The Warbirds

by Richard Herman

  “Convince me your crews can do it,” Morgan told him.

  “We’ve run low levels to the ranges in the Wash. Every one of our crews hit their TOT within ten seconds.”

  Morgan drummed the table with his fingers. “Make me an offer I can’t refuse.”

  “No offers, Major. This is our show all the way or someone else does it.”

  Morgan grinned, allowed a grin, nodded. “You’ve got the mission. But I’ve got to fly as tail-end Charlie to evaluate the mission.” Morgan meant that as the last aircraft across the target he would be following the other aircraft and could tell if they had met their TOTs and not gotten lost on the low-level route. In combat it would be a very dangerous slot.

  “You’re gonna have one pissed crew,” Jack said. “But you’ve got it.”

  On the morning of the raid all of the 379th’s Phantoms stood ready on the ramp. Waters and Gomez had driven down the long line in the DO’s pickup.

  “Impressive,” Gomez said. “Good for Maintenance. Fairly tells me this is all comm out. Let’s see if they can do it without talking on the radios.” Gomez turned the truck’s two UHF radios on.

  A pickup sped down the line waving a yellow flag that signaled the crews to start engines. In rapid-fire sequence the Phantoms cranked while the crew chiefs hurried to disconnect power, button up panels and pull wheel chocks. A crew chief ran to the front of his bird and gave a thumbs-up. When each flight of four aircraft was ready, four rear canopies came down in unison, followed by the four front canopies. Each flight of four taxied to the takeoff end of the runway where quick-check crews from Maintenance ran around each plane giving it a final inspection, checking it for hydraulic leaks, tire cuts and panels that might have jiggled loose.

  Fairly had selected a young crew, Broz and Ambler, to lead the mission. Jack objected, but Fairly overruled him. “I know you can do it, Jack. But you can’t lead every mission we fly. We’ve got to give some others a chance. And none of us is forever…”

  The first four Phantoms now taxied onto the runway, a green light from the tower flashed and Broz led the first two birds in a formation takeoff. Ten seconds later the second two took off while the next four taxied into position, awaiting a green light. Twenty seconds later two more rolled down the runway, repeating the sequence. In less than three minutes twenty-four Phantoms had taken the active and launched in total radio silence.

  The two colonels sat in the pickup. The launch was okay. Now they had to wait.

  The first cell of twelve aircraft were broken up into three flights of four as Ambler guided them on a low-level route over the North Sea at a leisurely 420 knots using two stopwatches and his compass for dead reckoning to back up his inertial navigation set. The four aircraft flew in pairs, two thousand feet apart, while the second flight of four followed Broz two miles in trail.

  Jack was in the third flight two miles behind the second. Like Bull, he was flying as tail end Charlie. It fell to Broz and Ambler to make each checkpoint on time or the entire cell would have to abort their part of the attack. At each checkpoint Jack would lift his plane to three hundred feet and make a comm out-turn with his wingman onto a new heading for the next leg, slam the bird back down on the deck. Sweat poured from both men as they labored toward their target.

  “No way the Dutch are going to let us carry live ordnance over Woensdrecht,” Thunder said. “Besides, it’d shoot our fuel-flow right through the roof.”

  “That’s why they have tankers, me lad. And that’s why we’re going to hit one after we come off target. Like for real.”

  As they coasted in-between the Dutch islands of Voorne and Goeree south of Rotterdam Thunder switched on his radar, whose effective range for navigation was limited because of their low altitude. At forty miles the first traces of the Dutch coast started to paint on the scope.

  “Damn,” Thunder said, “Ambler’s got us on course, on time.” He switched the radar back to standby.

  Jack lifted his aircraft to one thousand feet as they flew up the Haring Vleit, one of Holland’s inland estuaries. “I wish the Dutch would let us get down in the weeds on this one. No real low-level into the IP, no ordnance, just overfly the target.”

  Thunder grunted and turned the radar back on. He broke their Initial Point, the Dutch village of Akker, out of the ground clutter on his scope.

  “IP two minutes, on time,” he said.

  Jack concentrated on turning the IP exactly on time as he accelerated to 480 knots.

