Their victory, however, was quickly forgotten as the two pilots realized how heavily damaged their airplanes were. The Yugo was smoking and trailing oil from several large holes in its fuselage and wings. The Marut was in even worse shape: its left wing and tail-plane was mangled, and worse, it was losing fuel.
Without a word between them, the pilots turned their severely wounded planes around and began the attempt to make it back to the Fitz.
Twelve
THE COMMANDER OF THE Sakachita military base was worried.
His communication officer had just handed him a strange report. An SOS of sorts had been received by the Cult naval base twenty miles up the coast. Apparently sent from a fishing boat somewhere off the coast, the emergency call was garbled at best. In fact, no message ever came through from the civilian boat, and that was the problem. Civilian fishermen were under strict orders not to use military band radio unless they were reporting unusual activity, such as a spy plane or ship. Failure to adhere to this rule resulted in death by firing squad. Why then would a fisherman make an attempt to contact the military authorities, and then not follow through?
The commander checked his watch. It was 0615, just the beginning of his long day as the highest-ranking officer of the sprawling Sakachita installation. This was an unusual place: not only did it serve as an air station for a squadron of Cult interceptors, it was also the site for the central air defense radio network which linked all of the Cult air bases around the Home Islands. Responsibility for such a major Cult installation had been given to him by Hashi Pushi himself.
He looked out from his control tower window over the three rows of super-modified Dassault Etendard IV-Ms, the state-of-the-art aircraft of the Cult air defense forces. Usually when he gazed at these fabulous airplanes, he experienced a tinge of pride. But now a gut feeling told him that something was wrong. Suddenly the airplanes looked like sitting ducks.
He picked up his telephone and screamed a short order into it. Within 30 seconds he could see six pilots running to their Etendards, scrambled by him under the guise of a typical drill. He took a stopwatch from his pocket and started it ticking. He would be pleased if all six jets were in the air in less than four-point-five minutes.
The Viggens attacked two minutes later.
They had come in so low that the commander himself was the first to spot them. His air traffic officers were too busy getting the first three interceptors into the air to see the pair of blue dots streaking in from the eastern horizon.
But the commander saw them. They were flying faster and lower than he thought aerodynamically possible. Indeed, they were so low, their jet exhausts were actually leaving a trail of steam on the surface of the ocean as they roared in over it.
They looked so unusual, the commander had to take a few seconds just to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. When the two airplanes finally made landfall, he knew it wasn’t an illusion.
Who could they be? he wondered, just an instant before he let out a scream.
But his cry of alarm came about two seconds too late.
The first Mk 500-pound GP bomb off of Viggen One slammed into the Sakachita control tower, obliterating it and everyone inside, including the base commander.
Viggen Two came in right behind, pouncing on the three rows of parked Etendards, blasting away with its four 20mm cannons. The high-explosive cannon rounds shredded the planes, rapidly tearing apart their fuselages, engines, and cockpits, and igniting their fuel tanks.
Meanwhile, Viggen One swung back around and took out the taxiing and runway strips with a matched set of Durandel antirunway bombs. Each bomb exploded on impact, tearing up large craters and wildly spewing the runway with concrete and flaming debris. The converted Swedish fighter then turned and made a second pass to do the same thing all over again. Three enemy airplanes had taken off just as he and his partner had roared in; he wanted to make sure that it would be a long time before any plane left this airfield again.
By that time, the pilot of Viggen Two had banked hard left, and was making his turn to come back and tear up more Etendards. Suddenly his airplane began shuddering. He looked over his shoulder and saw two of the scrambled Etendards bearing down on him from his six o’clock, their nose cannons ablaze. With his bomb racks still overloaded, the Viggen pilot quickly lit his afterburner and banked hard right. The Etendards followed the maneuver and were soon back on the Swedish fighter’s tail. The Viggen pilot then screeched hard left, bringing him back out over the sea. The Etendards mimicked this maneuver too, all the while closing in for the kill on the slower, overloaded airplane.
