Final Storm

by Maloney, Mack;

  Recovering his composure, he slammed down the red alarm button on his console, shouting hoarsely into the intercom:

  “Multiple radar contacts! Distance forty miles! Bearing north-northeast, altitude one-hundred meters!”

  The warning blared through the cracked speaker in the missile fire control compartment, rousing an enlisted technician from his own half-sleep. Cursing loudly, he flipped on the missile arming switches and opened the covers of the long tubes that extended up from the truck’s flatbed at a forty-five degree angle.

  Scrambling across the compartment to where the fire control officer should have been, the Soviet soldier was desperately trying to engage the SAM’s targeting radar to lock the missile onto the speeding intruders.

  Frustrated, he hollered back into his own intercom at the radar operator. “More power … Fire control will not lock target … Repeat, more power …”

  The young lieutenant responded to the request immediately, cranking the output of the spinning radar dish up to the maximum as he scanned the screen again. Just at that moment, his captain burst through the door, holding his boots and clutching his pants to keep them from falling around his bare feet.

  With a panicked look, he screamed for the position and range of the radar contacts, berating the hapless junior officer at the same time.

  “Fool! How did they get so close? Give me range and speed of approaching targets now!”

  The lieutenant sputtered out the information, nearly babbling. He was certain the captain would begin pummeling him in a rage. But instead, the senior man froze in his tracks, his eyes narrowing into slits when he heard the new position and altitude of the incoming contacts.

  He started to reach across the radar console in front of the cowering junior officer, his hand traveling toward the intensity control knob. Contacts at that speed and altitude could only mean one thing—SAM killers. But the NATO anti-aircraft suppression flights were usually only four or six planes—here there were two dozen or more.

  The captain had lived through three similar attacks by the lethal American “Weasels,” surviving by turning off his active search radar quickly enough to avoid the deadly grip of the Yankee anti-radar missile’s probing guidance mechanism.

  This time he was too late.

  No sooner had his hand touched the knob when his eyes widened in horror, watching each of the speeding blips give birth to four more faster blips. The tiny dots of light rapidly increased their distance away from their host blips, streaking down toward the center of the radar screen where the hub of the sweep arc was anchored in its. constant rotation.

  In his last few seconds of life, the Soviet captain realized exactly what was on the screen before him. The large blips were NATO attack planes, probably American F-4 Phantoms. The small blips were high-speed anti-radar missiles. The center of the screen was their SAM battery’s position.

  A silent scream rose in his throat as he futilely snapped off the power to the rotating radar dish. The incoming missiles’ complex electronics had already locked on to the strongest radar signal available, supplied by the eager young lieutenant’s boost to full intensity. Now two of the racing HARMs had homed in on the launch vehicle.

  The Soviet captain knew there was no time to abandon the steel box that would become their tomb.

  The two missiles struck the SAM launcher a split second apart, lifting the heavy truck completely off the ground in a thundering explosion. The high-explosive warheads detonated in the guts of the SAM vehicle, ripping it in two with powerful blasts that in turn set off the volatile anti-aircraft missiles stored within.

  The two Soviet officers, their crew, and the entire vehicle were consumed in the yellow-white eruption that burst from the secondary explosions. Chucks of debris from the wrecked SAM site were flung in all directions, some more than a hundred yards.

  When the smoke and flames cleared, all that was left was a burning mass of twisted metal, and the Soviet captain’s boots, both of which had somehow survived the holocaust.

  Less than a minute later, a wave of thirty F-4 Phantoms flashed over the smoking hulk, flying at a mere two hundred feet.

  Captain “Crunch” O’Malley didn’t even take a fleeting glance at his handiwork, needing to keep full concentration on the chore of flying nearly twice the speed of sound over the frozen French countryside.

  But his weapons officer, Elvis, confirmed the kill from his rear-seat vantage point.

  “Looks like we got ’em, Captain …” the young man drawled with characteristic understatement.

  Crunch was too busy to celebrate; he knew there were more dangers in the sky.

  As if on cue, the shrill wail of the F-4’s airborne threat warning sounded, filling the small cockpit with its urgency.

