Supersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (Novels of the Jet Age)

by Walter J. Boyne

  “What happened with Lockheed and Rolls-Royce?”

  “Well, that was a terrible mess, too. Lockheed foolishly picked Rolls-Royce as its main engine supplier because the RB-211 fit the S-shaped duct in the tail. You know how the DC-10 has the third engine; it goes straight through—well, the L-1011 is more streamlined, and it needed an engine the size of the RB-211. Rolls-Royce got into difficulties manufacturing the RB-211—some of the materials it wanted to use for the turbine blades didn’t work out. The British government pulled the plug on it when it found out the shape it was in. And that almost killed Lockheed. They finally worked out a consortium of bank and government loans to bring Rolls-Royce back to life, develop the engine, and keep Lockheed going with the L-1011. But like I said before, that’s a big mistake. The L-1011 will never make a profit and neither will the DC-10.”

  “Can I quote you?”

  “You can quote me. But let me tell you, young Warren Bowers, none of what we just talked about amounts to a hill of beans compared to the problems we face with terrorists. You remember how in September last year the Arab terrorists hijacked four airplanes and blew them up? Well, unless we are careful, that’s going to be a way of life, and we’ll see airliners being blown up in the air, not on the ground. I don’t see any way around it, the way the Middle East is.”

  This was a little too esoteric for Bowers; he wanted to talk airplanes, not politics. “How about on the military side? Any good airplanes coming along there?”

  Vance brightened visibly.

  “Yeah, good old Grumman, the Iron Works, flew the F-14 Tomcat last December. It’s a hell of an airplane, and Grumman is a hell of a company. You know my boy Tom—” His voice broke momentarily. “My boy Tom flew Grumman Wildcats and became an ace in World War II. And I hear the new McDonnell Douglas F-15 will be a great airplane when it flies. But let’s go back to the commercial side for a minute. A new company got started this year, Federal Express—just carries freight, but carries it fast, one-day service all over the country. Mark my words, it is going to make a pack of money.”

  Bowers came back, “How about foreign aircraft? The French firm Dassault seems to do well, even though it is comparatively small.”

  Vance shook his head. Dassault reminded him of Madeline, and he didn’t want to talk about it. “They are OK, I guess. But no one has the resources of our guys, Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, General Dynamics, Grumman—nobody.”

  Bowers checked his tapes and asked, “How about the space program? I see where the Russians keep doing well, with the Soyuz spacecraft and the Salyut space station.”

  Vance looked dour again. “I hate to tell you this; it makes an old man out of me, even though I’m already an old man. I just cannot get excited about space flight. I know it’s a great scientific achievement; I know we have to keep up with the Russians, even if they do keep killing themselves.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know they keep their space program secret, never tell in advance about a shot, and don’t tell about any deaths or anything if they can cover it up. Last January, I think, they had their Soyuz hook up with their space station, the Salyut or whatever it is. That was a hell of a feat, but their guys were killed on reentry. But I understand why we have to compete; even if we are ahead of them now, they never got to the moon, and our guys just brought back a hundred pounds of rock on Apollo XIV. But it’s not like real flying; you are more like a passenger. You want to talk space flight, I’ll have you talk to Bob Rodriquez when he gets back.”

  Bowers nodded. “I feel the same way, but maybe the Space Shuttle will be different. Do you want to talk a little bit about the future? I don’t need much.”

  Vance thought for a minute. “There are a number of things going on, all interrelated. First of all, airplanes are getting way too expensive, even though they are way more efficient. This means there will be fewer bought in the future, military and civilian. That means there will be fewer contracts, and fewer companies to bid. Pretty scary, but actually good for a company like ours. When they cut staffs, they have to put out stuff for consultants, and that’s what we do.”

  “On the military side, what is the most important factor now, bombers or fighters?”

  “Oddly enough, neither. The tanker has become the single most important part of the airpower equation. You can’t operate anything, bombers or fighters, without the tankers. You need them for logistics, too; they’ll have to get transports with in-flight refueling capability soon.”

