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The satcom became clogged with chatter until Gainer silenced everyone with a few well-placed profanities and a demand: “Clear this net, immediately!” Then they got new coordinates: Goldfein was 16 miles to their east, Denehan said, 60 miles east of Loznica. He couldn’t see the approaching rescue choppers at first, but he could hear them and coaxed them in — “I can hear you, you’re getting louder, keep coming in that direction.”. Kubik recalled watching the school-bus-size Pave Lows pulling off radical maneuvers — rapidly moving left, right, up down — and swinging as he gripped the side of his own helicopter with all his might. His breathing accelerates as warning alerts blare, but with an even voice he informs his wingmen of his trajectory as the Fighting Falcon goes down. After laying awake for hours, Dawn Goldfein heard the phone ring at about 5:30 a.m. and shot out of bed. Sort of, ‘Beep beep,’” Goldfein said. “I left that perfect spot. They soon shook those attackers, but it put them on notice: The Serbs knew they were coming. Jewish General Named Air Force Chief of Staff. The general landed in a deep gorge and fell down face-first, “riding it like Indiana Jones down to the bottom,” he said. Gen. David Goldfein with his wife, Dawn. “It was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen,” she said. He remembered a story from one of his Desert Storm squadron mates, who bailed out and kept his mind occupied by collecting rocks to give to his kids as souvenirs. “I remember when he told me that story, I thought man, this guy is father of the year,” Goldfein said. He grabbed onto a seat and held on for dear life. Kubik feels pride when he looks back on what they accomplished that day. “At this point, we just needed to get out of there,” Denehan said. “We started nicknaming him the MacGuyver of Serbia. “Nature of warfare.”, Goldfein said the impact felt like a lightning strike he had experienced during a flight a few months earlier, which caused minor damage to his fighter — “Big flash, loud explosion. Denehan’s first thought was, “Oh man, somebody’s getting shot at.”. Father of Private He did one last scan of his surroundings, made one last radio call, and took off his goggles. The Forward welcomes reader comments in order to promote thoughtful discussion on issues of importance to the Jewish community. I always joke that I’m convinced it was a mountain lion or a grizzly bear, you know, there in Serbia. Dawn said that waiting on the flightline was an amazing moment, as she saw a sea of green uniforms gathering around, waiting to welcome back her husband. Egregious commenters or repeat offenders will be banned from commenting. Dawn assumed something had happened to another pilot in the squadron, and she would have to comfort that pilot’s wife. Goldfein did catch one lucky break — he was now concealed in a pitch-black ravine deep in a treeline. It was Brig. “What shape was he going to be in?” Dawn wondered. The 34 special tactics airmen and Army special forces A-Team troops on the rescue team were briefed, then boarded the Pave Hawk and two MH-53 Pave Lows. Please enable JavaScript in your browser's settings to use this part of Geni. The airmen thought they were closing in on their target when they saw a bright light erupt to their left. It was a little before two in the morning. “They didn’t leave me; I’m sure not going to leave them,” he said. The four-ship took off from Aviano in the middle of the night, flying eastward under a clear, bright moon. 2) The general has his own way of thanking the rescue crew. 5) After two female airmen came under fire for being awarded Bronze Star awards for their non-combat service, Goldfein came to their defense. “No one Air Force Specialty Code is any more important than the next in this theater — it takes the entire team working together to get the job done,” he wrote in a letter defending the women. While the admiral was of Jewish heritage, he raised his children in his wife’s Christian faith. The Serbs walked right towards him. He was good.”. But Goldfein had a big problem: He didn’t know how far he had glided, and had no idea whether he had bailed out in Bosnia or Serbia. Fortunately, Dawn said, their youngest daughter was at a friend’s house for a sleepover and had no idea what was transpiring. This time, it wasn’t one of the drills they had practiced night after night. We’re going into a fight.’”