Roman was furiously working the chaff button and the decoy flares as a shoulder-fired missilelvi sprang from the ground and gave chase. In one-and-a-half seconds the small missile homed in on one of the many flares falling like a waterfall from the Phantom and exploded. Shrapnel peppered the aircraft as the two aviators felt the shock of the four pounds of explosives going off less than one-hundred feet away.
The two radar missiles fired from the MiG’s giving chase now had their turn. It had been no easy task for the MiG pilot to keep the missiles on track with all the commotion the American was causing. At best the Wild Weasel was a fleeting target fading in and out of his older spin cast radar. The look-down shoot-down capabilities were none too good in the MiG-21. That was especially true when traveling at nearly the same speed as its target. The MiG really had to push it to stay with the Phantom. When the SA-6 missile exploded in the trail of the Phantom the electromagnetic radiation given off by the blast temporarily blinded the missile’s signal to the pilot. It was a wonder why they hadn’t plowed into the ground. When the uplink was re-established a whole second later, the pilot was astonished that both missiles survived. The MiG pilot was impatient to close the distance and finish off the aging Phantom with heat seeking missiles. He was closing the distance nicely while the American was busy evading, dodging and attacking. The Phantom was a formidable enemy when dealing with radar guided missiles. The playing field would be level when it came to heat seeking missiles and the Communist knew it. On his heads up display the MiG pilot then saw the Shilka gun open up and his two missiles fly bravely through anti-aircraft fire to close on the American. True, the target was rather nebulous viewed through the enormous chaff clouds it had dispensed but he was confident the Phantom was somewhere in that cloud. Then it happened. Some army dim-wit had fired a grouse (SA-18 shoulder fired missile) that exploded as his missiles neared the Phantom. For an instant he had hoped that his missiles hit their target or maybe the grouse had brought down the American. His hope sank when he again picked up the Phantom still streaking close to the ground apparently unharmed. It was time to lock up the American with his heat-seeking missile.
Pepe could feel a vibration in his control stick and rudder pedals. The engine instruments looked OK. Then he noticed the right wing fuel gauge was falling fast. He immediately started transferring fuel from the right wing to the fuselage and left-wing tanks. He was going to lose most of it before the recoverylvii.
Roman could not believe they had survived.
“What’s the vector to the last target, Roman, talk to me,” Pepe demanded.
“Head 262. Target is at 37 kilometers. We’re in range now. Get me enough altitude, I’ll get off the shot.”
Their last target was a large, fixed air defense complex. The thirty-year-old anti-aircraft missile regiment was well known and mapped from satellite intelligence. The GPS coordinates to its headquarters and nerve center were already safely held in the Phantom’s computer. With a push of a button Roman downloaded the targeting information to the HARM missile.
Pepe toggled on the VOX broadcast switch so everyone, friend and foe alike could hear their last moments. “We’ll pop up in a few seconds. You shoot the HARM. We don’t have enough fuel to make it home. We’ll go Fox three (gun attacks) and mix it up with the MiGs above us, try to get those SAMs to take out a few of their own planes. Then we bail, but I don’t think we’re gonna make it, Roman. I love ya man.”
Roman knew they weren’t going to survive as soon as Pepe started talking about love.
“Copy…ditto,” came Roman’s reply laced with despair. The visual image of his three-year-old son holding his finger, looking up at him, made him exhale in pain. He had an urgent desire to see his wife and three kids just one more time.
The two MiGs stayed in full afterburner, burning huge amounts of fuel. The lead MiG dropped his external fuel tanklviii and both gained altitude. Two SA-2 missiles streaked across the sky well above and in front of the MiGs and self-destructed. As the two MiGs once again climbed above the horizon another pair of SA-3 missiles following the first two missiles that had just self-destructed turned on the MiGs. The MiG pilot dove for the ground and sent out an urgent message that was picked up by the American RC-135 RIVET JOINTlix electronic reconnaissance plane. “One-twenty-six to Santa Clara, I’ve got two SA-3’s tracking me,” the MiG pilot screamed. “Tell them to hold their fire.”
