Wovember-Juliet-641 flight, report altitude passing, radar contact, climb and maintain one-zero thousand.” A few seconds later, on the same frequency, he heard, “Lead, give me a few knots, okay?” followed by a loud feminine voice in his headset that seductively said, “Caution! Caution!”
Major Greg Mundy shook himself alert—as intended, Bitching Betty had that effect on guys. The feminine audio “caution” warning in his F-16 ADF Fighting Falcon air defense fighter was better known as Bitching Betty, a computerized female voice that calls the pilot’s attention to a problem in the aircraft; the warning was repeated visually in his heads-up display with a large flashing caution message in the center. The male voice just before Bitching Betty’s was from Mundy’s wingman, Captain Tom Humphrey, who was apparently having trouble closing in on his leader and was asking Mundy to pull off a little power.
Mundy pinched his nose through his oxygen mask and blew against his nostrils to help clear his head—knowing full well that he was just blowing the shit in his head further in, which wasn’t going to help later on—and checked around the cockpit. He finally realized he was passing three hundred knots indicated airspeed in his F-16. still in zone- five afterburner—and he still had his landing gear down. He immediately flipped the gear handle up. pulled the throttle back to military power, and then flipped his oxygen panel supply lever to oxygen 100% to get a shot of pure oxygen into his lungs.
“November-Juliet-641 flight of two departing A-City. passing five for ten thousand, check," he radioed, realizing he had not checked in with Atlantic City Approach Control either.
“Two,” Captain Tom Humphrey responded. “Tied on radar, three miles." Good wingmen rarely said more than their formation position on the radios; Humphrey was fairly new in the unit, having come directly from undergraduate pilot training. Fighter Lead-In. and F-16 Air Defense Fighter training directly to the New Jersey Air National Guard. Being a new guy, he was still a bit wordy on the radios—that would pass soon, Mundy thought.
It was a big, big mistake to do this flight. Mundy told himself. Members of the 119th Fighter Squadron “Red Devils" of the New Jersey Air National Guard, Mundy and five other F-16 ADF fighter crews had been flying six straight days of air defense alert since the terrorist emergency, pulling ’round-the-clock four-on, eight-off shifts out of Atlantic City International. But a flu bug was starting to make its way through the fighter group, and two pilots assigned to air defense duties in the Philadelphia Class B airspace had gone DNIF—Duties Not Involving Flying, which with this flu meant little more than stay in bed—so the other crews were on four-on. four-off shifts. In addition to feeling the first few chills and achiness of an oncoming bout of the flu, Mundy and his fellow Falcon pilots were just plain exhausted, and it was starting to show in his flying.
“November-Juliet-641,” Atlantic City Approach Control radioed, “have your wingman squawk standby when he gets within two miles of you. Passing ten thousand feet, contact Washington Center, button eight.”
“641 copies all, check.”
“Two.”
With the gear properly up and locked, it didn’t take long to climb through ten thousand feet on their way to fifteen thousand feet, and Mundy took his wingman over to Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center’s VHF frequency and checked in. They were almost immediately shuttled off to their UHF tactical frequency, and shortly made contact with Liberty-90, their AW ACS controller for the next four hours. The E-3C AW ACS radar plane was orbiting over Allentown, Pennsylvania, about one hundred miles to the north, providing enhanced low-altitude radar coverage for all airspace as far south as Richmond, Virginia, as far north as Boston. Having an AW ACS radar plane in the northeast United States was not as critical as in the midwest or western United States. Because of the sheer density of airports, ground-based radar coverage was so extensive in the northeast that any aircraft flying higher than two or three hundred feet aboveground was in radar contact with some FAA agency.
First order of business was an air refueling, out over the ocean about fifty miles east of Long Branch, New Jersey— the two F-16 Fighting Falcons would top off from the aerial refueling tankers at least three times during their four-hour patrol. The night was clear and beautiful, visibility about a hundred miles; the lights of New York City, Newark, Long Island, Trenton, Wilmington, Camden, Philadelphia, and even Allentown were all clearly visible. Mundy’s wingman picked out the tanker’s powerful recognition lights a few moments before the radar locked on, and they set up for the air refueling. They were going to refuel in an “anchor,” a small, tight oval pattern in which the aircraft would be in a turn for half of the contact time.
