[Newspoetry] Bombs Over Belgrade-Misssles Over Macomb?

[Mike Lehman]

Interesting reading, FYI.

I can also report that B-2 Stealth bombers have been flying daily
missions to Yugoslavia from Missouri, yes, thats right, Missouri, the
"Show Me State", except they only showed you the first time they did it
and now hope you won't remember that Whiteman AFB, the home of the
509th, the same unit that was responsible for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is
now bombing people on a daily basis.  Could be worse, they could be
using one of...

Those.....let's not go there.

But remember that they're only six hours away in Missouri and it takes a
B-2 longer than that to get to Belgrade.

Letters to the Editor: 4/26/99  Macomb, IL Newspaper

Unusual maneuvers

It's not everyday that you see four fighter jets in a dogfight above a
populated town, but that is exactly what I witnessed as I was walking
into
the library at Western Illinois University last Wednesday morning around

10:15 a.m.

I have been attending Western for four years now, and I have lived in
Burlington for most of my 27 years, and I have never seen military
aircraft
in dogfight maneuvers.

This morning as I approached the library I heard the roar of a jet in
the
sky, and thought it unusually loud since the only jet I could see was a
commercial airliner cruising at a standard high altitude. I then looked
behind me and saw two rockets in the sky.

At first I couldn't understand what I was seeing, but the long climbing
contrails of white exhaust were unmistakable. After I covered the sun
with
my hand, and let my eyes adjust I could even see the bright glow of the
rocket's thrusters. I wondered to myself if these were the source of the

loud roar, and that is when I saw three or four fighter aircraft. They
were
fairly low to the ground, and they appeared to be F-15 Strike Eagles.

Just as I identified what I was seeing, the aircraft I was looking at
fired
three more missiles in quick succession. I wondered to myself if they
might
just be flares instead of missiles. But by their contrails I could tell
they
were not. Flares produce a much less pronounced contrail of gases, and
their
general trajectory arcs downward and away from the aircraft. That is
their
purpose after all, to lead away heat-seeking missiles.

But these contrails were a straight diagonal incline that was the same
as to
the aircraft's angle of attack. It also had a slight spiral to it,
something
a flare cannot do. Then, just as quickly as the fighters appeared over
the
skies of Macomb, they left.

What strikes me as newsworthy about this incident is that the aircraft
were
so low, over a populated area, had commercial traffic directly overhead,
and
they were firing live missiles. Now I sincerely doubt that the missiles
had
warheads on them, but the aircraft did indeed fire at least five
missiles
during their brief maneuver.

The amount of time they spent over Macomb also struck me as odd, they
were
only there for a few minutes. They came, engaged in several small radius

turns, fired several missiles, and left. I might be able to see it as
some
sort of training exercise for possible deployment in Kosovo. Therefore,
it
could be something that locals might be interested to know, that either
the
Air Force or the Air National Guard are training pilots in our own
backyard
for bombing missions in Kosovo.
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