just surveillance points, and we'd have to

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hit usually five, six, maybe
eight total of those surveillance points, video

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record activity, monitor activity, and
then fly back to Howard about the time

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the sun was coming up. And
then once a week, unless they had

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something really important it was going on, they'd sent it up immediately and the

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videotapes should then be edited and then
sent up right directly to Joint Chiefs of

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Staff. It was a JCS directed
mission, so we weren't even technically working

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for the Air Force. We were
working for JCS, and that mission lasted

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for seven years. I got like
forty five missions over El Salvador, and

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some of them were very boring.
Let me tell you, you're in the

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dark and the perfect environment to sleep
and there's been a couple of times that

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guys in the back would go up
on the flight deck and find the pilots

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and the engineer both sleeping, or
all three of them sleeping passed out on

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autopilot, and the nav would be
the only one that was awake and had

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to wake him up. Usually this
is on the on the return leg,

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not when we're over country. Everybody's
pretty keyed up over country because periodically we

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draw fire, but never really anything
that was that was significant. You mentioned

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Howard Air Force based in Panama,
but there were also missions you were on

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in Panama prior to just cause explain
what those involved and why they were necessary.

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Yeah, there was. We were
kind about eighty late eighty seven or

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early eighty eight. We're kind of
dual hatton missions. We split the missions

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going up into All Salvador with the
missions Panama Canal Security missions, and it

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was part of the treaty. There's
a whole bunch of different agreements. Who

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really need to get into that too
much, but I can tell you this,

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the Noriega's Panama Defense Forces were infiltrating
US facilities such as the air Han

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tank farm and the ammunition supply points
over at various places on Panama and they

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would go in there and they'd fire
up the Marines or the army, whoever

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the security force was. So now
it's always done at night. Again,

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who's got the night surveillance capability gunship? So we actually armed our airplanes because

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when we're doing all Salvador missions we
were not armed. It was considered peacetime

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special reconnaissance. So we armed our
aircraft for the Panama mission, and we

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would go over whenever there was a
firefight or any kind of action at all,

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and there were some and there actually
was one marine killed in one of

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the firefights by friendly fire, but
there was a whole lot of activity going

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on, and people wouldn't believe that
there was. We would go and video

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record the activity and turn it in. As a matter of fact, Chuck

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Frye was Colonel fry was running that
operation for a while. He lived in

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town here. He recently passed away, but Chuck had a lot to say

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about that mission. So all kind
of secret squirrel stuff as we call it.

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But it was necessary to protect not
only our military installations in Panama,

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but to remember, there was a
whole lot of civilians and dependence and other

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people that lived down there in Panama, and Noriega had old problem would letting

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his goon squads, that's what I
call them, beat up anybody that was

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downtown that would get in his way. And there were several confentrations with Panama

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Defense Forces and what they call the
Dignity Battalions towards eighty eight eighty nine,

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00:17:18.279 --> 00:17:22.920
where if you got downtown and you
got in trouble, they would beat the

205
00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:26.359
crap audio and you're lucky if they
didn't haul in and try and hold you

206
00:17:26.440 --> 00:17:30.960
for I wouldn't say a ransom,
but you know, like they'll hold you

207
00:17:30.160 --> 00:17:33.640
for as a prisoner until they get
what they want and they'd let you go.

208
00:17:33.839 --> 00:17:38.279
So we were banned from going downtown
about mid eighty eight or so.

209
00:17:38.920 --> 00:17:44.200
Nobody was going downtown to base on
lockdown. So as eighty nine unfolds,

210
00:17:44.519 --> 00:17:48.640
things are getting worse from from the
perspective of what Noriega is doing, the

211
00:17:48.720 --> 00:17:52.920
threat he poses. When did you
start getting wind of an operation and when

212
00:17:52.960 --> 00:17:56.960
did you start getting involved in the
planning? About early eighty eight there was

213
00:17:57.599 --> 00:18:03.519
there was a whole bunch of different
plans that were set in place. To

214
00:18:04.000 --> 00:18:11.640
one we evacuate. We call a
NEO a non combatant evacuation operation to pull

215
00:18:11.680 --> 00:18:15.720
out all the family members of non
essential personnel. There was a bunch of

216
00:18:15.759 --> 00:18:18.200
them. They had a bunch of
different code names, with the one that

217
00:18:18.240 --> 00:18:25.519
we focused on as the gunship community
was called Blue Spoon. Operation Blue Spoon,

218
00:18:25.839 --> 00:18:33.160
which was the military takeover and overthrow
of nor Riga's forces on Panama.

219
00:18:33.359 --> 00:18:38.160
So nobody really thought it was going
to happen for real, because that's a

220
00:18:38.200 --> 00:18:44.880
pretty major thing when you're taking a
sovereign country and you're actually overtaking it without

221
00:18:44.920 --> 00:18:52.400
a declaration war. So we trained
and trained all through nineteen eighty eight,

222
00:18:52.680 --> 00:18:59.279
even to the point of building mocked
targets here on Egland Reservation, specifically the

223
00:18:59.400 --> 00:19:04.240
Muse Rest Kurt Muse, which is
a whole different story in itself. We

224
00:19:04.400 --> 00:19:11.400
trained up for Blue Spoon operations over
and over and over again until December of

225
00:19:11.079 --> 00:19:18.000
eighty nine, we had the biggest
rehearsal to date. Prior to that,

226
00:19:18.039 --> 00:19:22.559
it was just piecemeal kind of Okay, we're training and you're segmented, and

227
00:19:22.599 --> 00:19:26.920
all of a sudden, we're going
to have this full scale dress rehearsal right

228
00:19:26.920 --> 00:19:30.640
before Christmas. So that everybody could
go home for Christmas and have a good

229
00:19:30.640 --> 00:19:34.680
time, and then we would plan
on rehearsing it again in six months or

230
00:19:34.680 --> 00:19:38.039
whatever. So in other words,
we built the plan, executed the plan

231
00:19:38.920 --> 00:19:45.640
real time, and basically checked out
the plan and said, boh, yeah,

232
00:19:45.720 --> 00:19:48.640
it looks pretty good. And I
think we finished what we call the

233
00:19:48.720 --> 00:19:56.000
Mod four. We finished it around
the fourteenth or so of December, and

234
00:19:56.039 --> 00:20:00.880
as you look at it and say, well, I think it was the

235
00:20:00.960 --> 00:20:07.039
seventeenth of December when the lieutenant got
killed down there by Noriega's goon squads,

236
00:20:07.559 --> 00:20:15.680
and right away we didn't expect it
at all. I think Noriega really,

237
00:20:15.880 --> 00:20:21.480
if there was a prize for bad
timing, he deserves that. Because we

238
00:20:21.480 --> 00:20:26.720
were cocked and locked and ready to
roll, and we slipped out of Hurlbert.

