by Andy Farman
“Brace! Brace!”
The driver made no attempt to slow for the speed ramp but steered so that the front wheels took it square together. First the front wheels left the tarmac and then the rear axle, Candice screamed as the truck became briefly airborne before slamming down hard on the front axle and bouncing wildly.
“God, but it’ll be a relief to get off this truck and back into combat!” Nikki said with feeling and the laughter erupted, a nervous release for some of the other passengers.
They were not the only vehicle delivering pilots to the flight lines and Nikki could even see crew on push bikes pedalling furiously.
Shouted conversations were taking place around Nikki during the breakneck ride, but these were drowned out by Pratt & Whitney turbofans and General Electric turbojets.
The first aircraft to release their parking brakes were Australia’s last pair of F111Cs, leaving their camouflage net ‘hangars’ and taxiing at high speed, anti-shipping ordnance in the shape of four AGM-84 Harpoons each carried on under-wing pylons. Right behind the F111s were a trio of Republic of Singapore F5 Tigers with a mixed AA and anti-radiation load-out.
As soon as he could be heard the Australian squadron leader shouted for attention, putting away the mobile phone he had been pressing to his ear.
“Listen up, we’re doing this one on the hoof so I’ll keep it simple. RV for everyone is 100 miles due West at Angels fifteen. ‘Magpie Zero Seven’ is the call-sign for AWACS on this and they are working on an anti-shipping strike so keep your ears to your radio but no speaking unless first spoken to. Radio silence people, let’s not give the bastards advance warning we are on the way!”
No writing was required and no questions were asked.
“Any Navy here?”
Only Nikki and Candice qualified there.
“Can you Elephant Walk?”
“Yessir, I flew Tornados on attachment with the RAF in Germany.” Nikki replied, but Candice looked blank.
The squadron leader nodded, satisfied and address everyone present.
“Once again, observe radio silence until you are called by Magpie Zero Seven.” He paused for emphasis. “Watch the Marshals', keep it tight and we’ll all get off the ground and get a shot at payback!”
As the truck reached the dispersed aircraft it slowed but did not stop and aircrew dropped over its sides, rolling as they hit the ground only to rise and sprint to their charges.
Nikki leaped out, landing and rolling before running the remaining distance. She couldn't find the damn entrance under the camouflage netting at first and was cursing as it was hauled up by rope from inside.
However long she had been asleep had been enough time for the ground crew to fuel and arm their Tomcat. Two AIM-7 Sparrows, four AIM-9 Sidewinders and a pair of AIM-54 Phoenix sat on the pylons, a drop tank added to the loadout.
“What’s an Elephant Walk, sir?” shouted Candice to the Australian squadron leader as they both landed on the grass and arose.
“About fifty miles a day, lieutenant.”
The ground crew, suited up already in the charcoal impregnated trousers and smocks but without gas-masks on, had already started up their F14 and the crew chief held up for her the weapons safety pins that had been removed. The aircraft was hers and ready for combat. Nikki was lowering herself into her seat as Candice climbed the ladder.
Candice fumbled with straps.
“Relax Ma’am.” A technician shouted and deftly connected radio jacks, oxygen and her flight-suits air bladders.
“First time?” he asked, meaning her first for real mission with war shots.
She nodded.
“You’ll do just fine ma’am!” he yelled over the engine noise.
A ground marshal’s illuminated wands signalled them forwards urgently and a moment later Nikki got the thumbs up that all personnel and equipment were now clear.
She released the parking brake.
The marshals were linked together on a stand-alone radio channel, working in unison.
“What’s an Elephant Walk, Nikki?” asked Candice.
“This.” Nikki replied simply.
The marshal waved them forward with both wands before pointing one wand angled down to their right wheel and the other moving up and back over his shoulder.
The Tomcat left the ‘hangar’ behind and turned right onto the taxiway.
Candice twisted around, looking at aircraft of all types that had appeared in front and behind.
“You've seen pictures of herds of elephants walking one behind the other, holding the tail of the elephant in front with their trunks?”
