They skimmed a hummock, then left the moon and stars and entered a dark world. At first Lundeen maintained about twenty feet between his cockpit and Jake’s right wingtip. But as they descended through the sodden clouds, the rainwater streaked in horizontal lines across his canopy, distorting the fading lights of the tanker. So Sammy moved closer until less than ten feet separated his plexiglass from the tanker’s wingtip. Sammy began to perspire. He knew that if he made one error-a little more or less adjustment to the stick or throttles than necessary-he would slide away and lose the tanker in the blackness, or the planes would drift together, wings would tear off, and the machines would cartwheel into the ocean.
Marty Greve informed Lundeen, “The TACAN’s dead.” Because the ICS was malfunctioning, the bombardier had to shout over the cockpit noise. Without TACAN, the radio navigation aid, finding the carrier would be possible only with the bomber’s radar. Of course, Lundeen could receive radar vectors from the ship as long as the radio functioned, but without accurate airspeed information he was getting too close to disaster for comfort. Once the gear came down, the angle-of-attack indicator would become accurate enough to use.
He had to stay with Grafton so that no matter what else went wrong electrically he could locate the ship.
As long as he had Grafton . “How much gas, Marty?” Sammy asked, keeping his eyes fixed on the tanker.
“Three thousand,” came the shouted reply. It would be tight.
Jake leveled at 9000 feet and flew toward the fix. As soon as he crossed it, Razor reported to the ship, “Five Two Two in Marshall at time three nine. State four point eight.” Marty Greve made his report.
“Five Oh Six is at Marshall at time three nine. State two point nine.”
Jake couldn’t resist rubbing it in. “Hear that?” he asked Razor. “if we hadn’t given them that gas those bastards would be sucking their seat cushions up their asses right now.”
In the bomber Marty Greve leaned toward his pilot and remarked, as casually as he could at the top of his lungs, “We should have gotten some more fuel from Jake.”
“There are other guys up here who may need a drop too.” Lundeen’s voice broke up several times on the intermittent ICS, so just to be sure Greve understood he added, “We can make it with what we have.”
Greve merely waggled his eyebrows. He had learned long ago that a king-sized ego was as necessary to a good pilot as his flight suit.
Pilots owned the space they occupied. Lundeen thought he could fly his machine through the eye of a needle and was willing to bet his life on it. The navy took them from all walks of life an winnowed out anyone who showed signs of self-doubt -in other words, anyone who carried the usual baggage of humility that weighed down most of the Human race–and retained only those with balls the size of a grapefruit and a brain the size of a pea, or so Marty liked to announce after a couple of drinks at the officers’ club. Still, he reflected, Lundeen had a remarkable ability to look disaster in the face, flip it the bird, and go merrily on his way. Tonight the bombardier’s eyes kept swiveling back to the fuel gauge.
Greve had not been able to find the target on the first bomb run. Lundeen had insisted on flying a racetrack pattern and making a second attempt Lundeen was driving, so that is what they did. But as they turned onto the final bearing for the second try, they had run right into a flak trap. Lundeen had cussed and yelled and threatened the bombardier’s life if he didn’t break the target out of the clutter this time. He did. After the drop, Lundeen had turned hard and gone back to drop the RockEyes on the concentration of antiaircraft weapons, and the plane had been peppered again.
The RockEyes were cluster bombs: each 500-pound cannister contained almost two hundred fifty bomblets that spread out to form an oval three hundred feet long by two hundred feet wide. Each bomblet contained enough wallop to disable a tank.
They had used too much fuel, stayed too long at full throttle. Lundeen had intentionally not told the ship about the little drink they needed from the tanker so that they would never have to explain that Marty couldn’t find the target on the first pass. The pilot would never tell, would pound him on the back and roar to the world that Marty Greve was the best goddamn “beenie” who ever strapped an A-6 to his ass. But right now, Greve thought, he would admit to any sin short of sodomy if that would squeeze another grand or two of gas into the tanks.
Even as he worried, the refueling drogue on the tanker streamed again.
