Hawkeye flight was last Navy mission over Iraq - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Hawkeye flight was last Navy mission over Iraq

When an E-2C Hawkeye snagged the arresting cable on the carrier John C. Stennis on Dec. 18, it marked the official end of naval air missions of the Iraq War.

The Hawkeye, from Airborne Early Warning Squadron 112, the “Golden Hawks,” was shot off Stennis at 7:32 a.m. and provided early warning and communication support for ground troops before returning with its crew of five at 11:04 a.m.

It was a quiet end to a war that began nearly nine years earlier with shock-and-awe air attacks from supersonic jets against Saddam Hussein’s defenses.

“We knew that we might be the crew to fly the last mission over Iraq. As always, we stayed focused on completing the mission we were assigned. After confirmation that we were the last, I realized I was part of something pretty special,” said Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Reynolds, the Hawkeye’s pilot.

Most of the Navy’s air assets hadn’t arrived by the time the tail end of the convoy entered Kuwait, officially ending the drawdown, said Capt. Dale Horan, commander of Carrier Air Wing 9 on Stennis.

“On that last day we had a full set of flights scheduled for support in the air over the troops. As it turned out, the last convoy exited Iraq into Kuwait before most of our forces got there. We did, however, have an E-2,” Horan said.

It was a typical mission for the waning days of Operation New Dawn, said Rear Adm. Craig Faller, commander of Carrier Strike Group 3.

“As Iraq stabilized, there was a low level of violence, so we provided command and control and support,” he said in a telephone interview from the carrier, the sound of flight operations in the background.

But it was dramatically different from when the campaign began.

Horan saw the change in operations through the war, starting when he was the commander of Strike Fighter Squadron 115 and flying from the carrier Abraham Lincoln when combat began March 19, 2003.

Navy documents show that two weeks into the campaign, the Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy collectively flew more than 1,000 sorties a day. As of April 13, 2003, the Navy was flying about 200 per day.

At the time, planes were regularly dropping bombs on Iraqi defenses. They transitioned to providing support for ground troops and gradually began to provide less direct support as Iraq calmed down, Horan said.

At the onset, there were five carriers in the area, including the now-decommissioned Constellation and Kitty Hawk; at war’s end, Stennis was the only one around.

“I’m happy to say it’s pretty quiet,” Horan said.

Operations in Iraq are over, but Stennis’ deployment, which began July 25, is not. It will take about a day to move out of the Persian Gulf and closer to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Horan said operations there are slightly different. Ground troops are still in regular firefights and often call for kinetic support — requests that will keep the air wing busy. Besides dropping bombs, he said he expects missions like the last one from Operation New Dawn.

“It’s a little bit higher paced than when we participated in Operation New Dawn, but it’s very similar,” he said.