Steiger's voice broke the silence. "The moon won't be up until about 2240. It's on the wane." But with the amount of flak the pilot suspected they would see, the target might nevertheless be visible. They would find it, one way or the other.
"How about fuel?" Jake asked Tiger.
"There'll be enough. We'll be late getting feet wet, but no one'll notice. If they do, we'll just say we had to make two runs."
"Where's the other strike going?" Jake inquired.
"Joe Wagner is gonna look for trucks on Route One," Abe replied.
"And the A-6B?"
"Not on this one," Abe said.
Good! No one in the squadron would ask any questions about all the flak around Hanoi. Some A-7 or F-4 drivers might see the fireworks, but they wouldn't know who was there nor would they care.
Jake looked closely again at the photo of the National Assembly building. Four buildings of similar size were nearby. "This thing'll be hard to break out of the clutter," he observed, referring to the radar picture that Cole would be looking at. The bombardier shrugged.
"Have you ever been downtown before?" Jake asked Cole as they packed the charts and radar predictions into the bombardier's flight bag.
"Yeah," Tiger Cole replied.
"How many times?" Abe asked. "A few."
"How many is a few?"
"Four or five."
"How many times exactly?"
"Exactly eight. Back in '67, late summer and fall. Lyndon Johnson was going to teach them a lesson."
"How was it?" Abe absently tapped his pencil on the table.
'Tad.”
"They shot a lot?"
"It was like sticking your dick into a hornet's nest. We lost a bunch of airplanes. I don't think we taught them much, except that we can be had."
As they left, Steiger momentarily put his arm around Jake's shoulders. "Watch your ass," he advised, his eyes wide and blinking behind his glasses.
In the passageway Jake said, "Well, you sure scared Abe."
"Then it's unanimous. We're all three scared."
"Why did you agree to do this?"
"Because you asked." As they went down a ladder, Cole first, the bombardier said over his shoulder, "And because you can't win a war unless you're willing to fight."
SEVENTEEN
The sea was a greasy mirror that reflected the grays of the evening sky. Not a breath of wind stirred. Even the swells had flattened under this heavy mass of dead air. In order to launch, the ship had to create a headwind; the deck vibrated as the four screws thrashed the still water into a river of foam that stretched aft into the thick haze that married the sea and sky.
From his cockpit Jake regarded the haze that at five hundred knots would impede visibility and threaten survival. He scoffed at his feeling of unease, but worry still clutched at him.
Jake was sitting behind the jet blast deflector for the number-three catapult on the waist when he saw Bosun Muldowski hold up a message board for the pilot of the Phantom on the cat. Although Grafton couldn't read the message, he could guess its contents. The cat officer was advising the pilot that he wouldn't get the usual fifteen-knots speed above the stall and was asking him to make do with less. The bosun turned away. Undoubtedly he had received a thumbs up from the pilot, who really had little choice but to accept whatever endspeed the cat could give him. The chief engineer in the boiler rooms was probably chewing his lip; the boilers couldn't provide the steam needed for the main turbines to drive the ship at flank speed and operate all M catapults at full power. Consequently he had to ration steam, and the Eva victims would be the giant catapult accumulators. Lower pressures in the accumulators meant the catapults would toss each plane off at a slower speed and the pilots would have to compensate. As usual, Jake thought, the solution to almost every problem ended up in the cockpit.
The Phantom on cat three wound up to full power as the catapult crewmen tumbled out from under the plane. The hurricane of exhaust gases over the top of the JBD shook the waiting Intruder. Now the afterburners lit and ten feet of fire shot from each tailpipe. The tailpipe nozzles opened to accommodate the whitehot flames. Muldowski returned the fighter pilot's salute and swung his arm toward the deck. The Phantomm leaped forward toward the sky.
As the machine left the deck the nose quickly rose. It rose and rose and rose, until it was almost twenty-five degrees above the horizon.
"Jesus!" Cole exclaimed.
