The Intruders jg-6

by Stephen Coonts

  Car quals are always goat-ropes, Jake thought, something going wrong sooner or later, so there is at least a fifty-fifty chance I’ll have to divert ashore once tonight. And if my luck is in, maybe spend the night in the Alameda BOQ, call Callie…

  No matter how long you’ve been ashore, after a half hour back aboard one of these gray tubs you’re tired, hungry and horny. No way to cure the horniness, but a night ashore in a real bed would work wonders on the other syndromes, with real food and a long, hot shower and Callie’s voice on the phone—

  His reverie was interrupted by Flap Le Beau’s voice on the intercom system, the ICS. “Don’t do nothin’ cute tonight, huh? My internal table ain’t so stable when we’re out here flyin’ through black goo.”

  “You and Muhammed Ali. How about laying off the monologue. When I want comedy I watch TV.”

  “Golden silence to practice your pilot gig. You got it. Just fly like an angel flitting toward paradise.”

  “You do the radio frequency changes and I’ll do the transmissions, okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “Takeoff checklist,” Jake said, and Flap began reading off the items. Jake checked each item and gave the appropriate response.

  And soon they were taxiing toward the cat. Automatically Jake leaned forward and tugged hard on the VDI, the televisionlike display in the center of the instrument panel that functioned as the primary attitude reference. It was tight, just as it should be.

  “Flashlight on the backup gyro, please,” Jake said to Flap, who already had it in his hand. If both generators dropped off the line, the little gyro would continue to provide good attitude information for about thirty seconds, long enough for Jake to deploy the ram-air turbine, called the RAT, an emergency wind-driven generator.

  Of course a double generator failure was rare, and if it happened on a launch with a discernible horizon there wouldn’t be a problem. Yet on a coal black night…and all nights at sea were coal black. Jake Grafton well knew that emergencies were quirky — they only happened at the worst possible time, the time when you least expected one and could least afford it. Then you would have to entertain two or three.

  The A-7 on the cat in front of Jake was having a problem with the nose-tow apparatus. A small conference was convening around the nose wheel, but nothing obvious seemed to be happening.

  Jake looked again at the sky. Darkening fast.

  Automatically he reviewed what he would do if he got a cold cat shot — if the catapult failed to give him sufficient end speed to fly. From there he moved into engine failure. He fingered the emergency jettison button, caressed the throttles and felt behind him for the RAT handle. Every motion would have to be quick and sure — no fumbling, no trying to remember exactly what he had to do — he must just do it instinctively and correctly.

  They were still screwing with the A-7. Come on, guys!

  He felt frustrated, entitled to a pinky. These guys had better get with the program or this shot will be like being blasted blindfolded into a coal bin at midnight.

  “Gettin’ pretty dark,” Flap commented, to Jake’s disgust. The pilot squirmed in his seat as he eyed the meeting of the board under the Corsair’s nose.

  “Why did you stay in the Navy anyway?”

  What a cracker this Le Beau is! “I eat this shit with a spoon,” Grafton replied testily.

  “Yeah, I can see you’re loving this. Me, I’m too stupid to make it on the outside. It’s the Marines or starve. But you seem smarter than me, so I wondered.”

  “Put a cork in it, will ya?”

  Jake smacked the instrument panel with his fist and addressed the dozen men milling around the Corsair: “For Christ’s sake, let’s shoot it or get it off the cat. We gonna dick around till the dawn’s early light?”

  And here came Bosun Muldowski, striding down the deck, gesturing angrily. “Off the cat. Get it off.”

  And it happened. The Corsair came off the cat and Jake eased the Intruder on. Into the hold-back, the thump as the shuttle was moved forward hydraulically, off the brakes and full power, cat grip up, cycle the controls, check the flaps and slats, now the engine gauges…

  Time to go.

  Jake flipped on the external lights, the nighttime equivalent of the salute to the cat officer. He placed his head back into the rest, just in time to catch Flap giving Muldowski the bird.

  Wham!

