The Warbirds

by Richard Herman

  “Getting behind on scheduled maintenance then, right?” Pullman asked.

  “Nah, right on schedule.”

  “Then behind on meeting your scheduled flying time?”

  “Nah, we’re actually ahead of the time line and might have to request additional flying time.”

  “The birds are starting to break more?”

  “Not a bit.”

  Another chief master sergeant entered the bar that was hard to ignore. Chief Curtis Hartley stood slightly over six and a half feet tall and was built like a weight lifter. Pullman motioned for him to join them. “How’s the Security Police business?”

  Hartley grunted. “Not good. The Old Man is using my sweet black ass for target practice these days.”

  “Gawd, it’s big enough. Hard to miss,” Gonzaga told him.

  “Colonel Waters has got us training like mad; perimeter defense, intruder exercises. You name it.”

  “Your troops can’t take the strain?” Pullman asked.

  “Naw, they love it. Especially when they hear about Waters getting on my case.” The three sergeants spent the next three hours complaining happily to each other about how rotten things were.

  All activity in the command post stopped. The men sat behind their telephones and radios and waited. The board plotters had finished marking up the birds as they reported in on status. Seventy-one aircraft stood ready to launch on the Ahlhorn raid. Only one plane had not checked in on status: 512.

  “I can’t believe that,” Leason snapped, picking up the phone and jabbing the button for Maintenance Control. “Get 512 on status or start building a scaffold.” Ten minutes later Leason’s phone rang. The DM listened and hung up, then leaned back in his chair and grinned at Waters. “The damned battery failed when they put power to the aircraft. No big deal replacing the battery but you have to pull the backseat to get at it. Normally about a two-hour job. The crew chief turned into a madman, dove into the pit head-first without removing the seat, got twisted around somehow and got the battery out and a new one in. Not by the book, but it’s done. They had to pull the chief out by his feet.”

  Waters nodded. “Make sure your troops know they did a good job. I don’t recall ever hearing of a wing getting all its birds up at once.”

  The digital master clock flashed 1305 and the first wail of cranking jet engines could be heard. Waters took a deep breath and tried to relax as his wing headed for the North Sea.

  Bull Morgan checked over his eighteen-ship cell as they came off the tanker and headed into the letdown point seventy-five miles off the Dutch island of Vlieland. Six of his birds stayed at altitude to act as a combat air patrol while he led twelve down onto the deck, coasting in at two hundred feet over Vlieland. He turned south, running in over the Ijsselmeer, the old Zuider Zee the Dutch were slowly draining, stealing land from the sea. As long as his flight remained over water they could hug the deck. His flight took spacing as they separated into pairs for the attack on Soesterberg. Touching shore, he inwardly groaned as he lifted his flight to the mandatory one thousand feet the Dutch demanded when flying over land. The first whiplash of a search radar activated his radar warning gear, but he believed it was too late, that the defenders would not get the F-15 Eagles setting alert at Soesterberg airborne in time. He was three-and-a-half minutes out.

  NATO had been watching Soesterberg’s reaction to the impending attack and duly noted the late warning of the inborn fighters. The 32nd had four Eagles airborne but they were in a Combat Air Patrol (CAP) over Ahlhorn, the base they thought would be attacked.

  Meanwhile, Bull’s F-4s overflew the base and then headed back out the Ijsselmeer, switching to a CAP role. NATO recorded the time of the attack and calculated that the runway had been cratered and would not be operational for two hours. The American and Dutch base commander conferred on where to divert the airborne Eagles and how long they could engage the attackers…Clearly the first phase of Jack’s plan had worked.

  While the fight over Soesterberg was developing, Jack led a thirty-six ship cell down the Dollart, the estuary of the Ems river. The cell broke up over the large mud flat at the mouth of the Ems onto different low-level routes leading to the six IPs they had selected surrounding Ahlhorn. Six minutes later Ahlhorn came under attack as the 45th crisscrossed over the base for eight minutes.

