Special Ops: Four Accounts of the Military's Elite Forces

by Orr Kelly

  But the plane itself is only half the equation. From the first flight of the Hornet in November 1978 until the first deployment of two squadrons on a carrier in February 1985 was a span of five years. And much of that time was spent selecting and training pilots to fly the new plane and mechanics to service it.

  Two years after the first flight, the first training squadron—VFA-125—was commissioned in November 1980, at Lemoore, under the command of Capt. James W. Partington, a veteran A-7 attack pilot. Four months later, on 10 March 1981, Partington and marine Capt. Doug Tyler picked up their first two-cockpit training plane in St. Louis, flew it to Lemoore, and immediately turned it over for the maintenance crews to study for a month.

  For the next year and a half, thirty-two hand-picked navy and marine fighter and attack pilots taught themselves to fly the Hornet so they, in turn, could train the “nuggets”—the new pilots just out of the training schools—and the experienced pilots moving over from their older A-7s and F-4s to the new F/A-18.

  The one great advantage the instructors had, beyond their combined experience with the fleet, was the presence of very realistic simulators that permitted them to put in hundreds of hours in the cockpit of a Hornet before they first left the ground. In the past, simulators had most often come along months, or even years, after a plane went into service, and even then they often provided only a pale approximation of what it was like to actually fly the plane. In this case, a determined effort was made to have the simulators available well before the planes themselves were ready, and to make them as realistic as possible.

  Three different simulators were developed. Gould Simulation Systems provided a relatively simple part task trainer to familiarize the pilot with the cockpit and permit him to practice manipulating the switches and other cockpit controls—to learn his “switchology,” as they say.

  The Sperry Corporation’s Flight Simulation Division (later a part of Hughes Aircraft) built a more complex operational flight trainer to provide practice in all the basic flying skills. The trainee sits in a cockpit inside a large dome, and an operator at an outside panel controls what the pilot sees. With a flip of a switch, he can create daylight, a moonlit night, or total darkness. He can present the image of a carrier so the pilot can practice landing time after time, and then the operator can change the scene inside to permit the pilot to navigate back to his home airfield and land.

  The most advanced simulator is the weapons tactics trainer developed by Hughes Aircraft. In this device, the pilot again sits in a cockpit in the center of a large dome. But here he is able to practice both aerial combat maneuvering—dogfighting—and attacks on ground targets.

  The computer that forms the brains of the trainer can automatically present the pilot with foes of varying levels of skill. At the most basic level, a hostile plane appears off to the side and then flies smoothly around in front of the simulated F/A-18. Even a novice can maneuver the plane, center the target in the sights, and pull the trigger when the strobe in his HUD flashes “SHOOT … SHOOT … SHOOT.” The result is a satisfying flash as the enemy plane explodes. But as the controller ratchets up the skill level of the hostile pilot, it becomes harder and harder even to keep an eye on the other fellow, let alone get in a shot at him. He may disappear one moment and then flash past head-on, large as life, with gun blazing.

  The system was designed so that two or more pilots, each in a separate dome, can fly together or fight against each other. In each dome, the images of the planes controlled by the pilots in the other simulators are flashed on the inside surface of the dome, growing larger or smaller, depending on their distance.

  The controller outside can complicate the combat by triggering cockpit warnings such as “bingo”—low fuel—or an engine fire. The simulator itself monitors altitude—very realistically. If a pilot forgets to watch his altitude, he may suddenly hear a crashing sound in his earphones and be startled to see his altitude indicator reeling off negative numbers.

  Both the device developed by Sperry and the Hughes simulator provide a remarkably realistic sense of actual flying except for the extreme pressures of gravity that are a constant part of the fighter pilot’s life.

  Creating these realistic simulators was a daunting challenge. If they had had their way, the designers would have rigged actual airplanes with instruments and gathered the data they needed to duplicate the flying characteristics of the plane in a dome on the ground. But the flight test program was already so crowded that there was no room for special flights for the simulator designers. Instead, they took whatever information they could gather while tests were being flown for other purposes.

