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     Airfield. Kurth now set out as a single ship along a road going
     north from the airfield. Soon the smoke became so dense, he was
     forced to fly only a few feet off the ground in order to see,
     occasionally flying UNDE~ power lines, until he located 1st
     Battalion, 5th Marines, and then shortly, 3rd Tank Battalion and
     fst Battalion, ~th Marines. Ne then returned to his informal
     landing zone, wheedled fuel out of some -nearby Marine tanker
     trucks, and then led his wingman back through the obscuration
     where they delivered Hellfire missiles, rockets, and 20 mm rounds
 *   against tanks, armored vehicles, and bunkers. Task~Force Ripper
     seized its objective.

                        The tuckiest Harrier Pilot

        Captain JohnS.  "Vapor" Walsh, 28, is an AV-83 Harrier pilot
     with Marine Attack Squadron 542. At dawn on the second day of the
     ground ~ar, he launched as Major Dan "Salt" Peters' wingman from
     his base near Jubayl, Saudi Arabia on a close air support
     mission. They landed for refueling and rearming at Tannajib, an
     ARAMCO airfield and then also a forward Marine airfield, about 35
     miles south of the ~uwait border.

        Taking off on their second mission at 0905, the pair of
     Harriers was ordered to attack a column of T54/T55 tanks under
     the control of an FA-18D "fast FAC11. The tanks were moving into
     contact with the 2nd Marine Division about 10 miles south of Ali
     al Salem Airfield. There were thick clouds over the target, and
     Walsh became separated from his leader during the penetration.
     After breaking out underneath, he was rejoining his leader, when
     he was struck with a heat seeking surface to air missile in his
 *   right rear jet nozzle.

        "It was a big bang. All my warning lights came on, and the
     airplane began burning pretty good", he recalled later. In more
     normal circumstances, the proc~dure then would have been to eject
     immediately. Walsh stayed with his aircraft and headed it south
     with £~is engine temperature going "off the peg". Ne would try an
     emergency landing at al Jaber Airfield wh.ch had just been
     captured by Marines. As he got over the f~eld, his hydraulic
     controls froze, and the aircraft rolled over at 1,000 feet above
     the ground. Ne ejected upside down and was relieved to find his
     parachute "worked as advertised".

         He landed just to the west of the airfield in an area that
     was not yet completely secured. He `then hid in an Iraqi trench,
     which fortunately had just been abandoned. Shortly, a Humvee
     vehicle belonging to 1st Marine Division's Task Force Ripper,
     appeared through the smoke: This carried~him to Major General
     Mike Myatt's command post who ordered his UN-iN helicopter to
     take him south. He switched to a truck at Tannajib and~was back
     with his squadron by nightfall.

        In the meantime, his parent unit, Colonel John Bioty's Marine
     Aircraft Group 13 (Forward), fell on the attacking tanks, and
     helped clear the way north for the 2nd Marine Division. Four *  * -


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