  Jack maintained four hundred feet until they entered the low-flying area, then descended to two hundred feet as he turned over the village of Papenberg and headed for their IP. Sooner, his wingman, moved five hundred feet off his left wing as he pushed the airspeed to 480 knots. They split a radio tower that loomed in front of them, exactly as planned. Thunder and Sooner’s wizzo kept twisting in their seats, looking for any bandits that might be in the area. The only other aircraft they saw had an “SW” for Stonewood on their tails. Telltale activity started to light Thunder’s RHAW gear.

  “Come on C.J.,” Jack said, “now’s the time to do your thing. Open up the door for us.”

  Strobes of jamming activity streaked Thunder’s radar. “Looks like some bear is at work,” Thunder said from the rear.

  “Right,” Jack said, wrenching the fighter into a sudden climb, snatching four Gs on the aircraft. “A damn Army helicopter—didn’t he read the NOTAMs?” The Notice to Airmen had warned pilots about the operation and the chopper was illegally transiting the area. Only Jack’s quick reaction saved them from a midair collision.

  “Nice dodge,” Sooner radioed, and was interrupted as a lone Luftwaffe F-4 chased a 45th Phantom across their path while a third Phantom sliced down onto the German. They could see the “SW” on the last F-4’s tail. “There goes one sour Kraut,” Sooner intoned over the radio about the developing sandwich.

  He got no laugh, especially from Jack, who warned, “IP now,” and jerked his bird onto a new heading while Sooner moved twenty degrees off Jack’s heading, the two aircraft separating for the run onto Ahlhorn.

  Two miles out, Jack pulled his nose up, rolling, and pulling back to the ground as he came down the chute, flying the wire down to bomb release. Meanwhile Thunder used their altitude to sweep the area visually, and sucked in his breath when he saw what looked like twenty F-4s converging on them from different headings. Unless everyone’s timing was right, there would be a midair collision over Ahlhorn…

  Jack pulled off his bomb run and exited over two F-4s that were running in on the target. On the ground, Group Commander Childs stood with the German commandant from TLP watching the attack. “An impressive show,” the German colonel said.

  Jack’s flight of four joined up as they fell into a loose box formation and climbed to five hundred feet, coasting out eight minutes after coming off the target. They climbed lazily to twenty-four thousand feet looking for F-15s or F-4s out of Jever. His flight rendezvoused with a tanker and entered a race-track pattern, waiting for other members of their cell to join up. When eighteen birds were accounted for, they fell into trail behind the KC-135 and headed across the North Sea to Stonewood. As they did, Thunder monitored the radios, listening as the last half of their cell joined up on the second tanker. “All accounted for,” he told Jack when the last two Wild Weasels checked in on the tanker.

  Waters found Jack hovering over Bill Carroll, who was peering into the screen on his computer, calculating the various probabilities that would determine the success of the mission. Carroll kept pounding numbers into the computer as he scanned the debriefs from the crews and the reports from the NATO ground observers.

  Carroll shook his head. “I’ll have to run it all again, but it looks like we would of lost three birds on this attack. That’s a four point two percent attrition rate. Jever was too tough a target and they got too many birds launched.”

  Jack groaned. Such an attrition rate meant that after seventeen maximum-effort missions like the one they had just completed, the wing would have lost half its aircraft.

  The Ahlhorn raid had been a bloodbath for the 45th.

  Forewarned is forearmed, went
the conventional wisdom. But this was the Air Force.

  General Blevins’ secretary did not like the position she was in—between the proverbial rock and a hard place. The general was going to reprimand her either for interrupting him after announcing he did not want to be disturbed, even though he was alone in his office, or for not immediately showing the man in. She made two decisions and picked up the phone. “Excuse me, General”—she deliberately clipped her words, using her British accent to full effect—“there is a gentleman here who wishes to see you.” She smiled at the nondescript British civilian in front of her.

  “Damn it, can’t you people follow directions?”

  “I take it then, General, that I’m to tell the gentleman from MI-5 to come back at your convenience. Good-bye, General.” She picked up her handbag and left.

