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

by Walter J. Boyne

  The entire party had been created and paid for by the employees, and it included two gleaming examples of Andrei’s creation, a beautifully restored Tu-2 from the Great Patriotic War and an operational Tu-22, the supersonic bomber that had startled the world with its debut at Tushino. The company’s own model makers had created a lineup of every Tupolev aircraft ever built, from the ANT-1 to the Tu-144. It made an impressive lineup.

  Alexei, conscious of his father’s fragile health, had made their excuses early, and they were now sitting in his old office on the third floor of the KOSOS building, engaged in one of their customary clinical analysis sessions, not going over the party with its host of old colleagues but instead thoughtfully analyzing the Tu-144 and its magnificent flight three days before.

  Andrei caressed the single sheet of paper in his withered old hands, raising it to his lips and kissing it as if it were a love letter. The letter was official notice that the Tu-144 had just flown from Moscow to Tashkent, almost three thousand kilometers, in just 110 minutes. The flight had been made at 18,000 meters. “This is something, Alexei; they cannot take this from us, no matter what.”

  Andrei Tupolev had believed in the Tupolev Tu-144 because he had to believe in his son Alexei. Alexei believed in it because he had distilled his father’s wisdom, his design team’s best efforts, and his own administrative skill in the pell-mell rush to have the aircraft fly in 1968, as both Khrushchev and Brezhnev had demanded.

  Both father and son knew that the design was rushed, despite the preliminary design information that had been stolen from the French and English. Both men knew that there were faults that had to be corrected before full-scale production could begin.

  “Yes, Father, but the thought of the Concorde sticks like a bone in my throat. It is embarrassing that they have been able to do so much in the last year. It will kill our foreign sales.”

  The preceding June the second Concorde had made a world’s sales tour to the Middle East, the Far East, and Australia. Sales were made to China and Iran. It was heartbreaking. There was no way the Tu-144 could be committed to such an itinerary, not yet.

  The two men, so devoted to each other, had long since settled their disputes over some of the radical design paths forced on the Tu-144 by time and technology. Andrei Tupolev hated the idea of a delta wing and, more recently, the canard winglets, while Alexei accepted these as a fait accompli of the schedule. On the other hand, Alexei would have preferred a less complicated nose section, using a television system to aid the pilots in landing. His father had insisted on the heavy and time-consuming nose that drooped for takeoff and landing to give the pilots better visibility. Both men still believed in their own ideas, long after there was any question of changing it.

  Where they differed most was on the potential for sales of the SST within the Soviet Union. Andrei felt that the design was premature, that another ten years’ work needed to be done on improving the passenger cabin and lowering landing speeds. Alexei, knowing how primitive the passenger accommodations were on most current Russian airliners, felt that passengers would endure the noise and the cramped cabin in return for the speed.

  For perhaps the hundredth time, Andrei said, “I just wish we had had more time to prepare the airplane for the Paris Air Show. We looked like ragamuffins compared to the Concorde.”

  At the last Paris Air Show, the Concorde and the Tu-144 had been eagerly compared by foreign observers. With its spotted paint and worn tires, the Russian SST showed the ravages of more than thirty months of test-flying. To Tupolev’s acute embarrassment, it looked shabby and worn compared to the sleek, fresh finish of the Concorde. Tired as he was, he had once again led the promotional charge, insisting in briefing after briefing that the prototype Tu-144 was still provisional and that a more sophisticated version would be flown soon. There was more truth than anyone knew or would admit in that statement.

  “The French and the English had so many advantages. Their governments leave them alone to conduct their business. No rush to first flight, no demands that certain components be used.”

  Alexei nodded. “And most of all, they had the magnificent Olympus engines.” Both men were silent, contemplating the power, the fuel economy, and the relative quiet of the Concorde’s Rolls-Royce engines.

  They had known that Tu-144’s engines were not powerful enough from the start, but there was no other option. The Tu-144 could fly supersonically only with the afterburners on, and this brought the range down from 4,500 kilometers to about 2,000—almost ruling out export sales.