239
00:20:26.839 --> 00:20:30.400
We sent four airplanes down there.
Already we had four A models and

240
00:20:30.519 --> 00:20:34.720
two H models for the Muse rescue, and then we had five more here.

241
00:20:34.759 --> 00:20:38.559
I was on one of the five
that left Hurlbert. Everybody thought it

242
00:20:38.599 --> 00:20:41.640
was a continuation of the MOD for
exercise. I had no idea that we

243
00:20:41.640 --> 00:20:48.440
were actually going down there to actually
take over the country. So it was

244
00:20:48.519 --> 00:20:53.480
a pretty wild ride getting down there. We left Hurlbert. We had an

245
00:20:53.599 --> 00:21:00.519
Army Fire's officer on board with us, Captain Joe Adams, and we flew

246
00:21:00.839 --> 00:21:06.400
six hours down there through some really
hairy weather. Didn't think we're going to

247
00:21:06.480 --> 00:21:11.039
make our ar. We were the
last ones. My pilot was Mark Transu

248
00:21:11.160 --> 00:21:15.720
at that time of captain, and
we had a lot of weather problems.

249
00:21:15.720 --> 00:21:19.519
There was a sandwich of clouds.
There was about an eight or nine hundred

250
00:21:19.519 --> 00:21:22.960
foot clear space in between these two
cloud decks, and that's what we wound

251
00:21:23.039 --> 00:21:27.559
up refueling in. Otherwise we wouldn't
have made it. And the tanker people

252
00:21:27.599 --> 00:21:32.160
were great. I mean they hung
with us all the way. We're way

253
00:21:32.279 --> 00:21:37.200
late in our refueling track, and
it was we had to We had to

254
00:21:37.200 --> 00:21:41.680
toboggan. It's a basically go downhill. You can imagine a toboggan the way

255
00:21:41.720 --> 00:21:45.440
it works. When you do that, you put the nose down and you're

256
00:21:45.480 --> 00:21:49.440
falling behind the tanker. And we
went from about seven thousand feet down to

257
00:21:49.480 --> 00:21:56.680
about five hundred feet above the deck
above the water to clear the Yucatan Gap

258
00:21:56.920 --> 00:22:00.839
because everybody was afraid that the Cuban
radars would to tech this large formation of

259
00:22:00.880 --> 00:22:06.599
airplanes going down there. So that
was probably the scariest part of the whole

260
00:22:06.599 --> 00:22:11.079
mission, was going through that tobogganing
episode and we were pumped up fat on

261
00:22:11.160 --> 00:22:17.359
gas and then climb back up to
Althode after we got that and arrived at

262
00:22:17.359 --> 00:22:22.039
our whole point just outside of Riojado. What our assigned task was to support

263
00:22:22.559 --> 00:22:29.440
elements of third Range of Battalion and
second Range of Battalion direct fire support.

264
00:22:29.720 --> 00:22:34.720
We were there fire support along with
the Age six Little Birds out of Task

265
00:22:34.759 --> 00:22:40.160
Force one sixty one sixty sore at
the time, I remember right, So

266
00:22:40.640 --> 00:22:44.599
we were the primaries. There was
two F one seventeens that were supposed to

267
00:22:44.680 --> 00:22:51.079
drop two thousand pounders at the very
beginning to Their idea was to shock and

268
00:22:51.200 --> 00:22:55.200
stun the PDF. But as we
found out, that really didn't have a

269
00:22:55.319 --> 00:22:57.720
great deal effect because well, for
one thing, they missed their targets.

270
00:22:59.319 --> 00:23:02.440
And like I said, they can
say all day that they were supposed to

271
00:23:02.440 --> 00:23:06.160
miss the targets, and I'm like, you run with that, okay.

272
00:23:07.319 --> 00:23:12.680
So the PDF was already awake and
out and at their positions when those bombs

273
00:23:12.680 --> 00:23:17.400
went off. Anywhere, there's nobody
there in the barracks, and that's where

274
00:23:17.400 --> 00:23:22.559
the targets were. Sixty four apaches
were hovering off the coast and their job

275
00:23:22.680 --> 00:23:26.160
was to suppress these two AN aircraft
guns that were up on the beach.

276
00:23:26.480 --> 00:23:33.079
Our job was also to take out
two AN aircraft guns in different locations.

