The Warbirds

by Richard Herman

  “Stinger, fly two-six-eight.” Outpost ordered the two fighters to adjust their heading a few degrees. Thunder was working out the mental geometry of the intercept and still letting the controller direct them. He needed an accurate indication of how competent the unknown personality was at directing aircraft. After a short break the controller continued, “I’m bringing Grain King over to this frequency.” Another slight pause was followed by, “Grain King, how read on this frequency?”

  For the first time, the F-4 aircrews heard Toni D’Angelo. “Read you five-by, Outpost.”

  “Be damned,” Jack spat over the intercom. “Two women!” Two women in the Air Force, caught up in combat. Not the role he had put them in.

  Outpost calmly queried the C-130. “Do you have the bandits in sight? They are at your eight o’clock, ten miles.”

  “Negative,” Toni groaned.

  “Jack, punch off your tanks. Now,” Fairly ordered his wingman. On the word “now,” Jack pushed his jettison button, causing the two empty fuel tanks attached to the underside of his wings to separate in unison with Fairly’s wing tanks. The two men were welded into a tight team. Both fighters had reduced the drag the tanks created and were fully configured for combat.

  Toni called over the radio, “They shot a missile, repeat, they’ve fired. Missile went ballistic…” She turned and dove her plane as hard as she could without tearing the wings off, taking the big cargo plane into a sixty-degree dive. She flew for a small cloud deck lacing the sky eight thousand feet below her as the two MiGs repositioned for another attack.

  “Stinger flight, you are cleared to engage. Repeat, cleared to engage,” Outpost told the Phantoms.

  Now Thunder’s voice came through. “One-Two has contact on bandits, Judy.” With the code word “Judy,” Bryant told the controller and the flight he was taking over the intercept. He would direct the two fighters into the engagement.

  The controller acknowledged and fell silent, continuing to monitor the radar scope in case she could be of more assistance or had to disengage the F-4s if more bandits joined the flight.

  Fairly buried his left foot in the rudder pedal and took spacing behind Jack, who was now flight lead, as he had briefed.

  “Come right. Roll out.” Thunder was directing Jack into a head-on radar intercept with the bandits.

  “Tallyho,” Jack yelled over the radio as he got a visual sighting on one of the bandits. “It’s a Flogger.” Jack had caught sight of the Soviet-built MiG-23 fighter, code-named “Flogger” by NATO. He had read the reports by U.S. pilots who had flown the swing-wing fighter in secret tests and had a healthy respect for its capabilities. If the single-engine fighter was carrying its normal armament, he could expect the MiGs to have two Apex and two Aphid air-to-air missiles along with a twin-barreled twenty-three-millimeter cannon.

  “Where’s the C-130?” he shouted at Thunder. The wizzo lifted his head out of the radar scope and twisted his large frame around in the cramped seat.

  “Seven o’clock, six miles, twenty degrees low,” he shouted back. Jack would not take his eyes off the MiG, not daring to lose sight of the slightly smaller aircraft. He was “padlocked” onto the MiG-23 Flogger. He jerked the Phantom to the right, dove and jerked back to the left, putting the MiG on a head-on collision course. He intended to shoot the other pilot in the face from a frontal cannon attack. As the Flogger surged into the target ring on the head-up display in front of him, Jack squeezed off a short burst of cannon fire. He had set the gatling gun on high rate of fire when he went through the arming routine. At six thousand rounds per minute, the six hundred forty rounds of twenty-millimeter shells in the ammunition drum would last less than seven seconds. The gun made a short burring sound as he expended one hundred eighty rounds, sending a near-solid stream of high-explosive ammunition toward the Flogger.

  It was the first time the lieutenant had fired a shot in combat. He missed. He snap-rolled the fighter to the left, bringing the MiG aboard on his left, passing canopy-to-canopy with less than fifty-feet separation, his reflexes faster than the other pilot’s. Instinctively, he pulled the F-4 up into the vertical, counterturning onto the escaping aircraft. Thunder’s voice came over the radio, telling Jack and Fairly what the MiG was doing. “He’s six o’clock, going away. Hey, they’re both on Fairly—”

  “Jack,” Fairly blurted over the radio, “come back left, I’m engaged…” The command was for Jack to turn hard to his left, returning in the opposite direction of his original flight path.

