In what may have been one of the most rapidly executed missions of the war so far, two F-117s of the 8th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron planned, loaded weapons, flew to Baghdad and bombed a residence where Saddam Hussein was spending the night--all in 4 hr.

One of the two F-117s involved in the first night attack on Saddam Hussein and his sons returns to its Middle Eastern base after the no-notice mission.

For the Mar. 19 mission that kicked off the conflict, members of the target cell in the combined air operations center (CAOC) at Prince Sultan AB, Saudi Arabia, chose the EGBU-27 1-ton penetrating bomb.

Two of the four bombs were dropped from an aircraft flown by Lt. Col. Mathew McKeon, commander of the unit.

"They had directed the use of those weapons, and we agreed," McKeon said. "That was a good choice because it took weather out of the equation. The EGBU-27 allows us to go ahead and drop with the [combined] GPS/INS guidance. But if we can see the target, we can also lase it [for even greater accuracy]."

However, the assignment must have come as somewhat of a shock because no one in the squadron had ever dropped one of those weapons.