Bowles views Desert Storm to be a career-defining event, having conducted 25 combat missions in ten weeks
Jim Bowles, a former US Air Force (USAF) B-52 Stratofortress Commander and Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) program analyst, deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Desert Storm in 1990. Senior Airman Benjamin Raughton, 2nd Bomb Wing, recalls his participation in the Gulf War 26 years ago in this article from a USAF news release.
“Pilot, we have a lock-on,” the B-52 Stratofortress electronic warfare officer called out in surprise.
Capt. Jim Bowles, a B-52 Stratofortress instructor pilot (IP) at the time, clenched his teeth and peered down to see an SA-6 surface-to-air missile launched in his way.
For most people, getting shot down by a missile over enemy territory isn’t a danger they expect to face, but for Bowles and his crew, it’s a possibility flying toward them in the black night of Iraqi skies.
Minutes flew by, each one seeming to last an eternity. Bowles took a deep breath and held it.
“This is it, this could be it,” he thought.
He was able to see the missile. He couldn’t see the jammer systems that were protecting him and his crew. The jamming worked flawlessly, sending the rocket on a different path. While supporting Operation Desert Storm in Iraq, Bowles narrowly dodged a rocket that night.
His training and family were continuously on his mind during the preparation and deployment.
Bowles, his wife, and their children had a family vacation and visited relatives before the deployment. He was obligated to phone and check in with his unit on Barksdale every afternoon at 2 p.m., and in the meantime, he was planning a duty station move to Castle Air Force Base, California.
His plans were thrown off by a phone call he received shortly after returning from vacation.
“It was about 11:30 at night and the phone rings,” he said. “My wife and I looked at each other and said, ‘oh no.’ I picked up the phone and was told to report to Barksdale.”
In December 1990, the situation in the Persian Gulf worsened.
“While I’m doing Christmas decorations, I’m also packing my bags for deployment to do combat operations,” he said. “It’s a unique experience when you think about peace on earth and goodwill toward men, and I may have to bring combat to my enemy.”
Bowles was sent to Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, for a two-week training exercise called Desert Flag after arriving at the airfield in January.
“The ramp was full of every type of aircraft,” he said. “Desert Flag was a Red Flag [exercise] on steroids. By Wednesday of the exercise, we saw aircraft leaving the base, and by Thursday, the airfield was a quarter empty.”
“Where’s everybody going? We all knew,” he said.
Bowles boarded a bus after the drill to receive a final round of immunization before heading to Saudi Arabia to perform combat operations against Saddam Hussein’s soldiers.
“While there was some apprehension about going into combat and the potential for not coming home, there was also a confidence because we knew we could do our mission,” Bowles said. “We’d trained together, and we’d do the jobs we were assigned to do.”
He said the first few sorties went off without a hitch. They went reasonably smoothly, and weapons were fired at strategic targets.
Bowles and his team would often fly “Taco Bell” missions, named after a 1980s advertising campaign.
“There were mine-breaching missions where we released our bomb-release lines just a few miles short of the Saudi Arabian-Kuwaiti border, and because of height and time of fall, those weapons would fall into the minefields that Saddam Hussein had sewn,” Bowles said. “We called those our Taco Bell runs because they were our runs for the border.”
Hussein dispatched three armored troops into the village of Khafji at one time. Bowles and his crew were just given a piece of paper with coordinates on it.
“At that time, Saddam’s armored columns were exposed and we laid down the fire on him with two aircraft full of Mk-82s and one aircraft full of cluster bombs,” Bowles said. “After we landed, we received a report saying we’d stopped them in their tracks.”
Throughout the countless combat missions, the B-52 Stratofortress consistently established itself as a deadly and unparalleled weapons delivery system to both allied and hostile troops.
“The B-52 has such a high capacity magazine that you can drop a very large number of munitions,” Bowles said. “We would get reports of enemy prisoners of war that surrendered because of the threat of B-52 attacks. They’d cross the Saudi border and surrender to the Saudis, surrender to our troops and even to our photographers because they didn’t want to experience the onslaught of the cluster bomb units we were carrying.”
Bowles views Desert Storm to be a career-defining event, having conducted 25 combat missions in ten weeks.
Photo by Senior Airman Benjamin Raughton / U.S. Air Force