by Bart Gauvin
Olsen didn’t like that last bit. If the Soviets didn’t respect Finnish neutrality, it meant they could launch aerial attacks from a much broader front than Norway’s own narrow frontier.
“Roger, Backstop,” he acknowledged.
Once settled on an easterly course, he and Bjorn pushed their throttles forward and shot back toward the airfield from which they’d launched less than an hour ago. In under five minutes they watched the first blue- and white-painted Scandinavian Airlines Fokker 50 lift off the runway. Olsen looked down from ten thousand feet through scattered clouds to see the Fokker fly out over the fjӧrd. Its propellers clawed the air under the aircraft’s high-slung wings as it gained speed, then banked left, setting a southwesterly course for Swedish airspace. Surely the Soviets aren’t bold enough to pick a fight with the Swedes as well, Jan thought. He and Bjorn banked their jets to circle the airfield as the second Fokker took off.
As they turned, Backstop called, “Two-One, continue east. The Vardø escort ran into some trouble and diverted to engage bandits to the southeast. Standby for immediate divert task but pick up the Vardø escort job, then remain over Banak. There is some major action developing to your south, but nothing from the east right now.”
“Backstop, what about Kirkenes? Anything coming out of there?” Jan asked. Covering an evacuation out of there would be hairy, to say the least. He wanted as much information as possible to prepare.
“Negative, Two-One. Kirkenes tower went off the air a few minutes ago.”
Olsen allowed that news to sink in for a moment. It was all happening so fast! He had already lost two of his pilots, one third of his Banak dispersal group in just half an hour of combat. People were fleeing the far north, and now Kirkenes had, what, Fallen already? Jan’s hand tightened around his sidestick in growing anger and his breathing quickened. He pushed the emotion aside as best he could. It doesn’t matter right now. Get the evacuation flights to safety.
They met the Vardø flight over the port town of Batsfjӧrd on the north coast. As Olsen and Jan accompanied the passenger flight the short distance to Banak, the pilot called Olsen and told him they’d seen Soviet landing craft approaching Vardø from the east. Jan passed the information to Backstop as he and Bjorn finished their brief escort and turned back east.
While the civilian airliners fled to safety, they listened over the net as a major raid developed to their south. The Backstop radar station was the new target. Bombers to finish the job that the Scuds started earlier, Jan surmised, clenching his teeth. Backstop is all we have now. He threw up a silent prayer that his forces could, at the least, stall the Soviets. Until a replacement AWACS arrived, Backstop was vital for coordinating the defense of the Far North. Jan listened as four F-16s were vectored in to ambush a flight of MiG-27 fighter-bombers and their MiG-23MLD escorts. His comrades from 331 Squadron downed several of the raiders in two high-speed passes, forcing the remainder to break off and jettison their bombs into the snowy taiga below. Jan continued to listen as the NATO pilots, their mission accomplished, dove and streaked westward, away from the surviving Soviet escorts. Then it was Olsen and Bjorn’s turn.
“Viper Two-One, Backstop. We have a raid developing to your northeast. I have eight. No. Make that ten bandits bearing zero-six-zero relative, heading northwest. Six at angels two, four more behind them at angels ten. Looks like the same composition as the raid we just broke up around our location. Expect MiG-27s escorted by -23s. Vector zero-two-five to intercept, over,” the controller ordered.
Olsen’s pulse quickened as he turned his nose to the northeast and readied himself for combat once again. They were growing short on fuel after the high-speed maneuvering earlier, and each of the Falcons only had half its missiles remaining, but he was confident. He and Bjorn had held their own against the best aircraft the Soviets could throw at them just a half hour before. The MiGs they were intercepting now were much older, no match for the sleek fighter he was flying. Both the MiG-23 air superiority fighters and MiG-27 fighter-bombers carried the NATO codename “Flogger” since they were based on the same single-tail, swing-wing airframe, which might have been cutting edge fifteen years before, but not now. Still, there are ten of them against two of us. Jan’s jaw was beginning to ache with the tension.
“Bjorn,” Olsen called his wingman, “we’ll come in low from behind and break up the bombers before they know we’re there. Then we’ll do a climbing right turn and take on the escorts before they dive on us. Got it?”