  “We’ve got company!” Elvis was instantly riveted to the tiny screen, calling out over the intercom as he identified the source of the radar’s warning. “I’ve got multiple bogies at twelve o’clock, moving fast. Could be Foxhounds.”

  A sharp chill ran up Crunch’s spine. The MiG-31 Foxhounds were big, two-seat interceptors with lots of speed and plenty of air-to-air missiles on board. All the Phantom had left after shooting the HARMs were a couple of decoy flares and several chaff cannisters to ward off the Soviet missiles.

  But Crunch knew what he had to do.

  “Steady, boys,” he said tightly into his radio to the speeding Phantom flight stretched out on either side of his aircraft. “You know the drill—let ’em see us and then we pull a fast U-turn and make tracks … On my order …”

  His voice trailed off in anticipation of the next bit of data he would receive from his back-seater.

  “Not yet, Cap’n,” Elvis near-whispered into his intercom, “A little closer … no movement yet … OK … now! They’re breaking!”

  Crunch savagely yanked the stick over to pull the shrieking Phantom in a gut-twisting high-g turn. The sturdy fighter shuddered at the strain, then bolted for the horizon with the MiGs in hot pursuit.

  “Send the message, Lieutenant,” Crunch shouted to Elvis over the roar of the Phantom’s afterburner-boosted engine. “And let’s hope those bastards don’t catch us.”

  Hunter felt the presence of the Soviet planes several moments before they were acquired on his F-16’s radar.

  The larger F-15s ahead of him already had targets for the huge AMRAAMs (Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles) slung under the fuselages of their speeding fighters. The Eagle pilots saw two sets of speeding blips appear on their screens—the ragged line of Phantoms escaping at low altitude was being rapidly overtaken by an orderly formation of faster MiG-31 Foxhounds.

  In another ten seconds, the Soviets would be firing their own large air-to-air missiles at the fleeing F-4s. But the Eagle flight leader was holding a steady course toward the two flights of planes ahead, breaking radio silence to give instructions to his men.

  “Fast Lane One, Fast Lane One,” the deep voice crackled over the radio, “Bogies are dead ahead forty miles out. Do not launch until Weasel flight goes through.”

  The F-15’s powerful radar enabled each pilot to target a separate MiG, and lock on with their big missiles. What’s more, the AMRAAM’s range had a slight edge over its counterpart, the Soviet AA-10.

  Closing to the battle, the streaking Phantoms shot underneath the flight of F-15s. Two seconds later, the Eagle flight leader gave the order to fire.

  “Fast Lane One, launch!” the lead F-15 pilot called out to his wing. “Break and engage at will!”

  Still ten miles ahead, the Soviets were just breaking formation to pounce on the slower “Weasels” when their own threat warning radars went off, activated by the deadly AMRAAMs fired by the Eagle fighters.

  For the moment, the Phantoms were ignored as the Soviet weapons officers tried desperately to jam the incoming missiles, relay evasive maneuver directions to the pilots, and engage the F-15s ahead of them instead of the escaping F-4 strike planes, all in the same thirty seconds. None of them succeede
d in accomplishing all three before the missiles tore into their packed formation.

  The lethal American rockets had closed the distance between the two groups of speeding fighters before most of the MiGs could react effectively. Like ducks in a gallery, four of the heavy Soviet fighters exploded into ugly black clouds. Two more of them collided in midair as they both swerved to avoid the attack, adding to the swirling confusion that stretched across the bleak skies above France.

  A delayed-fired AMRAAM homed in relentlessly on the Soviet leader, as the pilot tried to jink his way out of the missile’s sophisticated seeking beam. But it was no use. The AMRAAM impacted on the big Foxhound near its left engine intake, the explosion horribly ripping the fuselage along one entire side. The airplane blew up just as the pilot ejected, sending the smoking jet plummeting to the ground below.

  Once the wave of AMRAAMs had passed, the Soviets who had avoided the incoming missiles breathed a collective sigh of relief. But the respite didn’t last long. Ten seconds later, they were pounced on by the streaking Eagles as they descended on the scattering Foxhounds.

