The Warbirds

by Richard Herman

  Waters, Morgan, and Pullman were in the control tower in the middle of Stamford MTA’s target range. Morgan tuned the UHF radio to the common frequency the 45th would be using and cleared the first two Phantoms onto the range. “Let’s see how close they can hit their scheduled time over target,” he mumbled. They waited for what seemed an eternity. “Where the hell are they?”

  “There, sir,” a British Royal Army sergeant major said, pointing to the north, and looking, they could see the distinctive smoke trails the Phantoms left behind as two birds ran onto the range. Morgans’ instructions to the crews had been simple: cross the target area at low level in pairs, keep your airspeed below six hundred knots and hit your TOT, time over target. “Seventy seconds late. I’d estimate their altitude at eight hundred feet, airspeed at four twenty, maybe four hundred thirty knots,” the sergeant major said.

  Morgan’s ears started to turn red in embarrassment.

  The phone rang, the sergeant major answered, hung up and turned to Waters, “Sorry, sir, the Rapier crew reports two simulated kills.” Another pair of Phantoms overflew the range, almost two minutes late. Again the phone rang, reporting a simulated kill on the two birds. The next two F-4s never found the range, and Waters could see their smoke trails pass two miles to the west.

  Waters walked out onto the catwalk surrounding the tower, motioning Morgan to follow him. His hands clenched the railing as two more of his Phantoms flew across the range, this time a minute early. “What in the hell is going on, Bull? They’re all running in from the north and can’t even come close to hitting their TOTs. The Rapiers are having a damned field day.” Morgan could only shake his head.

  For the next hour Waters watched and listened as his wing struggled across the range. Steve Farrell, the squadron commander from the 377th, hit his TOT to the second and crossed the range at three hundred feet close to 500 knots, and for the first time the Rapiers could only report a probable kill.

  “At least one crew did it right,” Waters snapped.

  Now there was one scheduled TOT left. Everyone in the tower looked to the north, waiting to see the smoke trails. A Phantom flashed across in front of them, running in from the east, its sound wave shaking the tower’s windows after it had disappeared over the tree tops.

  “Bloody hell,” the sergeant major yelled. “That bloke was below three hundred feet. Damn close to six hundred knots…”

  Ten seconds later the second F4 slashed through from the south, kicking up a rooster tail of dust as spirals of wake turbulence fanned from its wing tips.

  The sergeant major was in awe.

  “Bloody fast, bloody low.”

  Morgan could smile for the first time. “Fairly and Locke. They split the TOT. Fairly was five seconds early, Locke five seconds late. I doubt if they saw each other.” The telephone rang and the sergeant major relayed the Rapiers message: a probable hit and a definite miss.

  Waters saw a glimmer of hope as he stared out the window. “Okay, Bull. We need to practice a mass raid stressing timing. I want to put a gaggle over a target so close together they’ll wet their pants if they blow their TOTs.”

  Jack and Thunder were on one of their pub hunts, checking out the bars—the Brits called them public houses—trying to find one for a squadron party. Group Captain Childs had told them the Maypole was worth a try but they couldn’t find it. Thunder’s date, one Francine Thomas, finally asked two policemen who were parked beside the road. Francine was a buxom school teacher Thunder had met while giving one of his Friday tours to third graders from the base school.

  Eventually they found the brightly lit building and a big parking lot no more than four hundred yards down the road. As they crowded up to the bar and Jack ordered drinks he also noted that there were some attractive women around, and this plus the obvious mutual attraction between Thunder and his Francine heightened his own need. It had been a dry spell for him. He’d had a notion about Sara, but Colonel Waters had taken care of that…He took a quick trip to the men’s room, and when he came back to the bar saw that Thunder and Francine clearly didn’t need him. Nobody else seemed to either, the place being full of couples…until he spotted someone he was sure he knew. It seemed almost too corny, like one of those old War War II movies with Robert Taylor, the Yank in England, or was it Oxford? and Eleanor Parker or somebody. But never mind, be grateful and accept that the lady he was looking at was, unless he was crazy, the haircutter. What was her name…? An unusual one—Gillian, that was it. Quickly as he could he maneuvered through the crowd of tightly packed bodies toward her.

