They traveled to Fallon one of two ways: in the cockpit of an F/A-18, or in the back of a Navy C-9 transport, which was a military version of the McDonnell-Douglas DC-9 jetliner. Two nuggets—Chip Van Doren and Burner Bunsen—still needed the squares filled for radar navigation training flights, so they got to fly out in Hornets. The others—J. J., Angie, Shrike, Road, and the McCormacks—flew out west in the C-9. The rest of the detachment’s jets would be ferried out by instructors.
“Wow!” said Angie Morales when she stepped off the jetliner onto the ramp at Fallon. She stood there on the concrete staring at the scenery. The Sierra range swelled in the west like a mural against the afternoon sky. You could see spring snow on all the high crests. The transition from the Florida flatlands to this—the high Sierras—was like changing planets.
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The bombing target complex was about twenty miles square and featured an assortment of targets with concentric rings that looked like giant dartboards laid on the ground.
This was where the strike fighter students got their first exposure to dive bombing, dropping the twenty-five pound Mark 76 practice bombs. The Hornet’s MER (multiple ejection rack) carried twelve Mark 76s.
Barney Barnes was the instructor and flight leader. Bombing was Barney’s special passion, and he loved teaching the subject. Students got a kick out of bombing with Barney because he made a game of it. He got them to compete with each other, betting beers on their hits. He debriefed his flights at the Rocket bar, where they settled all the bets.
Barney Barnes gave the nuggets a briefing. “Here is where we separate the men from the boys,” said Barney. Then he caught himself: “Excuse me, ladies,” he said, pretending to suddenly notice that Sally Hopkins and Angie Morales were in the class. “I mean, here is where we separate the strike fighter pilots from the interceptor pukes.”
Shrike and Angie knew what he meant. They didn’t mind. Barney was one of those guys they knew wasn’t down on them because they were women. As an instructor, Barney Barnes was egalitarian: He picked on everyone.
Barney was part instructor and part entertainer. His mannerisms and his language—he had a masterful range of arcane obscenities—seldom offended anyone, even the women. Most women pilots, in fact, would tell you they preferred working with Barney because he never condescended to them, playing that hyper-sensitive post-Tailhook gender game that they ran into everywhere these days. There was no bullshit about Barney.
Barney’s students for the first flight were J. J. Quinn, Shrike Hopkins, and a student from the German Navy, Lieutenant Commander Dirk Henschel. Henschel was there to qualify in the F/A-18, then to remain as an instructor pilot in the RAG. He had served an exchange tour with a U. S. Navy A-6 squadron, and already knew as much about carrier aviation as any pilot in the RAG. He was a tall, blondish guy with a bushy mustache. Everyone liked Henschel for his wit and laid back style.
Barney believed in aggressive bombing. “If you don’t act like a steely-eyed, hard-ball killer,” he told his students, “then you oughta be flying helos or S-3s.”
Aggressive bombing meant rolling in on target abruptly, hard and steep. “On the roll in, you gotta ‘squat’ the jet,” Barney said. “Honk the nose around hard, put some Gs on the sucker, then pull the nose down to the target. That way you lose hardly any altitude while you’re getting the nose around to the run in. If anybody down there’s pissed off at you, you won’t be giving them an easy target to shoot at.”
In its purest uncomputerized form, dive bombing was a skill roughly akin to dart throwing. It was a hand-eye exercise, performed while hurtling toward the earth at over five hundred miles per hour. You aimed your jet at a target that was marked like a giant bulls eye on the ground. You tried to put your illuminated aiming pipper smack on the bulls eye, strived to maintain a precise airspeed, dive angle, wind correction, and at a predetermined height you released your bomb. The big blunt weapon, now devoid of intelligence either human or electronic, soared downward, guided solely by the forces of gravity, wind, velocity and, most nuggets would tell you, pure blind-assed luck.
That, at least, was the way dive bombing had been executed for the first fifty or sixty years of aerial warfare. But towards the end of the Vietnam war came weapons called “smart bombs,” and then came smart jets like the Hornet that possessed their own onboard intelligence. You still dove your airplane at the target, and you still tried to keep the pipper on the bulls eye, but the many variables—wind, speed, dive angle—were taken into account by the jet’s mission computer.