  They also faced a firm deadline. The navy planned to begin training the instructor pilots early in 1982, and it insisted on having Sperry’s operational flight trainer installed at Lemoore by that time.

  Pilots who flew the plane and then tried the same maneuvers in the simulator were surprised to find that “flying” on the ground was almost exactly the same as flying in the air throughout the plane’s entire flight envelope. The one major discrepancy cropped up when pilots involved in the early carrier landing tests of the Hornet stepped into the simulator and found that it didn’t match the guide slope they had flown in their actual flights. By the time the simulator went into service at Lemoore, that and a few other less serious discrepancies had been found and fixed.

  When the initial small group of pilots had taught themselves to fly the Hornet, their first job was to train the marines who would form the first operational F/A-18 squadron. The marines, who had made a conscious decision to keep flying their aging F-4s while waiting for the new Hornet, deserved to be first in the new plane. But the marines felt the fact they came first was also a great help in getting the Hornet off to a good start.

  Unlike the navy pilots, traditionally segregated into fighter and attack squadrons, the marines, with their strong commitment to close support of their fellow leathernecks on the ground, expected their pilots to perform both fighter and attack missions. Although the navy bomber pilots doubted the marines’ skill at dropping bombs, the marines were comfortable stepping into a new plane designed to do both jobs.

  Even as training of the pilots for the first squadron began in 1982, however, there were many in the navy who continued to doubt that a pilot could be taught to be as good at both aerial combat and ground attack as pilots trained separately for the two jobs. Their doubts were buttressed by the navy’s decision to give the pilots the “firehose treatment”—teach them to fly the plane, to dogfight, and to deliver bombs and missiles, all in about thirty-six weeks, the same time that other training squadrons had traditionally used to train pilots in just one of those skills.

  Today, this introduction to the F/A-18 is conducted by two squadrons—VFA 125, the Rough Raiders, at Lemoore, and VFA 106, the Gladiators, formed at Cecil Field on 27 April 1984, to serve the East Coast carriers. Each is known as a RAG, for Replacement Air Group, but that is actually a misnomer, harking back to the days when entire air groups were trained as a unit. The proper name for today’s training squadrons is the seldom-used Readiness Training Squadron.

  Before a nugget comes to the RAG, he has spent about 200 hours in the air and has taken off from a carrier and landed again—just enough to know what it feels like.

  Much of the time he spends in training in the RAG, of course, is devoted to learning how to fly the plane skillfully. In this sense, the training is much like that offered earlier to F-4 or A-7 pilots preparing to fly fighters or bombers. On every landing, for example, the pilot “flies the meatball,” simulating his approach and landing on a carrier. Navigating to and from the training area and flying in formation are also the same, whether the training involves aerial combat or bombing. The instructors were pleasantly surprised to find that nuggets, with the help of the Hornet’s computerized controls, were quickly able to fly as smoothly and efficiently as pilots with long experience in other planes.

  In the past, fighter and attack pilots
argued endlessly over which of their skills was most difficult. But most Hornet pilots now agree that what they call “ACM”—Aerial Combat Maneuvering—is the most demanding. Partly, this is due to the fact that the computerized bombing system in the F/A-18 is so good that even the rawest nuggets, on their first day at the bombing ranges, often do better than veteran pilots in older airplanes. The same is not true in aerial combat. Personal skill is most often the factor that distinguishes winners from losers or, in actual combat, the living from the dead.

  Surprisingly, despite all the advances in aerodynamics and weaponry, fighting in the air has changed remarkably little from the days of the Spads and the Fokkers, three-quarters of a century ago. The major difference is that the time that planes may be engaged in combat has shrunk, while the volume of air space in which they fight has greatly expanded.

