Heroism Repeated: Airman Makes Air Force History with a Second Silver Star

HEROISM REPEATED

Airman makes Air Force history with a second Silver Star

BY RANDY ROUGHTON

22 December 2014

Maj. Gen. Harry Polumbo presents Master Sgt. Thomas Case with his second Silver Star medal during a ceremony at Pope Army Airfield, N.C. Polumbo is the Ninth Air Force commander, and Case is a tactical air control party Airman with the 18th Air Support Operations Group. Case received the medal for gallantry in action during a 2009 deployment to Afghanistan. (U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Ryan Callaghan)

One thousand feet into a 5-kilometer hike toward a target deep in a dangerous part of Afghanistan’s Paktia Province, Master Sgt. Thomas Case realized something was wrong. “Sir, we’re not where we’re supposed to be,” the tactical air control party NCO told his special operations task force commander after he looked down at his wrist GPS.
It proved to be a fortunate wrong turn for Case and the assault force.
“It was kind of a godsend that we ended up taking the wrong path because we came to find out that all of the enemy combatants up there had heavy weaponry oriented toward the valley where we were going to be operating,” Case said. “It was kind of like we were supposed to walk up there and distract them from what was going on below, so to speak.”
Case, then assigned to the 17th Air Support Operations Squadron, now the 17th Special Tactics Squadron, at Fort Benning, Ga., was attached to an Army Ranger team on an overnight mission to capture a high-level target and destroy an insurgent training camp high in the mountains. Suddenly, shots began to rain down on them, and the platoon was soon pinned down by enemy fire from higher ground 15 meters from their position. Machine-gun fire impacted trees and ground within 2 feet of Case as he tried to determine the insurgents’ position to call in air support. However, the wires on his radio were severed in the attack, and Case couldn’t communicate with supporting aircraft that included an AC-130 gunship and F-15 Eagles.

Master Sgt. Thomas Case coordinates aerial command and control while deployed as part of a joint task force during Operation Enduring Freedom. Case, who received his second Silver Star medal Nov. 13, 2014, is a tactical air control party Airman with the 18th Air Support Operations Group at Pope Army Airfield, N.C. (U.S. Air Force photo)

For his actions on the June 16-17, 2009, mission, Case received the oak leaf cluster to the Silver Star in a ceremony at Pope Army Air Field, N.C., where he is now stationed as the operations superintendent for the 18th Air Support Operations Group.
In addition to becoming one of only three Airmen with two Silver Stars, Case also became the seventh military member since 9/11 to have that distinction, except for classified medals awarded to Navy SEALs. He is also the only TAC-P in the Air Force with a second Silver Star. Tech. Sgt. Ismael Villegas and Staff Sgt. Sean Harvell, the other two Airmen with two Silver Stars, were both combat controllers.
“As a young staff sergeant receiving (the Silver Star), I thought it was pretty cool, but you tend to think it’s about me,” Case said. “Then, as you get a little more mature and you realize you’ve been nominated for a second one that’s been approved by both the Air Force and the Army, you realize you really want this one to be more about the career field, and let the civilian population understand that it’s not just Marines and Soldiers. There are Airmen, too, who are fighting, sometimes right next to our Army brothers.”
Since his ceremony, Case has told and read his story countless times. He can close his eyes and take himself back to the darkness in the mountainous terrain of the Khost-Gardez Pass as the insurgents tried to close in on their position.
Once he realized his radio wires were damaged, Case held them together as he made the call to request immediate air support. However, the AC-130 needed a couple of minutes to get into position, and Case learned support was still five minutes away. As enemy fire landed within feet of Case and whirled past his head, he stood up to lay down suppressive fire with his M-4 rifle and led five friendly assault force enablers, who were tactical psychological operations, cultural support team and combat camera members, to move behind cover.
As the fire continued to land within feet of his position, Case again stood to make sure the AC-130 hit the correct target area. He then saw two enemy fighters armed with AK-47 assault rifles headed down the hill and firing at him and the ground force commander.
As the insurgents closed within 15 meters of Case and the ground force commander, the joint terminal attack controller stepped between them and his commander. Case then shot dead both insurgents, who turned out to be heavily trained foreign fighters, with his M-4.
“I didn’t think too much about it,” he said. “I was just trying to make sure our GFC could do his job and move his guys and know where his platoon leader was. I’d been around long enough to understand that the GFC is a pretty important guy, and it’s our job as JTACs to be attached to that guy at the hip to make sure he’s making sound decisions in regards to airpower.”

