The True Story of Desert Storm “Top Gun” Pilot Steve Phillis (Memorial Day)

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories to show where America is the star and the American people. And send your stories to Our American Stories dot com. There’s some of our favorites up next, a story that comes to us from an Air Force fighter pilot and Top Gun graduate. Let’s take a listen.

My name is Brigadier General Jim Boots Demorest. I was a classmate at the United States Air Force Academy of God by the name of Captain Steve Phyllis. And I’m going to tell the story about Steve and his life and the heroic circumstances around his shootdown and untimely death on February fifteenth, nineteen ninety-one, during Operation Desert Storm. Steve was a miss Western kid, born and raised in Rock Island, Illinois. He was the oldest of five children and described by both his mom and his dad as Dobson’s strong-willed child. Early on in his life, his dad was in the Air Force. They had moved to Wyoming, and Steve thought his parents so oppressive that he decided to run away. So he packed all those earthly belongings at age four and went out the front door, and his parents washed him walk all the

way to the parade field.

He got underneath the bleachers and had packed a peanut butter jelly sandwich and lasted about six hours under the bleachers before coming back and realizing that perhaps his mother and father’s rules were not as ownerous as he originally thought. But as the oldest of five, he was a leader within the family. And, you know, we hear that a lot about the oldest children, but in Steve’s case, one of the examples that I think that kind of brings this out is that in Rock Island, Illinois, the family lived in a neighborhood full of children, and so there were constantly sports games going on outside. They would play street hockey and flag football and soccer, and as was often the case, the kids that were better athletes tried to put themselves all on the same team to compete against the kids that were not as athletic, and Steve was the kind of kid that would be almost always selected as a captain. And unlike most of his peers, Steve would pick all the kids that nobody else picked to be on his team, but he would take a few minutes before the start of a soccer game and coach them all up, and nine times out of ten, the less athletic kids, through Steve’s leadership and coaching, would come up on top of the neighborhood sports games.

And it was kind of a testament to the kind of guy he was.

He was very much an informal and a formal leader later in his life, but he he was an inspiring kind of guy, very quiet as a child, but kind of led by example and through action.

He was a high school football player.

He played in the marching band, but early on in his adult life he determined that there was something more for him out there, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. But as he approached his senior year in high school, it became evident to him that a future in the military would align with his organized, fastidious personality and also with the fact that Steve felt a calling to serve. He was an altar boy. He was a captain of whatever sport he was on, and so in late nineteen seventy-seven, he wrote a letter and applied to go to the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. And the letter that he wrote to his congressman is a classic because unlike a lot of others who wrote their congressman to talk about the free education and that, Steve’s letter to his congressman was very focused on the fact that he felt that it was his duty as an American citizen to serve in the military, and that the Air Force Academy would provide him with the greatest opportunity to serve. He also thought it might be neat to be a pilot, which he mentioned in his application, but it was much more about service and his obligation to his country than for his own personal game. So in the summer of nineteen seventy-eight, Steve shows up in Colorado Springs with fifteen hundred of his new friends to attend the United States Air Force Academy, and his parents made the trip that many parents do. They loaded up the family station wagon with all of Steve’s worldly possessions, the other four children, and they made the long drive from Rock Island, Illinois, to Colorado Springs. Were on a sunny, bright morning in June of nineteen seventy-eight, Steve was dropped off and in short order taught to march and marched off with a group of a dozen or so of his new classmates. So when he graduated from the Air Force Academy on June tewond of nineteen eighty-two, he was one of four hundred and fifty classmates off to undergraduate pilot training. And Steve went off to pilot training with one goal in mind, and that was to be fighter qualified and to fly the A ten Warthog as an Air Force fighter pilot, and his single-minded, focused, and determination drove him through the fifty-two-week pilot training program. He excelled academically. He was always extremely well-prepared. He was a cool character under pressure, and those things in the military aviation world translated to success. And so on assignment night in late nineteen eighty-three, Steve was fortunate enough to get his first choice, got assigned the A ten Warthog and was on his way to Alex, Louisiana, to Suan Airbase in the Republic of Korea. After being in Suan for a while, becoming upgrading to instructor pilot, it became clear to Steve that he wanted to excel in the A ten, and that means that he wanted to compete to attend the prestigious Air Forces Fighter Weapon School. Now, many may know the Weapon School as Top Gun from the Navy movie, but the Air Force Fighter Weapon School was more than just a place to do great flying. Steve got over two hundred hours of instruction and platform instruction to make him not only a great fighter pilot, but a great instructor. And he loved to teach, and he loved to learn

about the A ten.