  Jack wrenched the big fighter through the pitch back he had started, pulling five G’s as they came across the top, inverted. Both he and Thunder grunted, fighting the force of the G’s created by the maneuver. Sweat was rolling off their faces. The fighter headed down, rapidly accelerating as they returned to the fight.

  At the end of the arc, Jack saw Fairly about four miles in front and below him. The older man was jinking hard, attempting to shake the two Floggers and keep his tail turned away from the MiGs. One was less than three thousand feet behind Fairly and trying to get in a position behind the Phantom where the infrared guidance heads on his Aphid dogfight missiles could pick up the heat-signature of the F-4’s jet exhaust. So far Fairly was denying the Flogger pilot a missile shot and keeping out of the effective range of the MiG’s cannon.

  The other bandit was doing a high yo-yo, a vertical roller-coaster maneuver, three miles behind Fairly, trying to kill his high overtake speed and fall in behind the first bandit by trading forward momentum for altitude. He would then pull his aircraft back down after his prey.

  “You are dead meat,” Jack swore at the tail-end MiG. “Boss, pitch back left, bandit coming into your twelve o’clock. I’ll clear your six.” And he headed for the MiG directly behind Fairly.

  Fairly followed Jack’s command, reefing his Phantom into a vertical turn to the left.

  To Jack, it looked like Fairly was executing half a loop toward the Flogger doing the yo-yo. “Get him,” the lieutenant shouted. But the nose of Fairly’s F-4 only crossed the flight path of the Flogger for a fraction of a second, not enough time for a snap shot. The new Sidewinder missiles the wing had would have nailed the Libyan from any angle.

  Jack slashed past the Flogger on Fairly’s tail, managing to squeeze off a snap shot as the gatling gun gave off a short burring noise.

  “Save it,” Thunder commanded. The wizzo twisted in his seat, his eyes glued onto the Flogger. He quickly told Jack and Fairly what the MiG was doing…“Bandit is six o’clock, going away, disengaging. Going for the deck. Lost him.” The Flogger had disappeared through a break in the clouds, running from the fight.

  “Boss, what the hell are you doing?” Jack grunted over the intercom at Fairly, who was in a scissors maneuver with his Flogger, the two aircraft weaving back and forth across each other’s flight path. Jack knew it was a good defensive maneuver, but that it was hard to go on the offensive from that position and harder yet to disengage. Jack was pleased, though, when he realized his own six o’clock was clear and maneuvered to fall in behind the Flogger, sandwiching him for a kill.

  The Libyan pilot saw Jack at the same time and headed down, trying to disengage.

  “They don’t seem to want to hang around and fight,” Jack said to Thunder.

  “He’ll outrun us,” Thunder decided, trying to find the Hercules and the other MiG. But Jack wasn’t ready to let the MiG escape. He turned hard, pushed his throttles into full afterburner, and shoved his nose toward the ground, chasing the Libyan. Again, Thunder buried his head in the radar scope, trying to lock-on the fleeing MiG. Jack was astounded as the gunsight’s analogue bar clicked on, giving him the exact range to the MiG and telling him his backseater had managed to acquire the bandit on the radar scope in the midst of the fight.

  “Shit hot,” was all the pilot had time to say, signaling approval to his Weapons Systems Officer. Now the fight had descended to below five thousand feet and the F-4E was in the element it had been designed for. Jac
k’s bird was turning like a witch and accelerating with the Flogger. He was still in a tail chase with the MiG. Fairly was following him. All three planes were in a steep dive, dangerously close to the ground as their altimeters unwound in a blur. Jack calculated how much lower he could go before pulling out. He was totally committed to chase the MiG into the ground.

  Now the Libyan leveled out and jinked back and forth in short little left-and-right turns.

  Thunder had turned around in his seat, still trying to find the other MiG. But all he could see was Fairly, less than four miles behind them. Knowing that the two F-4 pilots were fully occupied with the Flogger, he queried the C-130, “Grain King, say position.”

  Toni answered. “Circling at twenty-two thousand, hiding in this goddamn cloud deck.”

  Thunder scanned his RHAW (Radar Homing and Warning gear). “Good. Stay there.” He twisted back and forth in his seat, still trying to find the first MiG, which would appear behind them at their six o’clock position—if it came back.