  Andrei’s office was filled with photos and models, and on his desk was one of the second prototype of the Tu-144, originally intended for the factory celebration. Some security-conscious bureaucrat had ruled that it was too secret to be seen on open display and removed it from the lineup. Andrei had asked that it be placed on his desk, and now, ever so gently, he extended his finger and ran it over the model, tracing the shape of the wing and the engine nacelles.

  Alexei’s eyes followed the movements of Andrei’s finger. Both knew that it was here that a fundamental mistake had been forced on them. The wing, lovely despite its foreign delta shape, was optimized for flight at supersonic speeds. It was perhaps the most modern element of the design, much more complex than the wing of the first prototype. It now incorporated variable camber, twist, and negative dihedral, and further changes were contemplated. The engines, which had been moved outward ten feet on this aircraft, now had square intakes.

  The absolutely crucial error was that the Kuznetsov NK-144 engines were optimized for subsonic flight. This mismatch of wing and engine design was a mistake of colossal proportions, but one that had to be accepted to meet Khrushchev’s and later Brezhnev’s mandate for a flight in 1968.

  The early French and English data had helped enormously, but the final design was by Andrei’s own team. They had followed British practice by testing the wing design on an “analog” aircraft, a MiG-21 fitted with delta wings. The veteran MiG test pilot, Oleg Gudkov, flew the analog and found that the delta wing created a cushion of air—ground effect—that would greatly reduce the Tu-144’s takeoff and landing speeds. The analog had come along to late to have any effect upon the prototype’s design, but it provided insight that enabled them to proceed so swiftly with the redesign of the second aircraft.

  The model showed the canards, the forward flying surfaces that Andrei resented so much as a makeshift, an obvious admission that there was a flaw in the design of the wing.

  Pointing to them, Andrei said, “My God, Alexei, this is no different from the Wright brothers! We’ve come sixty-nine years since they first flew and we are still sticking little wings up front.”

  Alexei did not respond. Advances in technology were forcing the use of canards on many designers. They were complex and they added weight, but they worked. With the ground effect and the canards, the Tu-144 was now spared the hard landings that threatened integrity of the intricate twenty-four-wheel main undercarriage. The canards added lift and further reduced the landing speed, but Andrei hated their complexity, their appearance of being an add-on. He always wanted his airplanes to be simple and elegant. Canards were just the opposite.

  At last, just as Alexei knew he would, Andrei ran his finger along the nose of the aircraft, raising and lowering the cockpit. This had been his invention, it was his principal contribution to the design, and he was proud of it. Alexei knew what was coming and deferred to it.

  “I tell you Alexei, that there is no substitute for the human in the cockpit. No television set, no computer, no array of computers, can ever replace the best flight computer of all, the test pilot’s brain.”

  Andrei suddenly sat back in his chair, overwhelmed by fatigue. Alexei rose to help him, and the elder Tupolev struggled back, pointed to the Tu-144’s nose, and said, “There it is, my son. That is my last contribution.”

  One day less than three months later, Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev died peacefully in his own bed.

  CHAPTER
SIXTY-FOUR

  December 20, 1972

  Hanoi, North Vietnam

  Beating Tom almost to death seemed to have given Fidel the Cuban a proprietary interest in him. Fidel closely monitored Tom’s recovery, even arranging for some minor medications. But as soon as he was able to walk, Fidel arranged for him to be sent to a filthy holding pen prepared for the most dangerous prisoners, called Alcatraz by the American prisoners. He and Pavone were thrown into separate underground cells, damp and ruled over by the usual collections of insects and rats. After a few weeks, the agonizing moans from Pavone’s cell had stopped. Tom reluctantly assumed that he had died. It was a terrible blow to Tom’s morale, for Pavone had done so much to help him and, in the end, he was unable to do the same for Pavone.

  Sometime in the fall of 1971, there had been one forced trip back to the Hanoi Hilton to be filmed by news cameramen, and afterward Tom had been returned to Alcatraz. There he had survived only by the force of will.