  “What about—”

  “Let me finish. Airborne electronics—anti-jamming, radar, and so on—are going to be as important as tankers. What it means is that a few bombers and fighters, especially when they get equipped with what they are calling ‘smart bombs,’ will be able to do the work of whole air forces in World War II. And it will perhaps permit not using nukes. Although I have a couple of spots I wouldn’t mind seeing nukes laid on.”

  “Tell me what ‘smart bombs’ are.”

  “Well, we had a hand in developing them; at least Bob Rodriquez did.”

  Vance hesitated for a moment. Bob had done exactly the same thing with his smart-bombs ideas as he had done with his simulators. As soon as he got things to the stage where they were ready for production, he sold the idea to a larger firm, retaining a percentage of the profits for Aerospace Ventures. It was working well with the simulators; there were royalties coming in on a scale Vance had never imagined. He just hoped that it would be the same with the smart bombs.

  “Bob’s going over to Thailand next year, going to the same base that my son Tom flew from, to help in their employment. There are two basic types, one guided by television—they call it electro-optical, but they would be better off calling it just TV. The other is guided by a laser. I cannot explain to you exactly what a laser is—you can look it up in the encyclopedia, I guess—but it’s like an invisible light that one airplane shines on a target. Another aircraft, the drop plane, drops a bomb that homes right in on the light that’s shining on the target. They have little controls that enable them to fly right to the bull’s-eye every time. The old bombs, the so-called ‘dumb bombs,’ you dropped them after a bomb run and prayed they hit something, but once they were out of the bomb bay you had no control. These you can fly right smack-dab on the target.”

  This was a little too technical for Bowers, and he shifted his line of questioning. “What about general aviation, you know, the Cessnas and the Pipers and so on?”

  “I think it will be tough for years, because we’ve never figured out a way to make flying less expensive. There’s another problem, too. Flying is too much a man’s game. We’ve excluded women, so when you go out to the airport there’s no socialization. Look at a yacht club—there’s always as many women, maybe more than men. And there’s something else that inhibits flying becoming popular—you cannot, I repeat cannot, have any drinking with flying, not even social drinking. On a sailboat, you can go out, everybody has a couple of drinks; it’s a party. With flying it’s a grim man’s game; you go out alone, fly around, have fun—but you don’t meet any women—and that’s a hell of a drawback for the business.”

  “What about executive jets? I know you had a big part with the Learjet.”

  “They are improving all the time, getting more costly, but they will pay for themselves. Companies have to learn to look on an executive jet as a tool, just like a big drill press or something. If they really cost it out, and see that it pays for itself, executive jets will take off. Right now they are sort of toys for the chairman of the board and for movie stars. Ten years from now, they’ll be moving mid-level executives around like they were riding a bus.”

  “And what about just plain-old pleasure flying?”

  “There you’ve hit it, my boy! There is a great outfit out in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the Experimental Aircraft Association. That’s the future of sport flying, believe me. They have already done more good than anybody realizes, and they will be doing more in the future. They ha
ve fantastic fly-ins, thousands of aircraft; it is amazing. If you like flying, you ought to join.”

  Vance yawned and said, “Do you think you have enough for tonight? I’m a little tired. Maybe you could give me a call, and we can finish up, fill in any loose spots over the phone?”

  Bowers quickly shut down his recording gear, stowed it, and got up to go. Then he said, “Mr. Shannon, I hope your son comes home soon.”

  Shannon reacted angrily. “Warren, me, too, but I don’t think he’ll come home until we bomb the hell out of them. We’ve been fighting a crazy war; we’ve dropped three times as many bombs on Vietnam as we did on Germany—but ninety percent of them are being dropped on South Vietnam, our ally; for Christ’s sake, we’re bombing our ally. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  Warren was sorry he’d said anything.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  May 13, 1972

  Thanh Hoa, North Vietnam

  A few inanimate objects project their nature. Gibraltar’s size and shape clearly say strength and stability. The pyramids of Egypt evoke a sense of mystery, awe, and deep spiritual experience. The bridge at Thanh Hoa stood as a symbol of North Vietnamese defiance, an arrogant structure, welded into the rock with ingenious architecture more suited to a fortress than a bridge. The number of anti-aircraft guns, surface-to-air missiles, and MiGs defending it had increased in number every year since the first attack on April 3, 1965.

