by Dale Brown
“I see the missiles! Still headed right for us!” Furness called out. She began a slow side-to-side rolling action. The Grumble didn’t seem to be going for it. On the command radio, she shouted, “One-Two, give me a couple more.”
“Copy,” Norton replied. “Decoys away.”
The extra decoys worked. Just as the flare of the missile’s motor winked out, Furness could see that the SA-N-6 missile was beginning to climb higher and higher until it was far overhead, tracking the decoys that were hundreds of times better targets than the Vampires. A moment later, Fogelman shouted, “Got it! Shit hot, we got both the air search and the Grumble missile emitter! We nailed ’em!”
It was confirmed by an entire series of explosions just about twelve miles off on the horizon as the hundred-pound warheads from the two HARMs fired thousands of tungsten alloy cubes in a deadly cloud of metal all across the center and aft sections of the Russian guided missile cruiser, setting off several SS-N-12 “Sandbox” antiship missiles sitting in exposed angled launch canisters on deck.
Just when it appeared the secondary explosions had subsided, a tremendous explosion erupted on deck, illuminating the sea around the Marshal Ustinov for miles in all directions. They could even see a helicopter afire on the aft landing pad.
“We might have a kill!” Furness said in delight on interphone. “We might’ve gotten the cruiser!” She keyed the command radio mike button: “One-Two, did you see that? Banjo, this is One-One, I think we got the cruiser.”
“One-One, Banjo, give me an ident.” Fogelman briefly shut off the Mode 4 transponder, then turned it back on again. “Received, One-One,” the controller said in a low, somber voice. “One-Two is faded at this time. Turn right heading one-one-zero and say what state magnum.”
It was as if both Furness and Fogelman had been hit in the stomach with baseball bats. The NATO radar plane no longer had contact with Norton and Aldridge. One of the SA-N-6 missiles that they thought was going after a decoy must have hit them instead.
Just like that, in the blink of an eye, two fellow crewmembers were gone.
The radar warning receiver blared to life, and an “N” symbol appeared on the scope. “Mark?” Furness said. No reply—Fogelman was staring at the TEREC sensor, but he was as still as a rock. “Mark, come on. That must be the lone destroyer out there. Let’s get this puppy and get the hell out of here.”
“God … it can’t be …” he said, mulling over the deaths of Norton and Aldridge.
“Mark, dammit, run this shot.” On the command net, she radioed, “Banjo, One-One has one HARM left. Stand by. We’re pressing on the easterly destroyer.”
“Copy, Thunder. You have bandits at eleven o’clock, fifty miles, may be converging on you. The destroyer is at your ten o’clock, sixty miles. You’ve got chicks engaged at twelve o’clock, one-two-zero miles.”
“Roger.” She reached over and shook Fogelman’s left shoulder. “C’mon, Mark. Maybe they got out. Maybe they’re in the water. We can’t do anything for them. Let’s burn this last guy.”
But without the TALD decoys to induce the Russians to turn on their radars, the destroyer Rezkiy, which was patrolling alone between the guided missile cruiser and the aviation cruiser, wasn’t going to get sucked in quite as easy. Fogelman even tried turning on his attack radar to attract attention from the ship—nothing. But it did attract the attention of the fighters nearby: “One-One, bandits on you, twelve o’clock, forty miles. Range to the destroyer, fifty miles.”
“We’ll give it a few more seconds,” Furness said. “We’re still outside his SA-N-3 missile range.” Once they got within range of the SA-N-3, Furness tried climbing slightly—the Goblet had a minimum effective altitude of three hundred feet, so she tried climbing to five hundred feet to get the destroyer to commit. Still nothing. This was the one problem with carrying all antiradar weapons and nothing else—if the radars didn’t come up, the missiles were nothing but deadweight.
The destroyer’s radar didn’t come up because, with the AWACS feeding radar information to them, it wasn’t needed. The Russian AWACS was proving to be a real problem. They had a plan to deal with it—hopefully that plan was coming together right about now.