And so, while at Suan, he was selected for and attended the prestigious Air Force Fighter Weapon School, where he graduated as a Distinguished Graduate, returning to Suwan Airbase to complete his two-year assignment in Korea.

And you’re listening to Brigadier General Jim Boots Demorrists tell the story of Captain Steve Phillis, and you’re learning about a profile in character and a profile of some of the men and women who serve this nation, and particularly the ones that go to our academies. And that’s at West Point, in Annapolis, and in Colorado. That’s the Air Force Academy, West Point, of course, the Army and the Navy in Annapolis, Maryland. When we come back, more of the story of Captain Steve Phillis. Here on Our American Stories. Here are Our American Stories. We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith, and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that need to be told. But we can’t do it without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love our stories in America like we do, please go to Our American Stories dot com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s Our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with Our American Stories and bring it to your General Jim Boots Demrist, telling the story of Captain Steve Phillis. Let’s pick up where we last left off.

Then it was time for another assignment, and Steve was lucky enough to get a third assignment to fly the A ten, this time in a much different environment as he was shipped from Korea to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. And Steve is cruising along like the rest of us until summer of nineteen ninety, when Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards roll south from Iraq into a little country that at that time none of us had heard of, called Kuwait, and Myrtle Beach was part of a quick reaction force at the time, such that as soon as armor came south into Kuwait, Myrtle Beach was put on recall and told to get ready to deploy. And Steve, as the weapons officer and tactical leader of the Panthers, who were designated to be the first squadron out the door within a few weeks of the invasion, uploaded on a C five and sent to Saudi Arabia, to a little air base in the middle of nowhere. So they land, and the door comes down on the transport airplane, and Steve and the others on the airplane are greeted by a one hundred and twenty-degree blast of heat from the desert, the likes of which they had never felt before. And they quickly prepared for the arrival of a squadron of twenty-four A tens, which when they landed had half a load of fuel. The only weapons they had on board were gun, and they were the only things standing between the Republican Guards and Saudi Arabia. And I think what people have to remember is, at the time, that Iraq invaded Kuwait had the fifth-largest standing army on the face of the earth. They had just come out of ten years of combat operations.

With Iran, so they were very experienced.

They were equipped with some of the most modern and sophisticated Soviet-built aircraft and surfaced air missiles that the world had seen. And so, while we know in the end that Desert Storm was a stunning victory, that was anything but assured in the summer of nineteen ninety, and so the build-up during Desert Shield was all about getting people ready. Now, in the prelude to the war, Steve had been promoted out of being the weapons officer and now was the commander of Seaflight, and a flight commander is essentially the officer in charge of about twelve other pilots in the squadron. And one of Steve’s important pre-war taskings was to make what we call combat pairings. And the idea here is that you would take your most experienced pilot and pair him with the least experienced pilot to average out the experience of the flight so that as we went out there, it increased the survivability of the squadron overall. And so as Steve, as the high-time A ten pilot in his flight, decided to select as his combat wingman a Lieutenant Rob Sweet.

“What we have seen is a redoubling of Saddam Hussein’s efforts to destroy completely Kuwait and its people. I have therefore directed General Norman Schwartzkoff, in conjunction with Coalition forces, to use all forces available, including ground forces, to eject the Iraqi Army from Kuwait.”

So Desert Storm kicks off, and Rob and Steve are going to fly twenty-nine of their first thirty combat missions together. And it is everything from benign attacks of unmanned targets to being shot out by surfaced air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery. And they had an incredible experience back and forth. But the story really that I want to focus on surrounds their thirtieth combat mission. On February fifteenth of nineteen ninety-one, Steve and Rob were tasked on what was by far their most dangerous mission of the war. They were tasked to fly one hundred miles north of the Kuwait Saudi border and attack Saddam’s elite Republican Guards, the same units that had spearheaded the initial invasion and who were equipped with the raq’s most modern equipment. So they’re tasked against the Republican Guards, but not just any Republican Guards. They happened to get tasked against the Medina Division, which later became famous for the Battle of Medina Ridge. They proved themselves throughout the war to be the most ferocia and dedicated fighters of any unit in the Iraqi Republican Guards, and the mission was very straightforward, to prepare the battle space for an upcoming invasion. They woure to target artillery, armor, and military equipment. What would make this mission even more difficult was that the Republican Guards had concentrated their forces. So this unit of about ten thousand elite Republican Guard troops were amassed in a circle about three miles wide and six miles across, and the idea behind that was to spread the equipment out enough to make it hard to target, but to provide overlapping fields of fire for the over one hundred and fifty pieces of mobile anti-aircraft artillery and the twenty-four SA thirteen batteries. Now the SAY thirteen was the most modern and sophisticated surface to air missile that the Iraqis owned. It was Soviet-built and designed, and unlike others systems, it did not rely on radar. It would track in the infrared and the electro-optical spectrum, meaning that the aircraft would get no electronic warning that it was being shot. And it was a raid with overlapping fields of fire throughout this Republican Guard unit. So Steve and Rob launched for their afternoon mission at about 2 p.m. local. They go up, they conduct a pre-strike refueling to top off on fuel, and they take their fully loaded A tens one hundred miles north to try and find military targets against the Republican Guards, and targets they find. Steve is getting ready to roll in and do a strafing pass, and Rob is in an orbit at ten thousand feet. And the way that they ran the tactics here is that one guy would roll in an attack and the other fighter in a supporting role would orbit overhead to look out for anti-aircraft artillery and surfaced air missile launches. So Steve rolls in, comes off target, and as he looks up, he notices that a surface to air missile has been launched at Rob’s Sweet, and Steve keys the mic and calls, “Enfield, break! SAM launch!” And about the same time Rob looks out and sees the surface to air missile has been launched, a thin trail of white smoke, and the missile is stationary on his canopy, a sign that it is

