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At the forefront of the Global War on Terror from the very start, the venerable F-14 Tomcat led the first manned air strikes on Afghanistan in October 2001 during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Flying from aircraft carriers cruising in the Northern Arabian Sea off the coast of Pakistan, naval aviators flew their Grumman fighter-bombers on six- to eight-hour missions in support of Special Forces and Northern Alliance fighters engaging the Taleban and al-Qaeda.
As explained by Tony Holmes in his book F-14 Tomcat units of Operation Enduring Freedom, aside from bombing airfields, SAM sites, troop barracks and terrorist training camps, F-14 squadrons also escorted C-17s that flew humanitarian airdrop missions over Afghanistan from night one of OEF. Seven million Afghanis were ‘at risk of loss of life as a result of the conditions inside Afghanistan’ Gen Tommy Franks told the Senate Armed Service, Committee in February 2002. The general also mentioned in his autobiography that he wanted the Afghan people to `know that we are not attacking them, but that our war is with al-Qaeda and the Taleban.’
Relief drops were the best way to win ‘hearts and minds’ in Afghanistan, so humanitarian aid was despatched via C-17s flying marathon 6500-mile missions from Ramstein AFB, in Germany. Aerial refueling en route, the Globemaster IIIs relied on F-14s to provide them with fighter protection while over enemy territory. Lt Cdr Will Pennington of VF-14 ‘Tophatters’ flew one of the first C-17 escort missions;
‘The two C-17s that we were escorting were dropping leaflets and food over northern Afghanistan. For some reason the transports scheduled to deliver food to the locals the night before had had to turn back because their escorts had not showed up. This annoyed Gen Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Bush administration, which had publicly stated that aid was being dropped on a daily basis. Just minutes before we left the ready room to man our jets, we got a call from CAG and my RIO went down to his office to talk with him. He was told that escorting C-17s was the most important thing that CVW-8 was going to do that day, and being a big deal, we weren’t to screw it up!
`Having briefed as a division of four jets, we launched into the night, got our gas en route and then split up into two sections. We went one way in search of our C-17s and the other two F-14s went off somewhere else to find theirs; we rendezvoused with the transports south of the Afghan border and headed in-country. We maintained a figure-eight pattern above them so as to remain in position as they did their stuff at medium to low altitude at barely 220 knots — we trained to fly a similar profile when escorting CSAR helicopters. There was no threat as we escorted them in, and we watched the transports release their payloads through our FLIR, before shepherding them out of harm’s way.
`In a moment of irony not lost on any of us, we then returned just a few minutes later to bomb a fixed target not 15 miles away from the C-17s’ drop zone! It almost felt like we were baiting them to crush them. Of course, our respective payloads were meant for different “customers”.’
F-14 Tomcat units of Operation Enduring Freedom is published by Osprey Publishing and is available to order here.
Photo credit: U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force
Military Aviation
