End of Chapter One
Cuba Chapter 2
F-15E aircraft, Freedom One
157km West of Santa Clara Military Base,
A Communist Cuban Air Base
September 30, 2018 9:21 PM
Just as Izzy had feared, shooting down the advanced Fulcrum fighter was the easy part. It was as though they had kicked a hornet’s nest. The doomed Fulcrum pilot had enough presence of mind to relate that the missile came from the east, from behind him. The line of searching MiG’s broke up and each raced to the area they thought the unseen enemy might be. The MiG’s patrolling in and around Santa Clara came charging out of their patrol areas like bulls into a bullring eager for a fight.
“Panhandle to Freedom one, head three-twenty degrees,” said the AWACS plane, trying to steer them away from the MiGs and the powerful ground based radar installations. The searching MiG’s were like security guards in a huge dark warehouse using their flashlights (radars) to look for a hidden burglar. The burglar can plainly see the guards and quietly evade their search. All that could change quickly however if the burglar gives himself away by making a sound or exposes himself to a flood light (ground based radar installation). The F-15 had such sophisticated radar detection equipment that the AWACS told them very few things that they did not figure out themselves. The aging Phantom F-4 now going by the call sign of Freedom Two was a different story. They were grateful to have all the help they could get to keep that bird alive tonight.
73 kilometers west of Communist Cuban Air Base-Santa Clara
September 30, 2018 9:21 PM
Freedom Two- Phantom-4, F-4 or Wild Weasel
The area around Santa Clara was defended by radar installations, numerous antiaircraft batteries and a few low-and-medium-altitude-capable mobile surface-to-air missile systems. By now there would be roving patrols of man-portable antiaircraft missiles ready and in place.
“Alright Pepe, time for plan B. We’re gonna try to hit one site going in to the IPli (initial point) then one more site on the egress.”
The AWACS operator saw Freedom One and Two split up and was careful to track the corridor that Pepe and Roman were obviously clearing for Cuco’s bombing run. The Wild Weasel would go around some SAM sites and hit others to create a path that would at least be free of the radar guided missile threat.
In the WSO seat (back seat) of the F-4 Phantom, Roman Aceituno was busily punching the cockpit display’s buttons and speaking computer commands. Both his screen and the pilot’s screen had large inverted cones showing the areas covered by enemy radar. If they kept out of those cones they should go undetected.
Roman started barking orders at his boss in the driver’s seat. “Pepe, Go COLA (low) between these two SA-2 sites. We’ve got a SA-6 lii search radar just six kilometers west of the IP. That is a must hit. Freedom One’s egress point is going to be to the northeast. We will hit an SA-3 site located there with our last missile. That’s about all we can do.”
“Yeah, and the last thing we do,” mumbled Pepe.
Both aviators knew the unspoken facts that would probably kill them in the next few minutes. They felt confident that they could survive the radar guided missiles. That is what the Wild Weasel was designed to do. The shoulder fired heat seeking missiles were a threat a gambling man could take even money on. But once they popped up to fire their HARM missile at the first SAM site, they would be acquired by at least three radar installations. Every fighter in the area would be vectored in to kill the aging Phantom.
Pepe’s mind now put many other alternatives in front of him in the place of him dying this night. ‘We could skirt Santa Clara all together and just go home. Its not like they will fire me, or even dock my pay,’ he thought. ‘I’d say that we just couldn’t make it, our wing man was gone, there are twenty plus planes and…Expletive.’ His hopeful thoughts were interrupted by the brick wall called duty. He knew there was no way around the fact that he was here and was going to do his duty no matter what impulses the reptilian survivalist part of his brain came up with. No small task that. For over three and a half billion years that instinct to survive had kept Pepe’s ancestors alive long enough to at least reproduce and pass on their genes. Those predecessors survived countless generations of desperate wars and inter clan intrigues. They survived a billion dark and fearful nights as hunted human creatures.