A modern fighter like the Hornet employed a system called auto-bombing. The heart of the system was the jet’s mission computer, into which was fed data from the fighter’s inertial navigation platform—dive angle, velocity, drift—all the factors that determined the bomb’s impact point on the ground.
During his bomb run, the pilot superimposed an illuminated pipper in his windscreen display over the bulls eye, then “designated” the target by thumbing a button on his stick. A vertical line, called the DIL (Displayed Impact Line) appeared on the HUD (head up display). The pilot pulled up from the target, keeping his wings level, using the DIL for guidance. The computer figured out the release point and—Whump!—kicked the bomb off the jet at the precise moment.
“Be on the line,” said Barney, stuffing a fresh wad of dip under his lip. “That’s how you get hits. At this point, anything inside of fifty feet is awesome. In a few weeks, you’ll be pissed about anything over thirty.”
It was still possible, of course, to make gross errors. The computer’s logic could be severely skewed by ham-handed control inputs from the pilot, or by sloppy and imprecise target designation.
Auto-bombing was used to drop what they called “iron” bombs. These were “dumb” weapons like the 500 lb. Mark 82s, 1000 lb. Mk 83s, and 2000 lb. Mk. 84s. Dumb bombs were nothing more than streamlined containers for raw high explosives, no different in principle from the conventional bombs used in World War II. Any intelligence imparted to dumb bombs came from the fighter’s onboard computer prior to weapon release. Once released, the dumb iron bomb soared off on its mindless way like a thrown dart.
The Hornet also carried modern “smart” weapons, like the Maverick and Walleye, which were video guided bombs equipped with control vanes that allowed the bomb to be “flown” to its target while the attacking aircraft made its escape. These were among the spectacularly successful weapons the world watched on CNN during the Gulf War—bombs and missiles that could be threaded through the ventilator shafts and half-opened windows of Iraqi buildings.
But for a nugget fighter pilot, all that would come later. Fallon was where you came to learn the basics. That meant you learned dive bombing the old-fashioned way—dropping dumb bombs with the assistance of the Hornet’s computers.
That’s what they would do, day after day on the weapons ranges at Fallon. The nuggets would practice diving at high-angle, low-angle, from all altitudes. At first they would practice on the giant circular dart board targets marked on the ground, then they moved on to “real” targets—tanks, trucks, fabricated buildings. They practiced low altitude “lay down” delivery, releasing simulated napalm and cluster bombs from as low as three hundred feet.
On the wall of the briefing room was a blown up aerial photograph of the target complex. “See this nice big, tempting bulls eye?” Barney said, pointing to a target with concentric rings. “Don’t even think about it. That ain’t your target. That’s the nuke target. It’s only used for dropping those big two thousand pound simulated nuclear bombs.” He pointed to a smaller, less distinguishable target about a mile away. “This is the one you’re looking for.”
He rapped on the photograph. “I’ll say it again, just for effect: Don’t fuck up and go for the wrong target. Once a month some dumb shit bombs the wrong target, and it’s an automatic SOD.”
The students all nodded. Wrong target? Yeah, we know that. It was pretty obvious. What kind of dumb shit would make a mistake lik
e that?
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They took off in ten second intervals. Barney first, then Dirk Henschel, who was the left wingman— dash two (number two in the formation). J. J. Quinn, being junior in rank to Henschel, was assigned to the dash three position, off Barney’s right wing. At the far right side of the formation, in the dash four spot, was Shrike.
They flew over the southern boundary of the target complex at fifteen thousand feet. Barney checked in with Range Control on the tactical frequency.
“Roger, Roman Five-nine. With positive target identification, you’re cleared in hot. The range is hot.” “Hot” meant the jets were cleared to arm their systems and release weapons on the target.
Barney signaled Henschel by radio to slide over to the right side, into the gap between the leader and J. J. Quinn in the number three jet. In a loose right echelon—the jets stacked on the right side—Barney led the flight into the target area. One by one, at seven second intervals, they broke off to the left, setting up a race track pattern around the bombing target on the ground.