277
00:23:33.000 --> 00:23:40.039
And all three minutes prior to the
rangers five hundred US Army rangers dropping in

278
00:23:40.119 --> 00:23:47.599
and thirteen C one thirties coming in
from the south. So very well planned

279
00:23:47.880 --> 00:23:52.680
and rehearse mission, but very time
compressed, is a good way of putting

280
00:23:52.680 --> 00:23:59.759
it. So we were rolling in
two or coming inbound to the target,

281
00:24:00.440 --> 00:24:06.039
and we had our first target is
supposed to be a ZPU four aircraft gun

282
00:24:06.400 --> 00:24:11.960
right between the runway and a taxiway
on the southern end. So we go

283
00:24:11.079 --> 00:24:15.640
there and our navigator, who is
very very good navigator, who's a very

284
00:24:15.640 --> 00:24:19.759
careful guy, saying, you know, these F one seventeens are going to

285
00:24:19.880 --> 00:24:26.720
drop these bombs right through our firing
orbit and there's a possibility they might actually

286
00:24:26.759 --> 00:24:30.359
bomb us out of the sky.
Well, that's not things that you want

287
00:24:30.359 --> 00:24:33.240
to think about. So, being
the clever nav that he was, he

288
00:24:33.559 --> 00:24:38.519
just held us back about thirty seconds
because we're in a geometric orbit anyway,

289
00:24:38.559 --> 00:24:41.559
it's not gonna matter. So we
made sure we were on the northern part

290
00:24:41.559 --> 00:24:47.039
of the orbit. When those bombs
went out directly on HRR. They drop

291
00:24:47.240 --> 00:24:49.880
right on time, thankfully. Two
bombs go off, bang bang, just

292
00:24:49.960 --> 00:24:55.000
like that, and right away we're
looking for the an aircraft gun, couldn't

293
00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:57.759
find it. It turns out it
was a little bit further south than what

294
00:24:57.880 --> 00:25:03.400
the intel people said fired on that. Nobody was there because I believe that

295
00:25:03.400 --> 00:25:07.759
that was one of the guns that
the Apache had fired on and the crew

296
00:25:07.759 --> 00:25:11.799
had already left. The Apaches fired
on another gun and then they left.

297
00:25:12.119 --> 00:25:17.920
So now we got the only fire
support platforms that are remaining at this point

298
00:25:18.599 --> 00:25:22.920
is one one thirty. My crew
air pop is there four and the little

299
00:25:22.920 --> 00:25:30.559
birds the aged six helicopters. So
we wound up I say, throughout the

300
00:25:30.680 --> 00:25:37.279
night as the air drop continued,
and just tons of activity going on at

301
00:25:37.279 --> 00:25:41.480
the same time. Obviously, the
Paytamenians didn't like that we were dropping in

302
00:25:41.559 --> 00:25:48.880
on our airfield, so they reacted
and some of the after we shot the

303
00:25:48.039 --> 00:25:52.440
first gun, we moved on a
second gun and there were some vehicles there.

304
00:25:52.519 --> 00:25:56.240
We engaged that gun and which I
can talk about a little bit later.

305
00:25:56.599 --> 00:26:03.279
And then just stare stepping through the
different targets while the rangers assembled at

306
00:26:03.400 --> 00:26:07.000
their points. And rangers are really
good at what they do. There are

307
00:26:07.119 --> 00:26:14.440
all about breaking things and moving swiftly, and so as they're assembling moving into

308
00:26:14.480 --> 00:26:21.799
the compounds. The third bat was
to take the north and the northwest the

309
00:26:21.839 --> 00:26:27.799
Panamanian Defense Force schoolhouses, if you
will. And second bat was they were

310
00:26:27.839 --> 00:26:33.960
to take the compounds. Now,
the compounds had two different divisions down there.

311
00:26:34.039 --> 00:26:40.279
One on was the seventh Infantry,
which was the Panamanian Special Forces,

312
00:26:40.279 --> 00:26:42.720
the real badasses. They called them
Macha de Monte, and we knew they

313
00:26:42.720 --> 00:26:47.279
were going to fight. Everybody knew
they were going to fight because that's what

314
00:26:47.319 --> 00:26:52.680
they do. And then the sixth
Mechanized Infantry was more like a line army

315
00:26:52.839 --> 00:26:57.480
unit, and we were pretty confident
that most of them were not going to

316
00:26:57.519 --> 00:27:00.759
fight, that they were gonna they
were going to move haul ass, if

317
00:27:00.759 --> 00:27:04.720
you will, And that's the way
it turned out. For the remainder of

318
00:27:04.759 --> 00:27:11.400
the evening, we fired on a
couple of vehicles, one of the V

319
00:27:11.519 --> 00:27:17.960
one fifties coming out across towards the
runway when the rangers still in their parachutes.

320
00:27:18.640 --> 00:27:23.960
We engaged that, and then I
think the army one of the rangers

321
00:27:23.960 --> 00:27:30.119
engaged as well, but it was
it stopped pretty much in its tracks.

322
00:27:30.799 --> 00:27:33.599
We went to the south and we
worked a couple more targets. Look found

323
00:27:33.559 --> 00:27:37.200
on an Ambos site, fired on
it because our objective was not to just

324
00:27:37.279 --> 00:27:41.960
go in there and just mop up
on people. Our objective was to keep

325
00:27:41.240 --> 00:27:47.039
the PDF, especially the Masha de
Monte, away from our rangers. So

326
00:27:47.079 --> 00:27:51.039
there's a lot of things that we
did that even the rangers weren't aware of

327
00:27:51.200 --> 00:27:56.160
because we were leading ahead. But
thankfully we had Captain Adams on board that

328
00:27:56.319 --> 00:28:00.799
was coordinating with his rangers at the
same time, so it was very well

329
00:28:00.960 --> 00:28:06.519
orchestrated mission. We had a few
gun malfunctions we had to clear along the

330
00:28:06.559 --> 00:28:11.440
way, but generally it was really
a good mission. We later on,

331
00:28:11.599 --> 00:28:18.799
right before we left, there was
a vehicle about three kilometers to the west

332
00:28:18.039 --> 00:28:23.000
that was making an end run to
go north and they were all armed.

333
00:28:23.039 --> 00:28:26.880
We tracked them with our television set. We're at fifty five hundred feet so

334
00:28:26.920 --> 00:28:32.559
we could see everything. The sensors
were good at fifty five hundred feet and

335
00:28:32.640 --> 00:28:36.079
you could see they had their weapons
protruding out the back of this deuce and

336
00:28:36.079 --> 00:28:41.519
a half truck that was without without
a canvas cover, and so they were

337
00:28:41.799 --> 00:28:45.440
were cleared to fire on them because
that was under the rules of engagement.