Bjorn clicked his microphone twice in response. The two fighters rocketed north on their intercept course, descending through the broken clouds that separated them from the snowy landscape below. Backstop continued to give them course corrections as they approached the Russian jets from the left-rear until: “Two-One,” the radar controller called, “those four escorts are turning towards you. Radars are coming on. Tasman IDs them as MiG-23MLDs.” Static started to interfere with the radio control net as Russian electronic jammers turned their attention towards this part of the battlefield.
What the hell? wondered Olsen, no way those Russians should have been able to know we were inbound yet. Unless—
Backstop beat him to the punch, calling to inform him through waves of electronic noise, “Tasman is reporting…Mainstays radiating now…probably have you…MiGs your way…climb to engage, over.” Olsen pieced together from the fragmented message that the Soviets apparently had their own AWACS, a Beriev A-50, NATO codename “Mainstay,” up and directing the pilots of the escorting MiG-23s towards him and Bjorn. Bad news coupled with more bad news, Jan thought as he increased power to climb. The MLD version was the most modern Flogger, this had just become a much less favorable engagement.
Within a few seconds the Norwegians’ radar warning receivers were blaring in their helmets, a clear indicator that missiles were inbound. This situation is becoming a little too familiar, thought Olsen as he scanned the sky ahead for tell-tale vapor trails.
“Two-Two,” he called to Bjorn, you evade left. I’ll break right. Once we shake the missiles, we’ll scissor up into them. Ready and, NOW!”
The nimble Falcons rolled in opposite directions and diverged until they were flying away from each other and perpendicular to the oncoming missiles. Olsen continued scanning to his left until he caught sight of the thin white trail of the missile bending towards him. He waited for a long second, then punched his chaff dispenser twice, not noticing that nothing happened after the first chaff packet exploded out the back of his aircraft. Then he rolled left and pulled up, grunting through the high-G turn. He could still see the missile tracking him. The screech of the RWR continued to scream. Finally, Jan’s tight turn forced the pursuing missile to turn so acutely that its seeker lost the return from its parent aircraft’s radar, and it streaked harmlessly past his tail.
Olsen’s maneuver had worked perfectly, and not just as an evasive tactic. Having shaken the missile, the nose of his own aircraft and the seekers heads for his three remaining Sidewinder missiles were pointed squarely at two oncoming MiGs. Now they were in range, and he had the advantage as he closed from their low front.
The MiGs were closing with Jan at a combined speed of a thousand miles per hour as he put the silhouette of the first one into his heads-up display, lining up a missile, and heard the warm purr in his helmet as the Sidewinder locked on: “Fox Two!”
In the same instant Jan saw a flash beneath the MiG’s wings as the Russian pilot launched his own infrared-guided missile. Olsen threw his sidestick to the right to evade and punched the release for his hot-burning magnesium flare decoys. The Norwegian missile exploded into the left air intake of the Soviet jet, while a split second later the Russian missile’s infrared seeker, struggling to maintain lock on the relatively cool front of Olsen’s oncoming fighter, exploded uselessly into one of the flares trailing behind.
“Splash one!” Jan called in triumph, seeing the broken airframe of his
victim spinning downward towards the ground. Then he threw his stick back to the left, executing a climbing turn to get onto the tail of the second MiG, while the Soviet turned his own ungainly fighter to try to do the same to Jan, the Flogger’s swing wings fully extended to increase maneuverability. It was a losing proposition, Jan’s nimble F-16 hopelessly outmatched the bigger Mig-23 in a close dogfight. In moments Jan was stitching twenty-millimeter cannon shells into the Soviet jet’s tail from less than three hundred meters range. Yellow flame shot from rear of the MiG as the big bullets ripped through its fuel tanks, and Olsen saw the Soviet pilot’s ejection seat shoot skyward.
