Both the bombers were targeted against suspected truck parks on the eastern edges of Hanoi. Cole suggested an orbit about twenty miles to the east of the North Vietnamese capital so they could lob their missiles at the heavy concentration of enemy missile sites that guarded the approaches to the city.
They carried two Standard missiles on the inboard wing stations and two Shrikes on the outboard. On the flight deck Grafton had examined the white missiles carefully. The Standard missiles were huge, fourteen inches in diameter and about fifteen feet long, packed with solid propellant and carrying a warhead designed to destroy with shrapnel rather than by blast. The Shrikes were smaller, about eight inches in diameter and nine feet long, and were steered by canards-tiny wings-mounted in the middle of the tubular fuselage.
"You've fired rockets before?" Cole asked.
"Not at night."
"When these missiles light off at night, they'll blind you if you look outside. All the gomers will see the ignition, too, if the air is clear. Spectacular."
They were now set up to launch the Shrike on station five, which was outboard on the right wing. The pilot glanced back at the left wing stations, but the missiles were invisible in the gloom. They were there, though, and ready.
All the crew had to do was find a target. The first nibble came from a gun-control radar behind them, the type that NATO code-named "Firecan." It acquired them and stayed locked up. Jake began weaving at random to make it harder for the large-caliber artillery, which the Firecan usually directed, to find them. "Swing around and take a look," said Cole. Jake held the left turn and searched the darkness where the enemy radar had to be. He picked up flashes from the muzzles of the big guns. He also saw small-caliber weapons immediately beneath the plane shooting tracers in streams.
"All the backyard stuff just shoots at noise," said Cole. "Only the big stuff-the eighty-five and one hundred millimeter-is hooked into the radar net and can reach us up here."
Arying the altitude by up to 500 feet, Jake swung back toward the planned orbit. Off to his left he saw white flashes. Those would be shells from the big guns exploding at preset altitudes.
They heard the bombers give their coast-in calls. Jake checked the clock and saw that Sammy and Rabbit were running a few minutes late.
Ahead a glimmer caught his eye. "I think a SAM just lifted off," he told Cole and turned on the master arm switch. He knew the Soviet-built SA-2 surface-to-air missile that the North Vietnamese usually used was a two-stage missile that had to be guided from the ground because it lacked an active seeker-head. For its first seven seconds of flight, the missile was unguided as the first stage burned. When the second stage ignited, the first stage fell away and exposed a receiver on the rear of the second stage that could pick out the guidance commands embedded in the emissions from the Fansong missile-control radar. When the A-6's ECM equipment heard the Fansong radar, as NATO called this type of missile-control radar, it presented a steady missile-warning light and a continuous tone in Jake's ears. When the equipment detected guidance signals, the missile-warning light would flash and the tone in his ears would warble.
Jake turned right to increase the crossing angle as he watched the continuous light far below in the darkness, small but brilliant. The missile was flying but the Fansong was not yet guiding it. Then the missile light on his glare shield began to flash, and he heard the warble warning. The signal-detection indicator now told him there was a Fansong at eleven o'clock, which he already knew. He looked back at the SAM and saw a second missile ignite and lift off.
"Want to shoot?" he asked Cole.
"Naw, let them shoot up some of their expensive stuff before we show our cards."
Jake popped some chaff to confuse the Fansong. He watched the telltale fire from the missile exhausts and knew the missile was traveling at about two thousand miles per hour. He would have to let the missiles get close, but not too close, then maneuver to avoid them. The missiles were traveling too fast to turn with the Intruder. The wait was anything but easy.
When he could stand it no longer, he pumped the chaff button three times, then rolled the plane almost upside down
"Not yet," Cole told him.
Jake pushed the stick forward and held the nose up. The fireballs were bigger and obviously closing. "Now!" Cole told him.
The pilot pulled until four Gs registered on the G meter. The nose came down and they were turning into and under the oncoming missiles. The missiles were now turning down toward them, but the lead missile would overshoot and fail to intercept the plane. Jake watched the missiles. The first streaked overhead at least a half mile away and exploded, probably detonated by the ground crew when they realized it would miss. The second one was correcting to intercept, so the pilot clanged direction and dropped the nose further to increase the change in course required of the missile. The missile was just beginning to turn when it swept overhead. The missile light went out. Jake rolled the aircraft upright and used the excess airspeed to zoom back up to 18,000. The Firecan still had them.