Greve pointed out the waiting hose to Lundeen, who was not too proud to accept a gift and maneuvered aft for a plug. When the green light went out on the tanker package, their fuel state was almost thirty-eight hundred pounds.
“Jake’s a helluva guy,” Greve said.
The Approach controller announced a time check and Razor and Greve set their clocks precisely at the mark. Jake crossed the fix inbound at 0144 and settled into a lazy turn with ninety degrees of heading change each minute.
On the right wing, Lundeen moved up and aft until he was looking at the red kneeboard light on the canopy wall near Razor’s right knee. When the clamshell speed brakes, or “boards,” began to open on the wingtip, they would block the kneeboard light from his view. If Lundeen missed the opening, or “cracking,” of the boards he would not be able to slow his craft to the same degree as the lead aircraft, even with his throttle at idle.
From Lundeen’s point of view, it would appear as if he were sliding forward in relation to the leader.
At thirty seconds to pushover, Greve warned him and he intensified his concentration. “Any time,” the bombardier hollered just as the red light in the tanker’ cockpit disappeared. Lundeen squeezed out his speed brakes and jockeyed the throttles. Jake had cracked boards, waited a half-second for Lundeen to react, then brought them on out to the full open position. That was the way it should be done but too many pilots forgot.
“Five Two Two leaving Marshall on time with Five Oh Six in tow. State three point eight.”
“Five Oh Six leaving Marshall with three point six,” Greve chimed in.
Jake had kept just enough fuel for one circuit around the pattern, which he knew he would have to fly after he dropped the bomber on the glide slope.
Approach acknowledged and directed a frequency change. Both bombardiers changed the radio channel then checked in.
At 5000 feet Jake slowed his descent and changed course to intercept the final bearing inbound to the carrier. They were still in the good. At 4000 Lundeen sneaked a glance at the radar altimeter, which he knew was not functioning. The black boxes containing the electronics for the instrument were in the rear fuselage presumably damaged by flak.
At 2000 Jake reduced his rate of descent still further and retracted the speed brakes. Sammy stayed right with him. With the throttles back they descended to 1200 feet and leveled there, still in the clouds, closing on the ship at 250 knots as they bounced in the rough air. They were twelve miles from the ship when the first F-4 missed all four of the arresting gear wires and caromed back into the air. “Bolter, bolter, bolter,” the LSO shouted over the radio.
“Boards,” Jake directed over the radio, and brought out the speed brakes.
“Gear,” he added, and dropped the landing gear and flaps.
Lundeen stayed right with him through the transition to landing configuration. “Just like the Blue Angels,” he told Marty with a hint of pride in his voice, which did not escape the bombardier. A successful pilot who would be any pilot still alive-found satisfaction in the smallest things: a good rendezvous, a well-flown instrument approach, a smooth configuration change while flying on instruments. Flight instructors nurtured this tendency from the first day the fledgling pilot crawled into the cockpit by criticizing and advising on every detail of the flyer’s art. Marty Greve had once witnessed a ten-minute conversation on the best technique of bringing a taxiing aircraft smoothly to a stop.
The turbulence was not doing Lundeen’s equilibrium any good at all. He no longer knew if his wings were l
evel or whether he was in a turn or dive. The only points of reference were the tanker’s wing and ghostly fuselage. More rain than ever streamed along his canopy.
The tanker crew tuned the backup radio to the LSO’s second frequency in time to hear Cowboy Parker trap aboard. Alternate landing frequencies were assigned to minimize the danger that the landing signal officer’s comments to the pilot on final approach would be misconstrued by the pilot immediately behind to be for him. Jake heard the second F-4 bolter and be given a downwind heading. Every plane that boltered was vectored downwind and turned into the landing pattern again with at least a five-mile straightaway on final approach. On a bad night with, say, twenty planes trying to get aboard, the bolter pattern could become jammed, the frequencies would be crammed with instructions, and the LSO would have to fight to edge in a word of advice to the pilots on the band. Fortunately only a few planes were recovering tonight. Now he heard the E A-6B successfully trap.