  “Pardon me,” he said, just as though he was Robert Taylor, “but haven’t we…?”

  “You know perfectly well we have,” she said, which was all the opening he needed. He reprised how she had saved him from an inglorious shearing at the hands of his squadron commander. They went back and forth like that for a while, the two girls with Gillian trying not to show their irritation at being left out, and then drifted through the crowd and out the door into the fresh air.

  Watching them go, Thunder was a little surprised. Friend Jack hardly ever went for a girl that looked like this one. Mostly they were slim and young, very young, and obvious air-heads. This one, well-built and no child, hardly fitted that bill.

  The sun was flooding his room, and Jack got out of bed to close the curtains. He stood in the middle of the room looking at Gillian, still asleep. Her long hair spilled over the pillow, framing her face and catching a ray of light. The soft morning light highlighted and accentuated her lovely, near-classic English features. No question, she was a new experience for him. She’d been straightforward in a way he wasn’t used to, saying quite simply her need matched his. No cutsey-pie teasing. A woman. Her love-making had been at once gentle and fierce, not holding back, demanding and generous, too.

  Rather than crawl back into the warm comfort of his bed Jack moved into the small kitchenette and started to make coffee, wondering how much longer before he’d have to send her home.

  He had just begun to clean up the kitchen when he heard her start the bath water, waited until she was comfortably soaking and carried a cup of coffee in to her. He sat on the commode, talking about the Maypole and thinking how she was built for childbearing.

  “I love all this hot water,” she said, “it makes a bath so much more enjoyable when you don’t feel guilty about using it all.” They talked about the differences between Suffolk and Phoenix, Arizona, Jack’s home.

  Later, dressed and having a second cup of coffee, they kept the conversation light, but Jack knew he wanted to see her again. Or did he?…She was a woman, all right, and had normal womanly nesting instincts, he assumed. He was a flyboy, married to a warbird.

  As though she were reading his thoughts, she put down her cup, found her bag, kissed him lightly on the lips and went out the door without a word.

  No demands, no good-byes. A considerable woman, no question. He wondered if he was man enough for her.

  The crews received their first surprise as they straggled into the base theater. Sharp-looking security police carefully checked the security clearance of each pilot and wizzo before they entered the auditorium. Most of them found seats in the rear with their squadron mates, but Mike Fairly dragged a reluctant Jack and Thunder to seats in the very front.

  Bull Morgan stepped to his podium and shouted, “Room, ten-hut!”

  The doors at the rear slammed shut and Colonel Waters quick-stepped down the aisle, stood to the side of the other podium.

  “Seats, gentlemen. This is the mission briefing for your first large-scale raid,” the wing commander announced as the lights dimmed and a map of the North Sea and southern Holland was projected onto the screen. Twenty-four Phantoms from each squadron would mount a two-pronged attack on the Dutch airfield of Woensdrecht. The crews gasped as the large-scale map of the base flashed onto the screen. Twelve aircraft from the first cell would run in from the north to attack the base, be off the target within two minutes and exit to the
south. The second twelve aircraft would attack from the south thirty seconds later and exit to the north. “The first cell will attack the base from low-level simulating high-drag Mark-82s,” Waters went on. “The second cell will ingress at low level and pop onto their targets; you choose the simulated ordnance. Gentlemen, it’s going to be hairy when you find yourself with twenty-three other birds in the same piece of sky and half of them going in the opposite direction.”

  The room was silent. The memory of how the wing had stumbled across the Stamford Military Training Area, barely able to find the target while Rapiers hosed them down, was still fresh. Finally a voice came from the rear: “Colonel, we can’t do that—”

  “You will,” Waters cut him off, “but not right away. This is the graduation exercise of your first phase of training. Major Morgan will run through different tactics and techniques you can use. But each squadron will have to work up its own training program and fly this attack before it can move on to the next training phase. I expect the first squadron to be ready to fly it within two weeks.”