  As the G’s slammed them back into their seats Jake roared into the ICS: “Yeeeeoooow,” and then they were airborne. A pinky! All right! Not very pink, but pink enough.

  Engines pulling, all warning lights out, eight degrees nose up — his eyes took it all in automatically as he reached for the gear handle and slapped it up.

  With the gear coming, the bird accelerating nicely, the pilot keyed the radio transmitter: “War Ace Five One One airborne.”

  “Roger, Five One One,” the departure controller said from his seat in front of a large radar screen in Air Ops, deep in the bowels of the ship. “Climb straight ahead to six thousand, then hold on the One Three Five radial at sixteen miles. Your push at One Seven after the hour.”

  “Five Eleven, straight up to Six, then hold on the One Three Five at Sixteen.” Jake moved his left thumb from the radio transmit button to the ICS key and opened his mouth. He wanted to say something snotty to Flap about the gesture to the bosun, but the bombardier beat him to the switch.

  “Hey, I damn near ejected on the cat stroke. What in hell was that squall you gave back there?”

  “You damn fool! I came within a gnat’s eyelash of punching out. I coulda drowned! If I got run over by the boat you wouldn’t be so damn happy. Yelling on the ICS like a wildcat with a hot poker up your ass — that’s the stupidest thing I ever…”

  Jake Grafton waited until the flaps and slats were safely in, then he reached over and jerked the plug on Flap’s mask.

  Silence. Blessed silence.

  Damn you, Tiny Dick Donovan. Damn you all to hell.

  * * *

  The night quickly enveloped them. The world ended at the canopy glass. Oh, the wing-tip lights gave a faint illumination, but Jake would have had to turn his head to see them on the tips of the swept wings, and he wasn’t doing much head turning just now. Now he was flying instruments, making the TACAN needle go where it was supposed to, holding the rate-of-climb needle motionless, making the compass behave, keeping his wings level. All this required intense concentration. After five minutes of it he decided enough was enough and reached for the autopilot switch. It refused to engage.

  Maybe the circuit breaker’s popped. He felt the panel between him and the bombardier. Nope. All breakers in.

  He punched the altitude-hold button three more times and swore softly to himself.

  Okay, so I hand fly this monument to Marine maintenance, this miraculous Marine Corps flying pig.

  He hit the holding fix, sixteen miles on the One Three Five radial, and did a teardrop entry. Established inbound he pulled the throttles back until he was showing only two thousand pounds of fuel flow per hour on each engine. This fuel flow would soon give him 220 knots indicated, he knew from experience, the plane’s maximum conserve airspeed. Would as soon as the speed bled off.

  Hit the fix, start the clock, turn left. Go around and around with the tailhook up, because this first one is a touch-and-go, a practice bolter.

  The second time he approached the fix the symbology on the VDI came alive and gave him heading commands from the plane’s onboard computer. Flap. He glanced over. The BN had his head against the black hood that shielded the radar scope and was twiddling knobs. Sure enough, the mileage readout corresponded with the TACAN DME, or distance measuring equipment.

  “You plugged in?” Jake asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Thanks for the help.”

  “No sweat.”

  “Autopilot’s packed it in.”

  “I noticed.”

  Just like an old married couple, here in the intimacy of a night cockpit. Th
ere are worse places, Jake thought, than this world of dials and gauges and glowing little red lights. Worse places…

  At exactly seventeen minutes after the hour he hit the fix for the third time, popped the speed brakes and lowered the nose. This was the pushover. The A-7 that had been holding at five thousand feet was inbound in front of them a minute earlier.

  Jake keyed the mike: “Five One One is inbound at One Seven, state Seven Point Six.”

  “Roger, War Ace Five One One. Continue.”

  At five thousand feet Jake shallowed his descent as Flap called on the radio: “Five One One, Platform.”

  “Roger, Five One One. Switch button One Seven.”

  Flap changed the radio frequency. Jake watched the TACAN needle carefully and made heading corrections as necessary to stay on the final bearing inbound. Soon he was level at 1,200 feet, inbound. At ten miles he dropped the gear and flaps. This slowed the plane still more. He checked the gear and flap indications and soon was stabilized at 120 knots. Flap read the landing checklist and Jake rogered each item.