Olsen had splashed two assailants, but while he did so the six fighter-bombers had continued towards the North Cape coastal radar station. Jan had lost track of Bjorn and couldn’t raise him on the radio. He continued calling to Backstop, even though communications were nearly unintelligible due to the powerful jamming. Tasman had called earlier to inform all pilots that the jamming was emanating from a Soviet “Cub-D.”. The Cub’s four “Siren” electronic countermeasures pods were jamming whatever targets of opportunity the Norwegians showed them, in this case the radio frequency that Backstop site was using to communicate with Olsen’s flight.
Jan decided to energize his radar in an attempt to find the MiG-27s. There! Six green dots on the screen, range twenty-four miles. A quick look at the LCD told Olsen that the MiGs were three hundred meters above the Porsangerfjӧrd, heading due north, accelerating towards the Cape. He didn’t think he’d be able to get to them before they reached the coastal radar north of Honningsvåg, but he intended to try with his last reserves of fuel. If only I had more missiles, Jan thought, his bitterness growing. By now he knew he wouldn’t be returning to Banak for fuel or arms.
Pushing his throttles forward to their stops he dipped his nose to trade what little altitude he had for speed. Twenty miles ahead of him the Floggers screamed past the Norwegian Coast Guard Cutter Norkapp, whose crew was desperately making for the mouth of the fjӧrd before they could turn south for safety. Going “feet dry” over the oil terminal at Honningsvåg on the southeastern coast of the North Cape’s island of Magerøya, the MiGs pulled up to clear the rugged, ice-covered cliffs. Jan continued to close on the tails of the Russian jets, but, I’m not fast enough, he raged.
The Soviets’ covered the distance from Honningsvåg to the radar station in less than ninety seconds. They released their bombs in unison, and twelve dark objects arced down towards the large white dome protecting the radar from the arctic elements as the swing-wing fighter bombers pulled up to gain separation from the coming explosions. The first blast was several hundred meters from the dome, the rest walked toward the structure in split-second thunderclap intervals. The last two bombs crashed through the already disintegrating plastic dome and detonated in a massive cloud of gray smoke, dark rock, and dirty snow, abruptly terminating the radar emissions from the sensor. Shit, thought Jan.
The MiG-27s, turned east after obliterating the coastal radar, heading home. He wanted to exact some small revenge, maybe splash one of the bandits as they withdrew, but the intervention of the two surviving MiG-23s diving on him from behind had forced him to fire one of his remaining Sidewinders at extreme range and then turn south to save himself. His missile, fired too far behind its target in a tail chase, had fallen harmlessly into the choppy waters at the broad mouth of the Porsangerfjӧrd.
Fortunately for Jan, the Russians had opted not to pursue, instead they turned to escort the fighter-bombers home. Continuing his evasive turn southward all the same, he pointed his jet’s nose towards the Cape. He tried calling Backstop once more, “Backstop,” Jan called, “give me a vector to Two-Two, over.” He needed to form back up with Bjorn. To his surprise he received a clear reply. Apparently, the Soviet jammers now had other fish to fry.
“Two-One, Two-Two is gone,” came Backstop’s somber response. “Last plotted just south of your current position, no beacon.”
Jan swallowed a dry mouth, It can’t be. Bjorn is too good a friend, too good a pilot to be gone just like that!
Then his own eyes confirmed his wingman’s death. As he pulled up and went feet dry over the Cape, he couldn’t fail to see the pyre of black smoke rising from an orange fire on the snowscape to his front. As Olsen flew over the crash site, he looked down to see the broken piece of a wing lying in among the snow-covered rocks and other debris. The wing still showed the blue and red roundel marking of the Royal Norwegian Air Force. Backstop said no beacon, so he hadn’t ejected either.
Jan blinked away tears as he continued southwest, realizing one of his closest friends was truly gone. A call from Backstop yanked his consciousness back into the present. “Two-One, come to bearing two-six-zero. Major raid developing against Banak. Clear the airspace so Three-Three can intercept. Vector for Tromsø to rearm and refuel.”
And which wingman will I lose on that one, Olsen wondered bitterly. Now three of the five pilots who’d flown north with him were gone. Rage began to overtake the heavy sadness in his chest. The Russian invaders were stripping him of his friends one by one. They had to be stopped. Then he realized: Raid. Banak. I promised to protect Erik!
