The Warbirds

by Richard Herman

  “I see you let their last defense posture determine which targets you pick—at the last minute.” The general thought for a moment about Waters wanting to change the way they were ordered into combat. “You need a list of approved targets to pick from, not a detailed frag order.”

  “There’s another reason,” Carroll said. “They were waiting for us at the convoy. I don’t know how they knew. maybe dumb luck. They might have psyched out our method of selecting targets—we’ve been going after big stuff. I don’t know, maybe an intelligence leak. Also, no matter how we try to keep our communications down, that Soviet trawler offshore can monitor us as we load out and broadcast early warnings. We know it radios our launch times. As long as it’s in International Waters, we can’t do a damn thing.”

  “So you do surprise launches any time during the night.” Shaw was almost sold. “What about the MiGs?” Jack allowed a grin. “The PSI has piss-poor GCI coverage. They’ll never find us rooting around in the mud at night. Besides, I don’t think your average PSI Flogger driver has the cajones to come down into the weeds at night and mix it up with a Phantom. General, Thunder claims we can do the low levels. I think we deserve a chance to nail the bastards.”

  “So do I, Jack. You three get packed, you’re coming with me to a conference at JUSMAG. We’ve got some convincing to do…Muddy, Chief Pullman is going crazy at Stonewood with nothing to do. Mind if I use him until you get back?”

  Waters agreed, knowing well that inactivity was the one thing Pullman could not handle.

  Shaw pulled a memo out of his briefcase while they waited for the men to return. “I’ve got a nitpicker from Third Air Force for you.” The general, it seemed, had come to Ras Assanya for another reason. As director of personnel for Third Air Force he was carefully appraising Waters, looking for signs of physical exhaustion and, more importantly, emotional fatigue. “Plans and Intel claims your use of tactical call signs is giving away too much info. They’ve ordered you to stop them and use the variable call signs assigned in the frag order.” He waited to see how Waters would react.

  Annoyance and amusement flashed in Waters’ brown eyes. “Tell Blevins we tried that and can’t make it work. We’ll do it if someone will come out here, fly a few combat missions and show us how it’s done. Maybe Blevins would like to volunteer. What we’re doing works well and I can’t see fixing something that isn’t broke. But like I say, I’m always amenable to someone leading a combat sortie and showing us a better way.”

  “I’ll be pleased to relay that message, Muddy.” Shaw smiled. Both loathed Blevins. “Who do you want to replace Tom?” he asked, easing into a more touchy subject, still evaluating Waters’ reactions.

  Waters kept his emotions under tight rein. “Steve Farrell, the 377th squadron commander. I want to give C. J. Conlan the 377th.”

  In spite of the man’s fatigue, Shaw decided, Colonel Waters was firmly in control of himself and his wing. But Shaw also knew the intense pressure and burden of responsibility for leading a wing in combat would eventually take its toll, and his friend Muddy would inevitably start to make mistakes. Once a wing was committed to combat, it turned into a machine that consumed people for its fuel. Its commander became the driving force behind it, pumping his people into the maw of war, in large part determining who survived. It was a hellish burden that few sane men could carry for long.

  17 July: 2245 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 2245 hours. Over the Atlantic Ocean

  Most of the passengers of this flight back to Washington were asleep on the Boeing C-137B, the version of the 707 the Air Force used for hauling VIPs. Cunningham sat alone in the rear compartment, enjoying the solitude and the comfort of the big leather armchair. Smoke filled the air as he puffed on one of the fine cigars that Ruth had found for him in London. Probably a Havana with its label removed. Just like Ruth, she does spoil me. He checked the sleeping compartment to see if she was sleeping comfortably. His wife had never been able to rest on protocol trips like the one they were returning from and he worried about her health. He watched her sleep, curled up in the middle of the bed, quietly closed the door and returned to the armchair.