THIRTY-SIX
The other four RF-111G Vampire bombers had hit the Novorossiysk carrier battle group from two sides, cutting in from the southwest and from the east in a supersonic pincer. Captain Frank Kelly and Lieutenant Colonel Larry Tobias in Thunder One-Three, the most experienced team in the attack, killed the Russian destroyer Burnyy with a salvo of three HARM missiles, but their fourth HARM refused to power up or take any commands. The frigate Revnostnyy was hit by two HARMs fired by Major Clark Vest and First Lieutenant Lynn Ogden. After that, all the Russian ships refused to turn on any radars even with decoys flying everywhere—Captain Joe Johnson and Major Harold Rota, firing TALDs for Kelly and Tobias, even fired a decoy directly at a frigate, coming within a few hundred yards of hitting it, and the vessel refused to even activate a radar for its close-in weapon system.
Once Russian fighters started showing up, the Vampires were effectively out of the fight—but to the Russian “Mainstay” AWACS radar controller’s surprise, the four RF-111Gs turned south only twenty miles south of the Novorossiysk and began a climb, with radars and radios blaring. The American bombers climbed right on up to twelve thousand feet, well within lethal range of the cruiser’s SA-N-3B and SA-N-7 missile systems. But with the destruction of the Burnyy by the Vampires, the aviation cruiser wasn’t going to risk a sneak attack by the other two Vampires that they knew were operating farther west. After all, they had a full complement of twelve Yak-38 fighters, sixteen helicopters, and over 1,600 sailors on board. So they never fired another shot. It was going to be up to the Russian fighters now.
The Vampires were tempting targets for the Russian fighters operating over the Black Sea in support of the naval task force and now howling south to take up the chase. Deployed to bases on the Crimean Peninsula, only 120 miles to the north, were several wings of MiG-29 and Sukhoi-27 fighters, mostly providing air cover for the Russian radar plane. When the Vampires were first detected by the Mainstay radar plane, the fighter wings at Sevastopol and Yevpatoriya were placed on full alert, and when the attack began on the ships south of the Crimea, the airspace over the Black Sea was filled with over sixty fighters, the maximum the controllers aboard the A-50 Mainstay radar plane could safely handle. Spread out on both sides of the Novorossiysk carrier battle group so as to not interfere with the ship’s self-defense capabilities, the Russian fighters fanned out to hunt down the fast, low-flying American bombers. Twenty fighters deployed west to cover the Marshal Ustinov group, ten stayed with the Mainstay radar plane, and thirty fighters pursued the four Vampire bombers retreating toward Turkey. It seemed as if the RF-111G aircraft were unaware that they were being pursued—the Russians knew the Americans had an AWACS radar plane of their own up, but the Vampires were still flying at a high, very vulnerable altitude.
They were too vulnerable, too tempting a target—and it was designed that way. As the Russian fighter sweep moved south, eighty MiG-23 fighters from the Ukrainian Air Force swept up from the south. The Russian pursuers suddenly found themselves the pursued—what was just a few seconds earlier an easy thirty-on-four advantage had turned into an eighty-on-thirty disadvantage. The Vampires were soon forgotten, and all four escaped to the safety of the Turkish coastal highlands.
The single-engine Ukrainian MiG-23 Flogger, however, was no match for a Russian MiG-29 or Su-27 fighter. Even at night, the more advanced fighters were capable of killing many times their numbers of the older, much less sophisticated Ukrainian fighters, especially with an A-50 radar plane directing them. But they never got the chance—as soon as the Russian fighters started pairing up against their former Soviet brothers from Ukrayina, the MiG-23s turned southbound and ran at full military power without firing one missile. It was a planned retreat—they never had any intention of trying to mix it up with the
advanced fighters …
… and the reason soon became apparent. As the bulk of the Russian fighter coverage moved toward Turkey’s north coast chasing the Ukrainian fighters, a flight of ten Ukrainian MiG-27 and ten Sukhoi-17 fighter-bombers swept in from the east at supersonic speed. The Mainstay’s radar controllers were swamped with so many planes on the scope that they didn’t see the low-flying newcomers until they were only sixty miles from the remaining five ships of the Novorossiysk carrier battle group. The Russian fighters were far out of position and had to use precious fuel to turn and engage the large number of bombers streaking in from the east. The Ukrainian tactical bombers were lightly loaded with extended-range fuel tanks—they had to fly three hundred miles farther than their MiG-23 brothers in order to outflank the Russians and successfully sneak up on the aircraft cruiser group—and they carried only one weapon, so they were very fast.