  Jack was padlocked on to the MiG, slowly closing as the Flogger pilot tried to outmaneuver the bigger F-4 and started a left turn seventy-five feet above the ground. Jack also turned his bird hard to the left, getting the nose of his Phantom inside the MiG’s arc. Slowly, the distance between the two closed as the F-4 turned inside the MiG, coming into gun range. Jack expected the Flogger pilot to roll out and accelerate away, but the Libyan, apparently confused, continued the turn, allowing the American to close on him.

  Again, Jack had a MiG fill his lighted target ring and squeezed off a second shot. This time, determined not to miss, he tried to empty the remainder of his ammunition drum at the Flogger. The gun fired over three hundred rounds before it jammed. Four of the stream of bullets found the agile fighter, cutting into the right wing, tearing it off.

  The MiG cartwheeled into the ground going over 600 miles per hour.

  Jack let out a whoop. What had they always told him? A kill is a kill, there are only two kinds of airplanes—targets and fighters.

  Jack pulled the throttles out of afterburner and started an easy spiraling climb above the wreckage of the MiG, which was sending a pillar of smoke into the sky, a dark beacon marking the funeral pyre.

  Thunder’s words broke the quiet of the aftermath as he called the radar post, “Outpost, Stinger One-Two. Any more trade?” Outpost immediately responded that there were no other bandits in the area.

  Jack’s backseater friend had not mentioned the downed MiG. Then he realized that Fairly had also been silent as he joined on the right. Jack keyed his radio. “Outpost, Stinger One-Two. Bandit splashed at this time.” Both he and Thunder studied the wreckage in silence.

  As they climbed above it, a peculiar sense of sadness came over Jack. He had just killed a man. His stomach tightened in a knot. His heart burned. He wasn’t so sure it was something to be proud of…But he could have just as easily been the pilot in the burning wreckage. “Poor bastard,” he said, mostly to himself.

  Thunder lifted his visor and rubbed the sweat off his forehead and from around his eyes with the back of his glove. He was grateful for the subdued reaction of the pilot. Just maybe, he thought, the man might make it.

  In the aftermath of the engagement, the burning wreckage fading behind them, Fairly took charge. The squadron commander understood what his wingman was going through. It was a feeling that he had experienced in Vietnam. Savor it now for what it is worth, he thought, because I’m going to chew the hell out of you later in the debriefing. “Well done, Jack.” The lieutenant colonel patted his left leg, trying to vent the intense pressure generated by the fight. He smiled as an image came to him: the embarrassment Shaw was going to suffer, explaining why Jack had been on alert for a week. “Jack, fuel check.” Fairly’s own fuel was at a low level and he suspected that Jack’s was even lower after the prolonged engagement.

  “One-niner squared,” Jack said, subdued. He had nineteen hundred pounds of fuel remaining, all in his internal fuselage tanks. He calculated how far his remaining fuel would take him. He sure as hell didn’t relish the thought of meeting an accident board and having to explain to them how he had shot down a MiG, then run out of fuel on the way home. One Flogger exchanged for one F-4 because he had forgotten to check his fuel while engaged…

  “Outpost, Stinger One-One. Request immediate rendezvous with the tanker. Request the tanker head our way. Now.” Fairly had resumed lead of the flight.

  The controller at Outpost came right back, still very much a part of Stinger flight. “Roger, Stinger. Fly heading of zero-seven-eight degrees. Climb to flight level two-four-oh. Tanker has already departed orbit and is moving your way.” Twenty-four thousand feet, Jack thought. It was a long way to climb with the fuel he had, and he was thankful the controller had brought the tanker in for a rendezvous before they asked for it.

  Toni’s voice came over the radio. “Outpost, Grain King proceeding on course. Declaring minimum fuel at this time and request priority handling.”

  All four of the F-4 crewmembers noted how calm and controlled the C-130 driver had become. They also understood her fuel problems could only be solved by landing. At least the Phantoms could refuel in flight. Outpost cleared Grain King over to an air traffic control frequency. Before her flight engineer could switch the radio over, Toni stopped him and keyed her mike. She could see the two fighters climbing past on the left. “Stinger flight, Grain King.”

