THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 17, 1996 TAG: 9607170326
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Interview
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 96 lines
The stitches are out now, and the big gash on Capt. Dan Penn's face is healing nicely. Ditto for the place where a piece of flying glass ripped into his leg.
But three weeks after a terrorist bomb exploded about 200 yards from his Khobar Towers apartment, Penn doesn't pretend that things are back to normal at Dhahran Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
In telephone interviews from Dhahran on Tuesday, Penn and two other F-15 pilots based at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton described life after the bombing in terms befitting a prison compound.
Checkpoints restrict their movements even inside the base, they said, and armed sentries are a constant presence on every rooftop.
``Of course, security is paramount,'' said Lt. Phil Stewart. Trips he and his squadron mates had hoped to make into Dhahran or to the beaches and bars on the nearby island of Bahrain are out of the question, Stewart said, but for now there's enough to do on base to keep everyone occupied.
``I'm comfortable'' with the security arrangements, said Capt. Don McCarthy, another Langley-based aviator. ``I'm really under the opinion that if a terrorist is determined to get you, he's going to get you - somehow.''
Dhahran was considered a comfortable, relaxed duty station until the terrorist bomb destroyed one Khobar building - the one that more than 250 Langley-based personnel from the 27th Fighter Squadron were to have occupied a couple of days later - and seriously damaged more than a dozen others.
Now, with buildings along the perimeter of the compound off-limits, personnel are doubling up in apartments clustered in the center, and traveling to the flight line in heavily protected convoys.
McCarthy, Stewart and most of the rest of the Langley contingent arrived in Dhahran just two days after the bombing. Penn and a few other members of the squadron were already on station, having deployed early to pave the way for their mates.
From his seventh-floor apartment, Penn could look out at Building 131, where the bulk of the Langley force was to take up residence. He was sitting at a computer terminal in his bedroom when the terrorists struck.
``One minute, it was peaceful and quiet,'' he said. ``The next second, all hell broke loose.''
Though Building 131 bore the brunt of the blast and shielded his apartment, the force of the explosion shattered Penn's windows and threw him and his furniture across the room.
``I knew instantly it was some sort of attack,'' he said. The concussion knocked the wind out of him. Struggling for breath, believing his building had taken the hit, Penn hollered to his colleagues to take cover.
For a few moments, the stunned pilots hugged the floors, waiting for another explosion. When it didn't come, they struggled to their feet and began checking one another for injuries.
``I thought I was just sweating,'' Penn recalled, but after a moment he realized his face was covered with blood. A doctor living in his suite tended to several aviators' wounds, he said, and the few men who'd had shoes on when the bomb hit rummaged through the glass and debris to find footwear for him and others.
The troops gradually made their way downstairs, where they joined in efforts to pull the more seriously wounded from Building 131. Later, as water from pipes broken in the blast flooded his building, Penn and some of his squadron mates went back inside to retrieve sheets, shirts and towels that quickly were torn into bandages.
Americans tending the wounded panicked briefly when Saudis began scaling fences and swarming into the compound, Penn said. Fearing a new terrorist attack, some of the Americans began running for cover; the Saudi ``invaders'' turned out to be good Samaritans who lived nearby and simply wanted to help the rescue efforts.
The wounded and other survivors eventually were herded to a dining hall near the center of the apartment complex, where several buildings shielded them from a still-feared second attack. ``We kind of felt like trapped rats, with no real protection,'' Penn said.
A Saudi doctor stitched up Penn's head wound and cleaned the glass out of his leg around 4 a.m., about six hours after the explosion. He was back in his F-15 two days later.
``That's what I wanted to do,'' he said. ``Just get up and start doing the mission.''
Since then, the compound's residents have spent their off-hours lifting weights and learning to play musical instruments their unit brought over, as well as taping cracked windows and picking up glass and other debris scattered throughout the compound.
Penn, the squadron's project manager for the deployment, said most of the Langley-based troops deployed in Dhahran are now housed in two buildings.
They and most of the other Americans in the compound have been moved around repeatedly since the attack, and they're aware of rumors they soon may move again, this time to a remote base where security could be more easily maintained. ILLUSTRATION: Before the blast, Langley personnel were to have
occupied this building.
THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Capt. Dan Penn says of the bomb attack: ``One minute, it was
peaceful and quiet. The next second, all hell broke loose.'' by CNB