  An indication of how little things have changed is the fact that an important part of the manual used by pilots in training at Cecil Field and Lemoore includes a comparison of rules for aerial combat set out at four different periods. First is a list of eight rules submitted to the German chief of war aviation in 1915 by Oswald Boelcke, the foremost theorist of aerial combat in World War I; another set of ten rules written by Adolph (“Sailor”) Malan, a South African pilot who scored twenty-nine kills during the Battle of Britain; an expanded list of twenty-five offensive and nineteen defensive rules written by Frederick (“Boots”) Blesse, an American air force pilot who downed ten planes in Korea and an even longer set prepared by the authors of the manual now used to train F/A-18 pilots.

  Basically, today’s rules, while taking account of changes in aircraft and weapons performance, are still about eighty percent consistent with Boelcke’s list.

  The pilots in training are told: “Above all (and taken for granted in Boelcke, Malan, Blesse, and anything intelligent written about fighter combat) is aggressiveness. It should be patient; it may even be cautious, but the absolute essential is a deep-seated drive to kill.”

  Much of the training, both on the ground and in the air, is focused on teaching pilots how to win in aerial combat against another fighter. And yet pilots are warned that is the last thing they want to do. They are told, over and over: “Don’t fight one versus one unless it’s a matter of life or death.”

  Lt. Comdr. Dave Jones, an instructor at Cecil Field, puts it this way: “I never want to fight. My ideal—and this may sound crude in civilian terms—is an assassination. I’m going to come sneaking up on this guy and kill him before he even knows I’m around. I’m not out there to turn and burn and do Top Gun stuff. I’m out there to put ‘em down, and I don’t want them to ever know I’m around. I want a guy to be flying along and then next thing he knows he’s hanging in his parachute wondering what the hell happened. That’s my idea of a perfect day in combat. My ideal is, when he’s six or eight miles away, he just goes up in a puff of smoke, and I just keep right on going.”

  To understand what it is like to go into combat, first accompany a section of two Hornets on a combat air patrol. Before they ever take off, the two pilots spend hours preparing for the flight, learning everything they can about their potential enemy: How many planes will they face? What type? Do they carry missiles capable of firing head-on, or only from the rear quadrant? How skilled are the other pilots? Will the enemy be under ground control? How much antiaircraft fire should be expected, and where?

  Attention to the tiniest detail pays off. Deck crews carefully clean and polish the cockpit canopies so there won’t be a speck of dirt to confuse the pilot in the heat of combat. Helmets, already personally contoured to fit the individual, are tightly cinched so the helmet and visor won’t shift position under the stress of gravity.

  As part of their preparation for the flight, the two pilots enter into a series of “contracts” that spell out what they will do in a variety of circumstances. This means they may not even have to exchange radio messages: they will act almost as though they were both in the same plane. As much as possible, these “contracts” between the lead pilot and his wing man are designed to make up for the fact that the Hornet is a one-man plane.

  As they head out on the patrol, the wing man flies slightly to the rear of the lead plane, from three-quarters of a mile to a mile and a half away, and within 3,000 feet above or below the lead plane’s altitude. If the two pilots get any further apart, it is hard for them to see each other and difficult to coordinate their actions. But, by spreading apart, they make it much more difficult for an enemy pilot to see both planes. They have been careful to pick an altitude just below that at which contrails would be formed. That way, they will not give away their position but will be able to see planes flying at a slightly higher altitude.

  The lead pilot sweeps the area ahead with his radar in the relatively short range at which his Sidewinder missiles will be effective. The wing man, in effect, looks over the lead pilot’s shoulder, using the longer range setting of the Sparrow missile. This way, they will be able to sort out the enemy planes. If the lead pilot picks up one plane, the wing man will look for the second. If they spot two planes, they will search for a trailing section of two more planes.

  Even with the Hornet’s superb radar, good eyesight makes all the difference when hostile planes come within visual range of each other. The pilot who can see the other fellow first and keep him in view is the one who is most likely to live. The two men on the combat patrol constantly scan the skies, trying to overcome the eye’s natural tendency to focus a few inches in front of a person’s face.