  “What’s got into that twit now?” Blevins mumbled as he hurried to catch the visitor from British counter-intelligence before his secretary sent him away. “Ah, please come in,” he said, affecting what he hoped was his best Bostonian accent.

  The man followed Blevins into his office, closing the door behind him. He handed Blevins his ID and scanned the office, deciding that it was probably bugged, the Americans were so careless…

  Blevins settled into his chair and smiled. “Not to worry. My offices are swept weekly for bugs.”

  “Sir Louis Nugent asked me to speak to you—”

  “Ah, yes, the chief of your section.”

  “Right…well, to come to the point, we have penetrated something of a spy net, IRA-based mostly. However, there are some interesting connections with Libya, and through them, the Soviets. We are not going to roll them up until we are certain of the extent of their penetration.”

  “Ah, yes, I see,” Blevins picked it up, “they have penetrated into my area. Well, I’m not surprised. I do have some, shall we say, interesting personal problems that have been forced upon me.” The general knew how to play the old CYA, cover your ass, game.

  “Not quite, sir. One of the ring’s agents has recruited a sixteen-year-old Irish girl to establish a liaison with an American colonel stationed at Headquarters USAFE in Ramstein, Germany. Apparently his duties bring him here quite often.” The man snapped open his briefcase and laid a stack of glossy black-and-white photos on Blevins’ desk. “We did not take these; they did.” The photos chronicled the development of a love affair, the last four prints leaving no doubt about the intimacy of the affair. “Very professional, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes…well, this colonel has been passing classified information to the girl?”

  “No. Not yet. We want to leave the girl in place and watch her. However, we want the colonel out of the way. He is in charge of the Inspector General’s Operational Readiness Inspection team, the ORI, I believe you call it, and is really quite small cheese.” The agent did not tell Blevins that MI-5 wanted to feed misinformation through the girl to the Soviets, and for that they needed the girl’s talents to be directed elsewhere. “Really,” the agent concluded, “at this point the affair is quite harmless, other than the girl’s young age, of course.”

  “Of course, we shall discipline the colonel and end the affair,” Blevins said.

  The agent gave an inward sigh. “Not discipline, that would be unwise. We simply want you to use your offices to tell the colonel to end the affair. If the colonel is, as you say, disciplined, then it will be obvious that we are onto the girl. This must be done discreetly, appear altogether natural.”

  “Certainly, of course. We will be glad to cooperate with Her Majesty’s government.”

  The agent then handed the general a card with the colonel’s name; then, without shaking hands or saluting, left the office.

  The plan did not immediately jell for Blevins. But a chance remark the next day that the 45th was due for an Operational Readiness Inspection set his mental processes to grinding…He told his new secretary to book him a seat on the next plane to Ramstein, preferably that day. He was finally going to teach Waters that his way of running the Air Force was the only way. And, he calculated, do the Air Force a favor in the process. Which, of course, had always been his mission. It was just that some idiots and malcontents didn’t understand…

  Doc Landis’ cadence was perfect as he called off the decreasing altitude coming down the chute. The sight picture was also perfect as Doc sang out “Pickle.” Jack instantly flicked the pickle button, releasing a practice bomb onto the target, then honked back on the stick, loading the F-4 with four G’s in two seconds for a smooth pullout. He was looking for the other Phantom when the first blink of the master caution light caught his attention. He promptly broke out of the pattern, checking his warning lights, keyed his radio and told the range controller and wingman about his problem: “Holbeach Range, Toddy Four-One. My Utility Hydraulic System has failed. RTB at this time. Toddy Four-Two, join up and let’s go home.” The range controller and wingman, Toddy Four-Two, acknowledged his call as Jack headed for Stonewood.

  The wingy slid into position on Jack’s left side as they passed by Blankeney Point, scanned his underside and told Jack that he could see hydraulic fluid streaming down the belly of the Phantom.

  “Roger,” Jack acknowledged, “we’ll take the barrier.” Doc Landis started to read the emergency checklist for hydraulic failure when the low oil pressure light came on for number two engine. Before Jack could shut the engine down the oil pressure had fallen to zero, indicating an internal failure in his right engine.