  As he turned his attention to the rough draft of a proposal John Shaw had given him in London, he thought of an ambassador’s daughter, Abigail, who had cornered him at an embassy reception in London and asked if he knew a Lieutenant Jack Locke, an F-4 pilot. The young lady, more out of her dress than in it, though within the limits set by the latest style, had more than a passing interest in the pilot. He told her he did know the lieutenant, who was currently with the 45th Tactical Fighter Wing at Ras Assanya on the Persian Gulf. She was impressed with him that he knew about a lieutenant and told him so, and a fleeting image of what the young lady might look like without clothes brushed his consciousness, a diversion he didn’t much indulge in these days. Well, fighter pilots will be fighter pilots, he told himself, remembering his days in F-86s when the world…never mind the world…when he was young.

  The reception in London for NATO commanders had not been a complete waste of time and the general had been able to spend a few minutes talking with John Shaw about keeping the 45th operational in the Persian Gulf. Shaw had hurriedly explained the plan Jack Locke had put together for cutting the wing’s losses. The lieutenant had convinced the JUSMAG that it would work but they needed higher approval to implement it. The young pilot’s idea had teased Cunningham with its possibilities, but the conference’s full schedule had forced him to put it aside. He had told Shaw to give his aide Stevens the rough draft of the proposal that Shaw had banged out on a portable typewriter on the flight in from Dhahran.

  Now Cunningham leaned back in his chair and turned his full attention to Locke’s proposal. The 45th had been committed to combat for two weeks and had hurt the PSI, reinforcing the UAC as the President had planned. Cunningham speculated how it had turned into a trade-off: the situation was nearing stabilization but at a cost of downed aircrews. Now the cost was causing political problems. The general began to play a game of “what if,” mulling over future possibilities, the probable reactions of the players and the counter-moves they would make. Carroll had accurately called the Soviet reaction. Glasnost was still the announced policy, the Soviets claiming what was going on in the Persian Gulf was a local matter and shouldn’t confuse Soviet-American relations. That’s what they said…Men and supplies were still reaching the PSI but not in significant amounts, not enough so far to cause the U.S. to increase its role in the Gulf. Fair enough, he decided, that’s the game we played with you in Afghanistan—keep the conflict going on a low burner until the other side gets tired of playing and goes home.

  We’re close, he decided, close to stabilizing the situation on terms acceptable to the United States and its allies. But if we pull out now, the military situation will tilt in the PSI’s favor. It was a limited-war situation that fascinated the general, calling for all his skill in resolving it without allowing it to escalate into a bigger conflict. And the 45th was the key—he had to keep them in place a while longer, flying missions, wounding the PSI. But the political game dictated that it had to be done with minimum losses. No more Nams. The general thought about the proposal in front of him…F-111s would be perfect for the type of mission Locke was proposing, but F-111s would be interpreted as a deliberate escalation.

  He cursed his Arab allies who would not give the 45th a dedicated CAP and refused to let the 45th fly its own. Either solution would cut the 45th’s losses. His advisers had convinced him that it was a question of Arab ego. The old macho perspective saw the ultimate use of a fighter aircraft in an air-to-air role, which was the arena the UAC had reserved for their own air force. They wanted to engage in so-called clean situations, where it was only fighter against fighter and not risk their expensive planes on escort missions into hostile territory. But if they let the 45th do it for themselves, it would make them look bad. He understood the irrationality of what was happening, and refused to accept it as a permanent condition for h
is Air Force.

  So…he’d try to keep the 45th in the game by using Locke’s Wolf Flight while he tried to find them a CAP. He tallied what he needed to make Wolf Flight work, focusing on the 45th, letting his thoughts spin down. Waters, you’re on the cutting edge and you’ve got to keep your wing fighting until I can get you out of there some kind of a winner. Otherwise the sacrifices your people are making will be for nothing. And to think I almost canned you…

  19 July: 1230 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 1530 hours. Ras Assanya, Saudi Arabia

  The men crowded around the largest flight-planning table in the COIC studying the message and photos that made Wolf Flight a reality. The message was much simpler than a frag order: a long list of map coordinates identifying targets the 45th could attack at will. What interested Waters the most were four general-target descriptions at the end, allowing the 45th to strike any identified troop concentrations, command posts, fuel dumps or artillery batteries that were in Iran and within a hundred-mile arc of Basra. Carroll had two of his sergeants plotting the targets on a large wall map.