tracking toward him.

Not moving left or right, is track and toward him. So Steve calls out the break. Rob dispenses chaff and flares, does a high-G maneuver, and successfully defeats the first surface to air missile that Robin had experienced in his Desert Storm missions. At this point, perhaps it was time to leave, but the A tens had decided early in the war that if anybody on the ground shot at them, they were going to immediately return lethal fire. They were trying to discourage these SAM operators from shooting at coalition aircraft, and there’s no better way to dissuade someone from shooting than to shoot back at them. So, consistent with their tactics, Steve rolls in, comes off a strafing pass, starts to make a turn, and now it’s Rob’s turn to roll in and deliver lethal fire against the surfaced air missile launch site. At that moment, Steve sees that a second surfaced air missile launch from a different location is guiding on Rob’s airplane, calls for the break too late. Sweet doesn’t see it, and he’s in his left-hand turn when he feels a little bit of a thump, and this airplane is now rolled wings level. It’s not a violent explosion; there’s no big bang. And he looks down, and there’s a bunch of lights on in the cockpit now, and he looks out to his right wing and sees a big hole where the right wing used to be. Most of it is gone. There’s some residual fire from the fuel and hydraulic lines, and now all sorts of lights start to come on in the cockpit indicating that there’s a your malfunctions going on in the airplane.

And you’re listening to Brigadier General Jim Boots Demris tell the story of Captain Steve Phyllis and his raid from a base in Saudi Arabia one hundred miles north, coming in contact with the Medina Division, the most ferocious division of Sodom. Hussein’s. What happens next? Well, we’ll continue with this story. We’ll continue with Jim Demeris’ story of Steve Phyllis here on Our American Stories, and we continue with Our American Stories and with Brigadier General Jim Boots Demors telling the story of Captain Steve Phyllis in a raid that cost him his life in nineteen ninety-one. Let’s return to Brigadier General Demors with the rest of this story.

The controls are not responding, and so he reaches down and pulls the ejection handles and now is under parachute, descending on top of the troops that he and Steve just got done bombing. Sweet takes off his helmet, checks, has got a good parachute. He can hear bullets whizzing by his head as he’s making this five-minute parachute descent, low on fuel, alone, orbiting at ten thousand feet in a slow-moving airplane over ten thousand emboldened Iraqi troops. After about a minute following Sweet’s ejection, Steve has earned the right to leave, yet the thought of leaving never crosses his mind. So, it gets back on the radio after getting the search and rescue started and starts to call other A tens in the local area and connects with a flight called Pakmeyer Three and Four and begins to talk to the flight lead. And what I think it’s important to understand is that the A ten is not equipped with a radar, and so in order for A ten piles to find some, then they have to visually acquire it. There’s no radar or other g whiz equipment that helps them find each other. So Steve is on the radio, orbiting in a left-hand turn at ten thousand feet. Everybody on the ground with a rifle, with an anti-aircraft artillery or with a SAM system is now shooting at Steve, and Steve is trying to talk this flight of A tens to come over his position to help provide additional firepower and support because he’s not willing to concede the fact that Sweet’s

going to get captured.

Three minutes after Sweet ejects, Steve is still orbiting over the target, and unfortunately, the inbound A tens are unable to find Steve and locate Sweet’s position, and so, in an act that can only be considered selfless and heroic, Steve reaches down and purposely dispenses high-visibility pyrotechnic flares. His intent there is to use those as a visual signal to get the A tens eyes on. What, in fact, it also does is that anybody on the ground that had not yet seen Steve