Hi again folks thanks for the replies so far they are much appreciated and a special thanks for the PM with the Female WO's name. Can I please point out that my name is Ian as I signed at the bottom of the original post.
As I said in the original post I was very busy and at the time did not know what job title the lady in question actually held on the crew so apologies for calling her a FC when she was actually a Links Manager, so I suppose the LM managed the SATCOM VHF and UHF Comms along with the Link 11 or 16. So I guess she would have been the person who spoke to the F-16 lead.
I'm afraid I am getting a bit exasperated with Waddington and the media people as I had to call them for a sitrep last time and had a very brief 1 line email reply saying my request had been referred to HQSTC. So to be absolutely honest I don't hold out very much hope of a visit especially when my ex colleague who still works on the base in Ops hinted that the CRO's Office think that Journalists and Authors make a lot of money from their writings, which believe me is not true. It's a bit galling when I think of the amount of visits that I arranged, did the VI's for and hosted around the Tower when I was there and we were much much busier with flying then with ACMI, Allied Force, Deny Flight etc.
As I said before I'm not asking anyone to contravien the OSA I never would. I think other posters have missed the point of my post. All I am trying to do is find out the date because as you can see the experts themselves contradict each other as we have had 24/03/99 and 21/04/99 posted above already !
Also the orbit areas I'm sure are not classified surely as this was 13 years ago and I don't think we'll be doing such an Air Campaign in that area again any time soon.
I apologise if I gave the wrong impression about the "Top Gun" comment all I can say was that the folks in the room were very emotional, tired, excited, relieved and very keen to speak to the F-16 jocks I won't mention the "MiG Killer" pictures that went around shortly afterwards (whoops just did !) and I can only recall what I remember of it at the time and the impression it made on us "Ground Support Staff" at the time and what we were told by the crew on their return as to what had happened about the F-16's being short of gas, how else would we know about it?
All I am trying to do here guys is try and write the story as truthfully as I can before someone perhaps from another country comes along and re-writes to their advantage it, like they did about the genesis of AEW the ACI Wellington from 1941/42 and how Project Cadillac was the instigator of AEW Ops not the RAF and TRE.
If the RAF don't want the true story out there about what happened on Allied Force and accept the version as touted by the NATO AEW Componant and the USAF's E-3C supporters then there's nothing I can do about it. But again I was there at Aviano in the midst of Allied Force, when the USAF E-3C bigwigs came over and had that big "discussion" with our Det Cdr and the NATO Cdr's about the relative performances of the various AWACS Componants and it wasn't a convivial meeting.
Yes, the D crews were at a disadvantage with fewer consoles - fewer frequencies and operators not being able to leave their consoles to go to the toilet they were so busy. The RAF Crews did a fantastic job, we used to get the calls in Ops from the other aircrew members of the packages saying how brilliant our crews were and how pleased they were that it was a D in the orbit and not a C or an F. Our missions launched and arrived on station on time and did a terrific job and went the extra mile with cool professionalism and as I said previously it was the best and proudest time of my 32 years. All I want to do is get it in print accurately and factually before the mists of time and memories fade it away. Finally by the way I remember after it was all finished the AOC promised that he would get more frequencies installed in the D's, did it ever happen?
Again thanks for reading, and thanks for the help so far it is appreciated and I don't mean to waffle on but I am very passionate about the subject.
Cheers
Ian