1904 local (Zulu -7)
Tomcat 205
“Missile lock broken!” Gator snapped. “He slid off the scope like greased lightning. Sparrow armed.”
“Okay, okay — now! Fox two, Fox two!” Bird Dog said. The lighter Sparrow shot off the rails.
“Oh, shit. Got a lock on us, Bird Dog!” The warning tone of an enemy missile lock warbled in his headset.
“Get some airspace!” Batman ordered. “He can’t see me as well as he can you. I’m going to move in closer. Join back up on me as soon as you shake the missile!”
1905 local (Zulu -7)
Chinese F-10
Mein Low watched the missile follow the American, grim exultation filling him. It was time for a combat kill, his first against the Western forces. The sacrifices his countrymen had made serving as operational test targets for the F-10 would be vindicated.
Suddenly, the missile lock tone wavered, then fell off into silence. Anger shot through him. Why now?
“Lock lost,” his backseater announced. “Probably from the climb. It can’t follow quickly enough, or perhaps the seeker head failed.”
“My weapons do not fail!” he snapped.
“Jamming,” the backseater added. “Probable EA-6B Prowlers. Recommend we go to heatseekers.”
Mein Low snarled his concurrence. If the American pilot wanted a knife fight, that’s what he’d get. Four Flanker pilots had died trying to evade the F-10, and Mein Low had learned how to best use his fighter up close and personal. Close-in, dirty fighting — nothing beat the F-10.
1908 local (Zulu -7)
Tomcat 205
“Lost it! Bird Dog, I don’t think those Chinese missiles liked that high rate of climb maneuver.”
“Get the word out,” Bird Dog said. They’d lost some speed from the climb, but the Chinese fighter was below and in front of him now.
He watched Batman’s dance through the sky and waited for an opening to join it without spoiling Batman’s targeting. His lead had already expended two Sparrows on the other aircraft, but was still out of range for the deadly heatseeking Sidewinder. The enemy fighter was as hard to hold radar contact on as the JAST bird was.
“We’re moving in closer. Sidewinder next,” he said, thumbing the weapons selection toggle to the appropriate position. If he could get within range, the heatseeking Sidewinder wouldn’t care about radar cross sections. The ass-end of the Chinese fighter was spewing out hot exhaust that would pull the missile into it.
Bird Dog tapped his fingers on the control stick, waiting for the growl that would tell him the missile had acquired the target. If Batman would just clear the field of fire, the geometry would be perfect.
1909 local (Zulu -7)
Chinese F-10
“Behind us!” his backseater screamed.
“I know, I know!” Mein Low snapped. He’d temporarily shaken the Tomcat that had been dogging him for the last five minutes. Two Flankers were diving in to deal with the first fighter.
He snapped the F-10 into a tight turn and headed back the way they’d come. It was imperative that he prevent the second Tomcat from getting a clean shot at his tailpipe. By turning, he’d put the two aircraft nose to nose and increased the closure rate to almost Mach 2. The Tomcat might be faster, but the Flanker was more maneuverable. In a close-quarters, one-on-one dogfight, he’d have the advantage.
“The wingman — where is he?” he asked, remembering the predilection for the fighters to operate in groups of two. The “Loose Deuce” formation, he thought, his mind stumbling over the uncomfortable words. American fighters normally fought as pairs, one aircraft above the other poised to maneuver into killing position while the lead aircraft fought in close.
“Two Flankers have him covered,” the backseater muttered. “He won’t be back.”
“Good.” One Tomcat alone would be easy prey. Easier, anyway. The numbers were in the Chinese’s favor, at least until the Americans could get the rest of their aircraft off the deck.
1910 local (Zulu -7)
Tomcat 205
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Bird Dog muttered. The radar contact was approaching at five hundred knots, slightly slower than a Tomcat’s max speed at this altitude. “You might want a nice look at my ass, you pervert, but I’m onto you!” He pulled the Tomcat into a tight bank, cutting across the path of the Flanker.
“Jesus, Bird Dog!” Gator yelled. “You want to give him a great beam shot or what?” As if in response, the high-pitched warble of the missile lock tone wailed in their headsets.