. Goldfein was pinned with his new rank by his wife, Dawn, and one of his daughters, Diana Glass. Four years ago, Goldfein found and got Kubik into the Eisenhower Center, a private health care facility on a farm in Michigan that specializes in military service members, first responders and NFL players with traumatic head injuries. But a lot of people are convinced it was a Serbian field mouse.”. General David Goldfein: What You Need to Know. “We’re like, damn.”. They turned north back toward Bosnia, hoping to find a clearer way back into Serbia, when another SAM hurtled toward them. She looked through and outside her house and found nothing amiss. Kelly, their gunner, immediately opened up with a minigun and swept the building until it “disappeared,” Kubik said. “Our total authentication was, ‘Let’s go,’" Goldfein said. Before, he served as Air Force Vice Chief of Staff and was previously Director of the Joint Staff, a position within the Joint Chiefs of Staff who assists the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “You could see them on your [night vision] goggles, pretty clear,” Goldfein said. (U.S. Air Force photo/Andy Morataya) For the first minute or two, Goldfein thought he might still have a functional engine because he didn’t lose airspeed when he turned as rapidly as he thought he would if the F-16 engine was, indeed, dead. She received an MA in Jewish Studies and Comparative Religion from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a BA in Government from Cornell University. Goldfein, meanwhile, still had no idea where he was. It wasn’t until he got involved, at the end, that it all stopped.”. Copyright ©2020The Forward Association, Inc.All rights reserved. Goldfein began running — as best he could carrying a raft — toward a treeline and what he thought was a nice, gentle hill. She tried to stay positive despite her fears. We’ll email you whenever we publish another article by J.J Goldberg. “We had a full moon, so it was bright to begin with, but I’m noticing that it’s getting brighter and brighter. The airplane landed and lowered its stairs, Dawn said, and Goldfein emerged a muddy mess. “You could tell the way he looked, he wanted to get the hell out of there,” Kubik said. Kubik ran past him and eyed the tree line, expecting more Serbs. In Operation Allied Force, NATO pilots began bombing targets in Serbia March 24, 1999, to force Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic — who had led an ethnic cleansing campaign against Kosovar Albanians — to withdraw his troops from Kosovo. A gunner on one of the Pave Lows later told Denehan that given how much chaff and flare was coming out of the Pave Hawk and how close it dove to the ground, he briefly thought they were crashing. We were all just in awe.”. At one point, Goldfein said, it banked up — and he began sliding out because he wasn’t strapped down. “It’s an adrenaline rush, you’re amped up,” Kubik said. “‘Hey, where’s the pilot? William Meyer Goldfein, Goldfein (born Vanni), Fleming (born Goldfein), Glass (born Goldfein). Sgt. They were not going to give up, come hell or high water.”. When they got word that the MC-130 was about to land, Dawn woke up their eldest daughter, Danielle — who is now an Air Force officer — and told her what had happened. Goldfein said the same Serb who shot down Lt. Col. Dale Zelko’s F-117A Nighthawk the fourth night of the campaign also shot him down, with the same skillfully jury-rigged SAM battery. He decided his best strategy was to walk through the plowed fields, assuming that farmers would have already kicked up any possible landmines. But what the Viper pilots didn’t realize was that the Serbs had moved some batteries north from where they expected they’d be. The missile went over them. They knew he had been shot down, and that he was coming back, but nobody knew his condition. Nearby, Senior Airman Andy Kubik, the combat controller on Denehen’s MH-60 Pave Hawk, was lifting weights. He dodged a few AAA bursts as best he could in his thrust-less fighter, but they couldn’t find him. They weaved their way through the terrain, sometimes flying at 50 to 100 feet and popping over trees and power lines. Finally, he made it to an ideal rescue spot: He had a tree line to his back, a field to his front with waist-high crops in which he could hide, and a pretty good sense of the direction from which the rescue helicopters might come. As Goldfein drifted down, he looked up at his parachute and became immediately concerned. And with that, the mad dash to save the life of a U.S. Air Force pilot was on. Cadet David L. Goldfein and Dawn Goldfein at the the Air Force Academy.

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