  The men made room for the wing commander when Waters joined Thunder. “Piece of cake, sir,” Thunder said. “I’ve never seen such clear photos and they’re one to fifty thousand, the same scale as a topo chart. And no distortion.” The crews used topographical charts for target planning. The wizzo held up the photo and chart of Ras Assanya for the colonel to compare. “I can use these to update our navigation charts and go any place we want.”

  Waters didn’t much care for the note of overconfidence…it could be a killer. Studying the photo with a magnifying glass, he had to be impressed by the high resolution. “This one was taken around noon,” he told them. “You can pick out my truck on the isthmus. That was the first time I had driven it out there.” He had been inspecting Chief Hartley’s perimeter defenses before noon.

  Cunningham had ordered two reconnaissance versions of the Stealth fighter to deploy secretly into a remote base in the wasteland of Rub al Khali, the “Empty Quarter” of the Arabian Desert, to support the 45th. Cunningham had welcomed the chance to test the Stealth fighters in actual operations. These photos were the first products of a new camera that relied on computer-rectified, reticulated optics and high-resolution film that imaged far beyond the normal photographic spectrum. The spooks at the salt flat of Al-Ubaylah were delighted.

  “When can you be ready to launch your first sorties?” Waters asked Jack.

  “The wizzos are driving this one, sir. Whenever they’re ready.”

  “Tonight,” Thunder said quickly, throwing himself into selecting his route and updating his map using the photos they had just received. Waters motioned for Jack and Carroll to join him in the command post, leaving the men to work up the mission.

  “Problems?” he asked the two young officers.

  Jack replied: “Night deliveries will be a little tricky until we get the hang of it. The weatherman says it’s going to be clear as a bell and the moon is in its first quarter, sets at three-thirty this morning. We should have good visibility. I checked with Bull. He prefers night operations because you can see tracers from Triple A or a SAM’s plume in time to dodge them.”

  “That Soviet trawler is going to cause us problems,” Carroll said. “But tonight we’ll probably catch them asleep. Hell, they throw out the anchor and even turn off their radar. They’ll hear our engines start and probably will figure it’s late-night engine runs by Maintenance. But we won’t surprise them twice, and they’ll start sending launch warnings. We don’t know how fast the PSI can react or if they’ll throw MiGs against us. The whole idea of Wolf Flight is to avoid threats and recover every bird we launch. It’s the same old problem—we can’t handle both threats.”

  Waters leaned forward in his chair. “Now’s the time we have to take a calculated risk. Even if the MiGs do launch I don’t think they can find one or two birds at night down in the weeds. The Flogger Gs they’re flying don’t have a look down-shoot down capability. Tonight, let’s bet on surprise being on our side. Like on our first mission. We’ll reevaluate after every mission. Bill, keep watching for increased GCI coverage by the PSI and faster reaction on scrambles. That will be the first clue the MiG threat is heating up.” They returned to the mission planning room, where C.J. and his bear were waiting for them.

  “No way you can do this without help,” C.J. said. “Stan-the-Man claims this stand-down is bad for his nerves and wants to get involved. It’s a perfect mission for a Weasel and we aren’t doing anything.”

  Jack turned to Waters: “Colonel, we are dealing with a lot of unknowns tonight. Wouldn’t hurt to have a Weasel as a wingman.”

  Waters nodded, pleased that Jack was showing some caution.

  It was agreed to launch eight birds in flights of two, pairing an E-model with a Weasel. Each flight would hit a primary target and if no threats were encountered, would go on to a secondary flight. They finished flight planning two hours later.

  “Briefing at 2300 hours,” Jack announced, sending them to get whatever rest they could find as the tension started to build.

  The briefing that night started with a weather and intelligence update. Nothing had changed and Carroll had some reassuring news. “We launched a training sortie this afternoon and had it monitor the trawler for radar emissions. The targets for tonight are in front of Basra and we’re doing the usual: interdicting a buildup by the PSI.”