“Worked once, will work again. Chaff!” Bird Dog ordered. He put the Tomcat in a steep, circling climb, pulling in behind the Flanker again.
“It’s still got us! Chaff away again!” Gator shouted.
“Hang on! We’re going to show this fellow what a real fighter can do!”
1911 local (Zulu -7)
Chinese F-10
“Go, go, go,” Mein Low chanted, watching the missile pip approach the American fighter. The Tomcat was above and behind him again, rapidly approaching perfect firing position for the Sidewinder. He banked hard to the right and nosed up into a steep climb, putting his aircraft between the sun and the American.
“Missile!” his backseater screamed.
“Sidewinder,” he grunted against the G-forces pounding him into the seat. “Flares, chaff, more flares!” The gentle thumps were barely perceptible over the screaming engines and the high-G-force vibrations.
A wash of turbulence shook the jet, and a few sharp metallic noises bit through the roar of the engines. “It went for it,” his backseater announced, relief evident in his voice.
“Now for him,” he replied, dropping the jet’s nose down. The Tomcat was now below him, afterburners screaming across the infrared spectrum. He toggled off a heatseeker, then climbed again.
1912 local (Zulu -7)
Tomcat 205
“It went for the flare, Bird Dog,” Gator said. “One Sidewinder left. Missile lock!”
“You’d figure. Let’s see if their missiles are any smarter than ours. Flares!”
Gator popped two flares. Bird Dog wrapped the Tomcat into a ball, turning more sharply than he’d ever tried before, standing the jet on its tail.
“Guess not,” he said a few moments later as the Chinese heatseeker exploded into the middle of the flare grouping. “Let’s make this last one count!”
Bird Dog popped the speed brakes, losing fifty knots of airspeed almost immediately. The Chinese fighter quickly overshot them. “Fox three!” Another Sidewinder darted forward off the wing.
“You’re inside minimum range!” Gator said.
“By the book, I am. Wanna bet that the firing doctrine has a safety factor built into it?”
“You can’t count on-” The explosion two miles in front of him cut him off. “-that every time,” Gator finished. “Damn it, Bird Dog, those safety factors are there for a reason. See?”
Bird Dog stared at the fireball in front of him. The missile had detonated beyond the enemy fighter. The aircraft turned to meet him, putting him within gun range.
“All we got is one Phoenix and one Sparrow. No more knife fights, Bird Dog.”
“And guns. Don’t forget the guns.”
Bird Dog slewed the Tomcat to the left, turning head-on to the other fighter, and pointed the Tomcat’s nose slightly ahead of the other aircraft’s course. He carefully led the enemy fighter’s maneuver and squeezed off his gun. Six thousand rounds per minute streamed out of the six-barrel Vulcan 20-mm gatling-gun, stitching a ragged line down the side of the other aircraft. Bird Dog came close enough to see the windscreen shatter and chunks of the hardened Plexiglas spray out away from the airframe.
Smoke streamed from the right side of the aircraft, which was rapidly losing altitude. A punctured fuel tank, probably, he thought. At any rate, he was hurt badly enough to be out of the air battle raging above him.
Bird Dog turned the Tomcat back toward the aerial fur ball behind him.
“Where’s Batman?” he demanded.
“Nine o’clock, six miles. He took out one Flanker, but he can’t shake the one on their tail.”
“Think they’d like a little help?”
“Might come in handy. Course, Tomboy’ll swear later that she could handle it alone.” The RIO grinned. “It’d be nice to pull her tail out of the fire for a change.”
“Tallyho!” Bird Dog said a few minutes later. “Looks like she’s in trouble to me!”
Batman’s Tomcat was heading for the deck, just finishing off a high altitude maneuver designed to give him tactical height and position on his opponent. It hadn’t worked. The smaller, more maneuverable Flanker had cut inside his turn. The JAST Tomcat was jinking like crazy, trying to screw up the shot. The maneuvers bled off airspeed and reduced the speed advantage the JAST Tomcat had over the Flanker.