The MiG was furiously punching out chaff clouds and decoy flares. His wingman was a little slow to pick up on what was happening. He too headed for the ground, punching his decoys but was met by two SA-3 missiles each carrying a 60 kilogram warhead. Two hundred and sixty-four pounds of explosives disintegrated the indolent MiG.
As the lead MiG was recovering from the buffeting his aircraft received from the explosion he flew over the burning wreckage of the two unfortunate SA-6 Gainful anti-aircraft missile launchers.
The Communist troops on the ground must have taken the exploding aircraft and the flares dropping from this plane as an admission of the MiG’s guilt. They had no hesitation this time as six shoulder fired missiles reached up from the ground to bat the MiG from the sky.
“Panhandle to Freedom Two, those two bogies on your tail were downed by friendly fire.”
“That’s it,” said Pepe as he pointed the Weasel’s nose to the stars and blasted skyward on a pillar of fire. The Phantom’s radar illuminated the sky around them. Multiple bandit icons filled the screen all pointing at the wounded Phantom. Pepe chose one for a head-on gun attack and rocketed toward him. Roman was busy acquiring the final target. He recognized it easily as the huge complex covered many acres and the access roads to the numerous missile launchers made it look like a giant flower carved onto the face of the earth. The location of the anti-aircraft regimental headquarters had long been known to the Americans who were eager to pass that information on to people who would use it. Those few digital coordinates were now locked into the HARM missile’s brain. The missile fell away from the Phantom and blasted off into the night.
Roman quickly switched his focus back to the threats that surrounded them. “We have multiple missile launches. Four SA-3’s (large ground based missiles) in the air, seven o’clock. Two PL-7’s (air-to-air radar guided missiles) two o’clock. What’s your plan Pepe?”
“We are terminal, Roman, ergo invincible.” There was a small pause. “I have rounds in my gun. If I get a chance to slow down you can punch out.”
“Don’t even think about it. When you go, I go,” Roman responded with real anger in his voice.
Pepe throttled down and came out of afterburner to eliminate the huge fiery jets behind the plane. He lined up the gun sights on his HUD (heads up display) as his airspeed bled off rapidly. It was a very disorienting sensation to be thrown against your harnesses decelerating more rapidly than car with locked up brakes, closing with the target at over one-third of a mile per second then seeing the enemy’s gun blinking faintly. It was surreal. Pepe sent a long stream of bullets that arced like water from a fire hose. The stream flew high and right. He sent a second stream of bullets which tagged the enemy’s left wing. Then he sent a long burst high and to the left. Pepe was good with statistical probability. He knew with over a fifty percent probability what reaction the MiG fighter pilot would have. Going head to head and being hit in his starboard wing the natural response of his enemy would be to break off, bank to port, trade his speed for altitude and climb. When the MiG did just that, it ran directly into the deadly stream of bullets. In Pepe’s display the MiG-23 shuddered as it seemed to shed a dusty cloud of debris. It instantly trailed smoke, which turned into flame. In the blink of an eye the Phantom whizzed past the stricken foe. Pepe dove for the protection of the ground, bucking and jinking all the way.
“More launches, look at your screen, looks like heat seekers,” Roman said as he busied himself with countermeasures.
The screen had been flooded with the icons of hostile aircraft and menacing missiles. All informati
on the Phantom had was now being transmitted in lightning fast bursts to U.S. intelligence aircraft. They weren’t going to make it. Four missiles would overtake the Phantom in the next moment as more missiles lofted skyward.
“Watch it, BREAK RIGHT!” yelled Roman.
Two radar missiles were again completely countered. The heat seeking missiles were not so easily fooled. One went after a flare decoy but was close enough to damage the tail and hydraulics when it exploded. One overshot the Phantom and exploded over the starboard wing next to the cockpit. Pepe’s world exploded. When he regained consciousness just a moment later he found himself in the middle of a tornado fighting to control the aircraft. The flight stick was mushy and not responding well.
“Roman, Roman,” groaned Pepe through spasms of pain.
Roman did not respond.