The flight of two F-16s approached the KC-135 Stra- totanker from one thousand feet below the tanker’s altitude, and as Mundy closed within five miles he made sure his precontact checklists were completed and turned all his attention to the rendezvous. He checked his blue rdy light to the right of the heads-up display, meaning that the slipway door was open, the fuel system was depressurized, the slipway lights were on, and the system ready for refueling. “November-Juliet flight, five miles,” he called. He had the tanker’s lights clearly in view, and there was no chance of flying through any clouds and losing sight of him, so he turned his attack radar to standby to keep from spraying the tanker with electromagnetic energy.
“November-Juliet flight cleared to precontact position, One-Five ready,” the tanker’s boom operator radioed. Mundy, with Humphrey on his left wing, started a slow climb, following the tanker’s rotating beacon. “One-Five coming left.” The tanker’s wingtip lights rolled gently left. Mundy used the left turn to “cut the comer” and speed up the closure, and he carefully guided himself onto the white light at the tip of the air refueling boom trailing down below the tanker’s tail.
The left turn pointed them north toward Long Island. The lights of New York that were so beautiful just a few minutes ago were serious distractions now, and Mundy had to concentrate hard on the tanker’s wingtip lights to tell how much the tanker was turning—his visual horizon was gone. “Halfway through the turn,” the tanker pilot radioed.
Soon, Mundy and Humphrey had moved to within fifty feet of the aerial refueling boom, slightly low, and they rolled out of the turn heading south. “641 stabilized precontact, ready,” Mundy radioed.
“642’s cleared to the wing,” the boom operator radioed, and Humphrey moved away from Mundy and took a position just off to the left and behind the tanker’s left wing. “641, cleared to the contact position, One-Five ready.”
“641, contact,” Mundy responded as the nozzle clunked into the F-16’s air refueling receptacle. The director lights, which were two rows of colored lights along the tanker’s belly that graphically depicted the limits of the air refueling boom, came alive, showing him slightly low and slightly behind the center of the boom’s envelope. He began maneuvering to correct, not really moving the stick but “willing” the fighter to the correct position—the F-16 was far too nimble for a pilot to make any huge corrections, especially flying five miles per minute just a few feet from another aircraft. He stole a quick peek at the fuel quantity gauge to the right of his right knee and watched the forward and aft fuel quantity pointers creep clockwise and the fuel totalizer rolling upwards.
“One-Five coming left,” the tanker pilot again reported. Mundy turned his attention back to the tanker—and the world started to spin on him.
“641, down two ... 641, down four... come left, 641 ...”
Mundy thought that he was in a tight left diving spiral, and he instinctively tried to compensate by rolling right and climbing. The combination of the left turn, no visual horizon, and his head movement to the right to check the fuel gauge caused the “spins.” He recognized it, hit the nws a/r disc msl step button on the outside of his control stick, pushed the stick forward, and transitioned to his heads-up display to get his bearings back. “One-Five, disconnect,” the boom operator reported.
“641, disconnect,” Mun
dy confirmed. His first priority was separation. He descended a few hundred feet and pulled a little power back. His head was still telling him he was in a hard left diving death-spiral, but for now his hands were believing his eyes, and his eyes were watching the flight instruments, which were telling the truth. “Ah . . . roger, I got about three thousand pounds, fuel transfer looks good, let's get 642 on the boom to make sure he can get his gas, then I’ll cycle back on to top off.”
It was a pretty weak excuse—boom operators could recognize the onset of spatial disorientation and were usually quick to either call a disconnect or guide the receiver pilot back—but everyone allowed Mundy to keep his pride. “Rrrr . . . roger, 641,” the boom operator responded, his voice telling everyone that he knew what was really happening. “You’re cleared to the right wing.” When Mundy was out of view of the boom operator, he called, “642, cleared to the contact position, One-Five ready.”
