Aviators recall thrilling 1st airstrikes against ISIS

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"It had already been an eventful deployment. The carrier George H.W. Bush had cruised alongside a Russian carrier in the Mediterranean in early 2014 as they forcibly annexed neighboring Crimea, then shot down a civilian airliner over Ukraine, all before the Americans' first port call.

Then it was on to the northern Persian Gulf, to provide security for Afghanistan's April presidential election. But things really ramped up one day in June, when members of the air wing returned to the carrier and realized something was different.

"While the higher-ups might have known what was going on, the JOs up here, we literally found out from CNN that we were headed to Iraq," an E-2C Hawkeye flight officer assigned to Carrier Airborne Command and Control Squadron 124, out of Norfolk, told an audience at the annual Tailhook Reunion Sept. 12 outside Reno, Nevada.

Mission planning began immediately and two days later, they were flying missions over Iraq against the brutal Islamic State militancy.

"We knew what we were planning was real, so that was really cool," she said to the audience of [how many] fellow carrier fliers. "It meant a lot of responsibility for us."

The E-2C NFO, a lieutenant, spoke on a panel with eight fellow junior officers about their combat experience, who asked not to be identified by name due to concerns about their personal safety; Militant leaders have continued to try to incite attacks against American troops at home.

The junior officers were featured as part of Tailhook's "Year of the Junior Officer" theme, sharing their successes and frustrations, including the ever-present peril of a nighttime carrier landing and the Hornet's lack of satellite communications equipment.

"As the former strike group commander from George H.W. Bush, prior to this deployment that you're going to hear about today, we had no idea what we would do," said Rear Adm. John Aquilino as he introduced the panel.

As the only American assets on station, the pilots and flight officers of Carrier Air Wing 8 were the first to fly into Iraq's air space, 45 days before other American or international assets joined in. ".....


 
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