Maj. Gen. Harry Polumbo presented Master Sgt. Thomas Case with his second Silver Star medal during a ceremony at Pope Army Airfield, N.C. Case received the medal for gallantry in action during a 2009 deployment to Afghanistan. The Silver Star Medal is the U.S. militaryÕs third highest military decoration for valor. It is presented for gallantry in action against an enemy of the U.S. (U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Ryan Callaghan)

As the battle raged on, the enemy moved to higher terrain and threw grenades down the mountain slope at the platoon. One grenade exploded about 10 meters from Case, damaging his helmet and wounding two Rangers. Case directed six more “danger close” strikes, which means friendly forces are within range of being harmed by incoming ordnance, and then realized he needed to link with the lead element to see the entrenched enemy position.
With zero visibility because of dust and haze from the air strikes and still under enemy fire, Case climbed 50 meters up a 60-degree embankment to reach the fire team leader. Once there, he repaired his radio and directed four AC-130 strikes on three enemy combatants about 100 meters away. A few minutes later, two more insurgents flanked his position within 7 meters in a clump of trees. Case threw a grenade that killed one of them and shot the other insurgent dead.
The 2009 mission happened six years after Case received his first Silver Star for actions during the Global War on Terror between March 31 and April 5, 2003. He was a staff sergeant aligned with Company B, 3rd Ranger Battalion in Iraq, tasked with directing combat aircraft. The company had been receiving heavy-direct and small-arms fire, anti-aircraft cannon, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar and artillery fire. Case directed air strikes while firing his personal weapon at enemy within 30 meters of his position. At one point, Case controlled 14 aircraft and was responsible for more than 300 enemy casualties and the destruction of 29 tanks, three heavy cargo trucks, nine S-60 anti-mortars, 10 enemy boats and helped ensure the success and safety of 120 Army Rangers.
Maybe it’s at least partly due to the fact that 14 of his 16 deployments were in support of their missions, but Case has always felt a special bond with Army Rangers.
“I have a very soft spot in my heart for the Army Rangers,” he said. “We’re talking about guys who, in your off-duty time, you’re with. Your friends, wives and kids are together. You’re barbecuing together, you’re training together and you’re deploying together. So there is a bond there, and it goes beyond the color of your uniform or what your name tape says. I talk to a lot of those guys to this very day.”
Some of them were at his award ceremony at Polk Field, and one Ranger, the first sergeant on the Afghanistan mission, paid Case one of the highest compliments a JTAC can receive before he returned home from the deployment.
“‘Tom, I just want you to know that what you did on this rotation was really great, and we appreciate the fact that you were here with us. There’s not a Ranger here who can out-Ranger you, and you’re in the Air Force.’
“They’re always going to remind you that you are in the Air Force,” Case said, laughing. “But it was a really big compliment, and one of the biggest compliments I’ve ever gotten.”

Master Sgt. Thomas Case is the third Airman and first tactical air control party member since 9/11 to receive two Silver Stars. Case received the medal for gallantry in action during a 2009 deployment to Afghanistan. The Silver Star medal is the U.S. militaryÕs third highest military decoration for valor. It is presented for gallantry in action against an enemy of the U.S. (U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Ryan Callaghan)

A few days after receiving his second Silver Star, Case was back in his office, telling his story yet again. He was also spreading the lust for life he’s cultivated from experiences like the one in the Khost-Gardez Pass on his 16 deployments.
“I look at every day as a blessing,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I think it drives our first sergeant nuts here because I tell her that every day. Some days she asks me why I’m still smiling, and I say because it’s a blessing to be here. I don’t attribute that to any specific life-changing event. I honestly think that every day is a blessing. I like life.”