The Viggen suddenly pulled back and went straight up, its overworked engine straining for altitude. The Cult fighter pilots couldn’t believe their good fortune. Their airplanes could climb much faster than an ordinary Viggen, never mind one so loaded down with bombs. Though the Cult pilots had no idea who the attacking pilot was, they were sure he was about to pay with his life for daring to attack their Homeland.
And that’s where they were wrong.
For when the Viggen suddenly turned over at about 4000 feet, the Cult pilots found themselves looking up at a pair of A-7 Strikefighters coming out of the clouds and right down at them.
The Etendard pilots tried to break off and get away from the ferocious Strikefighters, but it was much too late for that. Each A-7 unleashed a wicked barrage of 20mm cannon shells. Each fusillade quickly found its mark. Within seconds, the pair of Etendards were falling into the sea, almost side-by-side, aflame and in pieces.
Meanwhile the pilot of Viggen Two was weaving his way through scattered anti-aircraft fire, intent on bombing his main target, the massive radio communication network complex located on the edge of the huge airfield.
Orbiting overhead, however, the pilot of the third and last of the Cult Etendards saw the Swedish fighter begin its bombing run and quickly dived toward it.
As soon as the slower Viggen crossed his sight lines, the Cult pilot opened up with a long burst from his dual 20mm cannons. The shells danced along the thin outer edges of the Viggen’s wings, causing the pilot to quickly break off his bombing run and roll hard off to the east. The speedier Etendard shot up past him but then twisted around, staying right on the tail of the slower Swedish airplane.
Undeterred, the pilot of Viggen Two snapped hard left and began a bombing run on the communications complex from the opposite direction. He knew he had to unload his ordnance if he was going to try to get out from under this pesky Cult fighter, yet he had at least to try to hit the main target.
The Etendard, now right on the Viggen’s tail, opened up with his 20mm cannon again, this time chopping off good-sized chunks of fuselage, but the Viggen was able to jink and jag just enough to dodge most of the deadly fire. Then, for the next two and a half seconds, the Viggen stayed straight and true, aiming right at the communications complex. The Etendard pilot faithfully hung on the Viggen tail and increased his speed, trying to line up his sights for yet another burst that he hoped would finally put this infernal flying machine down once and for all.
Just as he was about to release a burst, the Etendard pilot saw the Viggen drop everything he had, the Beluga Cluster Dispensers, the Mk82 Snakeye retared bombs, and the Mk 500-lb GP bombs, right into the radio complex. With the sudden loss of all that ordnance, the Viggen virtually disappeared from in front of the Etendard, and the enemy pilot found himself heading straight into the resulting massive explosion. At that instant, his radar warning buzzed loudly, alerting him to the fact that a heat-seeking AIM-9 Sidewinder, fired from a tracking Strikefighter, was just about to fly up his exhaust. Caught between a rock and a hard place, the Cult pilot streaked into the rising ball of flame from the destroyed radio complex just as the Sidewinder slammed into his tail.
He never knew which one killed him.
The Strikefighters formed up and turned back toward the enemy flight line, strafing what was left of still-intact enemy airplanes. By the time they were done, all that was left
of the Cult squadron were shattered, twisted, and smoking hulks of blackened scrap metal.
The A-7s immediately exited the target area, catching up with the Viggens that had streaked off seconds before. The mission had been a huge success, but it was apparent that both Viggens were hurting badly. Each had vital electronic functions knocked out, Viggen One’s landing gear had fallen open and couldn’t be cranked up, and Viggen Two was handling poorly due to damage to its left wing.
The pair of Strikefighters quickly rallied around the battered Swedish fighters, and as one the four planes turned east, starting the treacherous flight back to the Fitzgerald.
In all, the air strike had taken less than ninety seconds.
Activity aboard the USS Fitzgerald was approaching sheer pandemonium.
The two Tornados had already “landed hard”—logbook terminology for “crashed.” Both had their landing gear and control surfaces chewed up; both ended up sliding in on their underbellies and catching the last arrestor wire after skidding almost halfway down the deck.