  Each pair of Phantoms in the twelve aircraft cell overflew the IP at precise twenty-second intervals. Jack varied his heading slightly to separate from his wingman for a pop onto the target they had selected—the control tower—carrying his pop high to give Thunder a chance to check visually how the raid was developing. Thunder could see the smoke trails of the second cell splitting into two arms as it converged on the base from the south. “If they’re early, we’re dead.” This was turning out to be no milk run.

  On the ground a Dutch officer noted the exact time each bird overflew its target. The first cell took exactly one minute and forty seconds to attack the base. Jack rejoined his wingman on the southern edge of the base as the second wave started their attack. By splitting into a pincer movement the inbound F-4s left an escape route up the middle for Jack’s cell.

  Jack and Thunder twisted around, back and forth, as they tracked the inbound attackers flashing by them on both sides. “Hot damn,” Jack shouted. “We did it. Right on time.” Easing the throttles back, he decelerated to 420 knots and flew out the Wester Schelde, the waterway that led to Antwerp, then joined up with his flight and headed for a rendezvous with a tanker. He could hear Thunder humming. One hour twenty minutes after takeoff they recovered at Stonewood.

  “What do you think?” Tom asked Waters as they watched the Phantoms taxi back in.

  “Depends on what the crews think,” Waters said.

  The crews crowded into the squadron’s main briefing room, exhilarated by how they had beat up the Dutch base. Then the phone call they were waiting for came—the Dutch officer reported that all twenty-four aircraft had made their times over target within five seconds. Jack was standing in the back of the briefing room, when Bull pounded him on the shoulder, congratulating him.

  “Bull, as long as we made our TOTs it was pretty much a piece of cake. Why did the Old Man make such a big deal out of it?”

  “Confidence builder, maybe. For you and Maintenance. Waters doesn’t want to waste any of you budding aerial assassins.” His shark grin was back in place. “But wait till the next one, buddy. You’re in for a surprise.”

  The next day the 377th launched on their raid, determined to repeat the success of the 379th. After watching them launch, Waters and Gomez joined Bull by the 379th duty desk. The command post soon called with news that six Phantoms were ten minutes out, and a voice from down the hall sang out, “They can’t hack it.” The building echoed with jeers and catcalls.

  “That’s probably C.J.,” Bull grinned. The major picked up the mike to the squadron’s PA system, “You mud movers, come on out of this den of iniquity and meet the latest addition to the wing.” The two colonels, Morgan and a puzzled 379th wandered out onto the concrete apron to await the latest arrivals.

  “Who the hell is C.J.?” Jack asked Morgan as they stood waiting.

  “Charles Justin Conlan,” Bull told him, “an absolute madman. And if you think he’s crazy, wait until you meet his bear.”

  “This guy has a pet bear?”

  “C.J. is bringing in six G-models for us from the States.”

  “Oh…great.” Jack had forgotten for the moment that a wizzo in an F-4G was called a bear. “How did the old man get Wild Weasels? I thought they were all dedicated to NATO and that the big-boy F-16 wings wanted every one the Air Force owns to support them.”

  “You’ll get your answers tomorrow,” Morgan told him as he started to pace back and forth.

  In the distance Jack could see the telltale black
exhaust trails of five Phantoms approach the base at twelve hundred feet. “I thought the regs called for radar approaches after a ferry mission,” he said. “That looks like an overhead recovery. What the hell sort of formation is that? There’s only five birds, where’s the sixth?”

  Morgan shook his head, laughing at Jack’s questions. Overhead recoveries are flown out of an echelon formation and these five new birds were coming down final in a perfect vee-formation.

  As they crossed the approach end of the runway, the tail-end Phantom on the left arm of the vee peeled off first, bleeding off airspeed and circling to land. At precise five-second intervals the F-4s broke formation in order, working up and around the vee.

  It was when the last plane was on downwind that the sixth bird shot down the runway at twelve hundred feet and 600 knots. At mid-field the new pilot reefed the fighter into a climb, heading for the cloud deck above them. As he disappeared into the clouds a few of the sharper-eyed observers could have sworn the pilot aileron rolled the F-4G.

  “I don’t believe that,” Jack muttered.