  If they pick up the enemy planes on radar at twenty to thirty miles, they will be about a minute and a half apart, time to swing carefully off to the side—but not so abruptly as to signal their presence by the flash of sunlight from a wing—and fire missiles that will hit the other planes from the rear quadrant. If they don’t spot the other planes until they are fifteen miles away, they will be only forty-five seconds apart and will have to use their head-on missiles.

  One of the most dangerous mistakes is to turn to fight the first enemy plane you spot. Novice pilots are warned: “Never turn your belly up to a trail group.” Much better is to fire head-on missiles at the first enemy section, put on speed, and “blow through” to engage the other planes trailing eight to ten miles behind.

  But what if the first shot misses and, as the pilots say, “the bogey is alive at the pass”? There may be no choice but to fight. Suddenly it is one against one, and the odds are very high that one pilot will have to knock the other plane out of the sky before he can go home. It is at that moment, as the training manual says, that “you are so scared you want to puke, and your IQ drops to fourteen.”

  It is also at that moment, as the two planes hurtle past each other at a combined speed of more than a thousand miles an hour and so close that the two men can see each other, that skill and training pay off as the Hornet pilot sizes up his adversary. Does he have a gun? Is he carrying missiles? Then stay so close he won’t have room for the missiles to arm themselves. What is his energy state? If he is making very tight turns, he is bleeding off energy at a rapid rate and may not be able to respond to your next maneuver. Is he pushing his plane to the limit or is he holding something in reserve?

  Most critical: How good a pilot is he?

  All those questions flashed through the mind of Lt. Randy Cunningham on 10 May 1972, one of the most intensive days of aerial combat in the Vietnam War. Cunningham, flying an F-4 Phantom from the U.S.S. Constellation with Lt. William Driscoll in the back seat as radar intercept officer, attacked air defenses as part of a major “Alpha” strike against the Haiphong rail yards. Then, as they came off the target, they were almost immediately jumped by two MiG-17s.

  Cunningham’s homework paid off. He knew that it is almost impossible for the pilot to move the stick of a MiG-17 when he is going very fast. Cunningham turned sharply toward the first plane and the pilot was unable to respond. Then he hit the second MiG with a Sidewinder.

  Moments late
r, Cunningham fired a second Sidewinder and shot down another MiG-17 just as it was about to attack a fellow Phantom.

  When four MiG-21s dove on them from above, Cunningham and Driscoll decided it was time to head for home. As they turned toward the carrier, Cunningham spotted a MiG-17 heading toward him. In training, Cunningham had often flown against A-4s simulating the performance of a MiG and had found one of the most effective tactics was to fly straight at the other pilot in an effort to intimidate him. The tactic almost got him killed.

  “I bored in on the 17 … head on,” Cunningham later recounted. “Suddenly, his whole nose lit up like a Christmas tree. I had forgotten that the A-4s didn’t shoot at you, but this guy was really spitting out the 23-mm and 37-mm.”

  Cunningham pulled back hard on the stick and zoomed into the vertical. But the MiG pilot came right with him, followed him over the top and started shooting again. Up and down the two planes went, with the Vietnamese pilot shooting every time they came over the top. Very quickly it became obvious to Cunningham that his opponent was not just lucky. He was good!

  Finally, the other pilot, apparently running low on fuel, decided to bug out and went into a vertical dive. Cunningham followed him down and loosed a Sidewinder at the fleeing plane, even though he knew that the missile, with its heat-seeking nose, would almost certainly be distracted by heat sources on the ground. But, as Cunningham and Driscoll watched, the other plane blew up in a flash of flame and a cloud of black smoke, and dove straight into the earth. They later learned that their adversary had been a Colonel Tomb, at that time the leading North Vietnamese ace, with thirteen American planes shot down.

  The three victories that day, added to the two MiGs they had shot down earlier in the year, made Cunningham and Driscoll the first American aces of the war. They were, unfortunately, wet aces. As they headed seaward after their victory over Tomb, they were hit by an antiaircraft missile and forced to eject. Both men were quickly rescued by helicopter and returned to the Constellation.