The Virginian-Pilot July 22, 2004
Oceana-based jets bomb insurgent targets in Iraq, Navy says
By Matthew Dolan
Virginia Beach-based fighter jets destroyed two enemy positions in Iraq this week, the Navy announced Wednesday.
The bombing runs against insurgent strongholds on Tuesday marked the John F. Kennedy's first active engagement of enemy targets since the Mayport, Fla.-based aircraft carrier arrived in the Persian Gulf.
The two fighter jets are part of Carrier Air Wing 17 , based at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach and deployed on the Kennedy.
An F-14 Tomcat from the VF-103 "Jolly Rogers" squadron dropped a GBU-12 on a mortar position near the coalition-held Balad Air Base north of Baghdad, according to the Navy's Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain. The Guided Bomb Unit-12 uses a 500-pound general purpose warhead, according the independent military Web site Globalsecurity.org.
The pilot identifies a target with a laser, and then the bomb aims for the laser's marking.
With about 20,000 coalition troops occupying a former Iraq air base there, Balad sits in the middle of an area formed by Baghdad, Tikrit and Ramadi known as the Sunni Triangle.
An F/A-18 from the VFA-83 "Rampagers" used a GBU-32 to destroy a building allegedly being used as a firing point for insurgent gunmen north of Samarra. The military Web site describes the GBU-32 Joint Direct Attack Munition as a 1,000-bomb guided by the satellite-fed global positioning system.
On average, the Kennedy completes 20 to 30 missions a day in support of the war effort, a Navy official said.
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