It was a tremendous relief to climb safely away from the tanker. Once safely on the tanker’s wingtip, flying very loose relaxed formation, Mundy dropped his oxygen mask, found a handkerchief in his left flight suit leg pocket, blew his nose, then massaged his sinuses to try to clear his head. No damn good. He had no choice—he retrieved a tiny bottle of nasal spray from his left leg pocket. Right surgeons would argue, but the fighter pilot’s unwritten but widely followed credo was, “Don’t Hesitate: Self-Medicate.”
The secure-voice UHF radio crackled to life: “November-Juliet-641 flight. Control, say status.”
“641 in the green, eight-point-one,” Mundy replied. He was about three thousand pounds shy of a full fuel load. “642’s on the boom.” Actually, Humphrey was having just as much trouble as Mundy did staying on the boom, but that was part of the new-guy jitters as well. Humphrey was a good stick, a good wingman.
“We’re tracking a pop-up target about one hundred and twenty miles bull’s-eye,” the controller said. “Bull’s-eye,” the navigation reference point for the air intercepts, was Atlantic City International. “Too far out for a good track. We’re doing a manual groundspeed, and he’s gone from two-forty to about three hundred in the past few minutes. Better top off and stand by to go take a look.”
“641 copies.” Mundy knew that the AW ACS controllers had three minutes from first detection to decide if an unknown aircraft was a hostile or not—that’s how much time Mundy had to get his gas. He rocked his mike button forward to the VHF channel: “642, I need to cycle back on. What’s your status?”
At that moment the boom operator reported, “Forward limit disconnect, 642.” The boom nozzle popped free of the receptacle on the F-16’s spine behind the cockpit, the lights illuminating a brief spray of fuel vapor. Humphrey had slid in so far that his F-16’s vertical stabilizer was dangerously close to the Stratotanker’s tail. He descended slightly and quickly backed away. ,
“I’m showing ten-point-one,” Humphrey radioed. “One more plug and I should be full.”
“Better let me get in there, -42,” Mundy said. “We might have visitors.”
“Roger,” Humphrey acknowledged. “Clearing to the left wing.”
“Copy, 642, clear to the tanker’s left wing.” As Humphrey moved away from the boom, the boom operator said, “641, cleared to the contact position, One-Five ready.”
“641, moving in . . .”
“Taking fuel, 641, no leaks”
Mundy was doing pretty well this time—in fact, he was so steady, and concentrating so hard on staying that way, that a new problem cropped up: autokinesis. The green “forward/aft” director light suddenly seemed to move, not up and down along the row of director lights, but in a slow clockwise spiral. Mundy knew what it was—a form of spatial disorientation when a stationary point of light would appear to move by itself, following tiny movements of the eyeballs. He tried hard not to follow the light, but there was no way of stopping the slight, almost subconscious commands to go to the flight controls.
“641, stabilize . . . down four .. .”
It was no use—the spinning was getting worse by the second. Mundy hit the disconnect button just as the director light hit the aft limit: “641, disconnect...”
“641, breakaway, breakaway, breakaway/” the boom operator shouted on the radio. Mundy’s reaction was automatic: throttle to idle, nose down, positive rate of descent. He glanced up and saw the boom operator’s observation window just a few scant feet away—he had come just a few milliseconds from hitting the tanker. The tanker pilot had cobbed his four throttles to military power and hauled back on the stick at the “breakaway” call, and they had still avoided hitting each other by less than a yard.
Get on the instruments, Mundy commanded himself. The sudden deceleration was causing his head to spin downwards, making him pull the F-16’s nose up, but he knew it would cause a collision if he let that happen. He choked back the overwhelming sensation of tumbling and spinning and focused on the attitude indicator, forcing it to stay at wings level and 5 degrees nose down. He saw the altimeter spinning downwards and applied a little power to level off. “641 is clear, One-Five,” he radioed. Mundy took his hands off the control stick momentarily, felt around his right instrument panel, and flipped on all the exterior lights.
“I’ve got a visual on you, 641,” the boom operator said. “Our next turn is coming up. Do you have a visual on us?” “I’ve got a pretty good case of the leans,” Mundy said, still staring at the attitude indicator but finally getting enough stability back to glance at the heads-up display and other indicators. “I’ll stay straight and level at the bottom of the block. Make your turn in the anchor. 642, come join on me after you’ve made the turn. I’ll let Liberty know what’s going on.” He pressed the mike button aft to the SECURE UHF position: “Control, 641 flight is rejoining, two in the green, about eleven apiece.”
