Angles of Attack: An A-6 Intruder Pilot’s War

Moments after Desert Storm began, bomber pilot Pete Hunt was in the air over the Persian Gulf. Hunt saw it all, and this is his electrifying account. Tested to the max, flying all night, every night for weeks on end, Hunt executed dozens of missions—from carpet bombing to dropping deadly five-hundred-pound cluster bombs with pinpoint precision; from supporting Marines on the ground to bombing fleeing Iraqis along the blood-soaked “highway of death.”

His A-6 jet was a wide-open target for the blazing antiaircraft fire streaking up to destroy it. Escaping this deadly blizzard of fire made setting the A-6 back down on a little deck in a big ocean seem almost easy. But Hunt, like the rest of his squadron, the VA-145 Swordsmen—honored as the premier Attack Squadron in the United States Navy for 1991—was just doing his job: keeping America free.