We are on station over the Black Sea and get our brief just as we run low on fuel. "Olympus", the E-3 off the Turkish coast, vectors us to the tanker running tracks around the sea. Good job too - without radar we could cruise around all day and never see anyone. We get regular updates as we close in and at 14 miles acquire the big plane visually. With eight Mavericks and eight Rockeyes it's hard manoeuvering the heavy Thunderbolt into position and closure is hard to judge. But having done this regularly over the last month I slide up under the huge KC-10 and get clearance for contact. I edge the nose of my plane under the nozzle and it is steered in by the boomer in the rear window.

The fuel gauge ticks upwards and at 10,600 lbs I get the order to disconnect. With over 8000 extra pounds of fuel the flight characteristics of the aircraft have changed and the flashing flight path marker at the bottom of the HUD shows me that I'm flying very nose high. Time to get down into denser air. I push the stick forwards and dive away from the tanker, skimming the tops of the clouds as I point my nose northwards towards the Crimea.
Our target is a convoy of armoured fighting vehicles heading down from the Perekop Isthmus. A pair of Cobra helicopters picked them up but they were damaged by fire from the convoy. The low cloudbase means that the standard F-16C laser-guided bomb attack is not an option - today we'll have to go low and that's a job for the A-10.



We drop out of the cloud base at 13,000 feet into a grey murky world far removed from the blue sky and sunshine over the clouds. My wingman is still with me - I want us to stay together until we approach the target. Racing around trying to keep extended formations uses up a lot of fuel. The coast looms dimly ahead - time to hit the deck.