In August of 2002, a little less than a year after the attacks on the World Trade Center,

the American military was already in Afghanistan trying to weed out the Taliban and find a

Somal bin Laden.

An A-10 pilot with the call sign Johnny Bravo was assigned to fly over a valley to protect

22 special operations forces that were making their way through a valley to extract what

the government likes to call a high-value target.

Johnny Bravo and his wingman flew the A-10 Warthog, which is a slow, low-flying attack aircraft

designed to provide ground cover for the troops below.

On this night, the heavy cloud cover was lit up by the moon, made it look like the snow

had just fallen.

Johnny Bravo was in contact with the troops below, and he got an uncomfortable feeling

from the tone of their voice.

So he told his wingman, hang out up here, I'm going to go down and have a look.

He pointed his plane to the clouds.

His plane thrashed about in the turbulence as he flew through the storm clouds, and when

he finally popped out below the clouds, less than a thousand feet above the ground.

The sight that he witnessed, he'd never seen anywhere before, not in training, not

in combat, not even in the movies, tons of tracer fire coming from the sides of the valley

pointed right at where the American troops were below.

He didn't even know where to begin.

He pointed his guns at the source of some of the fire and laid down suppression.

Good hits, good hits he heard from the troops below.

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