  Morgan smiled. “C.J.’s calling the tower right now with the exact altitude of the cloud bases. Good information for them to know when the 377th recovers.”

  Now the five Wild Weasels taxied in and lined up in front of the crowd. They did not shut down engines but waited until the sixth bird had landed and taxied into the lineup. On an unspoken signal they cut engines in unison, the front six canopies opened together, followed by the six rear canopies. The solo pilot almost leaped out of his bird, scrambling down the recessed footholds on the left side of the fuselage. Once on the ground he twisted off his helmet, revealing a bald head with a brown fringe of hair above his ears. Jack thought immediately of a Trappist monk as he studied the skinny, freckle-faced major. “That’s a fighter pilot?”

  “C.J. is all of that,” Morgan said. “If that bothers you check out his bear.” Jack switched his attention to the man climbing out of the rear cockpit. “That’s Stan-the-Man Benton.” They watched as a young, pudgy version of Winston Churchill reached the ground and unzipped the breast pocket of his flight suit, actually pulling out a stogie to complete the image. “They say he’s close to being an alcoholic,” Morgan said. “Probably goes with the territory if you fly in C.J.’s pit.”

  Waters had stood on the ramp during the recovery of the G models. As C.J. walked up to him the wing commander wondered how much he could let Conlan get away with before he’d have to jerk him back into line. Conlan was, after all, infamous for his high-spirited approach to air-defense suppression with the Wild Weasels. If it wasn’t for his airmanship and tactical abilities, he would have been court-martialed long ago.

  C.J. saluted Waters, and with a fly-boy insouciance better suited to an old “Steve Cannon” comic strip, said, “I’m here, Colonel. You can start the war now.”

  An eerie quiet descended on the base as fog muffled noise and gave a ghostlike quality to images flitting through the mist. Maintenance needed the break in flying to Anally bring the wing’s fleet of F-4s into top-hole condition.

  On the second morning after the arrival of the Wild Weasels, Major Yaru-Lau announced the wing’s combat status had reached a one and Waters congratulated Leason on his accomplishment—the wing had made it past the first big hurdle.

  After the morning briefing Waters called Fairly aside. “Mike, I’m putting the Weasels under Steve Farrell in the 377th. But it’s Bull’s job to teach people how to fly with them. He’s going to need help. Pick a pilot to be your squadron weapons-and-tactics officer to work with him and the Weasels. Have your man at a meeting in Intelligence today at 1300. By the way, your troops did good at Woensdrecht.”

  Fairly picked up the hint. “Jack Locke will be there at 1300.”

  “Good choice,” Waters said.

  Jack was pleased at the news he’d be the squadron’s new weapons-and-tactics officer but disappointed when Fairly told him he couldn’t have Thunder to work with him.

  “I’ve got other plans for the wizzo. You’ll have to do this one on your own,” Fairly told him and walked away. Time Jack got weaned from his wizzo.

  In the back vault of Intel, Group Commander Childs had shown up with Waters, who proceeded to introduce the men to C.J. and his bear. “We’re going to start training for an attack on Ahlhorn,” he then said, pointing to a German air base on a wall map of northern Germany. “For us it will be the equivalent of an attack deep into enemy territory. Alongside of it, Woensdrecht was a piece of cake. Ahlhorn will be defended by the Tactical Leadership Program at Jever.” He pointed to another German base near the North Sea. “They’ll challenge us with an active air-defense, which is where the Weasels come in. We’re going to have to fight our way in, suppress the base’s air defenses and fight our way out.” The colonel looked at Jack. “This one will not be a piece of cake.”

  “Colonel,” Jack said, “the only rough thing about Woensdrecht was the low level and timing over the North Sea. Flying at a thousand feet and 420 knots to an IP like we did in Holland isn’t flying low or fast. And that’s our best tactic for penetration into any target. The Rapiers at Stamford proved that…”

  Sara was right, Waters thought. There was a lot of Locke that reminded him of himself when he was a new young fighter pilot. There was a potential in Jack beyond anything in Morgan or Conlan when they were upcoming jocks at Red Flag. But he still had a long road to go and plenty to learn from C.J. and Bull.