  Hunter and the rest of the 16th were now close enough to join the swirling dogfight that was already in progress high above the French countryside. Several squadrons of MiG-29 Fulcrums had also joined the fray, as had a group of other NATO top-line fighters.

  In seconds the sky was filled with roaring, diving, and twisting planes from both sides, dueling with cannons and missiles.

  Hunter only saw the battle in a series of flashes. A British Tornado exploded as one of the Fulcrums unleashed a heat-seeking missile that disappeared into its hot exhaust nozzle. A Foxhound was blown up by cannon fire from an F-16. An F-15 went down. Then two more Foxhounds. He saw a smoking F-16 twist away from the scene. Then a Tornado and a Fulcrum collided head-on no more than a half mile in front of him.

  Everywhere he looked there were crazily zig-zagging, jinking fighters, dozens of air-to-air missiles, lines of cannon tracers, some missing, some not, explosions, fire, smoke—all of it leaving an insane spider web of contrails across a fifty square mile chunk of French sky. Cockpits on both sides were filled with the incessant wail of radar warning systems. Target radar screens went white from the effects of hundreds of jamming signals and too many targets to process.

  Radio procedure was abandoned in the heat of the airborne melee as pilots screamed warnings to each other:

  “Dive and roll!”

  “There’s two on your tail, Tango-Six!”

  “Got ’em! Good kill!”

  “Warning yellow, weapons hold …”

  “Fox one … Fox one!”

  “Tally two! Tally two!”

  “Head’s up Delta-Four! Foxhounds coming down from upstairs!”

  “Lock him up. Lock him up!”

  “Break left and climb! Now!”

  “Christ! I’m hit! I’m hit …”

  Hunter had never experienced anything like it before. Nothing he’d ever done had even come close to it. Not the Thunderbird training. Not the simulations of Red Flag back in the States. Not even the hellish sorties he’d flown in the last few days.

  It was a whole new ball game now.

  Time seemed to slow as he tried to absorb the whole scope of the battle and yet block out the extraneous information pouring into his cockpit console and radio headphones. His head swiveled constantly around the small cockpit of the strangely all-white fighter as he tried to keep track of the expanding battle that had airplanes spinning through the sky like mad dervishes.

  Suddenly a Fulcrum flashed in front of him. Purely on instinct he punched up his missile targeting system, and let go with a Sidewinder. There was a puff of smoke, a flash, an explosion and a cloud of debris. That quickly, one more enemy plane was destroyed. Hunter picked off another low-flying Fulcrum that happened in front of him with a long burst from his cannon.

  Then he snap-rolled the F-16 to engage a speeding Foxhound above him. Locking another Sidewinder onto the Soviet jet, he stabbed the fire control button just as his own radar threat device was activated by an incoming air-to-air fired by an Su-27 Flanker that had just appeared on the scene.

  Without missing a beat, Hunter mashed another button on his side-stick controller to release two decoy flares that shot off to his left. The Soviet missile took the high-intensity bait and veered off to explode when it met the flare. Executing a high-g vertical scissoring maneuver, Hunter drew the attacking Flanker high above the fray, twisting rapidly in the thin air.

  When the eager Soviet pilot overshot the smaller F-16, Hunter lanced the big Flanker with a sustained cannon burst that gashed a wide wound in the Russian’s upper wing surface. Flame immediately appeared at the edges of the torn metal, igniting the spraying fuel that quickly engulfed the entire tail section. The stricken Flanker plunged down through the clouds, spinning out of control.

  Hunter had no time to savor the kill or even catch his breath before diving down into the dogfight again. He spotted Jones’s fighter weaving through the crowded sky, unsuccessfully trying to shake a pair of Fulcrums that seemed to be locked onto his tail.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Hunter tipped the F-16 over in a screaming power dive to intercept the pursuing MiGs. Still a thousand feet above the Soviet planes, he poured on cannon fire as he deliberately spun his agile fighter in a tight barrel roll along the path of his steep dive. The maneuver sent the 30mm shells arcing into the wing roots of both Fulcrums from above, severing one of them completely. Both planes broke off the attack as they wobbled and rapidly lost altitude as a result of Hunter’s guns.