“Copy, 641,” the weapons controller aboard the AW ACS radar plane responded. “641 flight, vector heading one-six- zero, your bogey is at one hundred bull’s-eye low, speed three-twenty, ID only, report tied on.”
“641 flight copies, check.”
“Two,” Humphrey replied.
“641 turning right,” Mundy radioed. His case of the leans was just about cleared up, but his congestion was as bad as ever and probably getting worse. The shit was starting to pile up, he warned himself... “642, I’m at zero-two- zero for seventy-five bull’s-eye at angels seventeen.”
“Tallyho.” Humphrey had visual contact on him, so Mundy pushed the throttle up to military power, got on his vector heading, and started his pursuit. Humphrey would catch up as he could, and report when he was back in formation with his leader.
With a closure rate of almost a thousand miles per hour, the intercept did not take long. Mundy’s radar found a lone blip on the screen about seventy miles from the New Jersey coast. Mundy used the radar cursor control on the throttle quadrant to move the cursor on the radar return, then hit his designate target button on his control stick and received an audio lock in his headphones and a lock indication on his heads-up display. He then hit the iff interrogate button on his control stick, and a row of code letters appeared on his radarscope, ix 2X 3X 4X cx, which meant that the target he had locked on to was transmitting no air traffic control signals. With wackos like Cazaux flying around, this was definitely a hostile act, not to mention a really stupid thing to do—if I had an IFF or radio malfunction at night, Mundy thought, I wouldn’t fly anywhere near U.S. airspace these days.
“Control, 641, radar contact, twelve o’clock, thirty miles low, no paint.”
“That’s your bogey,” the weapons controller confirmed, “641 flight, check noses cold, ID only.”
Mundy checked the weapons status readouts on his left multifunction display. He carried two AIM-120 Ram radar- guided missiles and four AIM-9P Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles, plus two hundred rounds of ammunition for the gun and two external fuel tanks. Right now he had no weapons selected, none armed. “641 confirms nose cold for the ID pass, check.”
The last ten miles to the intercept turn passed very quickly. The bogey was screaming now, almost four hundred miles an hour, and he had descended to barely three thousand feet above the ocean. This was not a smuggler or a terrorist—this guy appeared on a military attack profile! Mundy remembered that the Cuban drug smugglers . stopped by the Hammerheads a few years earlier had used military aircraft to deliver drugs—maybe Cazaux had turned to military aircraft as well. That thought didn’t cheer Mundy up one bit.
Well, it was time to see what the story was. At fifteen miles distance, high and slightly to the left of the unknown aircraft’s nose, Mundy started a tight left turn and a rapid descent. He was passing twelve thousand feet on his way to four thousand ...
... when suddenly a red-hot jab of pain spiked through his sinuses like a knife driven into his head, threatening to blow out his eyeballs. Mundy’s vision and hearing both disappeared in the incredible pain, and his entire face seemed to creak and pop like a slowly collapsing building. Mundy knew what it was, and he was fully expecting it—what he had not been expecting was the enormous amount of pain it caused. With a head cold and sinus infection, the rapid climb during takeoff forced mucus tightly into the Eustachian tubes of Mundy’s inner ear, reducing the air pressure inside the sinuses and inner ear and jamming the sinuses and inner ear closed. As the ambient air pressure increased during the rapid descent, the outside air rushed in and tried to fill the partial vacuum in the inner ear and sinuses. The few extra pounds of air pressure on the delicate sinus membrane and eardrums caused intense pain. Mundy tried rolling his head, tried a Valsalva maneuver, tried swallowing, but the pain only continued. He dropped his mask and tried to squirt more nasal spray into his impacted sinuses.
Suddenly, the pressure in his left ear went away, followed shortly by relief in his right ear, and he could see his instruments again as most of the pain washed away. But as he felt a warm trickle of fluid running down his neck, he knew the relief wasn’t because of the nasal spray—it was because he had just ruptured both eardrums. He had to turn the radio volume up all the way to hear it. Mundy ran his finger up into his helmet’s earcups to scoop out sticky blobs of blood, but it didn’t help much.
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