That one weapon—the Kh-59 missile—was the most devastating weapon in Ukrayina’s air arsenal. Called the AS-13 Kingpost by NATO and nicknamed the SLAMski because of its resemblance to the U.S. Navy’s AGM-84E SLAM (Standoff Land Attack Missile), the Kingpost was a TV-guided subsonic 2,000-pound rocket-powered missile with a 300-pound high-explosive warhead. The MiG-27 and Su-17 bombers fired their missiles at a range of about thirty-five miles from the warships, then turned back to the east. The missiles first climbed rapidly to thirty thousand feet, then began a steep descent down toward the Russian warships. The last twenty seconds of their flight would be controlled by the Ukrainian pilots via a television and steering datalink back to their fighters.
Once the Kh-59 missiles made their climb, however, they were sitting ducks for the Russian fighters—the A-50 Mainstay radar plane could easily track each of the twenty missiles fired at the Russian warships. Since most of the fighters were still too far south to chase down the cruise missiles, the Mainstay directed all but two of its own fighter escorts to try to shoot down the missiles. Eight Sukhoi-27 fighters broke out of their combat air patrols and sped eastbound, locking up the big one-ton missiles on radar and maneuvering to intercept. The radio datalink between missile and fighter was used as a beacon to locate each missile, and the sophisticated track-while-scan radar of the eight Su-27s allowed almost the entire complement of Kh-59 missiles to be targeted …
… which sealed the fate of the Russian Mainstay radar plane, which was the joint U.S./Turkish/Ukrainian task force’s main target all along. While the main bulk of the Russian fighters was turning northeast to intercept the Ukrainian strike aircraft, and all but two of the Mainstay’s escorts were trying to intercept the Kh-59 cruise missiles, ten MiG-23 fighters blasted in from the southwest at forty thousand feet.
They were led by Colonel Pavlo Tychina himself.
Like the strike birds, they carried fuel tanks and only one weapon each—an R-33 long-range air-to-air missile with the NATO reporting name AA-9 Amos. The R-33 was one of the largest air-to-air missiles in the world, weighing almost 1,000 pounds, but it was one of the most sophisticated. It had a range of ninety miles when launched from high altitude, a top speed of Mach-three, and a 225-pound warhead. It used three types of guidance: semiactive radar homing, where it homed in on reflected radar energy from its launch aircraft; active radar homing, where a small radar unit in its nose cone steered it toward its target; and passive radar homing, where the missile could home in on radar energy transmitted by other aircraft—especially the big rotodome of the A-50 Mainstay radar plane.
The R-33 missile was not a typical weapon of the MiG-23 fighter—the Flogger’s radar could provide only basic navigation information and no guidance signals—but the power of the Mainstay’s radar sealed its own fate.
Out of ten missiles launched against the Russian Mainstay, two hit home.
The 380,000-pound aircraft lost the rotodome and its vertical stabilizer, but the main crew compartment stayed virtually intact. Its crew of twenty-four officers, who watched the R-33 missiles home in on them on radar, were alive to feel the impact as the huge aircraft crashed into the Black Sea.
They joined the aircraft cruiser Novorossiysk on its way to the bottom of the Black Sea, and because it was easily the biggest, most easily identifiable target for the relatively inexperienced Ukrainian pilots, six of the twenty Kh-59 missiles that survived their short flight hit the cruiser. With its landing deck full of Yak-38 Forger aircraft ready to launch in support of fleet defense, the fires and destruction on board the 43,000-ton vessel were devastating and complete—356 officers and seamen would perish in the attack.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Same Time
“Thunder One-One, many bandits at one o’clock, twenty miles, high. Chicks at two o’clock, seventy miles. Burner disengage east, bugout south. Acknowledge.”
“Banjo, One-One copies, we’re outta here,” Rebecca Furness replied. She swept the wings of her Vampire all the way back to 72.5 degrees, shoved the throttles into full afterburner, and began to accelerate past Mach-one. “Let’s get the Sidewinders on-line, Mark,” she said.
“They’re ready to go,” Fogelman replied. “The HARM is ready to jettison too if you want to get rid of it. I’ve got trackbreakers on and countermeasures set.”
