Topgun

by Dan Pedersen

  As we passed through the Strait of Gibraltar and began the long transatlantic crossing, the squadron completed seven months on deployment without a single accident, a remarkable achievement. Morale, at rock bottom the previous year, was sky-high. The Dogs were walking tall with our swagger back, ready for whatever the Navy threw at us.

  A few hundred miles from Norfolk, our F-4s began launching for the cross-country flight back to Miramar. With me in the backseat of my F-4 on this flight was our J79 specialist, Chief Jim “Frenchie” Ireland. He was nothing short of a prodigy. He knew more about the inner workings of our power plants than any other man I ever met in uniform. As we chatted over the intercom during our flight, I could hear the excitement and happiness in every word he said to me. We refueled in midair over Tennessee before heading on to Roswell, N.M., for an overnight.

  The next day, our sixteen Phantoms entered the pattern over Miramar. Fightertown was abuzz. Flags were waved, signs were held high. As we touched down, taxied to the ramp, cut our engines, and opened our canopies, our families surged toward our birds. For the chiefs who had never flown before, this was an incredible moment. To the surprise of their families, they climbed out of the cockpits in full flight gear. Frenchie’s wife reached him just as our brown shoes touched the ramp. She wrapped her arms around him and gave him one hell of a kiss, then grabbed me for a thank-you-skipper kiss that left me mirroring Jim’s smile.

  Quickly on her heels was my son, Chris, giving me a little-man bear hug. My daughter, Dana, pushed right in for a long hug. My girl, always a bit more reserved, was halfway through high school now, and I’d missed much of it. I needed to be there for her. Finally, Maddi reached my side. We’d had ups and downs over the years. Our marriage had taken big hits during my time at sea. But I was in it for the long haul and wanted to make it work. Our embrace on the ramp made me think we had a chance.

  My Dogs, surrounded by family, were headed home. Wrenched by the experience of Vietnam, they seemed reenergized and ready for more. When the America reached Norfolk the next day, the remainder of the Dog crew flew home in Navy C-9s. Everybody celebrated in their own way, but the joy seemed universally shared. It was the best homecoming I ever had.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  END OF THE THIRD TEMPLE

  Tel Nor Air Base, Israel

  October 6, 1973

  I would learn only after returning from the Med how the Yom Kippur War threatened the Middle East with Armageddon—and that Topgun had played a small part in averting what could have been a worldwide tragedy of the first order.

  On October 6, 1973, as I explained earlier, Israel faced down an Arab army almost a million soldiers strong. Dan Halutz lay in bed that morning, unaware that these troops, supported by thousands of tanks and armored vehicles, were poised to strike against the Israel Defense Forces. His first indication that something was amiss came when an A-4 Skyhawk blew over his house at treetop level.

  Dan belonged to the legendary 201 Squadron, known as “The One.” Colonel Ben Eliyahu was its deputy commander. The One was considered the elite outfit of the Israeli Air Force, and as such received the latest and most technologically advanced fighter in the Jewish state’s inventory: the F-4 Phantom. The Miramar RAG would play a vital role in the squadron’s survival in combat.

  In the Six-Day War of June 1967, the Israelis had responded to the imminent threat of an Arab invasion with a preemptive strike. Now, while Prime Minister Golda Meir wrestled with how to deal with the geopolitics of what Israeli intelligence could clearly see coming, the head of the Israeli Air Force ordered all squadrons to be armed and ready to carry out a strike. But when Henry Kissinger, the U.S. secretary of state, made it known to the Israelis that they would not receive any American support if they attacked first, Meir made the decision to absorb the Arab onslaught. At midday on October 6, the air force countermanded the original order, telling the squadrons to be prepared for air defense. While the ground crews pulled bombs and air-to-ground missiles off Israel’s fighter-bombers, the Arab invasion began. Waves of Egyptian and Syrian fighters and bombers thundered over Israel, attacking airfields, antiaircraft batteries, headquarters, and other command facilities. Our friends from the Miramar RAG days suddenly found themselves in dire straits.