Barney rolled in. Seven seconds later, Henschel.
Eight more seconds. J. J. Quinn was next.
J. J. was suddenly very busy. It was an abrupt switch from flying formation, with all your attention focused on the airplane directly next to you, then coming back inside the cockpit, punching up all the buttons and switches for bombing, getting the jet in the right place to dive on the target.
J. J.’s gloved fingers were darting across the digital display indicators like nervous ferrets.
Select the right program, the one that will drop only one bomb at a time.
Select auto-bombing mode.
Select the Master Arm switch on.
Where was the damned target? There. Right under the left wing.
Okay, start your roll in. Be aggressive. That’s what Barney told them. Squat the jet. Honk the sucker around, snap the nose down on the bull. . . there it is. . . get the pipper over there where it belongs. . . designate the thing. . . hit the pickle button. . . check your altitude. . . fifty-five hundred, start your pull up. . ..follow the DIL. . . stay on the line, keep the wings level. . .
Plink. The bomb released.
“Dash three,” came the voice of the range spotter. “What target are you aiming at?”
What target? Quinn was confused. Why would the spotter be asking a question like. . .
J. J. had four G’s on his jet, pulling up from his dive. He craned his neck to look backward and down, down there at the big inviting target, just in time to see the white plume of smoke erupt from his bomb.
The nuke target. Just like Barney said. Once a month some dumb shit bombs the wrong target. . .
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
FALLON
The days at Fallon were long. By the time the nuggets finished with debriefing, viewing their cockpit tapes, and putting in some mission planning, it was well after dark. Usually, no one felt like going into town, which was five miles away and required cleaning up and changing clothes. They just slouched over to the officers’ club bar, where it was okay to wear their stained and evil-smelling flight suits, and slammed down a few cold beers.
For decades the O’ club bar had been called Ruthie’s, after the bartender and proprietress. Ruthie was a Navy icon. She had been running the O’ club bar at Fallon, everyone figured, since Nimitz was a midshipman. It was her bar, and in it Ruthie was the final authority on everything—dice rolls, bombing bets, career decisions, marital problems.
She was fifty-something, short and roundish, tough as a Nevada muleskinner. She dispensed justice old west-style—by heaving troublemakers out on their tails. Rank was irrelevant. Ruthie threw out commanders, captains, colonels—offenders of all stripe. Usually, they came slinking back the next day bearing flowers and apologies.
The place was a shrine to naval aviation. The walls were covered with squadron plaques, patches, decals, memorabilia from long ago wars and campaigns, yellowed photographs of airplanes and aviators long extinct. Ruthie had known them all.
On a rare evening, the nuggets would change out of their grungy flight suits, clean up, and head into town.
Fallon was like something from a Clint Eastwood movie. It had a wild west flavor that appealed to young fighter pilots: the snow-crested Sierra range, the windblown, sagebrush-and-rattlesnake feel of the high desert, the gambling houses and the rude cow town flavor of the community. You got the feeling that this was a very good place for gunslingers.
Fallon had no visible industry other than a few casinos and the stockyards at the edge of town, which, with an east wind, gave the place a rich, moist manure smell. Visiting aviators favored a joint called the Bird Farm, a dumpy looking bar with a hand-painted sign that read “Fifty Cent Craps.” The Bird Farm had a juke box and a few blackjack and craps tables and a cheerful, go-to-hell ambiance. Like Ruthie’s, it had Navy memorabilia all over the walls—plaques and posters and photographs of old and dead warriors. It was run by a grizzled old retired Navy chief petty officer. The chief didn’t mind if his young fighter jocks got a little shit-faced and rowdy as long as they paid for their beer and left some change on the blackjack tables.
After a session of drinking and gambling, you could go next door to La Cantina, a Mexican restaurant, just as dumpy as the Bird Farm, with the right kind of atmosphere for a gaggle of pilots with a load on. At the front door was a miniature golf putting lane where you could gamble for your dinner.