338
00:28:45.480 --> 00:28:49.720
They were making an end run.
That was a pretty nasty attack. I'll

339
00:28:49.720 --> 00:28:53.039
put it. I'll just leave it
there. It wasn't it wasn't friendly,

340
00:28:53.160 --> 00:28:57.799
but it did break them up.
They scattered. The ones that could still

341
00:28:59.200 --> 00:29:03.119
get away got away, and they
weren't really a concern of ours anymore because

342
00:29:03.160 --> 00:29:10.039
we had interrupted their plans. And
as we're firing on those, we get

343
00:29:10.079 --> 00:29:17.680
called back to the compound because there
was a ranger element that was entering the

344
00:29:17.759 --> 00:29:22.759
Macha de Monte compound was taking fire
from behind this building that the PDF was

345
00:29:22.880 --> 00:29:26.079
using as a defalaid. You know, Panama, they don't have a lot

346
00:29:26.119 --> 00:29:30.880
of glass windows. They have like
open windows, airflow and everything. They

347
00:29:30.880 --> 00:29:36.319
were shooting through the building at the
rangers. We got called in by a

348
00:29:36.359 --> 00:29:41.440
lieutenant then Dave Hate, who I've
met actually and told me all about it,

349
00:29:41.519 --> 00:29:45.839
and well we went up there,
our television operator. We go rolling

350
00:29:45.880 --> 00:29:52.160
in behind there's a ZPU four gun
sitting there. Static and there's somebody that

351
00:29:52.480 --> 00:29:56.319
was near or on the gun.
We couldn't really tell. So we started

352
00:29:56.319 --> 00:30:00.960
to fire one oh five high explosive
And now I'll tell you, one oh

353
00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.759
five is pretty mean, thirty two
and a half pounds with five pounds of

354
00:30:04.839 --> 00:30:10.599
high explosives and a lot of fragments. So we started fire one oh five

355
00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:15.279
on the back side of this building, hoping to splash the fragments up on

356
00:30:15.319 --> 00:30:21.680
these three individuals that were behind the
building. Well, the three individuals,

357
00:30:22.400 --> 00:30:26.119
we're not really sure what happened to
them because there was a little bit of

358
00:30:26.160 --> 00:30:29.079
dust kicked up, but I can
tell you this. There was one of

359
00:30:29.119 --> 00:30:33.000
the one guy on the gun and
he when we fired the first round,

360
00:30:33.000 --> 00:30:38.039
you can see sparks splashing off the
gun because it's pretty high speed stuff,

361
00:30:38.519 --> 00:30:44.119
and somebody comes running off the gun, runs about twenty feet and just drops

362
00:30:44.160 --> 00:30:48.799
straight on. They're kind of like
the fight or flight instinct. We didn't

363
00:30:48.880 --> 00:30:53.400
really even notice it until we're reviewing
the tapes later on because I'm back there

364
00:30:53.440 --> 00:30:56.920
in the dark. I'm not seeing
any of this stuff. We're looking at

365
00:30:56.960 --> 00:31:02.519
the videotapes. So when we get
back in analyzing how battle damage occurred and

366
00:31:02.880 --> 00:31:06.759
somebody said, hey, what was
that We see this guy running And it

367
00:31:06.799 --> 00:31:11.880
was for boon, maybe two or
three seconds that you could see the guy.

368
00:31:11.920 --> 00:31:15.319
He runs, he drops, and
the very next round we fired hit

369
00:31:15.440 --> 00:31:19.640
him directly right in the back,
and the next after the dust cleared,

370
00:31:21.440 --> 00:31:26.000
couldn't see him anymore. We found
out from the rangers the next day that

371
00:31:26.519 --> 00:31:30.960
his torso was hanging from the tree
and there was pieces of bone, frag

372
00:31:30.039 --> 00:31:36.240
and there was everything everywhere. It
wasn't intentional, but that was sure.

373
00:31:36.240 --> 00:31:41.480
He didn't suffer. So in any
case, that was our last mission for

374
00:31:41.640 --> 00:31:45.920
rio Hodo. That night, we
had I think engaged twelve or thirteen targets.

375
00:31:45.920 --> 00:31:48.319
I'd have to go back and look
and see exactly what it was.

376
00:31:48.680 --> 00:31:53.759
During about a four and a half, well actually closer to five hours on

377
00:31:55.359 --> 00:31:59.839
station supporting the rangers, we had
to leave to get fuel. Another guns

378
00:32:00.240 --> 00:32:05.160
came in after us to support the
rangers, and by about six thirty or

379
00:32:05.160 --> 00:32:08.920
so, the field was relatively secure. They had swept through all the compounds

380
00:32:08.960 --> 00:32:15.440
and that was pretty much they had
control of the field well executed basically according

381
00:32:15.480 --> 00:32:19.920
to plan. Yeah, yeah,
absolutely, there was a few few errors

382
00:32:19.960 --> 00:32:24.359
that occurred. There always is a
complicated plan like that. They had a

383
00:32:24.359 --> 00:32:31.160
really unfortunate accident with the little birds, the Age sixes that fired on friendlies

384
00:32:31.400 --> 00:32:35.480
and I met a couple of guys
build on him. Great guy, I

385
00:32:35.519 --> 00:32:39.039
mean, he's lost part of his
leg. And we went down there for

386
00:32:39.079 --> 00:32:44.880
the thirtieth anniversary of just Cause,
and I'm here it is. I got

387
00:32:44.920 --> 00:32:49.160
an invitation from a ranger friend of
mine to go down there on a thirtieth

388
00:32:50.039 --> 00:32:52.759
but prior to that, let me
go back up a little bit there.