  Those who got aloft fought with almost superhuman tenacity. Two F-4 Phantoms from 201 Squadron rose to meet an incoming raid that included twenty-eight Egyptian MiGs. Outnumbered fourteen to one, the two crews maneuvered wildly, shooting threats off each other’s tails in a desperate, sprawling dogfight. When it ended, seven MiGs were smoking holes in the desert. Both Israeli F-4s landed safely back at base.

  There was a swagger to the Israeli Air Force, born from repeated victories over the Arab nations that had attacked them since the War of Independence in 1948. When the IAF rose to attack the advancing Arab armies, however, they had some of the swagger knocked out of them when they ran into a brand-new threat: the mobile SA-6 surface-to-air Russian-made missile launcher.

  As they rushed to support three thousand forward-deployed Israeli troops against ten times that number of Syrian troops on the Golan Heights, the Israeli Air Force was unprepared for the SA-6. Phantoms and Skyhawks exploded in the flames as missiles knocked them out of the sky. By the end of the day, the Israelis had lost forty planes—almost 10 percent of their entire Air Force.

  The next morning, the Skyhawks and Phantoms went after those SA-6 launchers, which the Syrians had moved forward to defend their frontline troops from air attack. Unable to detect the SA-6s’ new radar emissions, the Israeli crews could only eyeball the incoming missiles. By then, it was usually too late. Dan’s squadron, The One, was shot to pieces over the Golan Heights. In five wild minutes, a Syrian SAM battery was annihilated at the price of four Israeli F-4s shot out of the sky.

  At the same time, the Egyptians crossed the Suez Canal and invaded the Sinai with almost two hundred thousand troops, supported by tanks and armored vehicles. The surface-to-air missile batteries of the invaders also took a heavy toll of Israeli planes on this southern front.

  Colonel Ben Eliyahu and his squadron attacked the Egyptian bridges thrown across the Suez Canal that day. To avoid the missile threat, they flew right down low on the dunes before climbing suddenly to release their weapons. They hit the bridges with surprising accuracy.

  When a dozen Egyptian MiG-17s bombed the Israeli headquarters for the southern front, Ben Eliyahu and his men turned and went after them. In the ensuing dogfight, Ben Eliyahu scored his second confirmed kill, sending a MiG-17 into the desert sand. His wingman flamed two more, and a fourth crashed into the ground while maneuvering against Colonel Ben Eliyahu.

  For all the air-to-air success, the Israeli Army could not stop the Arab offensive, and the Israeli Air Force was taking losses it could not sustain or afford. It was a dreadful situation. On the ground, Israeli frontline units were simply being overrun. One unit defending the Golan Heights was down to its last half dozen tanks. The Syrians arrayed hundreds against them.

  Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan went to see Golda Meir. In a sober tone, Dayan said to her, “Prime Minister, this is the end of the Third Temple.”

  In other words, Israel was about to be overrun and crushed.

  Prime Minister Meir ordered thirteen Hiroshima-sized nuclear warheads to be assembled and placed on surface-to-surface missiles and under the wings of an F-4 squadron based at Tel Nof. The nukes were deployed out in the open, so that American intelligence satellites could see it happening. In later years there was debate over the degree to which this impressed Nixon and Kissinger. Some accounts say the threat of a nuclear war in the Middle East was a powerful impetus to what followed.

  Nixon ordered a full-scale emergency resupply effort for the Israelis. From U.S. Army bases in Germany, stocks of latest-generation antitank missiles were loaded into Air Force transports and flown to Israel, even as the air battles raged. It seemed my country, which had done so many things wrong in Southeast Asia, finally did so
mething right.

  In the United States, Phantoms and Skyhawks were pulled straight out of Air Force and Navy squadrons and forwarded to Israel to replace the planes lost to those deadly SA-6s. The majority of our NATO allies lent exactly zero assistance. Cowed by the threat of an OPEC oil embargo, NATO refused to help Israel in its hour of crisis, though the Dutch and the Portuguese, to their credit, allowed our flights to land and refuel in their countries.