“Sure?”
“That’s how this procedure got its name. It’s the fastest way to get everyone off the ground but it’s kinda tricky.” Just as if to highlight the point the jet blast from the F16 ahead of them caused the Tomcat to rock violently.
“I guess we don’t do this that much in the navy?”
“Not until they build a carrier the size of an airbase, no.”
It was like a conveyor belt; the line of aircraft moved steadily on and as they reached the end of the taxiway the aircraft immediately turned onto the runway where scant seconds later, when the preceding aircraft were only a couple of hundred yards down the tarmac they received clearance to take off.
Every airworthy aircraft on the base was on the taxiways or hurtling down the runway.
The marshals’ job now was to keep an eye on the interval between each aircraft to avoid collisions or aircraft being flipped over by jet blast. The marshals had their respirators still in pouches around their waists and ear defenders on their heads instead.
Nikki and Candice had their oxygen masks unsecured.
Eventually they were near the end of the taxiway in third place, a marshal signalling the two F-16s ahead of them to turn onto the runway and run up their engines
A flash overhead made them look up sharply through the canopy but there was nothing to see and it was not repeated.
The marshal pointed the illuminated wands sharply down the runway and hunkered down in a squat, clear of wings and the ordnance hung off the F16’s hardpoints.
The Falcon’s pilots opened the throttles and the two aircraft powered down the runway.
“Our turn now.” Nikki said, looking at the crouching marshal.
He did not rise and the glow of the F16’s engines got further and further away. As they lifted skywards Nikki frowned.
“What’s the delay?” Candice asked, puzzled.
A cold shiver ran down Nikki’s spine.
“Put your mask on Candy!” she hurriedly clipped hers in place and ensured the oxygen was flowing.
“What?”
“Mask on, do it now!” she ordered.
The marshal remained squatting on the edge of the runway, his back to them.
Had an aircraft been making an emergency landing he would have signalled them to hold, but he had not moved a muscle.
Nikki came off the brakes and the Tomcat turned left onto the runway, but Nikki did not wait for the marshal, she immediately pushed the throttles forward to full military power, the afterburner kicking in.
“What about the marshal?” an alarmed Candice exclaimed.
“He's dead, Candice.”
The wheels retracted just moments after the runway dropped away below them. With no idea as to whether the attack was over Lt Cmdr. Nikki Pelham kept low and the throttles through the gates to put distance between their aircraft and the field they had just departed.
Candice was twisted around in her seat staring back with a kind of disbelief at the blacked out airbase. The dead body beside the runway was no longer invisible, only the marshal's lit wands could be seen but even they were soon swallowed up by the night. She had never in her life seen a for-real dead person before and yet things seemed so normal down there, no shooting, no exploding bombs like in the movies. How could people have simply ceased to live, just like that?
“Is anyone else taking off?”
Nikki asked her.
There was no reply.
“Candy!”
“Sorry…yes, yes they are still taking off.”
The radar intercept officer turned back to her instruments.
“There is a chemical attack going on, maybe even a biological weapon attack, but don’t freeze up.” Nikki said. “I know its scary shit that is happening, but you need to focus.”
Nikki took them out to sea at wave top height until the coastline of Western Australia was far behind before pulling back on the stick, taking them up to join the stacked aircraft.
They orbited for some time before all the Pearce Wing had assembled.
Various flights were addressed by their callsigns and were then ordered to new frequencies where they received mission specific briefings. They could see the stack getting shorter as these began their sorties.
Eventually it was their turn.
“Smackdown, Smackdown?” an Australian voice sounded in their headsets. “Smackdown flight receiving Magpie Zero Seven?”
“Smackdown Zero One.” responded Nikki.
“Two”
“Three”
“Four”
Her flight of F-14s from USS Nimitz’s air wing answered in turn. She had not yet met any of them, only having arrived in Australia a few hours before.