389
00:32:53.519 --> 00:32:58.480
Right after that mission was done,
and on the twenty sixth, I believe

390
00:32:58.519 --> 00:33:02.680
it was of December, our squadron
commander, when we're analyzing all the BDA

391
00:33:02.799 --> 00:33:08.119
bomb dama's assessment of tapes, my
commander says, you know, we really

392
00:33:08.160 --> 00:33:12.359
like to get one of those gun
barrels from a ZPU four that shot at

393
00:33:12.400 --> 00:33:15.839
you guys, because we had an
instance where we had a gun that was

394
00:33:15.839 --> 00:33:20.480
shooting at us and we were shooting
at him. Well, it turns out

395
00:33:20.519 --> 00:33:25.119
we won, but the gun was
a catastrophic kill. The gunner was a

396
00:33:25.119 --> 00:33:31.039
catastrophic kill. Such as warfare,
that's the way it works. So I

397
00:33:31.160 --> 00:33:35.960
went out there. Commander says,
okay, Bill, send you out there.

398
00:33:35.960 --> 00:33:37.319
You're gonna get a barrel, and
said, how about they take Steve

399
00:33:37.440 --> 00:33:40.319
Hicks with me. Now you're going
out there by yourself, okay, great

400
00:33:40.720 --> 00:33:45.799
MH fifty three. One of our
helicopters took me out there in the afternoon

401
00:33:45.799 --> 00:33:47.720
at the twenty sixth and dumped me
off in the middle of the field.

402
00:33:47.720 --> 00:33:54.000
And this Army lieutenant or lieutenant or
captain that was seventh ID. The Rangers

403
00:33:54.000 --> 00:34:00.119
had already pulled out. Seventh Infantry
Vision was out there, and he met

404
00:34:00.119 --> 00:34:02.880
me at the center of the runway, says, what the f are you

405
00:34:02.920 --> 00:34:07.400
doing here? I said, well, I got sent out here by Colonel

406
00:34:07.440 --> 00:34:10.400
Soon made up a big story and
I said, you can call them,

407
00:34:10.440 --> 00:34:14.920
and you know I'm authorized to be
here, and so I basically I b

408
00:34:15.079 --> 00:34:17.440
asked him, and I wasn't supposed
to be there. I was just going

409
00:34:17.480 --> 00:34:22.039
on a lieutenant colonel's direction. So
he bought it, and he actually had

410
00:34:22.079 --> 00:34:25.400
his guys give me a ride down
onto compounds. And I can tell you

411
00:34:25.400 --> 00:34:30.000
what I it was a weapons and
tactics. I was a tactician, so

412
00:34:30.039 --> 00:34:37.119
I was very interested in analyzing our
effects that we had put down when they

413
00:34:37.119 --> 00:34:42.159
were still fresh and they were still
fresh. And I tell you when I

414
00:34:42.199 --> 00:34:45.760
was walking through the compounds, especially
the seventh compound where the guy that was

415
00:34:45.880 --> 00:34:51.519
hit with the one oh five,
it was just got awful smell there still

416
00:34:51.559 --> 00:34:55.039
because you know, the blood got
all down in the dirt. There's bone

417
00:34:55.079 --> 00:35:00.800
fragments everywhere because they didn't pick up
everything. The Ranger recovered team didn't pick

418
00:35:00.880 --> 00:35:07.239
up anything or everything, just the
big chunks. So walking down there was

419
00:35:07.400 --> 00:35:12.320
very eerie because the whole compounds were
abandoned at that time. They had a

420
00:35:12.320 --> 00:35:15.599
few observation points that were out there, but I had first, you know,

421
00:35:15.719 --> 00:35:21.360
pretty much a run on the compound. It was spooky as the word

422
00:35:21.360 --> 00:35:25.920
I'd use. And one of the
sixth Infantry building was barracks building was burned

423
00:35:25.960 --> 00:35:30.480
out. Little birds did that,
So yeah, it was a very spooky.

424
00:35:30.519 --> 00:35:35.440
I went out there a couple more
times, and then in I guess

425
00:35:35.440 --> 00:35:38.920
it was February of nineteen ninety,
I was down there again because we had

426
00:35:38.960 --> 00:35:45.199
a regular continual commitment down there,
and I went out with a couple other

427
00:35:45.239 --> 00:35:50.679
guys and that gun sight that we
had that was firing at us and we

428
00:35:50.719 --> 00:35:53.400
were firing at him and we won. Like I said, they actually had

429
00:35:53.440 --> 00:35:58.719
a memorial built for the gunner there, which was really kind of freaky and

430
00:35:58.760 --> 00:36:05.079
it kind of brings things too more
of a human aspect. Next to the

431
00:36:05.280 --> 00:36:08.960
gun site was this giant tree,
and it was probably a fifty sixty year

432
00:36:08.960 --> 00:36:14.519
old tree that all the fragments from
a one h five h because we fired

433
00:36:14.519 --> 00:36:19.159
about five or six rounds on that
gun before we finally got our catastrophic kill.

434
00:36:19.800 --> 00:36:25.079
And so there was this tree just
absolutely peppered with fragments, and branches

435
00:36:25.079 --> 00:36:29.400
are broken off, they're laying on
the ground. It was just a real

436
00:36:29.480 --> 00:36:35.199
mess. The gun itself had already
been cleared off and disposed of at that

437
00:36:35.280 --> 00:36:39.360
point, so I remember that big
tree, big tree. Wow, interesting

438
00:36:39.440 --> 00:36:44.159
how that all works. And I
found some other areas where we had shot.

439
00:36:45.199 --> 00:36:49.880
So here it is thirty years later, getting back to that point when

440
00:36:49.920 --> 00:36:54.800
I go down there to meet my
ranger buddies, and I'm by this time

441
00:36:54.840 --> 00:37:04.320
the whole real Hotto compounds have been
bulldozed away and they built an actual resort

442
00:37:04.400 --> 00:37:09.599
there, rolled the Cameron Resort,
And so I was staying right there in

443
00:37:09.639 --> 00:37:15.760
one of the rooms that was not
too far from the gun sight that I

444
00:37:15.880 --> 00:37:20.199
described earlier. But you'd never know
it by looking at it, because you

445
00:37:20.440 --> 00:37:23.639
only had terrain features to follow.
So what do I do as a tactician.