“Batman, pull up and break right!” Bird Dog ordered. Without waiting for a reply, he screamed in on the pursuing Flanker and toggled the stick back to select a Sidewinder. As soon as the Sidewinder growled its acquisition signal and Batman had cleared the field of fire, Bird Dog shouted, “Fox three!” and shot his last close-range missile.
Seconds later, the Chinese Flanker exploded into a fireball. Shards of metal pinged sharply off the skin of the Tomcat.
Bird Dog got a quick acknowledgment of no damage from Tomboy and then grabbed for altitude, heading for the next engagement.
“You only got the Phoenix, Bird Dog,” Gator reminded him. “Too close quarters for another shot.”
“Still got the guns.”
“But not much ammo. Face it, Bird Dog, it’s time for us to be out of here. Let’s get up high, look down, and see if there’s anything we can do from there.”
Bird Dog reluctantly acknowledged the wisdom of Gator’s advice. Two minutes later, Batman and Tomboy joined them, the wings of their Tomcat clean and vulnerable. At fifteen thousand feet, they circled for the next ten minutes, listening to the tactical chatter, calls for assistance, and victory screams gradually subside. Finally, the last of the adversary air had either fled or fallen into the ocean.
The rest of the Tomcat squadron joined them at altitude. Most still had Phoenixes hanging under their wings. The Tomcats turned back toward the carrier while the Hornets lined up behind the two KA-6 refueling birds, eager to replenish their tanks before attempting a landing.
1920 local (Zulu -7)
Chinese Strike Force
Less than half an hour after they’d met the American fighters, the remaining Chinese fighters turned west to head back to their base in Vietnam. Only twenty-five of the fifty Chinese aircraft survived the brief but furious ACM after being deserted by their supposed Vietnamese allies.
The aircraft straggled into a loose formation and watched in stunned silence as the Americans broke off the attack. Had the Chinese had the Americans’ tactical advantages, they would have pursued the retreating enemy. Burning airframes out of the sky was a good method of ensuring there would be no counterattack.
Ten miles from the coast, the Chinese flight leader — the senior pilot left alive — began to understand why the Americans had not come after them.
CHAPTER 27
Thursday, 4 July
1921 local (Zulu -7)
Chinese F-10
Mein Low initiated shutdown procedures on the damaged engine, holding his breath while he watched for any indications of fire. None. Good, perhaps he’d shut down in time.
The aircraft felt oddly sluggish and heavy, although one engine was more than enough to keep him airborne. Not that that mattered right now — they were out of the battle for good, limited to 370 knots on one engine and such sluggish maneuverability that they’d be easy prey for anyone.
He headed for the deck, intent on avoiding any interest from the fighters circling and maneuvering above him. After he put some distance between them, he’d climb back to a more fuel efficient altitude and pray that his remaining fuel could at least get him to within range of the carrier. If he couldn’t kill fighters, then at least he could turn their flight deck into a fiery inferno. They couldn’t stay airborne forever. Ruin their landing area and they’d be forced to either eventually ditch or break off immediately and try to reach land with their remaining fuel and the tankers currently aloft.
“What are you doing?” his backseater demanded. “You’re way off course — we’re only a hundred miles from rescue forces.”
“Shut up.” Backseaters. Just for a second, he smiled with grim humor. He wondered if American pilots had to put up with pushy backseat drivers as well.
1925 local (Zulu -7)
Chinese Flanker
“Bien, you coward!” the Chinese lead pilot raged over tactical. “You slimy dogs, turning tail and running away from the strike. We lost over half of our forces, escaping with barely enough fuel to make it back to base. You’ll pay for this, you bastards!”
Bien clicked his mike a few times, wondering if he had the strength to resist temptation. He didn’t, he decided. He’d spent too many months under the crushing imperialism of the Chinese to not savor the sweet radar picture. A ragged line of Chinese fighters limped toward the coast, eking out every last mile from their remaining fuel.
He keyed his mike for the last time on the Chinese tactical frequency and said, “Go ahead, punk. Make my day.”