“Smackdown aircraft, Magpie Zero Seven… take a heading of Two One Eight, regroup at Angels One Eight and rendezvous with Belly Dancer, a flight of two, Foxtrot triple One Charlie’s, Bar Fight, flight of three Foxtrot-5s and Texaco.” instructed their controller aboard the AEW&C, a Boeing E-7A Wedgetail of 2 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force.
“You are CAP for Belly Dancer’s anti-shipping strike.”
Nikki rolled them right, coming onto the new heading and bringing the stick gently back until the artificial horizon on the HUD showed them wings level in a gentle climb. The rest of the flight formed up on her.
“Smackdown aircraft, Magpie Zero Seven, intel update…there are multiple ongoing attacks on air, sea and land bases with both conventional and chemical weapons all along the coastline of Western Australian. Belly Dancer’s target is a trio of surface warships with a six handed Sierra Uniform Two Seven CAP overhead.”
“’Magpie Zero Seven, Zero One?”
“Go.”
“Are these the Pearce shooters?”
“Negative, that was a submarine launched weapon. Belly Dancer’s sortie is against an outer picket of the main fleet.”
“Zero One, rog’”
“We aren’t going straight for the carriers and troop ships?” Candice asked on the intercom.
“Been-there-done-that-got-the-life-raft.” Nikki said. “A fleet is like an onion, especially this one, lots of missiles…we have to unpeel it first, at least some of it.” she switched back and called up the RAAF bombers and KC-30A Airbus tanker.
Gerry Rich was all business, the Outback charm on hold as they put together a quick plan. Flt Lt Teo Koh and his pilots were veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom. ‘Wild Weasel’ sorties were their bread and butter and they would precede the F111Cs by twenty seconds to suppress the warships air defences in attacking their radars.
It would not be complicated but it did rely upon the Tomcats making themselves the centre of attention.
After tanking, the Tomcats switched to the drop tanks and turned directly toward the Sino Russian invasion fleet three hundred miles south.
Climbing to 34,000ft they split into two pairs in close trail, with 01 and her wingman, 02 in the lead and 03 and 04 tucked in tightly behind.
The SU-27Ks saw them coming at 160 miles out. Their ‘Slot Back’ radar was not the best as the aircraft were designed for fleet defence where extended radar coverage by Kamov KA-31 AWAC helicopters would be dominant.
By lucky coincidence another strike by other members of the dispersed Nimitz air wing operating out of Esperance Airport had taken the Kamov out of play with a long range Phoenix shot, taken while flying a similar ant-shipping strike as their own. The Kamov had been destroyed and its replacement was only on the Admiral Kuznetsov’s elevator on its way up to the flight deck, not on its way up to operating altitude.
The Flankers flew a racetrack course, five miles between each flight and one of the flights of three SU-27Ks turned north to confront what their radars told them were a pair contacts. They closed rapidly to 30 nautical miles where Nikki and the Tomcats ejected their belly tanks. Nikki launched two AIM-54 Phoenix missiles and her wingman one, following quickly with three Aim-9 Sidewinders. The AIM-54s sped harmlessly past the first Flanker flight at mach 2.5, apparently wasted shots, and to their eyes AIM-9 missiles due to their speed.
The Tomcats continued in without deviation, and on detecting the second launch of missiles the SU-27K Flankers chose to fight, not flee, and bore in.
The second flight now turned in also, going to burner in order to gang up on the two detected intruders.
Vertical jinking proved only 66.6% successful for the first Flankers and one parachute floated down. Now only at 16 miles out did Smackdown 03 and 04 go to burner and head for the second flight of Flankers. Nikki and her wingman closed with the first pair and launched short range AIM-7 Sparrows.
The surprise of finding four aircraft to contend with was matched by a realisation that the three missiles that had ‘missed’ were not falling out of the air at 22 miles but had now accelerated towards the second flight at mach 5.
Flankers Three, Four and Five killed their own burners in order better manoeuvre, twisting and turning to escape, allowing the second pair of Nikki’s Tomcats to get to knife fighting range.
With the Tomcats holding the Chinese CAP’s full and undivided attention the three Republic of Singapore Air Force F-5 Tigers came in at wavetop height on the trio of Russian surface combatants, closing from different directions.