  “Thank you, Captain,” Jones’s voice said over Hunter’s radio, calm as if Hunter had just bought him a drink.

  Then Jones sent out a warning to all of TFW16. “Keep an eye on your fuel gauges,” he said. “We’ve got to make it back to the gas stations.”

  “That’s a roger,” Hunter replied, keying his microphone as he instantly scanned the fuel supply information displayed in front of him on his Heads-Up-Display (HUD). He was getting near the safe return level needed to make it to the tanker rendezvous.

  But still the sky was full of Soviet fighters.

  “Estimate enough fuel for a few more passes, then it’s time to turn this tag team over to the next wave,” Hunter informed the general.

  “Roger, Captain,” the general replied. “I suggest we screw them all up and do a burst and break at forty. Might draw some stray missiles.”

  “Roger,” Hunter replied, knowing that Jones was calling for the old Starburst Thunderbird maneuver. “On you, break at forty.”

  Hunter slammed his side-stick controller forward and the white fighter shot through the swirling dogfight, joined by Jones a split-second behind him.

  The two F-16s rose as one in a straight vertical climb, belly to belly only a scant twenty feet apart. Several Soviet fighters aimed missiles at the speeding pair of jets that were tearing through the smoke of the battle.

  With at least a trio of missiles racing them for the clouds, Hunter and Jones kept the throttles open until they reached forty-thousand feet. Then both F-16s chopped power to drop their pointed noses at the ground below, twisting in an interlocking spiral as they descended in a blur of wings and contrails. The Soviet missiles couldn’t make the nose-over with the F-16s, and they orbited harmlessly until their fuel was spent and they exploded.

  The two pilots kept their spiral descent tight and fast until they both broke away to target separate MiGs in the cluster of fighters below them. Two Sidewinders flashed from Hunter’s wings and they found the hot exhausts of two Foxhounds. The big jets burst into ugly, flaming balls of jagged metal and disappeared in the confusion of the fur ball.

  Weaving again through the tangled mass of aircraft and missile contrails in the pack, Hunter and Jones were joined by two more familiar F-16s on the 16th TFW. Ben Wa and JT Toomey were soon flying alongside in a tight formation. Together, the four planes cut a wide swath through the enemy fighters, meeting any challenge with
a hail of cannon fire that ripped through the airspace ahead of them like four high-tech Grim Reapers cutting down corn stalks. Six more MiGs had fallen away in flames before the lethal flyby was complete.

  Jones communicated with his squadron by a wing signal that it was time to vector off and withdraw to let the next wave come through. The F-15s and the Tornados were also withdrawing at this point. Their fuel situation would become critical very soon, and Jones didn’t want to risk losing any planes over the Pyrenees. He needed every one he could get. And then some.

  “Let’s go, boys,” Jones said, warily eyeing his fuel data through the HUD. “Save some for the next crew.”

  Hunter reluctantly broke off the attack and veered off to form up on Jones and the rest of the first wave of fighters. Several Soviet fighters began a spirited pursuit, but they, too, were low on fuel and didn’t chase the NATO planes much past the battle area.

  Thus ended the first round of what would be the largest air-to-air battle of any war. Predictably, both sides called up reserves to cover for their spent first-echelon interceptors.

  No sooner had the combined force of F-16s, F-15s, and Tornados left the area when the NATO second echelon line of aircraft arrived on the scene. So too just as the Soviet top-line fighters began retreating, their slightly slower, slightly less-sophisticated second-line fighter force showed up.

  So far, the Soviets were following the script perfectly.

  Chapter 26

  THE 16 TFW FALCONS were 50 miles north of the French Riviera, when Hunter, Jones, and the others picked up a large flight of aircraft rising up from the Mediterranean and heading inland.

  “Who the hell are these guys?” JT called out.

  “I hope they’re on our side,” Wa added, as the large concentration of blips passed across his radar screen.