446
00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:27.960
The very first thing I do when
I hit the ground down there after

447
00:37:28.000 --> 00:37:31.880
I meet everybody, I go looking
for our target sights. And I remembered

448
00:37:31.960 --> 00:37:36.840
from where I was before, and
I remembered that big tree. And I

449
00:37:36.920 --> 00:37:40.880
said, surely I can find that
big tree. And I looked all over

450
00:37:40.920 --> 00:37:45.920
the compound, couldn't find it anywhere. Finally, i've up and down the

451
00:37:45.039 --> 00:37:51.400
road. It must have died because
of all the fragments. So I saw

452
00:37:52.760 --> 00:37:57.599
a table full of rangers and their
wives were sitting inside a lobby number three,

453
00:37:58.199 --> 00:38:00.400
and I said, well, let
me go join them, have a

454
00:38:00.400 --> 00:38:04.880
beer, relax. I go walking
in the lobby and as soon as I

455
00:38:04.920 --> 00:38:08.920
cleared the entrance, there's that tree. They had built the lobby around the

456
00:38:08.960 --> 00:38:15.960
tree. And it was very surreal
because I'm in there, I'm looking.

457
00:38:15.960 --> 00:38:19.840
I'm like, holy cow, there
it is. And you could see the

458
00:38:19.840 --> 00:38:24.079
fragment marks on the side of the
tree that were healed over, and they

459
00:38:24.119 --> 00:38:30.639
were kind of black marks. And
it was to make it more bizarre,

460
00:38:30.320 --> 00:38:35.800
as they had like a bunch of
Christmas decorations in the tree and everything,

461
00:38:35.840 --> 00:38:42.440
because it was right before Christmas,
and right where that gun was, right

462
00:38:42.480 --> 00:38:45.679
where that guy lost his life,
there was little girl rolling around on the

463
00:38:45.760 --> 00:38:50.679
floor. They're just having fun,
maybe three or four years old or whatever,

464
00:38:51.159 --> 00:38:57.159
and right in front of her then
was the registration desk for signing into

465
00:38:57.159 --> 00:39:01.599
the hotel. And I'm just looking
at that thinking, I am the only

466
00:39:01.679 --> 00:39:07.800
one here that knows what happened here, because it's very clear to me that

467
00:39:07.880 --> 00:39:14.400
nobody in that resort knew what level
of violence occurred back in eighty nine.

468
00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:19.760
So I'm not going blabbing about this, but I did tell some of my

469
00:39:19.840 --> 00:39:22.039
arranger friends. I said, you
are you're not going to believe this,

470
00:39:22.199 --> 00:39:27.280
but you know, Comma and I
took and I showed them all that,

471
00:39:27.519 --> 00:39:30.800
and I actually got pictures of me
stand in front of a tree and everything,

472
00:39:30.280 --> 00:39:37.840
and it's just a very, very
the word i'd use, surreal experience.

473
00:39:37.400 --> 00:39:42.320
But then again too, you know, people say, well, don't

474
00:39:42.320 --> 00:39:45.679
you feel bad about, you know, killing that guy? Well, this,

475
00:39:45.840 --> 00:39:50.000
these sort of things happen in war, they do. And I think

476
00:39:50.039 --> 00:39:58.079
that this guy had was defending his
country and we were defending ours, and

477
00:39:58.159 --> 00:40:01.039
it was a fair fight. There's
a fire exchange on both sides. So

478
00:40:01.320 --> 00:40:05.039
now do I carry any golt for
that, not that I'm aware of.

479
00:40:05.320 --> 00:40:07.559
This is just the things that happened. This is what we sign up for,

480
00:40:07.880 --> 00:40:10.840
and this is what we do.
In just a moment, retired US

481
00:40:10.880 --> 00:40:15.440
Air Force Chief Master's Sergeant Bill Walter
takes us into his service in the Gulf

482
00:40:15.480 --> 00:40:22.320
War, Somalia and Bosnia. I'm
Greg Corumbas and this is Veterans Chronicles.

483
00:40:23.880 --> 00:40:29.119
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg
Corumbas. Our guest in this edition has

484
00:40:29.159 --> 00:40:34.159
retired US Air Force Chief Master Sergeant
Bill Walter. Just a few months after

485
00:40:34.199 --> 00:40:38.360
the major combat activity in Panama,
America was once again bracing for war,

486
00:40:39.079 --> 00:40:44.800
this time in the Persian Gulf,
following I racks invasion of Kuwait in early

487
00:40:44.840 --> 00:40:49.880
August of nineteen ninety. And that's
where Walter picks up his story. Yeah,

488
00:40:49.920 --> 00:40:52.400
we had just got from Panama,
like only for a couple of months.

489
00:40:52.400 --> 00:40:55.360
It's like we were all busy through
the eighties. I mean, we

490
00:40:55.559 --> 00:41:01.679
never were home. So this was
kind of a surprise because we thought when

491
00:41:01.719 --> 00:41:07.519
the when when the balloon went up
so to speak in August and then we

492
00:41:07.679 --> 00:41:13.639
deployed in September. We thought we
weren't going to go because this really isn't

493
00:41:14.199 --> 00:41:20.000
a special operations mission. This is
something that the fighters, those F one

494
00:41:20.119 --> 00:41:24.519
seventeens that dropped their bombs in uh
in Rio Hoto, which really was kind

495
00:41:24.519 --> 00:41:28.519
of out of place. Well,
this was their game. This is the

496
00:41:28.639 --> 00:41:31.159
stuff that they do, and this
is the stuff they're good at. Uh.

497
00:41:31.679 --> 00:41:37.360
We are not good at radar threat
environments. We're not. We're still

498
00:41:37.400 --> 00:41:40.519
a C one thirty, so you
really got to be kind of careful.