  Two days ago, after the American bombing of Hanoi had begun in earnest, he’d been brought with other prisoners back to the Hoa Lo prison. While most of the others had apparently been quickly processed into the general POW community, Tom was still held incommunicado in some area of the block-square complex. Other prisoners told him via the tap code that he must be in what they called New Guy City, but in time it was apparent he was in some high-security cell they were not familiar with. It was hard to understand the lingering malevolence the North Vietnamese seemed to hold for him. Apparently conditions in the Hanoi Hilton had begun to improve a little after 1969, but Tom had never experienced any relaxation of the harsh treatment. Even now he was deprived of talking to men such as Alvarez and Risner, heroes whom he included in his daily prayers.

  The bombing had begun on the eighteenth, and Hanoi, once off-limits, was being pounded by waves of Navy and Air Force aircraft. At the first sound of the air-raid sirens, Tom took the ten-foot-long mahogany plank that had been thrust into the cell with him. They told him with hand gestures to prop it against the wall, in case a vagrant bomb hit the jail itself. It fitted at about a forty-five-degree angle between the two walls, and when the bombs came, he huddled under it.

  He had heard American raids in the past, but they had been individual sorties, with the aircraft, usually a fighter, dropping its weapons and then departing. As he had been warned by tap code, tonight was different. It was evident that the entire Hanoi area was saturated with fighters—no doubt taking out the SAM sites and the anti-aircraft batteries. Then there came the long rumble of bombs that could only have come from B-52s.

  In his mind’s eye Tom could see them flying in cells of three, dark, lethal looking, the crews inside intent on the mission, knowing that they would have to fly straight and level during the bomb drop, no matter if they saw the brightly burning rocket of a missile heading straight for them.

  The key turned in the lock—Tom had not heard anyone coming, and his stomach flipped, it could only mean torture, they were going to punish him because of the Americans’ bombing. A tall Vietnamese officer, the same one who had questioned Tom for the newsreel, came in, followed by one of the nameless guards. They both scuttled under the mahogany plank, pressing against Tom. The officer said, “The Americans will never bomb Hao Lo. They know you are here.”

  Somehow, they still considered him important. He looked with loathing at his tattered clothes, long nails, and dirty body and pulled himself up straight. He might be scruffy, but if they thought he was important, he was important.

  SEVEN MILES ABOVE Vietnam, Steve O’Malley realized that he had not made the wisest of career moves eighteen months before. General Meyer, anxious to continue the “fighter-pilotization” of the Strategic Air Command, had persuaded him to shift from fighters to bombers, guaranteeing him an aircraft commander’s slot and the command of a squadron within a year. “Persuade” was a euphemism. Meyer had told him what he wanted O’Malley to do, and O’Malley had done it. Now he was flying in Maroon 1, a jet-black Boeing B-52D, part of Wave Three.

  In his mind’s eye he visualized the flights of B-52s lumbering before and after him like multiple columns of Hannibal’s elephants. They were moving exactly on track, on this, the third night of Operation Linebacker II, President Nixon’s desperate effort to force the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating tables in Paris. So far, only two aircraft had been shot down out of more than three hundred sorties. If Linebacker II failed and the North Vietnamese continued their offensive into South Vietnam, as many as twenty-five thousand American servicemen would be taken prisoner. Worse, in the eyes of the State Department, the United States would have been dealt a naked military defeat, beaten by a tiny nation. And if they won, everyone knew there would be no release of prisoners of war; the North Vietnamese negotiations in Paris had made that quite clear.

  O’Malley would have preferred to be flying his Phantom in another Operation Toro, mixing it up with North Vietnamese MiGs, but he knew how important this mission was. For a moment his mind drifted to Vance Shannon and his request for a relentless bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. Well, Vance was getting his wish now, on a scale even he had not envisaged. O’Malley said a quick Hail Mary, praying that Tom Shannon, imprisoned somewhere below, would not be injured.

  Shifting in his seat, he cinched his parachute harness and gestured to his copilot, Chet Schmidt, to do the same. O’Malley was acutely aware of how flawed the U.S. planning was. The bombers were replicating the courses they had flown on the two previous nights, and he knew from long experience that the savvy North Vietnamese gunners and missile men would have the B-52s’ predicted track marked on their radar screens in crayon. All they would need would be the B-52s’ altitude, and the MiGs flying formation with the B-52s could provide that. It’s a setup, O’Malley thought—and our own staff is the one setting us up.