The canopy behind him had been blown apart. He looked at his rearview mirror to check on Roman. He reached up to wipe off the mirror now splattered with human debris. He gasped in pain as he smeared the mirror and only made the image worse.
He could barely see Roman, his helmet lolling about with the movement of the plane. Blood covered Roman’s facemask and neck. Pepe knew he was dead.
Pepe touched his abdomen to realize the flight suit was the only thing keeping his guts from falling into his lap. It felt like he had been cut in two. A piece of shrapnel must have pierced the side of the cockpit. In a panic he felt for his liver. The large organ held a third of the body’s blood. If it were destroyed he was a goner. Only a mass of blood and broken ribs were there. He could feel life slipping away. The thought of an ejection was out of the question. It felt like it would rip him in half. ‘What was the use anyway? I am a dead man,’ he thought.
He fumbled to take his flight gloves out of his pocket. With a screaming cry of pain he stuffed the gloves in the gaping wound and maintained firm pressure on his bleeding liver. ‘I just need a few seconds more,’ he thought. Pepe banked the Phantom and headed toward the Communist runways of Santa Clara now just over the horizon.
He did not have a free hand to throttle up to increase his speed. In any event, he was not so sure how the plane would respond to hypersonic speed.
“Freedom Two to Panhandle, we are out of weapons, plane is damaged, crew is dead and dying. Were going down. I’m going to crash the plane into Santa Clara. There will be no survivors, repeat, no survivors. Over.”
“Copy that, Freedom Two,” came the solemn response.
As Pepe approached the air base the tracers from the anti-aircraft batteries created serpentine figures in the sky. He knew missiles were after him, MiG’s were closing in on him and people were shooting at him from the ground but the loss of blood made him beyond caring.
“I am terminal, ergo invincible,” he repeated.
The runways and taxiways of the airbase came into view.
“Oh (expletive)” he breathed. Too weak now for his voice to be anything but a whisper, he said “I count eight plus MiG-29’s on the ground.., now twelve plus… Most in two hangars, end of eastern runway, three lined up on taxiway, I will try to crash into some.”
Thee beautiful new MiG-29’s, still in their Venezuelan color scheme, were now lined up on the taxiway ready to take off. Pepe counted five more in a hangar nearby. Yet another hangar was in the process of closing its armored doors where he saw at least four more. He tried to line up on the three waiting MiG’s but the controls were progressively getting worse. It took a stronger arm to control the stick now but his strength was ebbing away quickly. As the Phantom sluggishly turned he exhausted his ammunition by sending a short stream of bullets into the hangar and the sparkling new MiG’s, instantly causing a fire. A stream of tracers shot over his cockpit and ripped a line along the ground to the front of his plane. The MiG that fired the heat seeking missiles was on his tail trying to finish him off. He was too weak to counter or even look for him.
“I gunned some in hangar, now lining up on MiG’s on taxiway, MiG on tail,” he said in shallow breaths. He was still on VOX and was transmitting every word. “Five hundred meters.” Darkness seemed to envelope Pepe, a black tunnel with nothing but the enemy’s aircraft at the end of it.
The three MiG-29’s seemed frozen in place like bowling pins waiting to be knocked down and he was the bowling ball. A bowling ball that was traveling six hundred miles per hour and twenty feet off the ground. At one hundred meters he started to nose the plane down when a burst of bullets lashed at his wing and fuselage.
“Father, Father, into thine hands…”
The Phantom slammed into the ground and slid along the taxiway smearing a large fiery fuel slick and a shower of sparks in its wake. The thirty-one-thousand pound F-4 rear-ended the three beautiful MiG’s now heavily laden with fuel and rockets at five hundred miles per hour. The bright and beautiful crews, both the innocent martyrs and agents of evil, were consumed together in the fiery aftermath.
140km West of Santa Clara Air Base,
A Communist Cuban Air Base
September 30, 2018 “L” Day minus One 9:22 PM
F-15 Fighter Aircraft, Freedom One
Ten minutes before Phantom Two’s crash
“Panhandle (AWACS radar aircraft) to Freedom One, head one-one-seven, sending IP (initial point) now.”