  Morgan called the room to attention and Waters walked out, leaving over two hundred very worried pilots and wizzos in his wake.

  “I would suggest,” Morgan boomed at the crews, “that you get your bodies down front, listen up and take notes. You are going to get your asses in the proverbial crack if you don’t do this one right.”

  Jack twisted in his seat, all ears to hear what Morgan had to say and confident his squadron would be the first to attack the Dutch base.

  Racer Two-One came off the range at Holbeach and headed home, looking for his wingman. He knew that Racer Two-Two should be coming up on his deep five o’clock for a rejoin but he couldn’t see him. The lead uttered an obscenity. The mission had been perfect until he had lost his wingy after their last pass on the range.

  “Racer Two-Two,” he called over the radio, “lead is orbiting south of East Sturnham. Join up for recovery to home plate.”

  An affirmative answer told him that his wingman was headed for him. Finally his backseater confirmed that he had Two-Two in sight at their deep seven o’clock position. The lead started an easy righthand turn to allow his wingman to close and join up on his left.

  Who could have predicted what happened? It was, after all, an easy maneuver that the wingman had performed who knew how many times in the past. Nothing was mechanically wrong with the birds. But as the lead turned between the twin villages of East Sturnham and Little Sturnham, Racer Two-Two smashed into the belly of his flight leader, instantly killing both crewmembers in Two-Two as the force of the impact crushed the canopies down onto them.

  The engineers at McDonnell Douglas had designed the Phantom to withstand the ravages of combat, repeated hard landings on the decks of aircraft carriers and sustained high-G maneuvers. The Phantom was a hulking sixteen-ton monster that deserved its monicker Big Ugly. Big Ugly did not die easily. The engineers had done their work well. The pilot in Racer Two-One fought for control of his damaged bird as it sent him repeated signals that it could not stay in the air much longer.

  He yelled at his backseater to eject alone, leaving him in the aircraft for a later ejection. His wizzo turned the valve selecting his seat for a single ejection and pulled the handle, separating cleanly from the aircraft at thirty-five hundred feet. The F-4 wanted to roll right and pitch down into the ground as the pilot turned it toward an open field, away from the village of Little Sturnham. With both hands on the stick the pilot managed to guide the Phantom away from the village before it pitched over into its final dive. The pilot reached for the ejection handle between his legs and pulled, ejecting from the bird as it flopped on its back, aiming him directly toward the ground.

  A farmer watched the pilot hit the ground upside down, still strapped into his seat as the Phantom crashed only fifty yards behind the school. For a moment he could not move, horrified by the sight. Then he jumped off his tractor and ran toward the school, forgetting that he could drive there more quickly. He reached the yard along with the wizzo as the wreckage burst into fire. Both men ran into the school building, afraid of what they would find inside. To their relief no one was hurt and the three teachers were directing their small charges out the front door. The wizzo ran through the classrooms checking for stragglers. Outside, he scanned the playyard, grateful to find it empty. The wail of sirens sounded in the distance.

  RAF Stonewood learned of the crash through the civilian disaster net and immediately dispatched crash trucks and twelve security policemen to Little Sturnham. They drove through the village toward East Sturnham and to the site of the second crash, where they found the wreckage of the F-4 in a burning dairy barn full of bellowing cows. An eighteen-year-old security policeman ran into the barn in a futile attempt to rescue the animals. After bringing out four burning cows he watched a crash truck turn a fire hose on the animals. He drew his revolver and walked up to each cow and put a bullet in its head. The owner of the herd recognized the grief in the boy. “Thank you, lad. I couldn’a done it.”

  Sara watched her husband fight his inner demon, marking up a temporary win. Without words she had cleared the dinner table while Waters tried once again to write three terrible letters to next of kin. Sara waited, knowing at some point he would need to talk. Finally he did.

