While the video quality isn’t great, this is part of the HUD / VTR tape taken by Emmitt ‘ET’ Tullia as he ‘dodged’ at least six SAMs that had locked onto his aircraft during ‘Package Q’, the first daylight raid on Baghdad, on 19 January 1991. ‘Package Q’ was the largest single strike mission of the war, and likely the single largest F-16 strike package ever flown into combat.
Sadly the Lucky Devils, flying Block 30 F-16C’s deployed from Torrejon AB, Spain, lost two aircraft to SAMs that day with both of the pilots, Mike ‘Cujo’ Roberts flying 87-0228 and Jeff ‘Tico’ Tice in 87-0257 being captured and held as POW’s.
Another note to this video from Mick Bretz, another of our crew chiefs: “Maj. Emmet “ET” Tulla came back squaking code 1. After walking around the jet, he changed it to code 2 (In my mind after what he went through should have been a code 3). His entire Chaff/Flare modules were full!!! They never fired off, so all that manuvering was w/out counter measures. Some good flying!!!”
__For more information about the Lucky Devils and the Package Q mission, I invite you to visit the Lucky Devils in the Gulf War at: **http://www.lucky-devils.net/**__ 3.7 million pounds of ordinance, 1303 sorties, 42 days, 24 aircraft. The ‘Forgotten 1000’.
Mike Kopack
401st TFW(P) / 614th TFS F-16C-30 by Mike Kopack Sr.
That’s what it’s all about, boys and girls. Every time we build one of our ‘models,’ keep in mind the trials and hardships those brave souls of our armed forces go through in piloting those aircraft.
Unfortunately, they don’t get a chance for a stiff drink when they get back. More than likely, they get another sortie.
When I was growing up, my heros weren’t baseball players, they were people with names like Stanford-Tuck, Bader and Malan, Zemke and Gabreski, Olds and Ritchie… I’d always wondered what they must have been like all of those year ago… While working with the Lucky Devils pilots back in the Gulf, I found out.
But it wasn’t just the pilots, Lt General Bruce ‘Orville’ Wright (then the Lucky Devils CO) put it best when he said: “I remember sixteen crew chiefs who stood in the open on the Doha ramp the morning of 17 January 1991, in the middle of an “Alarm Red,” who refused to don their chem gear or move until “their” jets and pilots taxied; who looked straight north at a very likely Scud missile pointed directly at them – I will never, never forget them and wish I could shake every hand and hug every neck right now.”
Mike Kopack
PS - I remember knowing that we continued to stand out on that ramp on the 17th, not only until after the aircraft had launched, but until every one of them had returned. Knowing that we’d still be standing there now if we’d had to.
