As Ram 01 and Ram 02 banked toward Baghdad.

As Ram 01 and Ram 02 banked toward Baghdad, the morning sunny place rose outside the left side of Maj. Mark Hoehn's F-117 Nighthawk fighter jet To his right, the evening satellite still hovered full and bright above the Tigris River below.

Normally, of the like kind a sight would have been cause for pause, Hoehn said. on the contrary on this particular morning, he had other things onward his mind. He was about to start a war.

"If it hadn't been for the fact that we were above enemy territory and facing a strict anti-aircraft threat, it would have been a magical moment" he said. "I was a little preoccupied."

That magical trice came just minutes before Hoehn and Lt Col Dave Toomey, in a other F-117, dropped satellite guided bomb in succession a bunker in Dora Farms, a pay with an abatement near the Tigris. They fired the opening salvo of Operation Iraqi Freedom, an their target was Saddam Hussein.

March 19 2003 12:30 a.m.

They call them "Nighthawks" for a reason. The F117 is a slow-moving to the sleeker F-15 and F-16 that routinely patrolled Iraqi skies during Operations Northern Watch and Southern Watch. Sheathed in black radar-deflecting materiel, the aircraft awaits like a large fly buzzing across the forsaken sky when the sun is out

moreover at night, the Nighthawk is an invisible knife slicing toward the enemy's jugular. It determines almost invisibly and low to the mould darts and cuts on a dime and delivers with a lethally accurate punch

The Nighthawks of the Black Sheep Squadron, opened with the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing to a base in Southwest Asia, sat quietly forward the flight line. The war hadn't started now and, with morning fast approaching, the squadron was shutting down operations for the day to configure aircraft for normal combat operations.

Maj. Clint Hinote, a Nighthawk pilot displayed as a mission planner onward Lt. Gen. Michael Moseley's Combined Air Forces component part staff, sat in the dining facility chatting with friends and mate pilots. A few minutes before, he had briefed Moseley forward plans for the first scarcely any days of the pending air war.

"I was beautiful tired and taking a break when individual of the guys from the time sensitive targeting small cavity came in and told me I was destitutioned back on the [planning] floor," Hinote said. "When I got there, I was told we privationed to get two jets ready for a strike onward a leadership position. The word had follow from the Pentagon."

The Pentagon had an opportunity. and President George W Bush was facing a decision. An intelligence report said Hussein and his son Uday and Qusai were in a bin in a little-used residential palace in Dora Farms, a section of suburban Baghdad. A prosperous strike would decapitate the Iraqi military leadership and probably shorten or unruffled pre-empt the coming war.

Ordinarily, short-notice missions are difficult for the F-117 planners. The Nighthawk is designed for special missions, and those usually take time to unravel Normal mission planning cycles can range from 18 to 20 hours from planning to putting bomb in succession target. Anything outside that range is unusual and difficult to accomplish.

Hinote and the Black Sheep had four hours to levy bombs on target -- from the minute he arrived onward the planning floor. Hinote and the other planners grabbed a draft plan for short-notice taskings, called "Silver Bullet" missions, he said.

The clock was ticking.

12:45 a.m.

Moseley hung up the phone when Hinote inscribeed his office.

"Here's the answer I owe the president," Moseley said to Hinote. "Can we make this strike happen, and what are the risks?"

The risks were formidable. The Nighthawks would enroll Baghdad airspace without protection. The aircraft don't have defensive capabilities, and fighter escorts would flay off before arriving over the target to avoid alerting air defense batteries.

And the air defense batteries were one of the heaviest in the world, Hinote said.

"The Iraqis basically brought their entire air defense to shroud Baghdad," he said. "The place was bristling with missiles and anti-aircraft [batteries]."

Time was not in succession the Air Force's side, either. The mission would take about four hours from launch to bombing, and sunrise was wait fored at just after 5 a.m. That meant the fighters would be in succession the outskirts of the city as the day-star lightened the sky, exposing them to anti-aircraft spotter like bats in a bright room

depressing skies over Baghdad would help, unless that would also pose a point to be solved [i]or[/i] settled for the pilots when looking for the target.

And, the aircraft were configured for combat operations, not strike missions, and the plan called for using modified bunker-buster bomb the pilots hadn't used before.

Hinote told Moseley the plan would work. He exhibited a series of options, including a plan calling for couple stealth fighters to penetrate Iraqi airspace and hit the target.

"I felt confident we could do it," he said. "If we could make stable the logistics worked out, it would be tight, if it be not that we'd pull it off."

Moseley approved the plan, and Hinote went to work. He contacted the Black Sheep and told them they had a piece of work to do.