A night on the town in Fallon was a rare treat for the nuggets. Even then, they went home early. Training days at Fallon always began before dawn.
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It was even more intense than the tough grind back at Cecil. Briefings for the first flights on the weapons range began at 0530 (5:30 A. M.). Each student flew twice a day. Briefing, flying the mission, debriefing, repeating the cycle in the afternoon-- consumed twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours of each day. In between training flights and in the evenings the students were required to plan low altitude navigation flights and coordinated deep air strikes.
It was a bone-numbing, wearying schedule. “There’s too much to learn,” Road grumbled one night over a beer. “We should have done some of this mission-planning and map-studying back at Cecil.”
No one disagreed. Each of the nuggets was looking hollow-eyed and drained. Burner was not his wise-cracking self. He was slouched against the bar, nursing a beer. Neither of the McCormacks felt like Heckling and Jeckling. J. J. was not only feeling like the old man of the bunch, he looked it. His thirty-five year old face looked like it was sixty. The flecks of gray hair were turning to streaks. Shrike Hopkins and Angie Morales stopped in to say hello to the guys, then headed for their rooms.
But it was worth it. For the first time they were doing something with the jet, not just taking off and flying around, then trying to get the thing back on the ground in one piece. All the years of training—college, flight training, graduate school—were finally coming down to this: They were performing a mission.
Sure, it was still training, but in another part of the world those could be enemy tanks and trucks down there, and those winding desert roads could just as well be your ingress route to Bosnia or Iran. Those adversary fighters lurking out there to intercept you were every bit as adept and clever as the MiGs over the Iraqi desert.
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A pecking order had begun to emerge among the nuggets of 2-95 . Each weapons delivery mission—high angle bombing, low angle, strafing—was scored. And as the scores accumulated, day after day, some were consistently higher than others. The best bomber of the bunch was turning out to be Burner Bunsen.
Burner’s CEP (circle of error probability) during the second week of weapons training was twenty-six feet—the average distance from the bulls eye for each of his bombs. It was an impressive score for a nugget. Even for seasoned fleet pilots, anything inside thirty feet was considered superior marksmanship.
The other nuggets were having mixed results. One day Road Ammons managed to
put his first two bombs directly on the bulls eye. “Hooeeee!” he crowed on the radio. “Beat that, you plumbers.”
Then he proceeded to put each of his next four bombs somewhere between the hundred and two-hundred foot rings. It was the worst CEP of the day for anyone. It cost him the obligatory round of beers at the club.
Shrike was having accuracy problems. She was managing to keep most of her bombs inside the hundred foot circle, which was considered the outer limit of acceptability. But seldom could she cluster her bomb hits really close to the bulls eye. When marked on a chart, Shrike’s hit pattern looked like a test pattern for a wide bore scatter gun.
Two students’ scores, to no one’s surprise, were nearly identical. The McCormack twins, as if to authenticate their identicalness, turned in bombing results that were nearly mirror images. Each had a CEP of forty feet. But Russ’s hits were clustered in a neat pattern at nine o’clock—the left side of the target. Rick’s were at three o’clock—on the right side. “We like to maintain a balance,” they explained.
In number of bullseyes, Chip Van Doren was the close rival of Burner. But Chip was beset with streaks of unpredictability. On any particular day he could put at least three bombs inside the twenty foot ring. The next day he couldn’t find the hundred foot circle. He would come back from such a flight, stalking across the tarmac tightlipped and frustrated.
Angie Morales was doing well, particularly with forty-five degree bombing. On each sortie she was scoring at least one bulls eye. Her CEP was in the thirties, just behind Chip Van Doren.
The greatest frustration was being felt by the ex-helicopter pilot, J. J. Quinn. He had more experience flying close to the ground than any of them. But all J. J.’s experience had been accumulated at a leisurely hundred miles an hour, plodding along at the pace of a fast mini-van. In his new life as a fighter pilot, J. J. Quinn’s view of the world had compressed to a sagebrush-and-earth-colored blur. His brain was still synchronized to helicopter speed—about four hundred miles per hour slower than his F/A-18 fighter.
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