Going Mainstream - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 122

to free himself from its harness and run from the grassy clearing where he
landed to the cover of nearby woods. As their prey, he must be cautious with
his survival radio lest its signal lead them to him before rescuers could arrive.
He pressed the button and whispered his call sign, “Basher Five-Two,” but all
he heard was static.
O'Grady steeled himself for the possibility that he might have to spend days
or weeks evading capture. He was the second pilot shot down enforcing the
United Nations no-ly zone over the Balkan civil war, but he could not rely on
the locals returning him to friendly forces as they had done previously for a
British Harrier jet pilot. As the first U.S. pilot shot down since Desert Storm,
he knew members of his 555th Fighter Squadron out of Aviano, Italy, the entire
U.S. military, and much of nato would be combing the skies, the airwaves,
and intelligence sources for any sign he had survived. He needed to figure out
his location and make his way to higher ground, where his radio would have a
better chance of reaching search-and-rescue aircraft and where helicopters
could more easily land. He must make that journey only in darkness, hiding
under camouflage by day. O'Grady reached into the pocket of his survival vest
and pulled out his gps receiver, a Flightmate Pro made by Trimble Naviga-
tion. 2 The three-by-seven-inch handheld unit operated on four aa batteries,
but its four-line, backlit liquid crystal display was bright enough that he cupped
his hands around it to keep the glow from piercing the darkness. Once the
receiver acquired signals from three satellites, he had his position and oriented
himself on a laminated topographic map from his survival kit. His target, a
large hill, was about two miles south, but his stealthy advance, confined to the
hours between midnight and 4:00 a.m., consumed that night, June 2, 1995,
and the next four nights. He subsisted on rainwater, grass, leaves, and insects.
At 2:07 a.m., June 6, he finally made radio contact with a fellow f-16 pilot from
Aviano who was straining the jet's fuel supply crisscrossing the skies in hopes
of hearing something. Using his gps unit, O'Grady was able to provide accu-
rate coordinates. Military leaders rapidly mounted a rescue operation. Four
and a half hours later, a platoon of Marines specially trained in tactical rescues
used gps guidance and extraordinary piloting to land two seventy-foot-long
ch-53 Super Stallion helicopters in a small, fog-shrouded clearing about two
hundred yards from O'Grady. He ran out of the woods, and they hauled him
aboard one of them. The Super Stallions flew fast and low on the way out, draw-
ing antiaircraft and small-arms fire. At least two shoulder-ired missiles whizzed
behind them. Just before 7:30 a.m., the choppers landed on the uss Kearsarge