The one remaining AGM-88 antiradar missile on the number-five pylon did not limit their top speed at all, but it did increase drag slightly and made the ride a little choppier. “We’ll try to hang on to it for now,” Furness replied. “We’ll need all the HARMs we can—”
Their E-3 AWACS radar plane orbiting over central Turkey suddenly radioed, “ ‘Apex,’ Thunder, twelve o’clock, fifteen miles … ‘Apex,’ Thunder, twelve o’clock … ‘Apex’ …”
“Missile launch!” Fogelman shouted. “The Russian fighters are launching missiles! But we don’t have a missile-launch indication or an uplink signal. I don’t know where they are.”
“It’s an IRSTS attack,” Furness said. The Russian IRSTS, or Infrared Search and Track System, allowed fighters to launch air-to-air missiles by combining range information from a ground or airborne radar with a heat-seeking sensor on their planes. The fighter radar needed to be turned on only for the missile’s last seconds of flight. “Stand by, the uplink should be coming.”
Suddenly a bat-wing symbol appeared directly in front of them on the threat warning scope, well within lethal range, and they got a bright red MISSILE LAUNCH indication and a fast deedledeedledeedle warning tone in their helmets.
“Fighter attack off the nose!” Fogelman shouted. He used two fingers to eject chaff bundles out of both left and right internal dispensers. “Chaff’s out! Vertical jinks!”
They could not perform a break maneuver or a hard turn to try to throw the missile off, because they would only further highlight themselves—they had to hope their jammers would take care of the missile uplink and the enemy fighter radars would lock on to the decoy chaff instead.
The sky was filled with air-to-air missiles fired at them—the Russian fighters were close enough now so that they could see the missiles in the night sky as tiny winks of light as they launched. A missile exploded about two hundred yards off their left wing, close enough for them to feel the shock wave against their aircraft.
“Thunder, many bandits twelve o’clock high, twelve miles, line abreast, continue burner east, junk ’em, and hunker down.” The AWACS controller’s brevity messages were ones of desperation—he was telling Furness and Fogelman to fly balls-to-the-wall right through the line of Russian fighters, continue electronic countermeasures, and hope for the best. “First bandits now at ten miles, twelve o’clock. I’ve got bandits hooking north—they’re expecting you to break south after the merge. Recommend you continue to extend eastbound at best speed. Lead bandits five miles.”
Just then Furness heard it—the unmistakable growling of an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile locked on to a target. She did not hesitate, but squeezed the safety release button on her control stick and hit the launch button. The small heat-seeker on the left pylon darted out into space and w
as quickly lost from view.
“Thunder, bandits breaking left and right … head’s down.” The missile missed.
But it still had a good effect—the Russian attack formation had been broken up and was now on the defensive. “Banjo, can you get us the hell out of here?”
“Thunder, bandits at your ten o’clock, twenty miles high,” the controller responded. “What state heat, Thunder?”
“Thunder has one.”
“Roger, Thunder, snap to zero-three-zero nose high to engage.”
“Yeah, baby, I like it,” Fogelman exclaimed. “Let’s get ’em.” The AWACS controller was suggesting that they try to scatter the Russian fighters who were maneuvering to get a tail shot on them by trying a “snap shot” with their last Sidewinder missile—if they could get those fighters to turn away, even for a few moments, they had a chance to get away.
Furness rolled into a hard left turn toward the middle of the Black Sea—it was a totally unexpected move, with the safety of the northern Turkish coast only sixty miles to the south—and as soon as she raised the nose to 20 degrees above the horizon, she immediately got a growling tone and punched off the last remaining Sidewinder missile at the approaching Russian fighters. She then banked hard right, descended to two hundred feet above the sea, and began a full-afterburner power run to Turkey. They were out of weapons—speed and low level was their only hope now. “Gimme the TFRs, Mark,” Furness said.
Fogelman already had his hands on the terrain-following radar switches, and he set them up as soon as Furness gave the word. “TFRs engaged, left TF, right SIT, hard ride.”
“Thanks, Mark. Good work.” Two vertical lines on the E-scope told them the system was in “LARA override,” meaning their altitude over the water was controlled by the radar altimeter until they got within a few miles of the shoreline. On the command net, she radioed, “Banjo, Thunder is ‘Winchester,’ request bogey-dope and vector to home plate.”