by Dale Brown
“Probably a glitch,” Fogelman said dismissively. “ ‘Captain’s bars’ are on Brunswick.” Rebecca gently steered the bomber until the nav computer director’s bars were centered, then reengaged the autopilot to head for Navy Brunswick. Meanwhile, Fogelman began rooting through the charts and approach plates in the rack beside Furness’ headrest, searching for the approach plates and airport diagrams for the base. He set in the VOR radio navigation aid frequency in the primary nav radio as a backup to his admittedly poor INS system. The VOR needle on Furness’ Horizontal Situation Indicator continued to rotate aimlessly, and a red OFF flag in the HSI case told them no nav signal was being received. “Brunswick VOR must be off the air,” he said. He set in the UHF frequencies for Brunswick ATIS (Automatic Terminal Information Service) to hear a recording of the Brunswick weather and field conditions—no response. Fogelman set in the approach, tower, and ground control frequency into presets. “I’ll wait till we get a bit closer to the base, then—”
“Hey,” Rebecca interrupted, motioning out the right windscreen with her head into the darkening gray clouds, “there’s traffic at—holy shit, look out!”
Fogelman looked up just in time to see two F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter-jets in steep 90-degree-plus bank turns, not more than a few yards away from Thunder Zero-Four—and the first fighter appeared to be firing its 20-millimeter cannon at them.
Rebecca could actually see several winks of light and a stream of gas from the cannon muzzle of the lead F-16. The second F-16 fighter appeared to be flying in close trail, directly behind and slightly above his leader, and so he passed right over Rebecca’s head, so close that she could see the second pilot’s checklist strapped to his right thigh through his large clear bubble canopy. There was no time to react, speak, not even scream—Furness couldn’t do anything but let the thunderous roar and the shock wave of the two jets pass over her and pray that death would come swiftly or not at all.
The cannon shells hit with the force of Thor’s hammer along the bottom of the fuselage and left wing of Furness’ bomber, shaking the plane so badly that Furness thought she’d go into a stall or spin. The MASTER CAUTION light snapped on, several yellow caution lights illuminated on the forward instrument panel, and the navigation computers and most other control and display screens and systems went dark.
The F-16 passed less than half a wingspan away—no more than thirty or forty feet. Their supersonic shock wave smashed into the formation of Vampire bombers, threatening to twist them inside out and upside down. Rebecca saw Paula Norton’s plane cartwheel over into a complete roll, caught in the hurricane-like twisting forces of the F-16’s vortices—and it was plummeting right into Furness’ plane. Furness grabbed her control stick with both hands and pulled sharply to the left to get away from the second RF-111. The cockpit filled with debris from the negative G-forces as the bomber sliced over and down. There wasn’t any way Rebecca could control the roll—her controls froze. The roll continued, one after another, and Rebecca couldn’t stop it.
Fogelman kept screaming, “You have it? Shit, lady, do you have it?” He was frantically looking four directions at once—at the engine instruments, which were probably close to Greek to him; out the window; at his radarscope for some inexplicable reason; and at the ejection handles on the center console next to his left knee.
“I got it, Fogelman, I got it!” she shouted back, first on interphone and then cross-cockpit. He was so excited, with his oxygen mask, arms, and head flailing around so much, that Rebecca found herself watching the ejection handles, ready to block any attempt Fogelman might make to pull one and punch them out.
“I feel a vibration,” Fogelman shouted. “Right under my feet. Did Norton hit us? Jesus, we almost got plastered by those F-16s! All my stuff is out …”
“Fuck that!” Furness shouted. “I got the airplane—I got it …” But maybe I don’t, she thought in horror. The nose stayed high and wouldn’t come down, the aft end stayed low, and the left roll continued despite her efforts. She mashed the autopilot disconnect lever and brought the throttles to IDLE. No change.
“Eject! Eject!” Fogelman suddenly screamed. Furness saw him make a grab for the right ejection lever and she pushed his hand away.