The Phantom pilot had pulled too vigorously on the stick and his plane had gotten away frown bin. Without the usual excess airspeed, the nose quickly passed the optimum climb attitude and the wings had begun to stall. This caused the center of lift to move forward and the nose to rise further into the stall despite the pilot's application of full forward stick,
With its nose unnaturally high, the plane hung spread-eagle against the sky. Then the Phantom sank from view below the edge of the deck.
The radio exploded to life. "Pickle your bombs!" "Jettison!" "Emergency jettison!" The transmissions continued, garbled, cutting in and out.
"There he is," Cole said, grabbing Jake's arm.
The fighter was out over the water, the nose of the plane reared back. With the burners almost in the water, the aircraft wallowed in the air, staggering from side to side as one wing fell, then the other. A giant splash obscured the plane.
"Did he go in?" Jake whispered.
"No, he's dropped his weapons and external fuel tank."
Almost a mile from the ship, the plane's nose dropped toward the water and the spray churned up by its engines lessened. The fighter began to rise from the deadly embrace of the sea. Now, he was flying!
The bosun approached the Intruder with his chalk board. "8+ knots" it read. Jake Grafton did as the fighter pilot before him: he signaled thumbs up. At least the A-6 has better low-speed aerodynamics than the supersonic F-4, he thought. The edge of the stall is not so razor thin.
Jake pushed the throttles to the stops and wrapped his fingers around the cat grip ... cycled the controls ... a murmur from Tiger Me ... the exhaust gas temperatures and RPIMs had stabilized at full power when he snapped a salute to the bosun.
They rocketed forward toward the haze as the Gs mashed them back into the seat. Two and a half seconds later they were over the flat water, and Jake milked the stick, trading some of his precious altitude he had only sixty feet-for airspeed. As the gear retracted, the needle on the vertical-speed indicator registered progress upward.
"I told Orville and I told Wilbur: that thing'11 never fly," Cole announced as he turned on the radar and checked the computer.
They waited over the sea for the light to fade from the charcoal sky. With the autopilot engaged and the engines set at max conserve, the pilot listlessly scanned the instruments as Cole tuned the radar and monitored the computer and inertial. Jake wondered if this haze covered the land, and, although he hoped it didn't, he suspected that it did.
The sky was as placid as the sea, monotonously uniform, lacking definition. It seemed safe. The truth was, as Grafton knew, that moisture reduced visibility, which meant that the glowing artillery shells and the fireballs of the SAMs' exhaust would be hidden from his sight during the early parts of their flights. On such a night a man could die suddenly, without a chance.
He tugged at his harness strap, already as tight as he could stand it, and looked again at the chart Cole had prepared that depicted their planned route. The black line was so bold, so purposeful.
I should have written a will, he decided. Should have taken the time
Well, Morgan, this one's for you. For you and all those guys who got zapped for nothing. This one isn't for nothing, Morgan. With a quart or two of luck some of the gomers who give the orders are going to see hell arrive right through the roof of their National Assembly tonight. Give me some luck, Morg.
Callie, I'm a little scared right now, God knows, a little scared
"Let's do it," Cole said.
The plane flew in absolute darkness; the heavy
moisture absorbed all light. With nothing to see outside, Jake concentrated on his instruments. The radar altimeter did not function over the smooth ocean so Jake used the pressure altimeter to hold them level at 500 feet as they approached the coast. He sneaked glances outside, searching for the beach, convinced that seeing it would be a good omen. He was still looking when Tiger called feet dry to Black Eagle and started the elapsed-time clock. Then Tiger rotated the safety collar around the master arm switch and turned it on.
After a minute the pilot noticed the muzzle flashes of small arms close to the plane. The stuttering blasts of a large weapon, perhaps fifty-seven millimeter, shot through the fog. Four rounds to a clip, white tracer; yes, it was a fifty-seven. He estimated visibility to be about a mile, sufficient to see the streaks of tracer in time-but not the SAMs. Doing some arithmetic in his head, he figured that a SAM at mach three would traverse the last mile in about two seconds.