499
00:41:40.639 --> 00:41:49.360
So uh. Nevertheless, we were
deployed as rear echelon security for the bases

500
00:41:49.440 --> 00:41:53.000
over there. That's what it was
supposed to be. Turns out that through

501
00:41:53.119 --> 00:41:58.760
the time that I was there,
uh during Desert Shield, which is some

502
00:41:58.840 --> 00:42:05.760
of the most miserable conditions that anybody
could ever imagine. I named the rats

503
00:42:05.800 --> 00:42:08.119
in our compound. My favorite one
was Big Red. I tried to kill

504
00:42:08.199 --> 00:42:12.400
Big Red and never got them.
But I can tell you this, Big

505
00:42:12.440 --> 00:42:17.519
Red wouldn't even eat the number two
MRI corn beef hash. Big Red says,

506
00:42:17.599 --> 00:42:22.880
oh now, I ain't taking that. So by and large, we

507
00:42:23.000 --> 00:42:27.920
held together pretty good as a squadron
because we're all in the same situation.

508
00:42:28.199 --> 00:42:32.679
Everybody supported everybody else. We had
a rotation schedule that brought people back home

509
00:42:32.760 --> 00:42:40.119
for training, so we took advantage
of that. But in the end we

510
00:42:40.920 --> 00:42:45.039
put a lot of effort in.
Once the balloon went up and the war

511
00:42:45.280 --> 00:42:51.159
kicked off, our crews put in
a great effort under great, how can

512
00:42:51.239 --> 00:42:55.400
I say, under very challenging situations. We almost lost two airplanes on one

513
00:42:55.480 --> 00:43:02.880
night due to radar threats, but
thankfully they both escaped. And then January

514
00:43:04.000 --> 00:43:07.719
thirty first, on the day of
or the second day of the Battle of

515
00:43:07.800 --> 00:43:15.159
Kafji, we lost an airplane and
all fourteen crewmen. My old roommate was

516
00:43:15.280 --> 00:43:19.599
on there, Tim Harrison Barry Clark, who was my gunner. I was

517
00:43:19.599 --> 00:43:23.639
a league gun during Rio Hato and
he was my twenty millimeter gunner during just

518
00:43:23.920 --> 00:43:30.000
cause Paul Weaver the pilot. Everybody
knew everybody because, like I say,

519
00:43:30.920 --> 00:43:36.199
we're all joyfully inbred in the gunship
community. Everybody knows everybody because we stick

520
00:43:36.239 --> 00:43:40.960
around forever. So it's a very
tragic event. Again, it was these

521
00:43:40.960 --> 00:43:45.880
sort of things happen in war.
We understand that, but they're never really

522
00:43:45.880 --> 00:43:52.280
easy to digest, and every year
we still do a memorial for them,

523
00:43:52.159 --> 00:43:58.199
as well as all the crews we
lost in Vietnam, and also Jockey Won

524
00:43:58.320 --> 00:44:04.239
four which was lost in Somalia.
So very very much a sense of pride

525
00:44:04.880 --> 00:44:09.599
that you can honor your friends mentioned
Jockey one four that's connected to the mission

526
00:44:09.639 --> 00:44:14.039
in Somalia. Tell me a little
bit about where you were and what you

527
00:44:14.079 --> 00:44:20.480
were doing in that situation. I
first deployed to Somalia in October of eighty

528
00:44:20.519 --> 00:44:23.119
three, and just to back up
a little bit on that, I get

529
00:44:23.159 --> 00:44:29.440
the question all the time, why
weren't gunships in Somalia's supporting task Force Ranger,

530
00:44:29.880 --> 00:44:34.079
And I got the easy answer for
you, because we were blocked out

531
00:44:34.079 --> 00:44:38.840
by General Horror, and General Horror
was the sent Com Commander, Central Command

532
00:44:38.880 --> 00:44:45.360
commander at the time. And the
general consensus all the way through the political

533
00:44:45.440 --> 00:44:51.840
aspect of A two is that we
had been there in June and July of

534
00:44:51.880 --> 00:44:57.400
the same year and shot up Id's
infrastructure. And this is what the planners

535
00:44:57.440 --> 00:45:04.039
and the UN is not very good
at planning things. It's evident to me.

536
00:45:04.400 --> 00:45:08.679
So we're there, we shoot up
his infrastructure because they thought, well,

537
00:45:08.679 --> 00:45:13.320
as soon as we shoot up his
infrastructures, his tanks, his munition

538
00:45:13.400 --> 00:45:16.239
supply yards. It's worth that.
He'll just give up. No, no,

539
00:45:16.400 --> 00:45:21.119
he's not going to give up.
He went underground. So that's what

540
00:45:21.320 --> 00:45:30.239
prompted the deployment or the saddling up
of Task Force Ranger, which at that

541
00:45:30.360 --> 00:45:37.639
time the exercise is called Crafty Caper. Okay, we played in and trained

542
00:45:37.679 --> 00:45:39.800
with Task Force Ranger. I'll just
use that term because it's easier and em

543
00:45:39.840 --> 00:45:45.599
pretty can follow. We played in
with them for during the dress rehearsals pre

544
00:45:45.719 --> 00:45:50.679
deployment training, but then we got
yanked out at the last minute. So

545
00:45:50.719 --> 00:45:54.480
instead of going to Somalia, guess
what, I got sent to Bosnia.

546
00:45:54.559 --> 00:46:00.280
And we were working out of out
of Brindisi, Italy, flying missions over

547
00:46:00.400 --> 00:46:05.400
Bosnia. Kind of the same kind
of missions that we were doing in Panama,

548
00:46:05.440 --> 00:46:08.559
the security missions, but it was
actually supposed to be for close air

549
00:46:08.639 --> 00:46:15.519
support for the UN forces. Pretty
bad threat environment as well. Well.