“No!” Furness shouted. “What the fuck are you doing? We’ve still got ten thousand feet to work this.” She stomped on the left rudder petal with all her might. Suddenly the roll stopped—or did it? The turn-coordinator ball was still hard left and the turn needle was oscillating, although it appeared that the horizon had stopped rolling. She kept the left rudder pushed in, despite her desire to straighten out. Sure enough, the turn needle straightened and the rolling stopped, although the nose was still high over the horizon and the ball was still hard left. The altimeter was still unwinding—they were passing through ten thousand feet above sea level, the recommended safe ejection altitude. Furness pushed the control stick full forward.
“What are you doing?” Fogelman demanded. He tried to haul back on the control stick, but Furness managed to overpower him, and he eventually gave up. “Don’t dive! We’re already past ten thousand!”
“We’re in a flat spin,” Furness said calmly as she shoved the wing-sweep handle full forward. The airspeed-indicator tape was reading zero, a strange sensation since they were still thousands of feet in the air. “We’ve got no airspeed. Hold on—and keep your hands away from the fucking controls!” She shoved the nose seemingly straight down at the ocean. They plunged through a cloud deck, and Rebecca had to fight off a tremendous wave of nausea and vertigo. Her head was spinning wildly, to the right this time, and only by gluing her eyes to the instruments was she able to hang on. A few seconds later they popped through the cloud deck, and all they could see was blue ocean and wind-tossed whitecaps below. Slowly the airspeed began to rise, and when it climbed over one-fifty, she pulled back on the control stick slowly, not letting the airspeed bleed below one-fifty, and fed in power—thankfully, both engines had not stalled and responded immediately. The nose finally rested above the horizon, and she leveled off at about six thousand feet—they had lost over eleven thousand feet of altitude in about thirty seconds.
Carefully Rebecca tried some gentle pitch movements—no problem. But when she tried a gentle left turn, she noticed that the left spoiler, a fence-like drag device atop each wing used to help make crisper turns, would not deploy. “Looks like we got a damaged spoiler actuator on the left wing,” she said. “We’ll have to lock out the spoilers for the rest of the flight. I think the recon pod got creamed by that bomb, but it’s not serious.” On the primary radio tuned to the GUARD emergency frequency, she called, “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Thunder Zero-One on GUARD, midair collision with two Foxtrot-One-Six fighter planes, approximate position seven-zero-miles east-north-east of Brunswick, Maine, altitude zero-six thousand feet.” She wasn’t about to say that a friendly F-16 fighter had nearly succeeded in shooting her out of the sky. “My flight is split up and I am in marginal VMC. Thunder Flight, check in on GUARD frequency with status and altitude, over.”
“Thunder Zero-Two on GUARD, loud and clear, code one, one-seven-thousand feet, holding hands with Zero-Four,” Joe Johnson replied, signifying that they were undamaged and that Kelly in Thunder Zero-Four was with him.
“Thunder Zero-Four on GUARD,” Frank Kelly replied shakily, “loud and clear, scared shitless but code one.” No reply from Thunder Zero-Three.
“Thunder Zero-Three, this is Thunder Zero-One on GUARD,” Furness radioed, “report up on GUARD frequency. Over.” No response. “Zero-Three, come up on GUARD frequency immediately, over.” Still no response. “Paula, Ted, dammit, come up on any radio if you can! Key your mike three times if you can hear me. Zero-Three, come in!” Rebecca couldn’t believe it—they had lost Paula Norton and Ted Little. She obviously couldn’t recover from the—
“Becky!” Norton shouted over the GUARD frequency. “Thunder Zero-Three’s up on GUARD. Anybody hear me?”
“Paula, this is R
ebecca. Are you all right? Where are you? What’s your altitude?”
“We’re okay,” Norton replied, her voice shaking with excitement, fear, and exhilaration all at once. “Ted hit his head—he’s a little loopy but he’s okay. I’m at one-two thousand feet. I stalled my left engine and it took a few tries to get it restarted, but I’m in the green. I have no damned idea where I am—Brunswick VOR’s not on the air, and the nav stuff is out.”
“Are you VFR, Zero-Three?”
“Negative. Visibility is poor with snow. Not picking up any ice yet, though.”
“All right, Zero-Three, you can start a climb to one-six thousand,” Furness said. “We’ll try to get a contact to you.”
“Roger,” Norton replied. “Leaving twelve for sixteen—thank God.”