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Desert Storm 20 Years Later: Lessons from Vietnam Guided Commanders as They Planned Gulf War Strategy

Two decades ago, the United States fought a new kind of war, but commanders used lessons from an old one as inspiration. Mistakes from the Vietnam War guided commanders as they planned Operation Desert Storm, which began 20 years ago in January.
Unlike several competing command authorities like there were in Vietnam, Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander-in-chief of U.S. forces during Desert Storm, assigned air operations to one commander. As the joint force air component commander, retired Gen. Charles A. Horner was the architect of the air campaign that launched the Persian Gulf War.
 “If you aren’t part of the air campaign under Horner, you don’t fly,” General Schwarzkopf said to one of his commanders, according to the Gulf War Airpower Survey.
“I think the lessons that really came out in Desert Storm were the ones we’d been honing and altering in operations from the previous wars,” General Horner said. “In World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam, we did things wrong that we learned from, so in Desert Storm, we did a lot of things right.
“We learned bitter, bitter lessons in Vietnam that really paid off in Desert Storm. Our shared experiences in Vietnam [were] one of the reasons Schwarzkopf was so willing to let airpower rule the weight of that war. He wanted to get the job done with the least cost in human life on both sides.”
The U.S. military had 148 battle deaths and 145 non-combat deaths during Desert Storm, according to the 1991 Defense Almanac. Fourteen of 20 Airmen killed during the war were battle-related. The air war was crucial to the ground war that sealed the Iraqi army’s fate on Feb. 23 and ended 100 hours later with a ceasefire on Feb. 28. Coalition aircraft flew more than 65,000 sorties and dropped 88,500 bombs. The aerial bombardment “placed Iraq in a position of a tethered goat,” General Horner said after the war.
“Our loss rate overall in the Gulf War was lower than normal training,” he said. “We lost fewer airplanes in the Gulf War than we would’ve lost flying that number of sorties. It was amazing. One of the problems we had was we made something very difficult look very easy, so people get misconceptions about what it takes to pull something like that off.”
A United Nations-authorized coalition force, led by the United States and United Kingdom, began the first phase of Desert Storm on Jan. 16, 1991 after Iraq failed to meet a UN Security Council’s deadline to leave Kuwait by Jan. 15. Desert Shield began five days after Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990 when President George H.W. Bush ordered air and ground forces to Saudi Arabia. It became the largest American deployment since Vietnam. More than 30 other nations joined the coalition, and 18 other countries contributed with financial and humanitarian aid. The coalition built up its force in the Arabian Peninsula during the next six months.
The day General Horner received the call that eventually launched Desert Shield on Aug. 7, 1990, he and his F-16 Falcon were engaged in an air-to-air training mission near the North Carolina coast with two F-15 Eagles from Langley Air Force Base, Va.
General Horner, then commander of 9th Air Force and U.S. Central Command Air Forces at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., had expected to hear from General Schwarzkopf since Saddam Hussein moved 120,000 Iraqi troops into Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia several days earlier on Aug. 2. But once the call from the Federal Aviation Administration came for him to return to Shaw, he knew instantly what it meant. He was on the way to brief President Bush on possible military responses with General Schwarzkopf.
“We’d been following the invasion since it happened,” General Horner said. “In fact, I had the 363rd Tactical Fighter Wing at Shaw and the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing at Langley on alert for about a month to the point it was affecting their peacetime operations. My boss, Gen. Bob Russ, called me and said, ‘Chuck, you probably need to take them off alert. You’re affecting operations.’ I said I can’t. Suddenly, the invasion occurred, just like everybody was predicting.”
Even though the death toll was comparatively low in Desert Storm, it hit one of the largest Air Force Reserve organizations particularly hard months before hostilities began. On Aug. 28, nine Airmen in the 433rd Military Airlift Wing at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio died in a C-5 Galaxy crash at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Wing members wore black bands over their unit shoulder patches when their 68th Military Airlift Squadron was recalled to active duty the next day.