  “Good point, Locke. Group Captain Childs will explain the low-level flying structure in Germany. After he’s finished, get into bed with C.J. and Stan and figure out how you’re going to integrate the Weasels with your tactics. Okay, that’s it,” and he left.

  Childs threw a blue three-ring notebook on the table in front of them. “That gives the story of flying low level in Germany. You can legally operate between four and seven hundred feet most everywhere until you’re in a low-flying area; then you can descend to two hundred feet. Ahlhorn is in a low-fly area. However, the RAF likes to operate at two hundred feet wherever we please, but we do avoid most villages and built-up areas. Mustn’t upset the natives too much—”

  “Don’t the Germans file violations like crazy?” Jack broke in.

  Childs smiled. “Let us just say that the low-level structure in Germany is one way we remind the Germans that we were not invited there.”

  For the rest of the afternoon and the next morning, C.J. and Stan worked with the small group. Stan outlined the way a G-model worked and how they could detect and electronically counter radar-guided threats. C.J. took over and covered the three different missiles the Weasels carried that homed onto the radar-transmitting guidance signals to SAMs and Triple A. With a Weasel in the area, a radar operator led a short, exciting life. “There are several ways we can integrate our operations to get you onto and off a target, but in most cases what the old heads used to say is still right—’tell me what the threat is and I’ll tell you what my tactics are.’ Okay, time we chase our bodies over to the base theater to hear Bull shake up the troops with the Ahlhorn mission.”

  Jack met Morgan outside the theater as the crews crowded in for their next briefing. While they waited Jack said, “Tell me about C.J.”

  “Strange case,” Morgan said. “Supposedly he’s not even that good a pilot, but he’s been asked to join the Thunder-birds twice. He’s written articles on strategy for the Air University Review and been called simple minded. You figure it out. The guy’s kicked out of a Pentagon assignment after an arrest for drunk driving. He also wrote a satire on official policies. It is not worth your career to be caught with one of the bootleg copies at the Puzzle Palace, but rumor has it that Sundown keeps a framed copy in his bathroom. Maybe that’s C.J.’s secret weapon…”

  Bull finished up his briefing with: “Some of you are wondering why an old bird like the F-4 should still be so alive and well when the F-15s and 16s are eating up the sky. It’s because the Phantom can do many things well and has two engin
es and two crewmembers. It can take a lot of battle damage and still survive in a high-threat environment. It also offers a damn creditable air-to-air counter against the latest MiGs, especially since being retrofitted with the AIM-9L Sidewinder. Sure, the new birds can do any one of the things it does better, but none can do all of them as well. I’ve been talking about the Phantom’s potential. It’s your job to make it live up to that potential. The man in the cockpit still makes the difference.”

  Jack and Thunder had been visiting Eastern Radar. When they turned at the roundabout in front of Gillian’s shop, Jack got Thunder to pull over, jogged around the corner to the shop and found her behind the desk scheduling appointments.

  “How would you like to see the base this afternoon? The 378th is launching a mass gaggle on Woensdrecht. You might enjoy it. Pick you up at one?”

  Before she could answer he had run back to the waiting car.

  “He does seem sure of himself,” one of the stylists who worked for Gillian observed.

  Gillian said nothing but was thinking how glad she was he’d come back.

  Jack was glad he had planned on finishing Gillian’s tour of the squadron by watching the 378th crank engines and taxi out to the runway. The activity and the precision of the engine start and canopy drill fascinated her.

  “Can we watch them take off?” she shouted over the noise.

  Jack’s answer was to commandeer a pickup truck and drive out to the takeoff end of the runway, beating the taxiing Phantoms, then hand Gillian a set of Mickey Mouse ear protectors as the Phantoms arrived and the first four lined up on the runway.

  When the pilots lit the afterburners the shock wave rocked Gillian back as the Phantoms thundered down the runway. Ten seconds after the lead started his takeoff the second pair started to roll and the vibration of the noise pulsed through her body, seemingly reaching every nerve and bone. As the second flight of four taxied into position she took a hesitant step toward the runway, but Jack held her back. She shook off his hand and stood there, meeting the force of the noise alone until all twenty-four aircraft had launched.