  Linebacker II was a massive effort, one that Americans could be proud of in the midst of an unpopular war. Fifty B-52s stationed at U Tapao RTAFB, Thailand, and another 150 stationed at Andersen Air Base on Guam were to carry the air war to the enemy without the foolish rules of engagement for the first time. President Nixon had recognized the emergency and finally lifted the barriers to the exercise of airpower in the Vietnam War.

  The bombers were a mixture of the Big-Belly B-52Ds, capable of carrying up to 108 five-hundred-pound bombs, and the B-52Gs, which carried only 27 of the larger 750- or 1,000-pound bombs. To get the bombers to the target—a six-thousand-mile round-trip for the Andersen B-52s—required a massive effort involving multiple refuelings, a host of command and control aircraft, and the entire air-sea rescue force of the theater.

  Planning Linebacker II had begun in August and was based on the firm belief that cells of B-52s, operating together, had enough electronic warfare equipment to jam the enemy air defenses, which were the strongest in the world, stronger than those surrounding Moscow. During the past seven years, Hanoi and Haiphong had built up a powerful integrated air defense system that combined surface-to-air missiles, tremendous anti-aircraft artillery, and numerous MiG fighters.

  The MiGs were up tonight. O’Malley had done a double take when he looked out his window and saw a MiG flying formation on his left wing, no doubt reporting his course, airspeed, and altitude. The MiG peeled off but did not attack.

  He had taken off from Andersen more than six hours before, call sign Maroon 2. Now he was turning over the initial point, ready to drive in on the target, the Gia Lam railroad yard, a huge facility that should have been destroyed long ago.

  Even as he eased the B-52 precisely on course, he resented the fact that he was doing this in 1972, against heavy defenses, when it could have been done so easily in 1965. The same effort then would have spared the country seven years of war and more than fifty thousand deaths. Then things got busy.

  Schmidt, his copilot, called, “Target is overcast.”

  His transmission was broken by a call they all heard. “SAM Threat, SAM Threat, vicinity Hanoi.”

  Gabe
Rogers, the navigator, always acerbic, came on. “That’s hardly news; what the fuck does he expect?”

  O’Malley looked ahead. “There’s some flak at our altitude, about ten miles away or so estimate, but it’s hell breaking loose below. Looks like lots of 57mm.”

  The electronic warfare officer, Sam Greenberg, piped up, “They are really throwing the SAMs up. Looks intense.”

  O’Malley mashed his intercom button. “Let’s cut the chatter; we’re on the bomb run now.”

  John Rosene, the radar operator, said, “OK, pilot, I’ve got the target.”

  O’Malley saw a huge explosion on the right. Had to be a SAM hitting a B-52 square in the bomb bay. Schmidt started to speak, but O’Malley waved his arm. No sense in getting the crew shook up on the bomb run.

  Greenberg, his voice rising a notch, said, “I’ve got an uplink.”

  He meant that his signals showed that a SAM had been fired, probably at them. O’Malley thought, Pretty goddamn calm. Good man.

  Schmidt said, “Got a SAM, visual,” then transmitted, “Maroon 1, got a visual SAM.”

  Greenberg followed with, “Another one, four o’clock, coming at us.”

  Rosene said, “Steady, skipper, one minute to go. Keep her steady.”

  Every fiber in O’Malley’s body ached to pull the B-52 into a diving turn to outfox the SAM, but orders were orders—anyone who broke formation to avoid a SAM was going to be court-martialed, and this came straight from SAC headquarters.

  Rosene called, “Bombs Away.”

  O’Malley wheeled the B-52 in a steep turning, shrinking into his seat as he did so, knowing that the turn moved all their jamming antennae away from the radar sites below. They were most vulnerable in the turn, and the North Vietnamese proved it to them by exploding a SAM into the right wing, just between engines six and seven. The force of the explosion knocked the control wheel out of O’Malley’s hands for a moment.