The B-1 bomber was coming off a mid-air refueling tanker over western Iraq on Monday when it got the coordinates for a "priority leadership target," said Lieutenant Colonel Fred Swan, the weapons systems officer.

"This is the big one," the crew of the E-3 Awacs radar plane said in radioing the coordinates, Swan said.

A rush of adrenalin hit Swan as he cross-checked the coordinates and prepared the weapons and guided an inexperienced crewmate through the procedures.

The B-1's pilot, Captain Chris Wachter, lined up a package of F-16CJ fighters and an EA-6B electronic jamming plane to protect the big, long-range bomber as it flew toward Baghdad and its still dangerous air defenses.

"What I was thinking is, 'Well, this could be the big one. Let's make sure we get it right,'" Swann recalled in a telephone conference call with reporters after the mission.

"There wasn't a lot of time for reflection as we were doing the bomb run. It was mainly quarterbacking the crew and making sure we got the weapons on the target at the assigned time to make sure we had the coordination we needed," he said.

"It took 12 minutes to get the bombs on target," he said.

Baghdad was clouded over so they did not see the four GBU-31 bombs hit their target in a Baghdad residential area, learning only after the mission that the strike was believed to be successful.

US officials said the Iraqi president and his two sons, Uday and Qusay, were believed to be in the building.

"We had intelligence that indicated they were there along with other senior Iraqi intelligence officials," a US official said, adding that Saddam's fate was not known.

"I don't know whether he survived," President George W. Bush told reporters after a two-day summit in Northern Ireland with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "The only thing I know is that he is losing power."

The B-1 crew said they were not told who the targets were but assumed that it might be the Iraqi leader.

"That's the first time I've ever been on a crew that got a priority target," he said.

The coordinates were released from an observer on the ground through the chain of command to the AWACS command plane, a process that took less than an hour.

The B-1 was leaving an air refueling tanker plane over western Iraq when it got the coordinates, said Swan.

The first two bombs dropped were satellite-guided weapons with penetrators for hardened targets. They were followed by two more 2,000-pound bombs with a time-delayed fuse designed to detonate 25 milliseconds after impact, Swan said.

He said earth penetrator bombs bore 10 to 20 feet (three to six meters) into the ground, depending on whether they are going through soil or concrete, before exploding.

"When you know a weapon is that accurate, you can put it where you want and you don't have to take chances with civilians and maybe damaging other structures that you don't want to," he said.

After the strike in Baghdad, the B-1 dropped 17 more bombs at an airfield and a surface-to-air missile site at two other locations before returning to base more than 10 hours later.

"When you release the weapon, it's a good feeling," said Wachter. "It's a good feeling to have the bomb come off the jet because you know you're aiding someone somewhere by striking the target," he said. "And it lasts for about, oh, three seconds."

"Then you get back and you find that you struck your target. But when you find out what they are, especially something like this, it's a feather in the cap. It's a good feeling," he said.

"But I want you to know that anyone could do this, anyone in my squadron has the ability to do this. Just so happens we were the lucky ones."

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