  “Go ahead Grain King,” Fairly answered.

  “Mucho thanks. I’m buying the bar tonight. Can you make it?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it, Grain King.” There was no doubt in Fairly’s mind that between the trash hauler’s and Jack’s generosity, the bar was going to be very wet.

  16 July: 1635 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 1835 hours, Alexandria, Egypt

  It was one of those magnificent desert sunsets that escaped description, frustrated artists, and defied the poets who knew how many similar sunsets had witnessed the conclusion of battles in this scarred portion of the world. Colonel Shaw and his bird of prey DO had seen many Egyptian sunsets and were immune to the spectacular sunset before their eyes. The men were caught up in another emotion; the intense feeling of a commander when his crews returned from combat. Both had fought in Vietnam, where they had waited with growing concern for their comrades to recover. Time had not diminished the intensity of that emotion. The experience of making decisions and assuming responsibility for others had sharpened the feelings of pride, accomplishment and relief that they felt.

  They were not alone in their vigil. Word that one of the wing’s fighters had downed a MiG had gone around the base. The report the radar post had called in was classified Secret, but it was a secret the close-knit community could not keep, at least not from themselves.

  The base had first stirred when a buzz went around that two Phantoms had been brought up to cockpit alert. The buzz didn’t die down and kept growing until the entire base knew something big was going down. As facts changed the buzz to confirmed truth, a change came over the men and women who made the system work. The incessant complaining and grumbling—an everyday part of duty in the Air Force—died away. There was no rush to end the duty day. Wives were wondering why their husbands had not come home, and bars at the various clubs on base were empty. Instead, there was a migration toward the flight line. After the two Phantoms had launched, the command post filled with all who could think of a reason for being there.

  Then the words that gave meaning to the long months of work, training and frustration that marked their existence were being passed: “Our birds got a MiG…It wasn’t a squadron’s, or the wing’s, but ours.” The feeling was older than the Air Force and probably had its roots in the First World War when air combat was still in its infancy.

  Not everyone reacted with jubilation. The four crew chiefs who were really the two birds’ parents were waiting on the flight line for their charges to come home. No one intruded on their solitude. Each knew in his heart that it had been
his bird that had downed the MiG, and each wanted his Phantom to be safe. Later on, after uncounted beers, the hard veneer of the professional crew chief would be back in place. He’d claim that the heavy-handed “assholes” that flew his air machine had abused it unnecessarily. They should be permanently grounded for being such “dumb shits,” he’d say, and it was pure luck and the fine condition of his warbird that made the kill possible. But that would come later. For the moment, the crew chiefs were four very worried young men.

  Shaw watched the two Phantoms touch down two thousand feet in trail and pop their drag chutes. “Nice recoveries,” he said under his breath. “Thank God, Locke didn’t do a victory roll.” Turning to his deputy for Operations, he rubbed the sweat off his bald head and relaxed for the first time since responding to the call from the command post. “Your boys did good, Sam.”

  “Good enough,” was the only answer Hawkins would allow.

  16 July: 1700 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 1300 hours, Washington, D.C.

  The atmosphere in the Pentagon’s battle cab was blue with cigar haze. Colonel Blevins’ face was flushed and his shirt was mottled with sweat. He knew his performance in front of General Cunningham didn’t look good and he had to recover his standing. All messages were now coming in over the normal circuits and the RC-135 had been silent since its third transmission. Slowly, the situation reports were filtering in, giving a more detailed account of the engagement.

  Cunningham was his usual brooding self, deep into what the incident had revealed. The general understood the way of combat and how Intelligence, Command and Control, and operations had to work together for the effective management of violence. All three had been players in the Grain King incident and he wanted to use the experience to improve his Air Force, to get his people more ready to fight.

  The general focused on the men who had made the decisions. He sized up Blevins: a standard bureaucratic approach to business. If nothing else, the Blevinses of the Air Force would never act in haste. Still, he had placed the F-4s on cockpit alert and had recommended their scramble. Those were excellent, timely decisions, especially since Blevins was a ground-pounder. A three-star general on the battle staff, Hiram Stanglay, had also been impressed with Blevins’ performance. Stanglay had been picked to serve on the promotion board that would soon be selecting new brigadier generals for the Air Force.