550
00:46:15.119 --> 00:46:20.599
One day we get this. One
of our sensor operators comes out of the

551
00:46:20.920 --> 00:46:24.639
command centers. Pack up, boys, We're going to Somalia. What happened

552
00:46:24.639 --> 00:46:29.760
to Somalia? Well, the Rangers
got little trouble, so we redeployed to

553
00:46:29.920 --> 00:46:37.639
Somalia. It was the seventh or
eighth of October that we got there and

554
00:46:37.760 --> 00:46:45.079
actually fired on to announce our return. The Somalis were not particularly affectionate with

555
00:46:45.159 --> 00:46:52.199
us. They didn't like us so
especially I did right away when we started

556
00:46:52.199 --> 00:46:57.719
firing on them, firing on intersection. Micrew fired on an intersection road intersection

557
00:46:58.000 --> 00:47:01.280
next to this place called a cigarette
factory. This is one of IDD's main

558
00:47:01.400 --> 00:47:08.320
bivouax was all his people that there
were there as his gorillas. So another

559
00:47:08.360 --> 00:47:15.559
crew fired on target down by radio
Mugdishu right after we finished firing. The

560
00:47:15.639 --> 00:47:20.599
next morning, Ided calls for a
ceasefire because he knew better, he knew

561
00:47:20.639 --> 00:47:23.679
that we were going to come back
with a vengeance. We also could not

562
00:47:23.800 --> 00:47:30.280
fire on any anything, any structure
or facility or anything because we didn't know

563
00:47:30.320 --> 00:47:35.679
where our durant was and we might
wind up injuring or killing Durant if we

564
00:47:35.960 --> 00:47:40.719
target anything. So from that point
on it was like just pure, pure

565
00:47:40.880 --> 00:47:46.280
boredom. We flew over there every
night, and they wanted twenty four hour

566
00:47:46.360 --> 00:47:51.679
coverage, but we only had four
crews and four airplanes, and we're bringing

567
00:47:51.719 --> 00:47:54.920
over a fifth crew as a backup. But you can't fly twenty four hours

568
00:47:54.920 --> 00:47:59.719
a day. My crew flew like
two hundred sixty hours and forty five days

569
00:47:59.719 --> 00:48:04.000
were like walking zombies. So that's
a lot of time in the air.

570
00:48:04.039 --> 00:48:08.239
It doesn't sound like a lot of
but the flight environment, especially unpressurreized like

571
00:48:08.360 --> 00:48:14.159
that, will take a lot of
audio, believe me. I rotated out

572
00:48:14.599 --> 00:48:22.079
in December, right before Christmas,
and the crews that came in replaced us

573
00:48:22.519 --> 00:48:25.800
were there. They were supposed to
run through the end of March and doing

574
00:48:25.840 --> 00:48:32.679
the same mission. Nobody shot at
anything basically loose overhead surveillance, turning jet

575
00:48:32.679 --> 00:48:37.840
fuel into noise, because all the
people by that time, the Task Wars

576
00:48:37.920 --> 00:48:40.679
is long gone, the rangers were
long gone. It was Tenth Mountain,

577
00:48:40.840 --> 00:48:45.920
and they wanted us there because they'd
like to hear those engines because whenever those

578
00:48:45.920 --> 00:48:51.199
engines sounds are up there, the
Somalis think that we got them. Well

579
00:48:51.519 --> 00:48:57.400
yeah, now not with the u
N. So in any case, things

580
00:48:57.440 --> 00:49:01.079
got really fast and loose, and
we wound up having an accident with Jockuen

581
00:49:01.159 --> 00:49:07.559
four on the fourteenth of March ninety
four, and one of my best friends

582
00:49:07.639 --> 00:49:14.719
was killed bomby Daniel and it was
just a horrible accident. That things.

583
00:49:14.920 --> 00:49:20.360
Guys got complacent, and that's what
happens when you get a mission with no

584
00:49:20.519 --> 00:49:24.400
real direction. You're just there and
you know you're there. And I can't

585
00:49:24.400 --> 00:49:29.079
blame them, it's just the way
things fall out. When you're dealing with

586
00:49:29.119 --> 00:49:34.320
explosives every day, you can't get
complacent. Well, Bill, we've talked

587
00:49:34.320 --> 00:49:38.440
about some of the most excellent execution
of the American military, especially through the

588
00:49:38.440 --> 00:49:42.800
special operations of the Air Force that
you've been a part of on a number

589
00:49:42.800 --> 00:49:47.480
of occasions. We've also talked about
the tragic loss of American heroes, both

590
00:49:47.559 --> 00:49:53.079
in the Gulf and with Jockey one
four, and so I know there's more

591
00:49:53.280 --> 00:49:58.360
we could discuss, but what we've
covered today I think helps to inform folks

592
00:49:58.400 --> 00:50:01.639
a lot about Air Force special opera
rations, the AC one thirty in particular.

593
00:50:02.239 --> 00:50:06.480
And I can't thank you enough for
your time and especially for your many

594
00:50:06.519 --> 00:50:08.320
years of great service to our country. So thank you very much for being

595
00:50:08.320 --> 00:50:12.800
here. Thank you. Sir.
Bill Walter is a retired US Air Force

596
00:50:12.920 --> 00:50:15.920
Chief Master Sergeant. He served as
an AC one thirty gun ship gunner,

597
00:50:16.280 --> 00:50:22.039
was part of Operation Eagle Claw,
also highly involved in Operation Just Cause in

598
00:50:22.079 --> 00:50:25.599
Panama, specifically the seizure of the
Rio Jato Airfield. He also served in

599
00:50:25.639 --> 00:50:30.960
operations in Granada, El Salvador,
Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Somalia and

600
00:50:31.159 --> 00:50:46.719
Bosnia. I'm Greg Corumbus. This
is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is

601
00:50:46.719 --> 00:50:52.320
Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening
to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the

602
00:50:52.360 --> 00:50:58.599
American Veterans Center. For more information, please visit American Veterans Center dot org.

603
00:50:59.159 --> 00:51:02.079
You can also follow the American Veterans
Center on Facebook and on Twitter.

604
00:51:02.280 --> 00:51:08.480
We're at AVC update. Subscribe to
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605
00:51:08.599 --> 00:51:14.400
oral histories and special features, and
of course, please subscribe to the Veterans

606
00:51:14.440 --> 00:51:19.880
Chronicles podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and please

607
00:51:19.960 --> 00:51:22.360
join us next time for Veterans Chronicles