"Hokey dokey," Cole said.
"You make it sound like this is more fun than watching your alma mater score at homecoming."
"More interesting, anyhow. Now if the gomers get about four missiles or so in the air at once, we'll give them the Shrike we've set up. If they shut down they'll lose all the missiles, and if they don't-"
Jake Grafton drew a ragged breath. One avoided SAMs by trading altitude and airspeed for angle-off, as they had just done, thereby placing the missile in a position where it could not make the turn required to intercept. If enough missiles were in the air, an aircraft could run out of altitude and airspeed before it had outmaneuvered all the missiles. Cole knew the facts of aerial life as well as he, probably better.
"Where'd you get all this confidence in my ability?" Jake asked.
"I had an uncle with a nose like yours."
The Firecan went off the air now, leaving only the pulse of search radars to break the silence. A Fansong painted them for several seconds, then it too fell silent.
Waiting is the toughest part, he thought. You wait for the brief, you wait for the cat shot, you wait to get shot at. It's an old complaint, as old as the first warrior, but knowing that doesn't make the waiting any easier.
The missile warning lit up again. Jake checked the strobe indicator on the detection gear, which told him the radar was at five o'clock. He swung hard, maintaining his altitude, and searched the blackness. Two missiles were in flight, and a third lifted off as he watched. The missile light flashed and the aural warning wailed. "Three SAW up," Grafton said. A grunt was the only reply.
The pilot held the turn until the missiles were inbound at one o'clock, still low but climbing. On the ground a fourth missile ignited and raced skyward. "Four up," Jake said to Cole.
The bombardier straightened and looked around. "Point the plane at the radar and gimme fifteen degrees nose up," Cole said. As the pilot complied, the missiles disappeared from their view, hidden by the nose of the plane. "Hold it," said Cole.
Jake's gut was tying itself into a knot. Not being able to see the missiles terrified him. The falsetto screech of the missile warning made his heart beat wildly.
"Shoot!" Cole said, and the pilot squeezed the trigger with his finger and pushed the pickle button with his thumb. Cole had told him to hold both buttons for a second-the time delay was a safety feature to reduce the chances of inadvertent firing-and an age later the white fireball illuminated under the right wing with a "whoosh." Jake saw the bombardier limned in the brilliant light, which rocketed forward and faded to nothing in a fraction of a second.
"Split S," Cole ordered when the pilot didn't react with sufficient speed. Blinded by the unexpected radiance, Grafton instinctively jammed the stick to the left, spun the plane what he hoped was 180 degrees, then pulled hard toward the earth. He blinked rapidly because he had lost his night vision.
"Chaff," Cole reminded him. Jake pumped the button.
His visi
on was coming back. He could make out the panel and the VIII. Now he could read the VIII. The plane was seventy degrees nose down, inverted. The missile light still flashed.
Why hadn't the gomers shut down? He shoved the stick forward, rolled upright, and pulled the nose up while he searched the sky for the incoming missiles. He saw them strung out in trail, the first one way high and arching down, but it would overshoot.
"More behind us," Cole said. Jake dropped the left wing and clawed the plane around. He checked the indicator. The radar they had fired at had finally ceased transmitting, but another radar behind them was now guiding missiles. He found the oncoming pinpoints of light and continued his turn, dumping the nose slightly to keep his airspeed from bleeding off. He wanted to dive more steeply to pick up speed as he was moving at only 300 knots, but he was down to 12,000 feet and if they launched another SAM when he was below 10,000, he might be forced to descend almost to the surface.
The missiles were at two o'clock and at his altitude when Jake leveled the wings and shoved the stick forward until he and Cole floated weightless against the restraining straps at zero G. The nose fell slowly as he flew the parabola, but the engines' thrust was more effective without the induced drag from the wingsthey weren't making lift at zero G-and the airspeed quickly increased to more than 400 knots. The lead missile appeared to be overshooting, but the trailer was correcting. The pilot squeezed chaff, rolled right, and yanked the stick hard. Now! The second missile was also overshooting. The missile warnings ceased as the second SA-2 detonated in a flash of white light about a thousand feet away.
