Michael Baltzer said he knew he wanted to fly even before attending The Wheatley School.
“Ever since I was a kid I wanted to fly,” Balzer said.
What he didn’t know at the time was his passion for flying would lead him to the air force where he won a commendation for his service in Operation Desert Storm, the first Persian Gulf War.
He flew 37 missions from January to March 1991, taking off from a base near Dharan, Saudi Arabia, to help clear the way for American ground troops who were about to enter Iraq.
“Our general mission was to seek and destroy tanks and artillery,” Baltzer said. “We knew boots would be on the ground. So the tanks we destroyed saved lives.”
His job, he said, was made more difficult by the Iraqis’ tactic of building plywood tanks that looked like the real thing to pilots.
“The first couple of days, we shot at everything,” he said.
He said he quickly became more proficient at his job.
“I’d see a line of tanks and shoot rockets on each side,” Baltzer said.
“I just did what I did at the time,” he said. “I liked the mission. The forward air combat mission was a rewarding mission helping to save lives.”
Baltzer’s time with 23rd Tactical Air Support Squadron is now remembered by the A-10 Thunderbolt he flew, which now sits in the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Uniondale. The plane is emblazoned with the colors he and a member of his squadron painted on the craft along with his name and an insignia that depicts a skeleton head in pilot’s helmet with tiger stripes accompanied by a banner that reads, “Live to fly, Fly to kill.”
Baltzer left the air force a year after the war, and became a pilot for American Airlines, recently attaining the rank of captain. He currently pilots Boeing 737s.
Active in the community where he’s lived since 1999, Baltzer has been president of the East Williston Little League for the past seven years.
He and his wife have three children attending schools in the East Williston School District, two currently at Wheatley.
Baltzer speaks about his combat experience at Herricks Middle School each year. He’s also spoken to members of the Chaminade High School History Club and other school groups at the Cradle of Aviation.
Growing up in Albertson, Baltzer said he remembered seeing the Concorde streaking overhead each morning toward JFK Airport and decided he wanted to fly planes.
He earned his pilot’s license by age 16, before graduating from The Wheatley School and enrolled in ROTC while attending SUNY at Old Westbury. He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force for pilot training immediately after graduating in 1984.
“The opportunity was there. They offered me a pilot’s slot, so I took it,” he said.
His flight training began at Williams Air Force Base in Phoenix, Ariz. over terrain strikingly similar to Saudi Arabia and Iraq. From flying training jets, he took a significant step up to flying F-15 fighters at Bitburg Air Base in West Germany.
“It was pretty much awesome,” he said of the first time he piloted an F-15.
After two years at Bitburg, Baltzer returned to the U.S. to serve in an F-15 intercept squadron at McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma. From there, he moved on to the training that would prepare him for the Gulf War, flying the new A-10 Thunderbolt to become a forward air controller of an attack squadron.
The A-10 Thunderbolt, also known as the Warthog due its strange appearance, was uniquely equipped for its mission. It carried white phosphorous missiles Baltzer said would be used to mark a target with the bright white explosions they would produce on impact.
As he directed carrier-based F-16s and other A-10s in the aerial assaults in Iraq, he said, he would join in the attack with the four anti-tank Maverick missiles and six 500- pound bombs he carried. The A-10 was also armed with two heat-seeking missiles for self-defense and a lethal 30-millimeter gattling gun in its nose.
Baltzer said he saw only one Iraqi jet during the missions he flew. It was a faster craft he spotted a few miles ahead of him at the time, and he hoped it would turn and give him a chance to knock it down, but he never got the chance.
“I saw an Iraqi jet the first day of the war and never was another one. How awesome that would have been, to get an air kill,” he said
The most difficult mission he recalled was a day when he was ordered to locate an artillery position of 122-millimeter guns firing on an American ground position. It was during three days of heavy rain and ice – so cold in the upper atmosphere, he could see ice on his rocket pods.
“I’m in the weather, uncontrolled, not having fun,” he said, as he descended to 10,000 feet to the approximate position he was to reconnoiter and still saw nothing.
He said he kept descending and finally found himself in what he figured was the right neighborhood.
“I break at 2,000 feet over an Iraqi Republican Guard division. I could see the guys on the chow lines,” he said.
As he buzzed the Iraqi position, he suddenly saw tracer shells flying by the canopy of this A-10 and remembered thinking, “Oh my God, these guys are shooting at me.”
He gained altitude and as the flak kept following him he “dove for the deck,” descending sharply to counter the Iraqi radar and lowering his seat until he felt like he was in a go-cart. He also used flairs the A-10 carried to deflect heat- seeking missiles.
It was one day, he said, when he thoroughly appreciated the titanium “bath tub” that encased and protected the pilot in an A-10.
Baltzer said he couldn’t spot the artillery position he was trying to find, but he knew it had to be somewhere nearby. So he called in the coordinates of his position and went back to base to refuel.
He soon returned to the area, leading four F-16s and four A-10s, when he spotted the artillery position up the road from the Iraqi division’s base camp. He was fired on again as he let loose his “Willie Petes” – the white phosphorous rockets – to mark the spot and strafed the ack-ack positions he could also now see. The F-16s took the lead in bombing and destroying the Iraqi artillery, he said.
For his action in the Feb. 27 mission, Baltzer earned the distinguished flying cross. The next month the war ended and he was sent home.
“That was a short war. It was quick and dirty,” he said.
He agrees with military leaders who wanted to put an end to Saddam Hussein’s rule in the 1991 war. He said a friend of his was dispatched in an F-15 on a mission to intercept a plane reportedly carrying Hussein.
“It would have been nice just to get rid of him then,” Baltzer said.
He said he has maintained his connection to his combat service as a member of Aviation Post 743, composed of air combat veterans from all wars, and a member of Albertson VFW Post 5253.