Millions of years before that, those very same antecedents were smaller than a mouse and larger than a horse. They swung in the trees and lived below ground and everywhere in between. They survived the dominating dinosaurs and the amphibious monsters before them. They survived the Silurian seas and billions of years as life forms too small to see with your naked eye. Pepe’s illustrious line of life would end tonight. It would end because the Spirit that inhabited that body, so carefully crafted over billions of years, willed it to be so. Because the Father of that Spirit willed it to be so.
The Phantom carefully slid beneath and between the first two interlocking radar cones fighting hard not to pop up too high to get additional clearance over the odd power line and small rolling hill crests on the relatively flat landscape.
“Center up the bug to our new IP, you’re in COLA mode now, minimum safe altitude is on the barber pole,” the information continued uninterrupted from Roman.
He continued “We’ll do a twenty second pop up (target acquisition maneuver) … alright …we’re forty seconds to pop up. It will take the first two bypassed SAM sites at least thirty seconds to acquire us, and by that time we’ll be a few seconds out of their detection range and within a minute of flying out of lethal range.”
‘A few seconds’ sounded like wishful thinking to Pepe.
Pepe interjected, “It’s the one we’re attacking that worries me. Just make sure it’s a clean shot.”
“I’ll make the shot, you just stay in the (Doppler) notch,liii” Roman said defensively.
Pepe knew he was going fast by the way the cattle were peacefully standing around, not even looking up as the plane approached them. It was going to have to be an awfully fast HARM shot at this SAM site if they were going to make it to their second and last target.
“That signal is pretty strong now,” claimed Pepe.
Roman responded “Relax, the inversion layer is channeling the signal over the horizon. Just a few more seconds.”
“Here we go, on my count, three, two, one, go,” Roman counted.
The Phantom-4 Wild Weasel shot into the sky. Almost immediately the threat indicator burned red accompanied by a piercing deedle-deedle-deedle sound.
“Warning, SA-6 tracking…,” chimed in the female computer voice.
Roman’s jaw tightened as he knew what Pepe was thinking. He had forgotten to shut off what they affectionately referred to as the ‘Bitching Betty.’ With a quick punch of a button adjacent to one of his display screens she was silenced.
Roman knew where the emitting radar was within a two-thousand foot radius. Now the F-4G’s high resolution synthetic Aperture radar (SAR) went fully active to precisely locate the target with Global Positioning System (GPS) quality coordinates.
With another punch of the display button the target parameters were downloaded to the missile’s brain.
He launched the missile.
The eight-hundred pound HARM missile dropped from the plane into the dark night as inert as a dumb bomb but came to life as its rocket booster fired up and pushed the missile to over fourteen hundred miles per hour.
The Free Cubans had paid the U.S. the full list price of $283,985 for each one of these older AGM 88A missiles. If they were paying the full price of a new improved C model, contended the head procurer for the Free Cubans, that’s what they should get. Joshua Marti was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth and took the missiles with unabashed celebration. The two aging F-4G Wild Weasels were a bonus that he had hoped for but never thought they would get. They got them at bargain price of $107,000 per month till paid off in two years.
The United
States were replacing the Vietnam era aircraft with the newer F-16C’s and the time was perfect to put the aging Phantoms to the use they were meant for. Fighting Vietnam era enemies.
The F-15’s were a different matter altogether. Each one cost the Free Cubans $1,308,000 per month for three years. This too was a bargain but the bargain was not in the price but the terms. The Free Cubans had trained non-stop for the preceding twelve months in U.S. aircraft on U.S. bases. The aircraft were to be delivered to the Free Cubans just before hostilities became evident. The month before the official delivery the Free Cubans had to scramble to sell enough stock in the Free Cuban enterprise to meet these obligations. One month later war was now upon them. With that war, the stock prices, freely traded on the internet, would soar to nearly untouchable prices.