Jake climbed and turned toward the northwest. His body trembled in the sudden hush. The aural warning was silent, the missile light was dark, but for how long?
To the south, fifteen or twenty miles away, antiaircraft guns cleft the night. "Looks like our bomber friends have arrived," said Jake over the ICS to Cole.
On the radio, Jake asked, "You up on this freq, Sammy?" With his gloved hand, he wiped the perspiration from his brow.
"Roger." Lundeen's voice.
"Five Oh Three?" he asked as he noticed another flak concentration a little farther north.
"We're up," Rabbit Wilson said.
Jake heard Cole key the mike. "Five Oh Six, how far from your target are you?"
"About forty miles out," Lundeen replied.
"Pop up to fifteen hundred feet and stay there a bit," Cole suggested. "We'll use you as bait." Lundeen clicked his mike.
Well, Jake thought, weren't they all bait?
"If they shoot at Lundeen out of Hanoi," Cole said to Jake, "we'll fire the Standard missile as soon as we see the first SAM. There's a site there that has been peeping once in a while and I've slaved the STARM to his signal." With luck, the STARM would be locked in on the Fansong even if it went off the air before the missile arrived. With luck.
Grafton reached 18,000 feet and reined in the power to ninety percent RPM. They had to save fuel somewhere. He pointed the nose toward Hanoi and let the airspeed decay as he climbed. Altitude could always be converted to airspeed simply by diving. "About five degrees nose-up, no more," Cole advised him.
Flak sparking in the darkness below marked Sammy's progress across the night sky. When would another SAM launch? Jake wiped his eyebrows again with a gloved finger. "Man, we're having fun now," he muttered. Cole looked at him. "Morgan liked to say that," Jake explained.
"There!" Cole pointed. The pilot saw the tiny pinpoint at one o'clock. This time he closed his eyes as he squeezed the buttons on the stick. He heard the whoosh as the missile ignited and felt the brightness of the STARM fireball behind his closed eyelids. Perhaps three seconds had passed since the first SAM was launched.
"You have a SAM in the air and a STARM," Cole told Lundeen. "Stay at fifteen hundred as long as you can." By the time he had finished speaking a second SA-2 had been launched and was following in the wake of the first. "They're guiding," Cole informed Grafton as he consulted the gear on his panel. Their own aural warning system remained silent because the Fansong radar was not pointed in their direction.
"Stay up, baby," Cole whispered over the ICS. Jake knew he was really whispering at the enemy radar operator who was sitting in a dark semitrailer van and watching the blip that was Devil 506. A few more seconds ...
Jake's attention was riveted on the place in the darkness from which the two SAMs had been launched. He forced himself to ignore the exhaust plumes of the enemy missiles streaking along parallel to the invisible earth, streaking toward Sammy and Marty Greve.
"I've been up here long enough," Lundeen announced over the radio.
"It's off the air," Cole said.
The STARM was invisible because it had exhausted its fuel just before it began homing in on the emissions of the Fansong.
The pilot saw a faint flash. Grafton told Cole about it. The bombardier shrugged. "Maybe we got it." He manipulated the switches on the armament panel to put the second STARM in readiness.
The pilot turned and let the nose slide down. He stabilized at 18,000 feet. The search radars continued to paint them and a Firecan locked them up momentarily. Jake saw the rippling twinkles that were Lundeen's bombs, and a minute later, somewhat closer, a similar string of fireworks where the X.O.'s target must be. Tracer fire smeared the darkness near the bombers' tracks.
Jake and Cole continued to orbit as the bombers crossed the delta toward the coast. The missile-control radars were silent. Lundeen finally called "feet wet," and, a minute later, Rabbit Wilson as well.
They flew southeast toward the waiting ocean, steady at 400 knots at 18,000 feet. They heard a Fansong in the area of Haiphong, off to their left. It came on the air for several seconds, shut down, then repeated the cycle a half-minute later. Jake searched the darkness below for the moving points of light that betrayed the flight of SMAs. Nothing.
