January 2026 marked 35 years since the start of Operation Desert Storm and the air campaign against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait. The aerial assault on Iraqi forces was both the culmination of nearly six months of military buildup during Operation Desert Shield, and the opening round of battlefield preparation for an overland offensive to liberate Kuwait and destroy Iraqi forces.
What ultimately became known as the First Gulf War began in August 1990 when Saddam’s military, turning from a costly and inconclusive war with Iran, rolled into the tiny oil-rich emirate of Kuwait.
The crisis in the summer of 1990 caught the U.S. military in the midst of a budding demobilization program as the collapse of communism in Russia and Europe wrought a shift in strategic priorities in the Pentagon. Force drawdowns, ship decommissionings, and, eventually, base closings would go on to define the rest of the decade. For the 45-year-old USS Midway (CV-41), speculation was rife about its imminent decommissioning. Despite the talk, the carrier continued with its exercises with the South Korean military and routine flight operations.
Some 10 weeks into the evolving crisis, Midway was finally ordered to deploy to the Persian Gulf to join other U.S. military forces in the region.
It had already been a typically busy operational year for Midway, and its flight deck, also known as the carrier’s roof, desperately needed resurfacing. Though Midway was in the humid tropics and fresh from rainstorms, the deck needed to be treated with fresh non-skid during a brief mid-October port visit to Subic Bay in the Philippines.
Non-skid application is labor intensive, even for moderate patches, and requires a narrow range of ambient temperatures and humidity to ensure ideal adhesion to a prepared steel deck. With just three days pierside in Subic, Midway’s crew was able to scrap off the old non-skid and apply the fresh batch of abrasive coating.
At the end of October, Midway passed through the Straits of Hormuz and relieved the carrier USS Independence (CV-62) off Qatar. Over the next 45 days, Midway and other naval forces remained on high alert in the Persian Gulf. As the new year opened, Saddam stonewalled all diplomatic initiatives and a mid-January deadline to withdraw from Kuwait passed uneventfully.
With the air and ground forces from a multinational coalition in place, President George Bush ordered the commencement of aerial operations against Iraq and occupied Kuwait. A complex bombardment from land and carrier-based aircraft, as well as from cruise missiles, started before dawn and struck Iraqi installations. Aircraft from Midway’s airwing had the honor of being the first naval aircraft to cross into hostile airspace that morning. The ensuing air campaign was a systematic reduction of the Iraqi air defense network which by early February had shifted to battlefield preparation for the upcoming armored ground offensive.
Midway’s aircraft flew combat sorties around the clock, typically maintaining an average of more than 120 strikes per day. Despite having only two catapults, Midway sustained better performance than the larger carriers with four catapults. However, this efficiency came at a price. The hastily applied non-skid a few months earlier was now crumbling away on portions of the flight deck, particularly near the end of the angle deck and between the catapult tracks. Despite the soon-to-start coalition ground offensive, Midway needed to correct this problem.
The drastic reduction of the Iraqi defenses by mid-February allowed the carrier USS America (CV-66) to transition from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf. This permitted Midway to retire to the other end of the Gulf to mend its flight deck. On Feb. 16, the carrier stood down off the island nation of Bahrain to chip off the old surfacing and apply new non-skid to the worst areas. After several days of intense manual labor, Midway rejoined the war on Feb. 22.
With the ground forces advancing steadily, Kuwait was duly liberated and Saddam’s army was devastated. Operation Desert Storm formally ended at midnight on Feb. 27. Midway’s airwing had flown 3,339 combat missions and dropped more than 2,000 tons of ordnance. The airwing, led by 36 F/A-18 Hornets and 14 A-6E Intruders, actually flew more strike missions than the larger carrier airwings. Midway did not lose any of its aircraft during the conflict. With hostilities over, the carrier readied for its ultimate decommissioning in the coming year, but with her roof finally fixed.
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