The pilot checked the radar altimeter and wiped the sweat from his eyes. The radar altimeter came into play over land, and he descended to 400 feet.
Flak poured randomly into the sky, a poison spewed reflexively at the sound of approaching engines. A man coming in supersonic would have a quiet ride, Jake thought, because the gomers wouldn't hear him coming. But these goners can't get us, even at only 420 knots. Nothing can get us, he told himself, and he waggled the stick. The sharp, agile movements of the plane provided reassurance.
The antiaircraft guns were usually in a line, from two or three to half a dozen, on roads on top of the paddy dikes. The reddish-orange tracers from the belt-fed lighter weapons-12.7, 14.5, and 23 millimeter-floated aloft in long ribbons. Tonight the fog pulsated with their glare. Within the cockpit, though, the defiant thunder was inaudible amid the background noise of the engines, the squawks and screeches of the ECM, and the static of the radio.
"Only two knots of wind," Cole told him. The bombardier was checking the computer readouts. To keep track of the aircraft's position and accurately solve the attack problem, the computer needed to know not only the aircraft's precise position, but the amount of wind affecting the aircraft's track over the ground as well. The wind would also affect the trajectory of the bombs after they were released. Any corrections that
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the bombardier made to velocity errors were understood by the computer to be extra wind. Tonight the minuscule wind readout meant the INS, the Doppler, and the computer were humming perfectly: they were "tight."
Cole identified the IP for the power plant without trouble. As they approached the initial point, Grafton went to full power.
"IP. New heading two eight seven."
Jake turned and let the machine climb to 500 feet as he retrimmed for the increasing airspeed. The sensor lights on the instrument panel blinked ominously and the beeps of radars seeking to acquire them sounded in his ears. But the plane was too low to be detected, still safely hidden in the ground cover of the earth. Jake concentrated on staying level at 500 feet and on course. Random muzzle flashes dotted the darkness on his left, like flashbulbs popping in a gigantic stadium.
"I'm on the target and in attack."
The computer-driven display on the VDI assumed a new complexity. The target symbol, a solid little black box, appeared just below the horizon in the center of the display. A highway, or pathway, led from the bottom of the display to a point on the horizon just above the target. On this apex rested the steering symbol, a hollow rectangle, that the computer skewed right or left to show the pilot the proper course to the calculated release point. Jake turned the aircraft to keep the hollow box centered in the display right above the target symbol. On the right side of the display a black line appeared, the release marker. It began to sink gradually toward the bottom of the display. The instant it dropped off the VDI the computer would release the weapons.
Without taking his eyes from the radar, the bombardier fingered the dozen switches on the armament panel. Jake noted this performance and was impressed: he still had to visually check armament switches.
Pulsating tracers loomed out of the fog. The fireballs were huge-traveling in slow motion and not changing their relative position-and Jake lifted the plane over the oncoming stream. As he did so a Firecan guncontrol radar at ten o'clock locked them up. He punched chaff and descended once he had passed over the fiery flow. He punched off one more bundle of chaff, just to be sure, and was astonished at a bright flash under the aircraft.
"What was that?"
"IR flare in the chaff," Cole said.
Angry with himself for being startled, Jake divided his attention between the dancing steering symbol and the molten currents of flak.
"Thirty seconds or so," Cole said. "Ground lock." The pilot could see only darkness ahead. But the power plant was there. Cole said it was. "Gimme a discrete lock, baby," Cole muttered at the Intruder's track radar. If it would lock on the plant, the computer would read the range information. "No discrete tonight." Only the track's depression angle was going to the computer.
Jake dived 200 feet and let a flak stream pass overhead. After five seconds he pumped the stick to get back to altitude.
"Steady . . ." Cole whispered crossly, anxious not to jiggle the accelerometers of the INS with unnecessary movement.