He was looking at the Fansong light on the indicator panel, now on again, when he noticed another light also lit: 1-band. He examined the circular dial on the threat-direction indicator and, sure enough, a weak I-band strobe pointed behind them. When the Fansong fell silent he could even hear the other radar, a two-tone, high-frequency pulse. As he listened, he heard the audio separate into three distinct, clicking, rhythmic tones that repeated about once a second. Virgil Cole cocked his head at the direction indicator. He, too, seemed to be listening.
"Sounds like we have a MiG-21 on our tail," he announced. "Doesn't that sound like a conical scan to you?"
MiG! Even as Cole said it, Jake thought he could now hear the intermittent clicks. If it were a MiG, it was getting closer. Grafton jammed the throttles full forward and punched the chaff button three times as fast as he could, then slammed the stick full left and forward in one fluid motion. The nose tucked down and the plane flipped on its back, 180 degrees of roll in one second. In a continuation of the same motion he brought the stick aft and center, and the nose of the inverted warplane dropped through to the vertical where he stabilized in a straight-down dive. The altime
ter spun insanely as Jake listened for the beat of the
conical scan, mixed in with the wail of the Fansong now back on the air in the target-acquisition mode. If the MiG saw the false target the chaff created and went after it, he could escape out below. Near the ground the MiG couldn't acquire him. He hoped.
He rolled ninety degrees about the longitudinal axis and at 7000 feet began a hard, five-G pull in the direction of Haiphong, punching chaff all the way. The primary gyro tumbled, apparently, because the VDI still indicated a vertical descent. He ignored it and included the standby gyro in his scan. Virgil Cole said, "Pull up to twenty degrees nose up, ten degrees right, and we'll shoot the STARM."
"Are you crazy?" The radar altimeter dipped below 3000 feet, the nose still five degrees below the horizon. His right arm tightened slightly, six Gs, 540 knots indicated. The 1-band warning was gone, the earphones silent. The MiG had lost them.
Cole's fist slammed into his right biceps. "Do like I told
you!"
They bottomed out at 2000 feet and Jake kept the nose coming up. Stabilizing in a twenty-degree climb, he waited for Cole to ready the missile. The airspeed dropped below 480 knots, then 460.
"Come on, you crazy bastard," Jake shouted at Cole. "Let's shoot and get the fuck outta here before that MiG figures out which way we turned."
"Just a sec ... almost.... Shoot!"
Jake heard the Fansong kick in his earphones as the last Standard missile ignited under the right wing and shot forward, trailing a dazzling sheet of fire. They were in trouble again unless that MiG pilot was blind. Grafton turned hard right to run for the coast.
"Black Eagle, Devil Five One One," Cole said over the radio. "We have a bandit on our tail. Get the BARCAP headed this way. Buster." "Buster" meant hurry, bust your ass.
Jake was at 5000 feet, 510 knots when he again heard the beat of the MiG's Spin Scan radar. It was out to his right, at four o'clock. He had to get down, near the ground. The MiG was coming in at an angle and he wouldn't have time to turn.
"Devil, this is Mustang. We're coming! State your posit,"
"Thirty miles south of the lighthouse, fifteen miles inland," Cole said.
Jake selected the station for the remaining Shrike and held the buttons down. The missile shot forward toward the earth. Now to give the MiG a real false target, not just a chaff cloud. He depressed the emergency jettison button above the gear handle. The empty missile racks and belly tank were kicked away with a whump.
The MiG was closing fast from the side. Two thousand feet above the ground.
"Devil, don't let him get away!"
"Fuck you!" Grafton shouted and chopped the throttles to idle and deployed the speed brakes as he shoved the nose over.
A missile raced across the windscreen above and in front of him. He pulled up to avoid the ground. He pushed on the throttles but they wouldn't move! Then the cockpit went dark.
Mother of God! He had inadvertently pulled the throttles past the safety detents and had shut down the engines. The speed brakes were still out, but they should come into trail with the loss of electrical power. He desperately groped behind him for the handle to the ram-air turbine, the emergency generator. He had to have electrical power for a restart.
Flight of the Intruder Page 23