The download popped up on their screen neatly mapped with their planned route and with Freedom Two’s route highlighted in blue.
“Ok, we follow the weasel in. We’re gonna get a hot reception,” said Cuco.
“Not as hot as those guys are going to get,” muttered Izzy.
Izzy’s implication was clear. They had left Freedom Two without fighter cover so they could bring down a MiG-29 piloted by a retard. The trade was not worth it. Then it occurred to Izzy why it was such a bad trade. The communists must have plenty of the advanced fighters. That’s why the pilot was so inexperienced. The Fulcrums are not in the air. So where are they?
They flew the imaginary road in the sky projected on their computer screen until they heard Pepe’s report, “Freedom Two has six missiles chasing us.”
Izzy and Cuco listened in horrified fascination to the Phantom’s last desperate moments.
“Panhandle to Freedom One, twelve plus missiles in the air. They’re shootin at their own guys. The Commie pilots are screamin’ for them to hold their fire but they’re still shooting.”
“Kook, they got a hangar full of Fulcrums. You want to hit it instead of the taxiway?”
“Sure, if you can. It will take some fancy footwork. You make the call.”
Izzy visualized the air base. There were at least eight large hangars. Trying to decide which one to hit during a pop up would be tough, plus they had only three bombs left. Santa Clara had two runways.
“He said the hangars were at the end of the eastern runway.” Izzy brought up the latest image from the E-8 Joint STARSlx (surveillance and Targeting Radar System) ground-reconnaissance aircraft. The image showed smoke pouring out of one of the hangars. The hangars on either side of it were closed up. It was a fifty-fifty chance which one held the MiG-29’s. Maybe they both did. Izzy highlighted the GPS coordinates of one of the hangars from the image then copied and pasted them onto his targeting screen.
Cuco lit up the LADAR. It showed that most or all bandits were heading away from the target. They probably had enough of their own friendly fire and were steering clear of the base. It was unbelievably good luck. They could have ended up swarmed and overwhelmed like the Phantom was if the Communists could have coordinated their air defenses better.
“You better be ready with those new coordinates Izzy, here we go. Three, two, one, go.” The F-15 shot into the sky and gained one thousand feet in four seconds. To their surprise no missile launches or anti aircraft fire greeted them. They could see the burning wreckage that was now the funeral pyre of their dear friends. One of the hangars had fire pouring out of the top of its open doors. Cuco was careful to maintain the correct altitude and speed for the drop. The margin of
error was plus or minus fifty feet in altitude and plus or minus ten miles per hour in speed. Cuco had always been one of the best at being right on the money in practice and in combat he was proving to be even better. The bombs dropped away from the aircraft and again the F-15 headed for the safety of the ground, punching out chaff clouds and dropping white hot flares in the process.
Behind them anti-aircraft fire once again resumed and two shoulder fired missiles targeted the decoys burning brilliantly in the night. But far too late. They were long gone.
Free Cuban Armed Forces -
North invasion force, Guantanamo City, Cuba October 1, 2018.
“L” Day or Liberation Day. 11:35 PM
“Medic,” yelled Boitel again. Impatient with the Navy puke’s response, he grabbed the end of the large wooden sliver from a shattered two-by-four that had pierced his side and pulled on it.
“Ahh, ahh,” Boitel groaned in pain as he unsuccessfully tried to pull it out. He laid down on the broken debris that now covered the floor to await the medic.
The artillery stopped raining down followed by a momentary silence.
“Here they come again,” someone called as rifle bullets began whacking the side of the building. Another surge of enemy tried to swarm their position. The team let loose a fusillade that brought the charging enemy down. Within seven seconds the situation was back in control.
“Let’s get out of this building,” Ozzy said. “Scottie, Phillips, take Gordo and Havee, flank them (sneak around to the side of the enemy) to the right. The rest of you spread out to the other buildings on this block. Don’t bunch up. One mortar could get us all.”
Boitel started to get up. He was not going to let this war pass him by. Not while he had this much fight left in him.
The Cuban Liberation Handbook Page 12