  Seventy-five hundred pounds of fuel. He toggled the main dump and let a thousand pounds bleed overboard into the atmosphere. If this worked out, he should cross the ramp with exactly six thousand pounds remaining, the maximum fuel load for an arrested landing.

  Jake adjusted the rheostat on the angle-of-attack indexer, a small arrangement of lights on the left canopy bow in front of him. These lights indicated his airspeed, now a smidgen fast. One hundred eighteen knots was the speed he wanted, so he eased off a touch of throttle, then eased it back on. The indexer came to an on-speed indication. He checked his airspeed indicator. Exactly 118. Okay.

  There — way out there — the ship! It appeared in the dark universe as a small collection of white and red lights, not yet distinguishable as to shape. Oh, now he could see the outline of the landing area, and the red drop lights down the stern that gave him his lineup cues. The ball on the left side of the landing area that would give him his glide slope was not yet visible.

  The final approach controller was talking: “Five One One, approaching the glide slope, call your needles.”

  The needles the controller was referring to were crosshairs in a cockpit instrument that was driven by a computer aboard the ship. The computer contrasted the radar-derived position of the aircraft with the known location of the glide slope and centerline. It then sent a radio signal to a box in the aircraft, which positioned the needles to depict the glideslope and centerline. The system was called ACLS, automatic carrier landing system, and someday it would indeed be automatic. Right now it was just the needles. Jake had to fly the plane.

  “Down and right.”

  “Disregard. You’re low and slightly left…Five One One, slightly below glide slope, lined up slightly left. Come a little right for lineup, on glide path…on glide path…”

  At the on-glide path call Jake squeezed out the speed brakes and concentrated intently on his instruments. He had to set and hold a six-hundred-foot rate of descent, hold heading, hold airspeed, keep the wings level and this plane coming down just so delicately so.

  “I’ve got a ball,” Flap told him at two miles.

  The controller: “Left of course. Come right.”

  The pilot made the correction, then glanced ahead. Yes, he could tell from the drop lights he was left. When he was properly lined up again he took out most of the correction. Still his nose was pointed slightly right of the landing area. This correction was necessary since the wind was not precisely down the angled deck, which was pointed ten degrees left of the ship’s keel. Except for an occasional glance ahead, he stayed on the gauges.

  “Five One One, three-quarter mile, call the ball.”

  Now Jake glanced out the windshield. There’s the meatball, centered between the green datum lights. Lineup looks good too. Jake keyed the mike and said, “Five One One, Intruder ball, Six Point Oh.”

  “Roger, ball. Looking good.” That was the LSO on the fan-tail, Skidmore.

  The ball moved in relation to the green reference or datum lights that were arranged in a horizontal line. When the yellow “meatball” in the center moved up, you were above glide path. When it appeared below the reference line, you were low. If you were too low, the ball turned red, blood red, a stark prophecy of your impending doom if you didn’t immediately climb higher on the glide slope. The back end of the ship, the ramp, lurked in red ball country, waiting to smash a plane to bits.

  Yet as critical as proper glide slope control was, lineup was even more so. The landing area was 115 feet wide, the wing span of the A-6, 52. The edges of the landing area were defined by foul lines, and aircraft were parked with their noses abutting the foul lines on both sides of the deck. Landing aircraft were literally sinking into a canyon between parked airplanes.

  And Jake had to monitor his airspeed carefully. The angle-of-attack indexer helped enormously here, arranged as it was where he could see it as he flew the lineup and glide slope cues. Any deviation from an on-speed indication required his immediate attention because it would quickly affect his descent rate, thereby screwing up his control of the ball. Running out of airspeed at the ramp was a sin that had killed many a naval aviator.

  Meatball, lineup, angle-of-attack — as he closed the ship Jake’s eyes were in constant motion checking these three items. Nearing the ship he dropped the angle-of-attack from his scan and concentrated on keeping properly lined up, with a centered ball. As he crossed the ramp he zeroed in on the meatball, flying it to touchdown.