At that, the Vietnamese fighters broke formation and descended on the remaining Chinese fighters like starving sharks on a school of fat tuna. Only this time, the tuna didn’t have enough energy to run.
1927 local (Zulu -7)
CDC
USS Jefferson
“We got contact on them while they were still in the high-altitude portion of their profile,” the Vincennes TAO told his counterpart on Jefferson. “They’re running about Mach 3, it looks like. Damned tough to see — if we’d stayed down south with the carrier, we wouldn’t have detected them until they’d gone into the sea-skimmer mode. Ten, maybe twelve seconds warning.”
“You got them targeted?” the Jefferson TAO asked. “Oh, never mind. Symbology just coming up on the LINK,” she finished, as the NTDS symbol for a missile raced away from the Vincennes on course to intercept the Chinese cruise missiles. “Looks like a good firing solution. Just what do you think the range on those bastards is?”
“About two hundred miles shorter than China planned,” Vincennes replied. “Look, I hate to be rude, but don’t you have something else to do besides talk to me right now? I mean, it’s okay with me — my missiles are off the rails, and it’s just a matter of wait and see. But according to the LINK, you’ve got a hell of an air battle going on to your west.”
“Oh, that,” the TAO replied offhandedly. “Our part’s already over. The first Tomcats are back on deck as we speak.”
“So who’s in that fur ball off the coast?”
“Let’s just say that the Vietnamese government made some permanent choices about the future of their country,” she replied. “And it looks like China’s a little annoyed about it. We’re standing by in case they need a hand. But from what I can tell, they’re doing pretty damned well on their own.”
1930 local (Zulu -7)
Niblet 601
“Well, will you look at that?” the SH-60F pilot yelled over the ICS. Angel 101 was on SAR, hovering a discreet distance from the air battle to be immediately available for rescues. “Damned fighters, letting one sneak off like that!”
It wasn’t too often that the less glamorous elements of the carrier air wing got a good look at a bad guy. Especially a hurt one.
“Doing 270 knots,” his copilot said. “I make his closest point of approach less than one mile. And he’s headed for the carrier.”
“Let Homeplate know they got a kamikaze inbound. Give me a course to close him.”
“You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“You betcha!” the pilot said. “Those damned Penguin missiles have been hanging on our wings for too long. Let’s see if these suckers
work as advertised.”
1930 local (Zulu -7)
F-10
The carrier was only eight miles away, but it already loomed huge, blocking out most of the horizon. He felt his gut tighten and tried not to think about the next few minutes. It was his duty — his destiny, perhaps. If it meant that he must die, then so be it. The possibility of doing permanent damage to the carrier was too good to pass up.
Less than five minutes to live. He shut out the sounds of his backseater screaming. The man had figured out his plan a few minutes ago, and had been wailing ever since. Mein Low had taken the precaution of switching the ejection seat controls to front seat only. It would have been better for the backseater’s karma if he’d been able to face it bravely, but then the wheel of the universe moved in mysterious ways.
1931 local (Zulu -7)
Niblet 601
“Roger, Homeplate, you heard right. Tallyho on bogey. Taking with Penguin.” The pilot toggled the safety cover aside, took careful aim, and then let fly the Penguin missile tucked onto the underbelly of his helo.
“Fox-hell, Homeplate, what do I call these?” Fox one was a Phoenix, Fox two a Sparrow, and Fox three a Sidewinder. “This a Fox four?”
He watched the antiship missile close on the crippled Flanker. The first missed, but the second scored a solid hit on the windscreen. The remaining tattered fragments of Plexiglas shimmered in the air, along with remnants of the cockpit. Including, he assumed, the pilot.
“Ain’t Fox four,” he heard the carrier TAO reply, amid a few cheers in the background.
“Well, how do I report it?”
“Let’s just call it a first, and leave it at that. You’re credited with one kill, Angel One.”
“Dang!” The pilot high-fived his copilot. “That plane captain’s gonna love me! Bet he never thought he’d get to paint a kill on his helo!”
1928 local (Zulu 4)
Alpha Strike c-8 Page 25