  “My God, we’ve lost three aircraft under my command. For Cunningham that’s three too many. For me too. I don’t give a damn about the airframes; I just want the crews to get out…I don’t know, maybe I’m pushing them too hard, demanding too much of them after Morris. But damn it, we’re close to getting the wing on track. And with a little more time—but we’re running out of time. Bill Carroll is keeping us up to date on the situation in the Gulf. He’s translating Arabic and Iranian newspapers, listening to their news broadcasts on a shortwave radio and tying it together with the usual Intelligence summaries we get from the Air Force. What he’s telling us is scary. The place is unstable as hell, as there’s a major buildup of supplies going on in southern Iran.”

  Time. How much? And how much could the men take?

  Jack sat in the briefing room watching Fairly study the plan he had laid out for the squadron commander.

  “It’s ambitious, Jack, considering the way we performed at Stamford. How do you propose we train for it?” Fairly asked.

  Jack was ready with his answer. He outlined a series of training missions in which flights of four Phantoms would practice low-level runs over the water onto targets in Scotland. The same flights would also practice lay-down and twenty-degree dive-bombing out of a pop maneuver on nearby gunnery ranges.

  “How will you put it all together so we know they’re ready and won’t self-destruct?”

  “We put a low-level mission together with a range mission,” Jack said. “The first attack is hot and that’s the only pass they get. They’ve got to be over the target plus or minus fifteen seconds.”

  Fairly stood and folded the maps. “Let’s get over to wing and sell Bull. If we’re going to run the first raid, we’re going to have to beat the 377th.” The two men hurried out of the building and nearly skidded to a halt in Bull Morgan’s new office in wing headquarters. One of Muddy Waters’ first changes had been to pull Morgan out of the 379th and make him the wing’s weapons-and-tactics officer. Steve Farrell, the squadron commander of the 377th and three of his pilots and wizzos had beaten them to Morgan.

  Morgan told them to come back in an hour. “You snooze, you lose,” he said.

  That afternoon they were back, Jack explaining the 379th’s plan. When he was finished Morgan said, “Not bad for a virgin. Start taking notes.”

  For the next thirty seconds Morgan shot a series of questions at the pilot. After taking two pages of notes. Jack looked up, hoping the major was finished. “When you’ve got the answers to those questions, come back. If you want to be the first to attack Woensdrecht, get your tail in gear. The 377th had got its act together.” Jack asked about the 377th’s plan. Morgan said, “There’s no fre
ebies on this one, kiddo.”

  Activity on the flight line and in the squadrons kept building for the next two weeks as the two squadrons pushed their crews through a series of missions. Maintenance had to keep up with the 377th’s and 379th’s demand that all of their Phantoms be ready every day. The 378th, the tortoise of the piece, slowly built momentum.

  The 379th came alive, and lights in the squadron came on early in the morning for the first Go’s briefing. During the brief winter day the 379th tried to launch forty sorties. Maintenance protested, claiming they could not keep that many of each squadron’s twenty-four Phantoms operational. At sundown the last go would recover and peace would again settle over the quiet countryside. But activity on the flight line was already revving up as Maintenance readied the birds for the next day’s flying. The crews would return to the small briefing rooms in the squadron and rehash what had gone wrong on that day’s missions and what to do to fix it. Wives had no trouble finding their husbands when they didn’t come home. They just called the squadron.

  Finally Jack and Fairly went back to Morgan’s office to convince the big man their squadron was ready. But again the 377th had beaten them to Morgan and they had to come back later. When they did get to Morgan, Jack was determined to sell the 377th. “Major, this is really a simple attack. It looks bad because we have two gaggles of F-4s approaching from opposite directions. Looks like a setup for the Keystone Kops. We don’t see it that way. It’s a highly efficient way to quickly get in and off a target. It is a matter of timing, and time over target is the critical element. In real life the frag patterns from the bombs would be a big concern. Woensdrecht is a big base so we’re using three thousand feet or twenty seconds for frag clearance between deliveries.”