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Son of local man recalls role in Iraq bombing campaign

By Jackie Beranek 7 min read

On the opening night of the Iraq War, Air Force Maj. Mark Hoehn wasn’t thinking about his parents in Ohiopyle or his wife and son in New Mexico. He was simply thinking about the mission that his president had given him and fellow pilot Lt. Col. David Toomey.

Hoehn, whose call name is Fuj, and Toomey, whose call name is Tooms, flew the first strike mission in the war March 19. They were targeting a senior Iraqi leadership compound in Baghdad where intelligence sources believed Saddam Hussein and other top regime leaders were staying.

It was a risky flight coming near daybreak and exposing Hoehn’s F-117A Nighthawk Stealth fighter to possible attack. None came, though, and Hoehn and Toomey returned to Iraq on numerous other occasions for subsequent attacks.

While there was no evidence that Saddam or any of the other top Iraqi military leaders were killed in the attack, the strike did serve notice that the U.S. could and would attack Iraq at any time and at any place. It paved the way for the multitude of strikes that followed, leading to the eventual U.S. victory.

Hoehn, the son of Douglas V. Hoehn, operations manager at Ohiopyle State Park services, and Alice Hoehn, said the only thing on his mind that night was getting the job done.

“When the president of the United States approves a target, you do your best to make sure that the target is hit” said Hoehn, who is stationed with the 49th Fighter Wing at Holloman Air Force Base, Alamogordo, N.M. “It is an honor to serve this nation and the United States Air Force. This is what we’re trained to do.”

The 36-year-old Hoehn, who grew up on state game lands across Pennsylvania because of his father’s job as a park ranger, said he was very proud that he could serve President Bush and the American people.

“I think the whole world came to know Toomey and me by our call names Tooms and Fuji,” said Hoehn. “We had no idea that the recognition of the mission would rise to the level it has.”

Hoehn and Toomey have been interviewed on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and on NBC and CBS television shows. For their bravery, they received the Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross.

“We knew when we were deployed to Southwest Asia that we would probably end up in the Persian Gulf,” said Hoehn. “But we didn’t know that we were going to be the first guys in Baghdad until shortly before the mission.

Hoehn said the F-117s were the first aircraft to drop bombs in Baghdad, and they flew more than 80 missions, dropping nearly 100 enhanced guided bombs.

The Nighthawks also supported Operation Desert Storm in 1991, but Hoehn was still a cadet at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and didn’t get the chance to participate in that conflict.

Hoehn spent nearly two months in the desert before the mission. He was deployed in late January or early February and lived in a tent city with thousands of people in the desert before the hostilities erupted.

Hoehn said the order for the mission came out of the blue.

“When we got word that there was intelligence on the possible whereabouts of a leadership target of opportunity, we were ready to roll,” said Hoehn. “Any leadership target at the potential beginning of a conflict is important to pay attention to in order to start knocking down their command and control.”

Hoehn said just the fact of where the target was located led the flyers to believe that it could be Hussein.

Hoehn, for national security reasons, still isn’t allowed to identify certain mission elements when talking to the press, so he spoke in general terms when describing the mission.

Hoehn said the “target of opportunity” (Hussein) wasn’t confirmed until he and Toomey had landed after the mission.

The target, according to Hoehn, was a piece of property that had a suspected bunker on it belonging to the Hussein family.

News reports have confirmed that it was one of Hussein’s properties.

The Associated Press reported Hoehn and Toomey, screened by other planes, flew over and dropped four 1-ton bunker-buster bombs on the residential compound. According to the reports, the bombs burrowed and exploded, presumably in the tunnels underneath the site.

Reports further stated that a few minutes later, a barrage of ship-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles arrived and exploded, adding to the destruction on the compound and surrounding area. Missiles also were fired from four ships and two submarines.

Hoehn said he was sent to the Middle East as one of only two or three pilots with actual combat experience. Hoehn said he had flown the F-117 in Kosovo in 1999.

“I guess they figured they would send someone with a little bit of experience in this plane,” said Hoehn. “I helped them get set up and took a look at their program, because it’s a fairly young squadron when it comes to guys with combat experience.”

Hoehn said although a stealth fighter mission requires six to eight hours of preparation, he and Toomey had less than two on this one.

“As we approached Baghdad, I noticed the sky brightening,” said Hoehn. “I could see the sun coming up in the east and the moon setting in the west, and I thought this isn’t good because the F-117 is black and I thought they are going to see us.”

Hoehn said they opened their bomb bay doors, a move that exposes the stealth fighter to detection, and dropped the bombs.

“When I looked back, I could see flashes of the bomb explosions,” said Hoehn. “We raced away undetected.”

Hoehn said he and Toomey were very surprised with the reception they received when they got back to the United States on April 16.

“We had no idea what people were thinking,” said Hoehn. “We just looked at it like we did our job. I can’t believe the positive attention that we have gotten. I guess it’s just one of the benefits of this job.”

In addition to flying F-117s, which he said he loves, Hoehn teaches young pilots at Holloman Air Force Base how to fly.

Hoehn said he grew up in Doylestown believing that public service was a respectable way to make a living because of what his father did at the state parks, so he spent a year at Valley Forge Military Junior College after graduation from Central Bucks East High School near Doylestown.

Afterward, he was accepted at the Air Force Academy, where he spent the next four years, graduating in 1991. Out of the academy, he went to pilot training school for the F-15C, an air-to-air combat aircraft.

Mark Hoehn said he felt comfortable patrolling around at 40,000 feet in his F-15, but the F-117 really made him feel special.

“Its such a unique aircraft,” said Hoehn. “It’s not generic by any means. It doesn’t take anything special or different to fly it versus any of the other airplanes out there. Each one provides a training program to make sure that the pilots are capable of performing their job.”

He also credited the other troops who protected him and Toomey during the mission.

“We knew going into the mission that there was some risk involved, but we felt confident that everything would work,” said Hoehn.

Hoehn is married to Jules Hoehn, with whom he shares a son, 9-year-old Josh.

Hoehn said although his wife hates it when he is gone, she told him before he left this time that she wanted him to “go get them and do it right, because I don’t want you to have to go back.”

“We’re very proud of him,’ said his father, who has been the park ranger at Ohiopyle since 1990. “We’ve always been proud of him.”

Looking back on his experience, Hoehn said he only wishes he would have had a rearview mirror during the bombing mission.

“I’ll never forget racing the sun as we were flying over Baghdad,” said Hoehn. “I figured if there was anyone down there looking up they would probably see us, but we had a little bit of cloud cover and a lot of luck.”

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