The release marker fell relentlessly. As it dropped off the display Jake squashed the pickle with his thumb, backing up the computer's release signal with a manual one.
The four bombs were gone in a fifth of a second and he let the plane climb 200 feet as he turned hard left to ensure that he would not be caught by bomb fragments if a Snake-eye fin failed to open. Behind the speeding aircraft the bombs flashed. Jake looked back in time to see the explosions, then looked ahead.
Now for Hanoi.
The steering symbol lashed off to the right. "Ignore that. Cursors running. Your heading two oh five." "What's wrong?"
"Ah, the fucking velocities went ape shit. It's either the INS or the computer." Cole studied the readouts. "It's the damn computer. We'll have to bomb without it."
Tiger administered a healthy kick to the pedestal between his legs. Actually, this was one of the unwritten procedures taught by experience for freeing the rotary-drum computer that represented state-of-the-art technology-in 1956. This time kicks and curses failed. Cole gave up on the computer and adjusted the radar cursor manually to the weapons-release range he had calculated on the ship. Without the computer, their chance of hitting the National Assembly decreased drastically.
Jake set the switches on the armament panel for the last eight bombs. He decided to leave the modeselector switch in "train," which meant that instead of dropping the bombs in two sets of four-the "salvo" mode-they would release them one at a time. This increased the likelihood of getting at least one hit, though the damage a hit would cause would be less. Cole nodded his agreement. As they flew southwest at almost 500 knots, Tiger gave Jake small heading corrections.
They blasted across Bac Ninh at 400 feet, the guns below firing up and the big-caliber tracer shells so bright as they zoomed across the top of the plane that they lighted up the cockpit.
Jake swallowed hard. Hanoi would be heavily defended. When Cole called ten miles to the target, Jake continued to hold the plane low at 400 feet. The flak was getting thicker; there were just more guns. When Cole called eight miles, Jake decided to wait until six miles before climbing. In the glow of the enemy ordnance he could see the outline of the city.
"Six miles."
Jake pulled the stick aft, reaching 1500 feet before the threat indicator illuminated, warning of Firecans ahead and behind. He continued up and leveled at 2500 feet, where he was not sheltered by ground return. He noted that the visibility was better than he had expected.
A large battery of belt-fed guns exploded into action ahead. Ignoring Cole's heading calls, Jake turned the plane on knife-edge and sliced through a gap in the fire. You gotta hand it to the little fuckers: they give it their best. He then quickly leveled so that Cole could reide
ntify the target.
"I think I have it. Right five."
The pilot yanked the stick to get on course as fast as possible. He could see the city spread out before him. It looked unearthly in the flicker of the tracers, and more and more tracers darted up from every street corner.
"Left one ... steady now." Without the computer Cole would have to provide the steering from studying the radar scope.
The Red River was a black snake slithering across the city.
"Hair left. Hold it."
The missile light began flashing and the aural warning sounded. The strobe on the ECM gear was long and brilliant, a powerful signal indicating that enemy radar was very near, The pilot searched the fog in the direction the strobe indicated, from two o'clock.
"Steadeee . . ."
They were much too high for the earth's shadow to offer any cover. Grafton felt completely naked. He pumped chaff, hoping the blossoming false targets on the enemy's screen would fool the operator.
There! Two large fireballs ... in the fog.... They mesmerized him, but he managed to ease the nose down and, without thinking, pumped more chaff. Going down, passing 1500 feet, descending....
The first fireball came out of the fog, tracking the descending plane perfectly, coming down toward it. Jake hauled the stick hard aft and the missile flashed beneath their belly where it exploded, the concussion jolting the plane. Jake kept the Gs on and saw the glow of the second missile, which was correcting its trajectory. Like the plane, it was climbing.
He inverted the aircraft. Over the top at 3000 feet with the nose coming down ... 2000 feet ... four Gs....
"Roll over. Pull out." Cole's voice was strained, urgent.
Flight of the Intruder Page 25