“Zero-Three, Zero-Two’s got a lock on you,” Johnson radioed, indicating that his attack radar was locked on to Norton’s plane. “We’re at your four o’clock position high at five miles. You’re clear to climb to sixteen thousand five hundred.”
“Roger. Zero-Three’s leaving fourteen for sixteen-five,” Norton announced.
“Zero-One copies, I’m leaving eight for fifteen-five.” Rebecca had to give Norton a lot of credit for bringing it back under control.
By the time Rebecca climbed up to altitude, Thunder Zero-Two and Zero-Four, now with Zero-Three within visual range of them, had moved to within a mile. Because Fogelman’s nav gear wasn’t running, Rebecca put Johnson in the lead and got on his right wing, with Kelly flying beside Furness so he could look her plane over carefully. After coordinating what they would do, Furness moved to twice route-formation distance, about a half-mile from Johnson, and Kelly crossed under and to her left wing, looking at the damage:
“Well, you can kiss that recon pod good-bye,” Kelly radioed. “It’s departed the aircraft completely. Both bomb bay doors caved in, your nose gear door looks damaged, looks like a few actuators hanging in the breeze. Looks like hydraulic fluid or coolant streaks underneath— better double-check that the pod is powered down and isolated.”
“Checked, power off, bomb door switch off, circuit breakers pulled,” Fogelman told Furness.
“We got it, Zero-Four,” Furness radioed Kelly.
“It looks like the nose gear door might have gotten hit,” Kelly continued, “so we’ll have to keep an eye on it when you bring the gear down. Moving to the left wing.” Kelly eased his bomber over the left wing: “Looks like a possible rupture or break in the skin, Zero-One—I suggest you start transferring fuel out of the right wing, if you got any left, or you’ll end up with a heavy wing.”
“We’re burning off body fuel only.”
“Copy. Your left weapon pylon is gone, and you’ve got a lot of damage on the pylon root. About four feet of the trailing edge of the center flap assembly is ripped off. Some pieces are landing in the slipstream, but not much. Anything else you want us to check?” “Couldn’t stand any more happy news, Zero-Four.”
“Roger that. Moving back to fingertip.”
Just as Rebecca watched Kelly slide under and out of sight, she looked up and saw four F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters, behind and to Johnson’s left about a quarter of a mile. “Company, eight o’clock, Thunder Flight,” she called on interplane. “Green Mountain boys returning to the scene of the crime.”
“The four buttheads who buzzed us, no doubt,” Ted Little chimed in. “You guys are from Burlington? Why the hell did you make a pass at us like that?”
“Hey, Thunder, we didn’t know it was you,” one of the 134th Fighter Interceptor Squadron Patriot’s F-16 pilots radioed back. “We were scrambled against a Backfire bomber from Cuba that NORAD had been tracking all morning.” NORAD, or North American Air Defense Command, call-in sign WINDJAMMER, was the joint U.S. and Canadian military agency responsible for the air defense of the entire North American continent, from the North Pole to Panama. “WINDJAMMER must’ve thought you guys were the bogey and vectored us right on top of you.”
No wonder Boston Center and the military command posts were so weird on the radios, Furness thought—they had Russian bombers off the coast to deal with! Well, this wasn’t a topic for discussion on an open radio. “Patriots, how about leading us back to Plattsburgh? We’ve got two birds close to emergency fuel, and now we’ve got structural damage. Tell Boston Center we’ll need weapons-on-board clearance and that we’ll be declaring an emergency. Or are you still out chasing Bears?”
“We’re heading back to the barn too,” the lead F-16 pilot replied. “We’ve been rotating these intercepts for days now. And after our little close encounter back there, I’m going to need a fresh flight suit—right before I go downtown and get plastered.”
TWENTY-THREE
“Two green—correction, nose gear green light out, red light in the gear handle still on,” Fogelman called out. Normally he read the checklists very mundanely, with little interest, and recited the usual “two green no red” verbatim without hardly looking—but not this morning. He paid attention to every checklist step and double-checked each light and indicator as if his life depended on it—which, of course, it did.