Long before the Gulf crisis began, the American military trained for an eventual showdown with Iraq, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union. A month earlier, a U.S. Central Command war game had a scenario of a “Country Orange” attacking Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from the north. When General Schwarzkopf accepted command of U.S. CENTCOM in November 1989, he told his military leaders since a war with Russia wasn’t likely, “we have to find a new enemy or go out of business,” General Horner said.
“He said he was concerned about Iraq because they came out of the Iran-Iraq War with a huge military, dead-broke and owing a lot of money,” General Horner said. “So he told us to think about that. So I had been thinking about it and in March, I’d gone to brief him about things like using the MM-104 Patriot for ballistic missile defense.
“I knew if we’d ever gotten into a ground war against Iraq, our Army would never know what they’d come up against until they came up against it. So what I wanted to do was to make sure they’d get all the air support they needed when they needed it and where they needed it, but they didn’t tie down the Air Force in anticipation. Those sorties could be out killing the enemy instead of sitting on the ground waiting on the Army to call. Schwarzkopf bought the idea immediately because he was very intelligent and easy to work with.”
When Desert Storm began, General Horner and his staff planned only the first two-and-a-half days of the war. He sent then Maj. Gen. Buster Glosson, his key air war planner, to each base so he could consider the input of Airmen fighting the war.
“We listened to what the captains and sergeants have to say because they’re the ones who have to exercise the war, and they know very well what’s going on,” General Horner said. “I always reserved the right to override them, but nonetheless I wanted to hear what they had to say.”
The air war caught Iraq by surprise, especially Hussein who told Dan Rather in a CBS interview days before the war: “The United States depends on the Air Force. The Air Force has never decided a war.” Then came the opening night of the war Hussein had called “the mother of all battles” when Lt. Gen. Larry L. “Puba” Henry launched unmanned target drones on all Iraqi sand sites in Baghdad and Bazra.
“The next day, they reported shooting down 49 enemy aircraft, and that was exactly the number of target drones we sent up,” General Horner said. “I was amazed – either it was blind luck or they were extremely good at collecting data. The same time they were shooting at these target drones, we had these anti-radiation missiles raining down on both Bazra and Baghdad. As a result, they rarely turned on their guidance radars. The reason was they knew if they turned on that guidance radar, they were going to get a missile.
“On the second night, the Iraqi air force was very reluctant to fly, other than trying to escape. So we went after their minds, as well as their physical capabilities, and it really paid off.”
The coalition organized for both Desert Shield and Desert Storm gave U.S. military services an opportunity to work closely with forces from other nations, as they would do a decade later during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. An Air Combat Command exercise called Blue Flag in the early 1980s was intended to train servicemembers who would deploy to Europe or Korea to augment the air operations center. General Horner insisted that his 9th Air Force units work closely with Army, Marine Corps and Navy contingents, “who we would actually be going to war with,” he said.
In addition to learning from Vietnam battle strategy, General Horner also sought help from the history of the Middle East. He took advantage of learning from history, and it served him well during Desert Storm.
 “The thing I used to worry about the most was what was I not doing that I should be doing,” General Horner said. “What mistakes am I making that may cost somebody’s life? That bedeviled me every minute of every day, so I did a lot of thinking, and I listened to a lot of people. I got some great help from Air Force and aviation historian Dr. Dick Hallion, and he used to send me boxes of books about wars in the Middle East. I read those books, and believe me, they helped my feeling of the region and my sense of what to do. You never know where you’re going to get information that’s going to pay off.
“That’s why I think every general ought to be a historian.”