CHAPTER 60
1340 CET, Sunday 13 February 1994
1240 Zulu
HNoMS Terne, off the North Cape
SIX MILES TO the west, between the rocky, icy cliff walls of the inlet called Tuorm, were accelerating towards the mouth of the inlet when the radar station went silent. The small flotilla was one of three such groups that put to sea earlier in the day, when the world was still at peace, to lie in wait along Norway’s craggy north coast as insurance against a Soviet naval offensive. Norway’s numerous and dangerous fleet of small craft was an integral part of the defense plan in the event of war. That investment was about to be tested.
The technicians manning the North Cape radar, after surviving the Scud attack and repairing their equipment, had been providing the captain of the Tern, a tall, hollow-cheeked officer named Egil Møller, with position reports on a group of four Soviet Nanuchka-class corvettes passing through the gray waters twenty-two miles due north. As the three Norwegian craft crossed from the relatively calm waters of the fjӧrd out to the chop of the wintry Barents Sea the reports ended mid-sentence.
Møller’s group was en route to ambush the Soviet corvettes before they could turn southwest into the Norwegian Sea and make for the port of Tromsø. Møller was counting on the radar to provide targeting data so he could launch his Penguin II anti-ship missiles at their maximum twenty-mile range without having to turn on his own radar to provide a vector. The shorter range of the older Penguin I missiles on the other two boats would force his comrades on Rapp and Storm to close a further five miles to make their own attacks. The loss of the coastal radar severely limited the group’s options.
The Norwegian tactic was to rely upon the rugged coastline behind them to mask their craft from the Nanuchkas’ radar, and thus from the six radar-guided SS-N-9 “Siren” anti-ship missiles carried by each of the Soviet ships. This was important. The Soviet weapons out-ranged the Norwegians’ infrared-guided Penguins by a factor of three, hampering a proper radar fix was essential for survival. Moreover, the Norwegians needed an accurate update on the Soviets’ position in order to get the Penguins’ short-range infrared seekers close enough to acquire the enemy ships. With the coastal radar now a smoking ruin, the only alternative was to find the enemy themselves by leaving the safety of the rocky cliffs and using their onboard radar, thus turning on an electronic search light that the Soviets could hardly miss. The small flotilla accelerated north out of the fjӧrd to engage.
Møller ordered his command to their maximum speed of thirty-two knots. The Tern would need four minutes to close on the Russians, as long as they didn’t change from their last reported course and speed. The older boats would need twelve.
Aboard the lead Nanuchka, the MRK Priboy
, the senior Soviet captain listened as his radar room reported tracks coming out of the fjӧrd mouth to the west of the Cape. “Definite contacts, tovarich Captain,” the technician was saying, “but I cannot pick them out individually against the cliffs. Too much clutter.”
The captain nodded with a knowing grin. His intuition had been right. The strategy from the beginning had been to trawl along the coast, tempting the dangerous Norwegian boats out into open water where they could be destroyed by his longer-ranged weapons. He reached for his radio and ordered his flotilla into a prearranged turn to the north, away from the emerging Norwegians. He would force the enemy boats to chase him to where his sensors could track them sufficiently and guarantee hits with his missiles.
Three miles north of the Soviet corvettes, the modern Norwegian diesel submarine Ulstein hovered at communication depth twenty-five miles off the Cape. Her captain smiled to himself as his small sonar room reported the course change for the Soviet ships. The Nanuchkas possessed far too much speed for his submarine to stalk them effectively, so he’d been hoping for something, probably the missile boats he knew were lurking in the area, to force the Russians ships north into the engagement envelope of his torpedoes. Now something had. Patience had paid off.
“Torpedo room,” the captain called, “how is our firing solution to the contacts?”
“Captain, we have good solutions for all four. I assess that the lead two, contacts One and Three, won’t be able to evade based on their new course,” the Ulstein’s weapons officer responded
The captain nodded, then ordered, “Very well. Prepare to fire one weapon each at One and Three. Stand by for the same at Contacts Two and Four on my order”
“Captain, high-speed screws to our front! Torpedoes in the water dead ahead! I estimate two thousand meters, captain!” screamed the sonar officer onboard the Priboy.