  On October 14, Colonel Ben Eliyahu led his Phantoms on a deep strike against the Egyptian MiG-21 base at Mansura. A wild fight erupted down on the deck as MiGs clashed with Phantoms and the base was pummeled with bombs. Ben Eliyahu locked on to a MiG-21, whose pilot maneuvered wildly, trying to buy time as his wingman came to his rescue. Ben Eliyahu’s navigator twisted around in his seat and spotted that second MiG-21 sliding into firing position behind them.

  Rather than breaking off his pursuit, Ben Eliyahu stuck with his MiG. He opened fire with his 20mm cannon—the latest version of the F-4 came with an internal gun—and watched as the MiG exploded in flames and augered in. A split second later, his RIO shouted, “Break! Break!” Ben Eliyahu bent the Phantom into a tight turn. The MiG-21 driver behind him, obviously inexperienced, tried to follow and pushed his aircraft too far. It spun in and crashed not far from the Israeli’s first kill. Once again, it was considered a squadron kill. In any other air force, Ben Eliyahu would have become an ace that day.

  As he took over the squadron command, he and Dan Halutz flew nonstop. In seventeen days, Dan flew forty-three combat missions. The pace was so intense that a major general came to Colonel Ben Eliyahu and recommended the squadron stand down and get some rest.

  “Under absolutely no circumstances,” came Ben Eliyahu’s response. A warrior to the core, he would help save his nation or die trying. There would be no rest until one or the other happened. In this intense war of survival, only winning counted.

  The squadron went into action day and night. They led attacks deep into Egyptian territory. On one mission against a communication center, MiGs intercepted them again. Colonel Ben got on the tail of one panicky MiG-21 pilot, who saw the writing on the wall and ejected. The squadron received credit for that one too.

  The days of flying and fighting wore The One down. They lost brothers in nearly every fight, and each day fewer and fewer planes and crews remained. Yet the bombings and destruction of MiGs helped blunt the Arab advance. Finally, Israeli ground forces retook the Golan Heights, and drove into Syria, too, smashing the Syrian Army and leading Iraq and Jordan to send troops to defend Damascus.

  As the tide turned, the first American F-4s and A-4s started to arrive to replace the near-crippling losses. Topgun played an unheralded role in this pivotal moment.

  Mugs McKeown was the skipper of the Navy Fighter Weapons School at the time. After Roger Box stood it up as an independent squadron, and Dave Frost held the reins in the summer of ’72, Mugs arrived from Yankee Station to run the shop. One Friday, halfway through the current class, word came that the Israelis needed his aggressor A-4E Mongooses. The maintenance people spent all weekend repainting them in Israeli markings and camouflage. Some F-4s were also promised to the Israelis, and a call for volunteers went out to fly them from Miramar to the combat zone. Every naval aviator present at that meeting volunteered.

  Almost a hundred F-4s from Air Force units headed east to join the Israelis. More Navy Phantoms soon followed. A half dozen Israeli pilots arrived at Miramar three days after Mugs got orders to give up the shop’s A-4s. A serious, secretive bunch, the Israeli pilots expressed profound gratitude for the help.

  The Israelis flew the Topgun A-4s across the country and crossed the Atlantic, tanking en route before stopping in Portugal or Spain. For the American crews who delivered aircraft straight to Tel Nof, they discover not just an air force at war, but an entire people. The families of the flight crews lived in tents around the runways. Wives hung laundry out to dry next to missile batteries. Their country and lives were threatened. There could be no greater stakes for any patriot. The dynamics of the situation were so very different from the Vietnam War. More than a few of the U.S. pilots would have gladly stayed and flown into combat with the Israelis.

  Three weeks into the war, a Russian cargo vessel carrying nuclear weapons steamed out of the Black Sea into the eastern Med, bound for Alexandria. Soviet-manned Scud missile batteries operating in Egypt included at least one tactical nuclear warhead each. American intelligence discovered that fact when overflights spotted the unique trucks the Soviets used to transport such deadly weapons. As a result of these discoveries, senior U.S. officials—apparently without the approval or foreknowledge of President Nixon—took the country to an upgraded nuclear alert, DEFCON 3.

  The Russians saw the U.S. response and interpreted it as a panicky overreaction. After a series of long internal discussions in Moscow, the Soviets decided Syria and Egypt were not worth a global thermonuclear holocaust. The ship carrying nukes dropped anchor in Alexandria, but did not unload. The Kremlin’s diplomats started leaning on its Arab allies to end the war.