Viggen Two had returned about ten minutes later. Its right-side ailerons were completely shot away, and the pilot reported he was getting a negative light on his airbrake assembly. Its pilot somehow floated the beat-up Swedish fighter in, losing part of his wing but snapping his brakes into working condition with the first bounce on the carrier deck. He too connected with the fourth and last arrestor wire.
Viggen One bounced in for a fairly normal landing, its right-side gear bending but holding as the pilot caught the three wire. The Strikefighters held off on recovery, making way for the shot-up oddballs, the Yugo and the Marut.
Neither could slow down enough for a normal approach, so they were forced to lower the airspeed gradually by circling the carrier with the gear down, slowing their jet engines until they were barely airborne. Still, both came in hard and nearly out of control—their tailplanes were totally useless or so full of holes that they made no difference whatsoever as they hit the deck. The Marut hit the one wire so hard coming in, it snapped it. The Yugo sliced off three feet of its right wing by smashing into the island itself. Both pilots escaped with just cuts and bruises.
The flight deck was now awash in hot, slick oil, firefighting foam, and smoky jet fuel. Only by the professionalism of the crew and the superb skill of the pilots was order somehow maintained in the face of the chaos.
Damage control reports continued to be sent to the bridge. “The Ball,” a series of vertical lights used to alert incoming pilots as to whether they are too low or high on an approach, had been hit by part of Viggen Two’s left wing when it snapped off a plane as it slammed onto the deck. It could not be repaired. Elevator Number Two was jammed midway down its shaft from hot oil that had leaked down and shorted out its electrical power. It was now covered in Purple-K flame retardant foam and likely unrepairable.
There were at least six fires barely under control topside, and two more in the hangar deck that had just started in the heavily-damaged planes that had been brought below. The regular firefighting crews were stretched to the far edges of their abilities; now everyone on board who could be spared was battling the fires.
When the first A-7 finally came in, it skidded on the foam and oil, crashing through the netlike safety barrier strung beyond the four wire, stopping just inches from going over the side. With the pilot trapped inside the cockpit, the airplane teetered precariously on the lip of the carrier.
Without prompting, the USS Cohen was immediately alongside, several of its bravest crew members crawling out on its main loading crane and rescuing the dazed, grateful pilot. Then they attached a steel cable around the nose landing gear of the airplane, and thus stabilized, the deck crew on the Fitz was able to winch the Strikefighter back onto the deck.
It was now 0755.
Yaz was in the bridge, impatiently awaiting the arrival of the Fiat G.91 and the A-4E Skyhawk. In many ways it was those two airplanes that had faced the most difficult mission of them all.
Their assignment was to go directly to the center of the port city of Yokohama and destroy the main telephone switching station, a place which routed every phone call made on the main Japanese island of Honshu. In one sense, the switching station was a “soft target”: it could be taken out with one or two direct hits.
But in reality, it was the hardest target any of them took on.
Besides being defended by the heaviest concentration of antiaircraft defenses than all the other targets combined, it was also situated between a civilian hospital and a prisoner-of-war camp. This particular strike called for absolute precision under the most difficult of circumstances. Jones knew it when he designated the mission; the pilots who were to fly this mission knew it when they accepted.
But the risks involved had remained unspoken.
Yaz and his entire bridge crew scanned the horizon. The two Yokohama planes were long overdue, way, way past their bingo points. Everyone was just about to give up hope when they noticed a single tiny speck in the distance, heading toward the carrier.
Radar confirmed the sighting, Yaz, relieved that at least one of the planes was returning, was remorseful of the loss of the other. Then the “speck” got bigger. Finally it was close enough for everyone to make out clearly what was coming on home.
The crew was simply astounded.