Their targets were the Syktyvkar, a large ASW warfare Udaloy class destroyer, and two multi role Krivak-I frigates, the Yoshkar-Ola and her slightly older sister ship, the Samara.
Without the early warning coverage of the Kamov the warships only detected them at fifteen miles out. The Krivak-Is launched SA-N-4 Gecko SAMs, and the Tigers emptied their rails of AGM-88 HARMs, the high speed anti-radiation missiles, and turned away.
Samara had two missiles targeting her and Yoshkar-Ola had four.
Turning to face the threats and reduce the frigates radar profiles their mortars threw out chaff and shut down their radars, trusting the Geckos to switch to their terminal guidance radars in the absence of command guidance from the warships.
An AGM-88 remembers where its target’s last position is and as it was approaching at 1400mph the frigates positions were not greatly altered by the time the big missiles reached them. Fire broke out on Samara’s forward deck as a HARM detonated close in, severely damaging her boxy four tube Silex anti-shipping launcher on the foredeck. Ironically it was the AGM-88s proximity fuse that had saved the warship a potentially fatal blow. The HARMs proximity fuse fired short of the superstructure owing to passing beneath a chaff cloud.
Three AGM-88s were dummied by chaff from Yoshkar-Ola but the fourth struck the bridge and 146lbs of TNT blew the upper works apart and started a raging inferno.
Damage control went into top gear, high pressure hoses being run out aboard the Samara. The night was as dark as pitch but astern of them the Yoshkar-Ola’s position was discernable by the angry glow reflecting off the cloud base. The damage control parties worked on with chaff still being ejected, the loud reports of the mortars made even shouted commands difficult to hear. The mortars bundles burst apart, the tin foil strips carried off by the wind as a short-lived dummy radar target, the light of the flames reflecting off the shiny aluminium lengths as they drifted astern.
Yoshkar-Ola was injured but not defeated. As horrendous as the damage appeared it would take a month at the most to repair in a shipyard, but the explosion had robbed critical areas of electrical power. The main breakers had popped and needed t
o be reset by hand, the work of but a moment, but the mortars firing circuits were not battery powered. No chaff was being launched until that item was put right.
Samara’s firefighters on the foredeck ducked as two Harpoon anti-shipping missiles screamed overhead. The big missiles ignored her in favour of a larger target, a chaff cloud, but that fell to the waves and dissipating before they reached it. Beyond though, was an even bigger target, just six miles away.
Syktyvkar had reacted to the air defence picket ships initial warning of approaching anti-radiation missiles by putting her own radar to standby.
Two great fireballs, one to starboard and one astern of Samara were roiling skywards. A Harpoon had dived down to skewer the frigate, penetrating to below the waterline and detonate in its magazine. Yoshkar-Ola blew apart and once the smoke had been carried a little distance away by the wind there was only burning fuel oil remaining upon the surface and wreckage falling from the sky. The Krivak was gone.
Belly Dancer 1 and 2 had met with complete success but they had ordnance left, so what to do now, run with the winning streak or play it as briefed? The Bar Fighters had expended all their anti-radiation ordnance and were heading home at wavetop level, so there would be no interference with other ships air defences and sensors other than that produced by the F111C’s own jamming pods. High above the clouds the Tomcats were mixing it with the Flankers, keeping them off the Australian bombers backs so they could make their planned attack and egress.
Discretion won over.
This was just Round 1 and they had succeeded because it had been a team effort. The F111Cs cleared the area on burner.
For the Nimitz Tomcats it was not quite as simple as for one thing they were heavily engaged, and for another they wanted some payback for the destruction of their carrier.
Nikki’s Sparrow had missed, her opponent rolling inverted and banking hard to get in behind 03 and 04 for missile shots. She followed, but instead of banking as the Chinese pilot had done she extended slightly, dropping beneath the Flanker before pulling back on the stick. They were high above the cloud and by the light of a half-moon she saw her enemy’s outline above her when she craned her neck.