WASHINGTON -- Shortly after 8: 45 p.m. Saturday in the Balkans, a secretive search-and-rescue team based with U.S. forces in Bosnia received an urgent phone call: An F-117A stealth fighter, the premier attack plane in America's arsenal, was down in Yugoslavia. The fate of the Air Force pilot was unknown.
Within minutes, a nighttime recovery mission was under way, tapping the talents of an elite special operations team that stands poised to pluck downed and injured pilots from stormy seas or from behind enemy lines.
Nearly 5,000 miles away in Washington, the national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, broke the news to President Clinton at the White House. "Keep me informed," Clinton responded grimly, according to a White House aide.
For the next seven hours, Berger, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, waited anxiously and fielded dozens of phone calls from Gen. Wesley K. Clark, NATO's military commander in Brussels, Belgium, updating them on the situation.
There were emotional highs and lows. Pentagon aides cheered with joy when it was reported the pilot had been saved, only to learn it was a false report. About 7: 30 p.m. Eastern time, or 1: 30 a.m. in Yugoslavia, tension rose as CNN reported that Belgrade had launched a manhunt for the downed pilot.
At 9: 35 p.m. EST, three specially equipped Air Force MH-60G Pave Hawk and MH-53J Pave Low helicopters, skimming over treetops at more than 150 mph, swooped in to snatch the pilot from his hiding place.
Seventeen minutes later, with the might of the allied air operation covering its flight, the rescue team crossed back into Bosnian airspace.
The pilot, a field-grade officer, had suffered bruises and a battered kneecap in the ejection but was otherwise well and wants to return to duty as soon as possible.
He parachuted to earth more than 10 miles west of where his $43 million plane had crashed, 35 miles northwest of Belgrade. The Pentagon has not said what caused the plane to go down.
Although the area around the rescue site was teeming with heavily armed Yugoslav troops, the rescue mission took no enemy fire.
In Washington, Berger alerted Clinton, who expressed relief. At the Pentagon, spokesman Kenneth Bacon confirmed the pilot's safe return, but declined to disclose details, cautioning that NATO may need to rescue other pilots and did not want to give away its extraction secrets to Yugoslavia.
The outlines of the most perilous pilot rescue since Capt. Scott F. O'Grady was snared by Marines six days after a Serbian missile felled his F-16 fighter jet over Bosnia in June 1995, emerged yesterday in interviews with more than a dozen military officials in Washington and Europe.
Search-and-rescue teams are an integral part of any U.S. combat operation around the world. As the United States engages in strategically murkier missions in places like the Balkans, Haiti and Somalia, special operations forces are playing a more prominent role.
Another reason for the increased prominence of search-and-rescue teams is that Shelton is former head of the military's commandos and Cohen was instrumental as a senator in creating the Pentagon's Special Operations Command.
The Air Force rescuers undergo 18 months of intensive sea, air and land rescue training, with an emphasis on survival techniques. About 15 percent of the applicants make the cut. There are about 400 search-and-rescue specialists in the Air Force or Air Force reserves. They are among the troops most heavily in demand in today's military.
While Saturday's rescue was largely an Air Force affair, members of other branches of the services and officers from other NATO nations helped, from flying air cover to providing intelligence on the ground.
Pentagon aides knew within an hour after the plane was reported missing that the pilot was alive. As part of their survival kit, pilots carry emergency beacons. Aviators also carry special flares that can emit smoke for daytime rescue and infrared signals at night that can be seen by rescue crews with night-vision goggles.
"During all of this, the rule we follow is, say nothing about this," a senior Pentagon official said. "The immediate concern is getting the pilot back. We don't want to alert the other side we're even looking. That's why we don't even announce a plane is down until we know the fate of the pilot."
But at an undisclosed base in Bosnia and at the NATO air command center in Vicenza, Italy, officials were scrambling reconnaissance aircraft to home in on the pilot's beacon.
Officials would not disclose what specifically happened next in Saturday's rescue. But once searchers identify the pilot's location, they try to make voice contact with him using an emergency transmitter. Pilots must be wary of enemy troops that could be intercepting the messages.
Pub Date: 3/29/99