  Peace broke out on October 23, 1973. The Israeli counteroffensives cleared the Golan Heights, captured significant chunks of Syrian territory, drove the Egyptians largely out of the Sinai, and even established footholds on the west side of the Suez Canal. In that sense, it was a catastrophic defeat for the Arab alliance. But in truth it had been a near-ruin thing. The Israeli Air Force was battered and exhausted, with just seventy or so Phantom crews left standing. The Israelis admitted to the loss of over a hundred aircraft—almost a quarter of their entire complement of combat aircraft. With only a few exceptions, these planes went down to latest-generation Soviet-built missiles.

  Those three weeks were rough ones indeed. They were worse for the Arab air forces, whose fighter pilots found themselves completely overmatched by the better-trained Israelis. Boyd may have had his equations, but at Topgun, we trained to the man in the cockpit. The better pilot will almost always win, no matter the odds, situation, or planes. The Israelis fought savage air battles against ridiculously long odds—and tore the guts out of their enemies. The exact kill ratio will never be known, as the Egyptians concealed the extent of their losses, as did the Israelis. Our Israeli friends claimed more than 440 Arab aircraft destroyed, most of them in air combat. Current sources show the number of Israeli air-to-air kills at around 83. The American influence was significant, but it boiled down to the men in the cockpit. They had performed as well as fighter pilots ever have.

  Meanwhile, the Yom Kippur War precipitated a crisis at Topgun. With only a single aggressor A-4 remaining after the transfers to the Israelis, the school could not function. The October class graduated on schedule, but Mugs canceled the next one while they scrambled to solve this problem.

  Since its inception, Topgun had faced ongoing jealousies and bureaucratic hostility. We fought our battles for resources and respect early on, and slowly gained both through any means necessary. The year before, thanks to Dave “Frosty” Frost making his career-risking stand, Topgun became an independent command with its own aircraft. Now, with our war in Vietnam over, some careerists above and around Topgun began to question the need for such a school, especially one that was an independent command. This is where it hurt Topgun to be run by junior officers. Lieutenant commanders and lieutenants usually do not have the political horsepower to fend off serious threats.

  Fortunately, Mugs McKeown was a special kind of skipper. He intuited the threat. If Topgun owned no aggressor aircraft, the school would have no way to function independently. Bill Driscoll, Duke Cunningham’s back-seater and the only Navy RIO ace of the Vietnam War, was a Topgun instructor at the time. He and the others running the school all sensed a pivotal moment was at hand. The Navy either refused to buy new jets or had no aircraft to spare in the aftermath of Vietnam. The animosity toward Topgun from the staff officers who came up through the ranks of attack aviation led to many closed doors. If Mugs didn’t fix his airc
raft shortage, Topgun might just dry up and blow away. Death by bureaucratic atrophy.

  A fighter to the core, he’d earned his nickname while boxing at the Naval Academy. He also played running back for Navy in its glory year of 1960, when the team was ranked fourth in the nation and beat the number one Washington Huskies. Thanks to his time training with the Air Force, Mugs knew a lot of people outside Navy circles. He networked with men who became members of Congress and Air Force leaders who ended up in key commands.

  While working the phones, Mugs learned from an old friend at VX-4 that the Air Force just stashed a pair of broken-down T-38 Talon fighter trainers at the Navy test facility at China Lake, where they were to be turned into target drones and blown up.

  Mugs and his executive officer at the time, Jerry Sawatzky, went down to China Lake to take a look. The planes were in bad shape. The engine intakes were full of desert dust; the ejection seats were nonfunctional; they were missing parts and even had flat tires. Still, they were better than nothing.

  With the help of Northrop, Topgun got those aircraft ready for flight. Mugs and Jerry flew them to Miramar, where the school’s maintainers discovered that none of their support equipment would work with the new planes. Basic things like engine stands, hoists, and a cache of spare parts would be needed to get the birds functional. The mechanics improvised, pulling the engines out by hand and laying them on mattresses inside a hangar, but that was a stopgap. They needed a proper logistical setup for these planes.