Jake slowed to 116 knots. The angle-of-attack needed and the indexer-a stoplight arrangement on the windscreen rail he could see as he looked toward the landing area showed he was fast. He elected to stay fast, to counteract sudden drops in airspeed caused by turbulence, until he was on the glide slope.
They were still in thick clouds. “Five Two Two, you are approaching glide path. Begin descent.”
Jake brought the power back and saw the rate-of-descent needle sag.
“Five Two Two, you are up and on the glide path.” Jake clicked the mike. “Five Two Two, call needles.”
Jake glanced at the automatic carrier landing system or A C L S , which provided a glide slope and azim display from information data-linked with a computer aboard the ship. “Needles right and centered,” he responded, which meant the instrument crosshairs showed he was slightly left of the center line but on the glide path.
“Disregard your needles. You are slightly high and right. Come left and increase your rate of descent.” Apparently the two planes in formation were descending *** the shipboard computer. Jake concentrated on instruments, scanning the heading, the rate of descent the indexer. His eyes roved constantly over the panel. They swept every instrument, taking in the information that constantly had to be correlated with the reality descending on a 3.5-degree glide slope in a sensitive machine in unstable air. Now he took off some power and trimmed the nose up a click to get to 112 knots the on-speed indication on the indexer. Then he checked the pressure altimeter and matched it with the radar altimeter. “You are on glide path and on centerline. Come right two.”
Grafton obeyed.
The LSO spoke to the Phantom ahead. “Deck heaving, keep it coming … a little power … not too much! … bolter, bolter, bolter!”
“Five Two Two is on glide path, slightly left of centerLine.” Jake dipped the right wing to correct. He was passing 500 feet. How low does this stuff go? “Five Two Two, on glide path, on centerline.”
They broke out of the clouds at 300 feet. “Ball,” Razor told him.
“Five Two Two, three-quarters of a mile. Five Oh Six, call the ball.”
Marty Greve keyed his mike. “Five Oh Six, Intruder ball, three point three.” Sammy Lundeen kept his eyes on the tanker until he saw Grafton retract his speed brakes, add power, and break away to the left. He heard his roommate tell Approach, “Five Two Two breaking away,” and heard the instruction in reply for Grafton to climb to 1200 feet and turn downwind.
Lundeen looked forward. There was the ship. He saw the ball on the left side of the landing area, the white centerline lights, and the red drop lights. These drop lights traveled down the back of the ship to the water and provided a three-dimensional reference. Instead of a windshield wiper, the A-6 used bleed air from the engines to clear rainwater from the windshield, and Greve already had it on. The indexer showed the plane was on-speed, and the ball told Lundeen he was slightly low. He made the correction.
“I’ve got vertigo,” he told Marty. He involuntarily took his eyes from the ball and glanced at the visual display indicator to reassure himself that the wings were level. He felt as though he were in a left turn and had to resist the urge to lower the right wing to correct. Even his eyes told him he was wings level, so his instincts were lying.
“Wings level,” Greve shouted. Lundeen tore his eyes back to the ball and the landing area. The ball was seesawing between the reference lights, revealing the ship’s up and down motion in the sea. He fought the nausea that came with spatial disorientation and the impulse to correct to every twitch of the glide slope indicator light, the “ball.” Out of instinct he nudge the throttles forward slightly.
“Too much power,” the LSO advised.
“Wings level,” Marty reassured him again. Lundeen jammed on the power as they sank in the turbulence created by the ship’s island, then jerked it off as they reached smoother air.
Then he crossed the ramp. Miraculously, the ball was dropping, which meant the deck was coming up toward the descending plane. The wheels smashed into the steel, the nose pitched forward, and Sammy Lundeen thrust the throttles to the firewall and automatically thumbed the speed brakes closed. He felt the welcome jolt as the aircraft began a rapid deceleration. He jerked the throttles back to idle, and the muscles in his body began to relax. “Hot damn,” he told Marty.
Carrier landings were no more than controlled crashes. On the downwind leg Jake Grafton knew Lundeen had trapped because there had been no bolter call. His attention turned to the Phantom wingman whose fuel state was becoming critical.