  Built in a crash program in 1964, the bridge funneled supplies out of Hanoi to support North Vietnamese units operating in South Vietnam. Used for both rail and road traffic, it was 58 feet wide and 540 feet long, hanging 50 feet above the Son Ma River. The North Vietnamese named it “Ham Rong”—the Dragon’s Jaw—and they rejoiced that it had withstood seven years of bombing. American fighter jets had assaulted it 869 times with bombs of varying sizes. Each time the smoke from the exploding bombs, the guns, and the burning wreckage of aircraft had cleared away, the bridge stood undamaged, funneling the lifeblood of the war to the south. Eleven American jets had been shot down, their twisted remains salvaged and turned into weapons, pots, and pans by the thrifty peasants who manned the guns when they were not tilling the fields.

  The bridge at Thanh Hoa was a prime example of the utter futility of the bombing-campaign rules set up by the American Secretary of Defense, McNamara, and continued by President Lyndon Johnson. On March 31, 1968, Johnson had announced that he would not seek or accept nomination for the presidency. He had also announced a bombing halt on all targets above the twentieth north latitude, shielding the bridge and almost all other important targets in North Vietnam for four precious years. In that interval millions of tons of supplies and tens of thousands of soldiers had begun their journey to South Vietnam over the Dragon’s Jaw. In that interval thousands of American and South Vietnamese troops had died.

  Johnson’s goal had been peace talks. The North Vietnamese goal was victory. In the four years of the bombing halt, the Americans had followed a policy of “Vietnamization,” strengthening South Vietnamese forces so that they would be able to resist the North Vietnamese without active American assistance. At the end of the fourth year, on March 30, 1972, the North Vietnamese, their roads and bridges repaired, their strength at a peak, launched a full-scale offensive into South Vietnam, with the intent of ending the war with a unified country run from Hanoi. The South Vietnamese, unable to fight without massive American air support, collapsed.

  The United States responded with a massive infusion of airpower. Units were sent again to Thailand and naval forces were reassembled off the coast. With only about twenty-five thousand American troops on the ground in Vietnam, only airpower could prevent a complete North Vietnamese takeover. President Richard M. Nixon called for Operation Linebacker on May 10, 1972, allowing air operations against the North and permitting North Vietnamese harbors to be mined. And for the first time, that airpower was going to be supplemented by Paveway One bombs.

  Bob Rodriquez stood on the tarmac at Ubon, watching the powerful McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs preparing to take off for their strike on the Dragon’s Jaw. Rodriquez was exhausted, having spent the entire night going from one aircraft to the next, making sure that the Paveway systems he had done so much to develop were operational. Then he had waited on the flight line, skipping breakfast, to learn whether the bombs he had labored over for so long would work as they should.

  In the interval, Bob thought about all he had learned about the miserable conditions of American prisoners of war in Hanoi, and he feared for Tom’s life. As usual, Bob felt guilty that Tom had gone back into the service and he had not, even though he knew that he had done far more for the American war effort as a civilian than he could have done as a pilot. Still the guilt was there, made even sharper by the knowledge that Tom disapproved of Bob’s place in the business and the fact that he now knew for certain that torture was inevitable for American prisoners of war.

  Bob had been to Ubon often over the years and was amazed at the way each succeeding year had seen more U.S. creature comforts in place. When the Americans had first arrived, the base was primitive, with remnants of Japanese hangars from World War II still being used. Each succeeding year saw tactical improvements—a new control tower, bigger, longer runways, and so on. But even more noticeable were the spread of air-conditioned buildings, comfortable quarters, a swimming pool, a twenty-four-hour Officers Club, and so on. Ubon now housed the Eighth Tactical Fighter Wing, commanded by an old friend, Colonel Carl S. Miller. Miller had flown 57 combat missions in Korea, some of them with Bob, and gone on to fly almost 450 more in F-100s and F-4s in Vietnam. Miller told Bob that torture was epidemic in the North Vietnamese prisons.