Freedom Two dropped back down to treetop level as the missile streaked toward the Sam site. The Communist SA-6 Gainful was obviously as prepared as it could be. Before the F-4G dropped below the horizon, one of the Gainful’s three missiles launched a snap shot. The deck was hopelessly stacked against the Communist SAM operator. He knew he had a missile streaking toward him, probably a deadly HARM missile carrying twenty-five-thousand hardened steel fragments with his name on them. In ten seconds they would cut through his tank-like vehicle and put a thousand holes in him and his men. His target was now totally lost in the ground clutter and his missile had no hope of acquiring the enemy aircraft on its own at this range. The Communist Gainful lurched forward tearing away from the power cords that tethered it to its radar and raced forward down a dusty road in a desperate attempt to survive. The missile monitored the movement of its target and kept its menacing nose on the traveling missile carrier. Now eighty meters from its original location the Gainful sped away at forty kilometers per hour. The SA-6 exploded in a shocking blast that flattened the vehicle and blew it apart. The HARM missile disbursed its twenty-five-thousand tungsten cubed fragments in all directions each one traveling in excess of fifteen-thousand feet per second. In comparison, the fastest bullet used on the battlefield travels at three-thousand feet per second. The radar array, now one-hundred and fifty meters distant from the explosion, was damaged by them. Replacement missiles on their transport truck that seemed a safe distance of two-hundred and fifty meters were holed by the shrapnel and set afire.
Freedom Two turned hard to starboard (right) away from the Communist missile as Roman punched the chaff button. It was clear that the missile was a wild shot as it did not turn or maneuver with them.
“I thought I saw another unit near that SAM during the pop up,” declared Roman. “There it goes, what I tell ya, its transmitting now. Another SA-6.”
“Freedom Two, Freedom Two, Freedom Two,” yelled the AWACS officer from two hundred miles away “One MiG-21, on your six, five miles and closing. Two other MiG’s close behind him. Eight bogies in vicinity and twenty-plus others being vectored in on you.”
The two airmen were too busy to feel despair.
“Light him up and take him out,” growled Roman.
Pepe brought the radar online and his screen came alive with numerous threats flying toward them like arrows from all directions. He punched the missile off and it arced high into the sky turning one-hundred-and-sixty degrees toward the trailing MiG.
The Phantom’s radar, a full generation older than the F-15’s LADAR, had to continuously paint the MiG with radar beams so the missile could ride the reflected beams all the way to its target. That radar also gave them away to every enemy in the area. Roman could feel every malevolent communist eye turn toward them.
The targeted MiG dove for the ground in an attempt to evade the missile the moment after it responded in kind with its own radar guided missile. The MiG also had to fly relatively straight and level to guide its missile to the Phantom but there were two big problems with doing that. First, the Phantom surprised him and fired well before he did. The MiG pilot’s missile was following a target racing away from it. The American missile was closing in on him head-on. He would die first if he bravely, but stupidly, maintained his position and his missile would go unguided and useless. Secondly, his radar lock on the ground-hugging Phantom was intermittent at best. If his missile did come close to the American lackey all he had to do was shut down his radar, jam his weak signal and evade. So down the MiG dove.
“Give me a vector to the new SAM,” yelled Pepe.
“Its still there at our nine (o’clock), we’ve got two MiG’s right behind the first. They’ve got us locked up (targeted by their radar), do you see them?” responded Roman. He couldn’t believe Pepe was thinking about a new target. They could think about that in ten or twenty seconds from now, an eternity.
For seven long seconds the Phantom-4 followed a straight flight gaining altitude to keep in line of sight of the diving MiG. The Phantom was a perfect sitting duck.
“An SA-3 is in the air, range thirty kilometers…now there’s two,” Roman reported the Communist missiles now coming at them.
“Hold it, just a few seconds…” said Pepe. The radar image of the MiG blossomed green white then tracked multiple pieces of the broken enemy plane.
“It’s a hit, splash that bogey,” came the excited AWACS voice.
The Phantom banked sharply ninety degrees to line up on the newly transmitting SA-6 Gainfulliv missile launcher. The Wild Weasel was living up to its name tonight as it slid back down toward the ground, hugging it closer than it had ever done during a night flight. As it did so the powerful radars of the SA-3 air defense site, now thirty kilometers away, sunk below the horizon.