The wingman had bolters twice, while the lead trapped on his second attempt. Built for supersonic flight, the fighters had flight characteristics that were a result of design compromises. Their approach speeds were thirty knots faster than the A-6’s, and they were harder to handle at landing speeds. At low altitudes with their gear down the engines drank fuel at a gluttonous rate.
As Jake turned to the final bearing the lone F-4 stayed in the air, Stagecoach 203, called the ball with four thousand pounds. “Why don’t they send him to Da Nang or up to tank?” Razor asked on the ICS.
“I dunno,” Grafton replied as he dropped the gear and flaps for his approach. “They know what they’re doing.” Maybe, he added to himself.
As he slowed to an on-speed indication on the indexer he heard the tanker that had just launched check in on one of the landing frequencies. “He must have problems,” Jake said to Razor.
Now there were no “sweet” tankers–tankers capable of transferring fueling in the air. Undoubtedly, Jake thought, the ship would soon shoot the manned spare sitting on deck. If they waited much longer the lone fighter still trying to get aboard would not have enough fuel to reach an altitude at which he could rendezvous with the tanker. The fighter pilot on the ball surely knew that, too, and that knowledge would not help his concentration.
“Bolter, bolter, bolter!” the LSO shouted over the air. The frustration could be heard in his voice. “Two Oh Three, you are overcorrecting. You are trying to chase the ball. Just average it out and be smooth.”
“Be smooth” was the universal admonishment for every piloting sin. Play the stick and throttles , as if he could have fiddled in a jolting jet beating through turbulent air with rain soaking up all the light.
“Five Two Two, you are approaching glide path begin your descent…. Five Two Two, up and on the glide path…. Five Two Two, call your needles.”
“Up and right.”
“Concur. fly the needles.”
Jake Grafton concentrated on the ACLS gauge, which meant he looked at it about half the time and the altimeter, angle-of-attack, rate of descent, and gyro the other half. Flying the needles was much easier than flying the ball since the carrier’s computer stabilized the electronic glide slope regardless of the ship’s motion in the heavy swells. The optical landing system was stabilized in pitch and roll, that is, in the horizontal plane, but it could not compensate instability in the vertical plane, the up-and-down motion of the ship known as heave.
&nb
sp; As he descended he heard the pilot of the Phantom inquire about tanking or diverting to Da Nang, the nearest jet base ashore. “Da Nang is closed temporarily due to a rocket attack and the tanker is dry. We’ll get some gas in the air shortly.”
“Shortly may be just a little too late,” was the acid reply.
The tanker broke out of the clouds at 280 feet. Instantly Jake made the transition from instrument flight to visual flight, scanning the angle-of-attack, the ball, and the lineup while Razor made the ball reports.
Razor had the breed air blasting the rain from the windscreen. As Jake approached the ship he began to see the light-the ball cycle up and down between the green reference lights. He went from high to low to high again without any movement of the stick or throttles. He tried to ensure the high cycles were not farther away from the correct, centered ball, than the low cycles. Each cycle took about eight seconds as the plane closed on the ship.
Then they were there. The drop lights swept under the nose and the ball began to rise, indicating the plan had flattened its approach angle or the deck was descending. Jake pulled off a handful of power, move the stick forward a smidgen, then pulled it aft as he shoved the power back on. This maneuver violate every rule in the book-it was called “diving for the deck” but it was a sure way to get aboard when you had to. The main wheels struck the deck with a tremendous thud and the nose wheel fell the three feet to the rigid steel as the main gear oleos compressed and the engines were winding toward full power when the deceleration threw both men forward against their unyielding shoulder harnesses.
“Shit hot,” Razor said. “God, I hate this fucking business.” The taxi director led the plane to the front of the island. When it was parked, one of the squadron maintenance chiefs lowered the pilot’s ladder, opened the canopy, and clambered up. Jake tilted the left side of his helmet away from his ear so he could hear the chief. “We’re going to fill your internal tanks and shoot you again,” the chief shouted over the whine of the idling engines. “The spare tanker went down. This is our last good machine.”
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