  Rodriquez glanced at his watch. In a few minutes, fourteen F-4Ds of Miller’s Eighth TFW—the Wolfpack, it was called—should begin their assault on the Dragon’s Jaw.

  NORTH VIETNAMESE RADAR had long since picked up the fourteen F-4Ds, their place in the sky clearly visible from the long oily-black columns of smoke issuing from their GE J79 engines. The Phantoms were loaded for bear, carrying among them nine three-thousand-pound laser-guided bombs, fifteen two-thousand-pound laser-guided bombs, and forty-eight conventional five-hundred-pound bombs.

  For ten square miles around the bridge, anti-aircraft crews slipped on their helmets and assumed their positions, while the missile crews prepared for a sudden launch. When the enemy came in range they would release their customary torrent of fire.

  The Phantoms rolled in on the target in a waterfall of lethal metal, each one sending its laser-guided bombs to the target, each pilot seeing the roaring wall of flak reaching up to them, and every one pulling off the target at top speed to avoid the murderous anti-aircraft fire. The first crews could not see any damage, but the last three crews saw bombs striking the bridge, exploding in a roar of fire and smoke. All fourteen aircraft emerged undamaged, with the bridge down behind them.

  Later RF-4Cs crossed the target, and their photos showed that the western span of the bridge was blown completely off its forty-footthick concrete foundation. Twenty-four laser-guided bombs had accomplished what the full ordnance loads of 869 previous attackers could not do: destroy the bridge at Thanh Hoa.

  Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base erupted in a celebration of the victory. Colonel Miller invited Rodriquez to the party that night, but he stayed in his quarters, analyzing the combat reports of the crews and scanning the photos the RF-4Cs had brought back. He wrote a long report back to his project officer at Eglin, concluding with a passionate paragraph that he begged be forwarded up the chain of command, all the way to the President, if possible:

  In conclusion, the Paveway bombs offer a path to the future that could provide a very clinical victory in Vietnam. It could be applied against North Vietnamese cities with surgical skill, taking out their vital industries and still not causing much collateral damage or killing many civilians. The risk of provoking Red China or the Soviet Union would not only be minimal, it might even be salutary, for
I suspect that they would be reluctant to engage the United States after it had demonstrated such technical prowess. Let me repeat this: the Paveway, and the other precision-guided munitions that will soon be available to us, can win the war by the application of airpower alone. This path to conquest can begin at once with the weapons on hand, and it can be followed up by the deployment of those under development, all at a cost far less than that of maintaining a huge ground army.

  In simplest terms, with Paveway and its developments, Vietnamization can work, and South Vietnam can defend itself. Without precision-guided munitions and American airpower, South Vietnam will never be able to resist North Vietnam in open combat.

  Bob reread what he had written and then copied the report, sanitizing it so that he could send a copy of it back to Vance, who would be heartened by it.

  Rodriquez signed his report, then walked it over to the command section for transmission back to Eglin. “This is going to make a lot of people happy—and a lot more unhappy. I wonder if anybody will read it except at Eglin?”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  September 23, 1972

  Moscow, USSR

  The main party celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Tupolev bureau had been held in the new assembly hall, scrubbed operating-room clean for the occasion. It was filled with tables laden with vodka, caviar, and delicacies from all over the Soviet Union, provided by the many suppliers who had contributed to creating the latest Tupolev triumph, the Tu-144. Both Andrei and Alexei had made speeches, and there was a long film specially created for the occasion that showed Tupolev aircraft over the years, from the very first one, the little all-metal ANT-1 monoplane, down to the first takeoff of the Tu-144 SST on December 31, 1968.