Pepe was in full afterburner now pushing past fourteen-hundred miles per hour lining up his gun run while two missiles were still heading in his direction.
“The SA-6 just launched on us,” yelled Roman. “Got a MiG-21 launching on us now, two missiles.”
The thought ‘five missiles from three platforms chasing us at the same time…that must be some kind of record,’ morbidly flashed across Pepe’s mind.
The SA-6 missile site was now a little more than eight kilometers away. Pepe’s mind visualized the mathematical problem in front of him. ‘SA-6 missile traveling at nearly one kilometer per second toward me, I’m traveling 0.63 kilometers per second toward it. Got to get within five km of the launcher before the missile arms itself and can detonate.’ This engagement would be determined by a few tenths or hundredths of a second. Whether in his favor or the Communists’, he just couldn’t calculate it in his brain. Pepe’s eyes narrowed and eyebrows scrunched and scowled as though he were about to crash his head through a brick wall. It was their only option, whether it worked or not. The other missiles in the air were at least eight seconds away. An eternity.
“Those two MiG’s are settin’ up for a fox two shot (heat seeking missile).”
Roman had been furiously working the chaff dispenser, creating the radar decoy clouds mostly for the benefit for the two radar missiles from the MiGs now following them.
The Communist ground based radar installation directing the two SA-3 missiles flying at them were now over the horizon and were less of a threat.
The SA-6 missile and Freedom Two went head to head with a closing speed of nearly one mile per second as Pepe started to gently undulate his aircraft up and down causing the missile to respond in kind. If the old Phantom fighter was within the missile’s minimum range of five kilometers the missile would, in all probability, not detonate but that does not mean that they couldn’t have a nasty head on crash with a thirteen-hundred pound missile. The instant Pepe spotted the missile visually it covered one thousand meters in less than a heartbeat and shot past the Phantom just under his port (left) wing. The missile corrected itself a little too late and drove its nose through the jets exhaust trail. Five hundred meters behind the Phantom the missile exploded.
“That SA-6 fired again,” Roman reported urgently.
Pepe backed the throttle down and pointed the nose up. The aircraft gained altitude and slowed so fast it threw both men
out of their seats and into their harnesses.
“Freedom Two has six missiles chasing us,” Pepe broadcasted. He didn’t want to die fading silently into the night. Yes, it took time to say it, two precious seconds, but that was for him. He wanted to die with friends and family at his side and now with a simple sentence they were there with him.
During that two second sentence Pepe acquired the Gainful launcher by following the newly launched missile trail pointing back to its source. The point-blank launch was desperate act on the part of the Gainful missile launcher and no big threat to them. Now at an altitude of seven hundred feet he pointed the nose at his target.
From thirty kilometers away the powerful SA-3 GOA radar reacquired Freedom Two, illuminated them and redirected the two missiles now closing the distance to the Phantom. Freedom Two automatically answered the radar with a friendly IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) transmission, mimicking the MiG fighters IFF transmissions. The spoof wasn’t working. The SA-3 operator was having none of it and the installation fired two more missiles.
“The SA-3’s have reacquired (us), nine o’clock,” Roman said with a touch of bitter fatalism.
Pepe trained his gun on the menacing Gainful missile launcher. His night vision projected directly on his heads up display. The first burst thrashed the vehicle and exploded the remaining missile on its launch rail.
As Pepe’s bullets rained down upon the dying missile launcher Communist bullets from the ground responded in kind. A ZSU-23lv “Shilka” four barreled anti-aircraft gun, the very same model Freedom Two had dispatched earlier in the evening opened up on them. The rounds streaked though the night vision screen like tracers. The gun was almost as lucky as the Phantom had been with its first burst, blowing two holes as big as a fist through the starboard (right) wing. For whatever reasons the Shilka rounds did not explode upon contact. Maybe they were old and defective. Maybe they were just cheaper solid bullets. Pepe started to bank hard in an attempt to turn on the gun but he was traveling too fast and the angle was too sharp. He streaked past the mobile gun that was still blazing away at them.
The Cuban Liberation Handbook Page 11