Rebecca’s damaged RF-111G Vampire bomber was handling pretty well as they descended through the clouds and prepared for landing at Plattsburgh, and up until now things had been fairly routine. There were a few snow showers in the Plattsburgh area, and it was overcast and cold, but the runway was open and the ice and snow had been scraped off. The Air Battle Wing had a strip alert tanker ready to launch and refuel the incoming bombers, but the other three bombers had enough fuel to land without an emergency aerial refueling, so the tanker stayed on the ground. Thunder Zero-Two and Zero-Four landed first and Zero-Three last, with Paula Norton taking the approach end arresting cable just in case her aircraft had experienced any serious structural or landing gear problems.
Because Rebecca would be landing without flaps, slats, or spoilers, she needed to burn down fuel before landing in order to get the lowest aircraft gross weight and the shortest landing roll possible. Her plan, as long as the weather cooperated, was to enter the visual pattern into Plattsburgh, being careful to keep the base and the runway in sight at all times, and do a series of low approaches until they were down to five thousand pounds of fuel remaining. Meanwhile, the approach and departure end arresting cables were being reconfigured for her.
Again, it was wall-to-wall checklists—no flap–no slat landing checklist, asymmetrical spoiler checklist, brake energy limit check, approach or departure-end-cable arrestment checklist in case the runway was too icy to stop, plus the normal approach and landing checklists. Now they had an unsafe-gear indication—either the speed brake (the forward main gear door) was not in its proper in-trail position or the nose gear was not fully down and locked. With the damage to the nose-gear-door area, Furness had to assume the worst—the nose gear was not fully locked.
“Delta, this is Zero-One, nose gear indicating unsafe condition, and I’m picking up increased vibration in the nose,” Furness radioed on the command post frequency. Delta was the call sign for the Maintenance Group commander, who would coordinate all the recovery efforts for the damaged bomber.
“Copy that, Zero-One,” the group commander responded. Furness didn’t know the new maintenance group commander—he had just recently arrived—and she was a little skittish about turning over this recovery to a new guy, but the operations group commander, Colonel Greg McGwire, call sign Charlie, and the wing commander had both deferred to the new guy’s experience and had turned this recovery over to him. “What are your light indications?”
“Delta, the nose gear light is out, repeat out, the main-gear green light is on, and the red light in the gear handle is on, repeat, on, Thunder Zero-One.”
“Okay, Zero-One, leave the gear handle where it is, check your circuit breakers, clean up your checklists … and clear me in to your left wing.”
“Zero-One cop— Say again, Delta? Clear you in … ?” Furness searched out her left side and t
o her amazement saw an F-16B Fighting Falcon fighter, the two-seat trainer version of the supersonic interceptor from the 134th Fighter Interceptor Squadron in Burlington, climbing and turning to join on them. “Delta, are you in the F-16 closing on me?”
“Affirmative, Zero-One,” Lieutenant Colonel Daren Mace said. While the other three RF-111Gs were landing, Mace had requested a two-seat F-16 from Burlington to take him up to inspect the damage personally. “Give us a right turn toward the base. We’ll be underneath you looking at your damage.”
“Copy, Delta,” Furness replied. Somewhere in the back of her mind she thought that voice sounded familiar.
The F-16 reappeared on her left wing a few minutes after she rolled out of her turn. “Okay, Zero-One, your nose gear is not down and locked, and it looks like the wheels are castering in the slipstream. Looks like you’re going to take an approach-end cable. Hang in there about fifteen more minutes to get down and get ready. See you on the ground.”
It took more like thirty minutes before Delta called up and cleared her for the cable pass. Furness had only fifteen minutes of fuel remaining—she had this try and one more, and then they’d have to take it out over the Atlantic and eject. She was determined not to miss.
“Okay, Mark,” she said to Fogelman, “all the checklists are done, right?”
Fogelman had been very quiet for the past thirty minutes. She could see his fists clenching and unclenching on his lap, his nervous, staring eyes, how he jumped at every new shudder and creak the bomber made. He was double- and triple-checking his landing data numbers, reading the checklists over after running them to make sure he had done all the items, and glancing around the cockpit, repeatedly securing loose items, checking switches and circuit breakers. Nothing like a good old-fashioned inflight emergency, she thought, to bring out the best in a crewdog. “Yes,” Fogelman muttered, “checklists are complete.”