  Jack took over then and covered night-time delivery techniques. “Remember,” he said, wrapping up, “from now on you’re part of Wolf Flight, and if you can’t hack night low levels going in and coming out fast, tell me now before you buy the farm.”

  Wrango, a pilot from the 378th, asked about their call signs. “You’re a ‘Wolf,’” Jack answered. “Learn to recognize each other’s voice on the radio and keep the chatter to a minimum. Intel says the PSI monitors all our communications so we’ll use that as a weapon. When the Gomers hear ‘Wolf,’ I want them diving for cover, convinced that the meanest fucker on the block is coming after them personally with a five-hundred pound bomb. Instead of a name we’ll each have a number. I’ll be Wolf Zero-Nine. You pick your own number and keep it.”

  At 1:08 A.M. the quiet of the early morning dark was shattered as eight Phantoms started their engines simultaneously. When their inertial nav systems were aligned they raced for the runway in pairs, maintaining radio silence. The tower saw the first two birds take the Active and blinked a green light, clearing them for takeoff. Each pair of birds made a formation takeoff to the north and never lifted above two hundred feet as they headed toward their target. Seven minutes after engine start, the base fell silent…

  The PSI watch team that had been inserted to monitor takeoff activity at Ras Assanya heard the Phantoms start engines but had not reached their observation point in time to discover what had happened. The Soviet trawler offshore that served as a listening and radar watch post for the PSI never detected the activity…

  C.J. moved his Phantom as close as possible to Jack’s, determined to weld himself to Jack’s wing. The sweat rolled off his face as he fought to maintain position, using the dim green luminescent formation lights on Jack’s bird for a reference. Flying formation at night, that close to the ground and fully configured for combat was adding up to the most demanding mission he had ever flown. He was so close to Jack that they were even cycling together in response to the ground turbulence.

  “Right turn to zero-six-four coming up in thirty seconds,” Thunder warned his pilot.

  Jack lifted the flight up to four hundred feet for the turn, spun them onto the new heading and immediately jammed them down to two hundred feet once they were wings-level on their new course.

  “He’s good, damn good,” C.J. muttered under his breath.

  Thunder’s call of “ten minutes out” cued Jack to arm up his bird as they headed for the truck park that was their first target. Jack had decided that CBUs would be the best ordnance to use, giving him coverage over a w
ide area. C.J. had a mixed load for defense-suppression and would drop his CBUs on the secondary target they had selected on their escape route, a haphazard array of barrels and crates that looked like a supply dump. He would only use his anti-radiation missiles if a SAM site challenged them; otherwise he would return with the valuable missiles. They turned the IP and made their target run. Jack listened to Thunder count the seconds down to bomb release and at the count of five saw the truck park flash up in front of him. The lay down delivery was right on.

  Thunder twisted in his seat and scanned the target. “I counted four secondary explosions,” he said. “We got something that time.”

  The two Phantoms headed toward their next target.

  C.J.’s backseater concentrated on his RHAW gear, waiting for signs of SAM activity. Thunder guided them to their secondary IP, and again they ran in on the target. Except this time C.J. dropped his CBUs while Jack moved out to the right and slightly above him, keeping him in sight, not wanting to become separated at night.

  Again, Thunder scanned the target. “Maybe one secondary,” he reported. “I saw a small flash that might have been something.” The small flash that Thunder had seen was the fuel tank of an auxiliary generator exploding.

  Coming off the target Jack made a gut decision. “Head straight for home plate, Thunder; let’s get the hell out of Dodge.” Thunder punched the base’s coordinates into the nav computer. As Jack selected Nav Comp on the Navigation Function Selector Panel the bearing pointer on the Horizontal Situation Indicator slewed to the right, pointing to Ras Assanya. Jack wrenched the Phantom onto the new heading.

  “Where the hell we going?” C.J. rasped over his intercom to his bear.

  “Rats Ass,” Stan told him. “No reason to get off our planned route.”

  “Not good.” Thunder was studying his chart, working out where they were headed. The terrain was flat, and he and Jack had spent hours over charts, identifying landmarks and significant features. What worried Thunder now was that the reccy photos had proved the charts to be out of date. “There’s a village on the nose—”