  Landis continued to read the checklist as Jack reviewed each step. “Isn’t this the emergency the flight manual says to consider ejection for?” Landis asked, trying to keep his voice calm; this was no damn appendectomy.

  “It is,” Jack answered. “We’ve lost most of our control surfaces. The right wing is dead. It’s easy to run out of lateral control authority. If that happens the only choice we’ve got is to lower the nose and reduce power to recover. That can be hard cheese close to the ground. How do you feel about it? Want to try an approach?”

  “One ejection per lifetime is more than enough,” the doctor muttered. “Let’s do it.”

  Jack radioed the tower and declared an emergency as he positioned the Phantom to the west of the base for a straight-in approach.

  “Toddy Four-One, Tower,” Stonewood tower radioed the wingman. “The DO says to consider ejection. He says he’s got lots of Phantoms, only one you.”

  “Tell him thanks but I think that I’ll give this bird back to him.”

  Waters had joined Tom Gomez in the DO’s pickup truck and they now followed the crash trucks out to the approach end of the runway, listening to the radio calls on the truck’s UHF radio. They watched in silence as the disabled Phantom intercepted the glide slope and started to descend. “I think I’d rather eject,” Waters said. “But it’s Jack’s decision.”

  Gomez nodded, well aware that neither he nor Waters would stay in command if the 45th lost another bird.

  As the Phantom passed through two hundred feet they saw it begin to yaw to the right, but Jack brought the nose down and gained enough control to continue the approach. “He won’t have enough altitude to do that again,” Waters said, trying to sound calmer than he felt.

  Gradually Jack reduced power to 200 knots, then touched down four hundred feet short of the barrier. The Phantom’s hook caught the cable and snatched the big bird to a halt in the middle of the runway.

  Waters grinned. “He makes it look routine. Your boy did good, Tom.”

  “Good enough. He survived. Name of the game, I guess.”

  Doc Landis’ wife pressed against his shoulder and glanced at the clock on the night stand. He started to caress her. His wife had never stopped being a sex object to him, thank God, and the feeling was mutual. “Doctor Landis,” she murmured, “you better stop that or we won’t get any sleep and you’ve had a rough day…you’re a real goat, you know that?…”

  He ignored her and kissed her neck, causing her breath to come faster.


  “Jeff, stop it or I’ll be as pregnant as Sara Waters. No wonder this place has such a booming birthrate, it over-stimulates you men. No more flying for you on Mondays.” And so saying, she returned his kisses, thankful to have her husband safely home, and more than willing to show it.

  A team from the Inspector General’s office at Ramstein, Germany, had managed to hit the 45th with a surprise Operational Readiness Inspection, totally disrupting the base. Every one of Chief Pullman’s contacts had fallen through and all the markers he had called in as due had misfired. The entire network of first shirts had let Pullman down. He would even some scores in the future. But in the meantime…

  Five staff cars had driven on base and dispersed to predetermined locations, one group to the command post as a simulated terrorist bomb exploded in a maintenance shop, creating a mass-casualty exercise. The inspectors at the hospital, in Maintenance and Security Police, all tight-faced, noted the reaction of the participants, taking endless notes and photographs. The order directing the wing to load its aircraft for wartime missions came at 1:00 P.M. and the wing had to load live ordnance on its F-4s. Munitions safety was of paramount concern for the inspectors as the wing entered into its next major event. The inspectors noted a munitions NCO had to borrow a checklist.

  After listening to reports from his team that night, the IG’s team chief, Colonel Peter Gertino, placed a call to Waters, telling the wing commander only that he would like to meet with him. He found Pullman in the office with Waters and Gomez and quickly proceeded to summarize the inspection. “Your Security Police were rated unsatisfactory. The command post was rated unsatisfactory. Your load-out would have been outstanding except for the improper use of checklists; consequently my inspectors rated that event as marginal. The mass-casualty exercise was satisfactory. In sum, not a good beginning, Colonel Waters. Your people can still salvage this inspection, but they are going to have to work for it.” He picked up his notes and left the office.