  The wheels hit and the nose slammed down. Jake Grafton thumbed the speed brakes in as he smoothly and quickly shoved the throttles forward to the stops. The LSO was on the radio shouting “Bolter, bolter, bolter,” just in case he forgot to advance the throttles or to positively rotate to a flying attitude as he shot off the edge of the angled deck.

  Jake didn’t forget. The engines were at full song as the Intruder left the deck behind and leaped back into the blackness of the night. Jake eased the stick back until he had ten degrees nose up and checked for a positive rate of climb. Going up. Gear up. Accelerating through 185 knots, flaps and slats up.

  Now to get those six traps.

  The radar controller leveled him at 1,200 feet and turned him to the downwind heading, the reciprocal of the ship’s course. He was stable at 220 knots. Jake reached for the hook handle and pulled it. Hook down.

  The controller turned him so that he had an eight-mile groove, which was nice. As soon as the wings were level he dropped the gear and flaps. Once again he concentrated intently on airspeed and altitude control, nailing the final bearing on the TACAN, retrimming until the plane flew itself with only the tiniest of inputs to the stick to counter the natural swirls and currents of the air. This was precision flying, where any sloppiness could prove instantly fatal.

  “Five One One, approaching glide slope…Five One One, up and on glide slope…three-quarters of a mile, call the ball.”

  “Five One One, Intruder ball, Five Point Six.”

  * * *

  Deep in the heart of the ship in Air Ops, a sailor wearing headphones wrote “5.6” in yellow grease pencil on the Plexi-glas board in front of him and the time beside the notation that said “Grafton, 511.” He wrote backward, so the letters and numbers read properly to the air officer, the air wing commander, and the other observers who were sitting silently on the other side of the board watching the television monitors and occasionally glancing at the board.

  Just now the picture on the monitors was from a camera buried on the landing centerline of the flight deck, which pointed aft up the glide slope. As they watched the officers saw the lights of Jake’s A-6 appear on the center of the screen, in the center of the crosshairs that indicated the proper glide slope and lineup. As the plane closed the ship the lights assumed more definition.

  Up in the top of the carrier’s island superstructure was Pri-Fly, the domain of the air boss. His little empire was pretty quiet just now since all the
air traffic was being controlled via radar and radio from Air Ops, but two enlisted men behind the boss’s chair were busy. One held a pair of binoculars focused up the glide slope. He saw the approaching Intruder, identified it, and chanted, “Set Three Six Zero, A-6.” Regardless of a plane’s fuel state, the arresting gear was always set at the maximum trap weight, in the case of the A-6, 36,000 pounds.

  To his left, the other sailor made a note in his log and repeated into a sound-powered phone that hung from his chest, “Set Three Six Zero, A-6.”

  The air boss, a senior commander, sat in a raised easy chair surrounded by large bullet-proof glass windows. He could hear the radio transmissions and the litany of the sailors behind him, and noted subconsciously that they agreed with what his eyes, and the approach controller, were telling him, that there was an A-6 on the ball, an A-6 with a maximum trap weight of 36,000 pounds.

  Under the after end of the flight deck in the arresting gear engine rooms, all four of them, sat sailors on the Pri-Fly sound-powered circuit. Each individually spun a wheel to mechanically set the metering orifice of his arresting gear engine to 36,000 pounds, then they sang out in turn, “One set Three Six Zero A-6.” “Two set Three Six Zero A-6,” and so on.

  When the fourth and last engine operator had reported his engine set, the talker in Pri-Fly sang out, “All engines set, Three Six Zero A-6,” and the air boss rogered.

  On the fantail of the ship directly aft of the island, on the starboard side of the landing area in a catwalk on the edge of the deck, stood the sailor who retracted the arresting gear engines once they had been engaged. He too was on the Pri-Fly sound-powered circuit, and when the fourth engine reported set, he shouted to the arresting gear officer who stood above him on the deck, right on the starboard foul line, “All engines set, Three Six Zero A-6.”