3Check SixWingmen: They Have Your Back, and You Have Theirs

ON JANUARY 19, 1991, the president’s order came, and Operation Desert Shield suddenly became Operation Desert Storm. The skies over Baghdad lit up with antiaircraft artillery, and coalition forces launched missiles from sea and air against the city’s highest-value targets. The “mother of all battles” had begun.

Some twenty thousand feet overhead, Package Q, the single largest strike mission of the war and likely the single largest F-16 strike package ever flown into combat, was in flight.

During one particularly harrowing moment, Maj. Emmett “ET” Tullia was caught in an intense game of cat and mouse with ground-based missile systems. He was the mouse.

Surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) ...

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