There was only six feet left of the right wing of the Fiat. The Skyhawk, precisely matching airspeed, altitude and attitude, was flying alongside and slightly ahead of his partner, his left wing almost touching the stump that remained of the Fiat’s right wing, thereby providing what aerodynamic experts would call “false lift.” (The airflow created by the Skyhawk’s wing allowed the Fiat’s busted wing to pass through much diminished air resistance, thereby not requiring it a lot of wing area to stay airborne.)
Yaz could only speculate the daring that the two pilots must have displayed in the attempt and the success of achieving this tenuous position. He knew quite well that when a jet loses a wing, it’s no longer a flying machine, it’s a rocket spinning wildly out of control. He also knew that they had only one chance of making it back onto the carrier.
Together the two planes flew, straight and true and right for the landing deck. Radio chatter confirmed the situation, and the bridge requested that the Skyhawk bring the Fiat in to the point of landing, and then break away, letting the Fiat try to come in by itself. It was the safest and most logical way to handle this most unsafe and illogical situation.
But then the Skyhawk pilot feigned radio breakdown. Everyone on the bridge knew it was an old trick that pilots often used to get what they wanted. It was dangerous, but no one dared call this brave pilot on it. Instead, they held their breaths …
The planes remaining on deck—the A-7s and the Yugo—were hurriedly pushed, by hand, by every available sailor and pilot that could be mustered, to the remaining working elevators, and deposited in a heap in the hangar deck. Seawater mixed with detergent solvent was pumped up through the firehoses and sprayed across the landing deck in an attempt to rid it of the hundreds of gallons of JP-8 jet fuel, hydraulic oil, and grease that had spilled or poured from the injured birds that had landed earlier. Last, a fresh layer of foam was spread out across the deck to prevent any fires from breaking out, and a double layer of steel netting was loosely stretched across the far end of the landing area.
All this was accomplished in a matter of two minutes, and everyone was standing by just as the two stricken airplanes made their last approach, demonstrating the tightest of precision flying possible.
Slowly, they both eased in, just above stall speed. The two pilots were bringing them on down so incredibly smoothly, that it looked like they were literally attached to each other.
With what was left of their landing gear they both touched down at once. Both planes’ tail hooks snared the two wire at the same time, and instead of the pilots pushing to full power, they both immediately killed their engines. The two planes smashed into the safety barrier, stopped
dead in their tracks with a screech of smoke and sparks, and then fell in against each other.
Within seconds, the firecrews had the pilots out and both planes covered in even more foam. From the bridge, Yaz saw the pilot of the Fiat and the pilot of the Skyhawk look up toward him.
They gave Yaz the “Thumbs Up.” Mission accomplished.
Yaz returned the gesture with a salute for a job well done.
Then he checked the time. It was 0800. The only ones left out there were the two Alphas. And Hunter.
Thirteen
BOTH FRENCH ALPHA JET E trainers were struggling under the weight of the six bombs under their wings.
Their mission had been a long and arduous one so far. They’d been loitering just outside the estimated radar range of the Cult coastal defense units, flying at wavetop level for nearly ninety minutes. Down in the luggish air near the surface of the ocean, their jet engines were forced to work harder, churning up the heavy air and turning it into jet power. As a result, they were both burning up fuel at a dangerous rate.
Yet it was part of the plan that their journey was the longest of all the TF Squadron. The Alphas couldn’t hit their targets until 0815—when they could be reasonably sure that the other strike craft had completed their missions.
It was now 0810.
Flying just 500 feet above the Alphas, Hawk Hunter did one last check of his flights systems. Everything looked okay. He waited while another five minutes slowly ticked off the clock. Finally it was 0815.
“Showtime,” Hunter thought.
He wagged his wings, the prearranged signal for the Alphas to follow his lead. As three, they climbed to 750 feet and broke in over the coastline. They had exactly three minutes to get to their target: the military stronghold of Tokyo itself.
Several klicks in, Hunter raced forward of the Alphas. He quickly judged the wind currents over the city, which they were approaching from the south.
“Winds are steady at about twenty knots,” he radioed back to the Alphas, all need of radio silence now gone. “Looks like it’s from the southwest.”
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