by James Philip
The constructive total loss of the Ranger, which was already being dismantled by scrappers within sight of the base at Sasebo, there was one less of them.
Two, if one included the Kitty Hawk.
McCain was confident that somebody in the Navy Department would be lobbying for the building of new, replacement ships but from what he had heard that was not on the cards any time soon. Now that the British had decided against taking up the option to lease the Franklin Delano Roosevelt (CV-42), citing their own manning issues, which had been in the Reserve Fleet since mid-1963, the case for massively expensive new builds was paper-thin, regardless of how vociferously the lobbyists of the big shipbuilding combines and their contractors worked the corridors of Congress. Moreover, there was still a big carrier, the fourth Kitty Hawk class ship, almost cancelled in 1963 but re-confirmed after the Kennedy Administration tried to reverse its own peace dividend cuts in 1964, which had been laid down at Newport News Shipbuilding, in late 1965.
Back in early 1962, the Navy had wanted to build the fourth Kitty Hawk as a second, nuclear-powered carrier. These days, nobody talked much about the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CV-67), whose uncompleted shell, thirty-seven percent completed, had lain dormant for most of the last year. The nuclear-power option had been dropped by 1964 on grounds of cost, when it was decided not to adopt the Enterprise’s multi-reactor layout. Thus, she would have the same machinery set as the earlier ships. Unfortunately, with the passage of time a raft of design changes had been mandated – she was to be marginally longer, and broader in the beam, and a thousand tons heavier than her three sisters - and then, the real game-stopping problem had reared its head, there had been a row on the Hill about allegedly profiteering contractors, the FBI had got involved and appropriations in respect of the Eisenhower had been ‘provisionally withheld’ for fiscal years 67/68 and 68/69. The Navy Department had enough problems without looking to further entrench Congressional displeasure; so, in the way of things, construction had in effect, stopped indefinitely.
It was a dumb way to run a navy but hey, democracy was like that sometimes!
In any event, the conveyor belt of big carriers to the Western Pacific had now been halted, and all the signs were that it was about to be put into reverse.
The Saratoga was bound for Australian waters to fly the flag and to exercise with the Royal Australian and Royal New Zealand Navies. After that she was to steam to the Persian Gulf. Later, she would come home via the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean, a courtesy call at Portsmouth – where she would have to moor offshore in the Solent because the entrance to the naval base was too shallow – and return to Norfolk, Virginia, or Mayport, Florida, early next summer.
John McCain had been informed, officially at last, that he would remain with the ship, and in command of VF-74, until the ship got back stateside.
Life was good.
He would worry about meeting Lucy again when it happened, as it probably would when the Saratoga visited Sydney. In the meantime, he planned to enjoy what would almost certainly be his last carrier tour as a fast jet aviator to the full.
The hero of the Battle of the Paracels had already sent his Chief of Staff over to the Sara Maru to make preparations for his arrival, and commandeered office space ashore. It said everything one needed to know about the Navy Department’s opinion of Zumwalt’s unnecessary battle, that he was not being sent back to the South China Sea. That ‘battle’, in retrospect, really a turkey shoot, could very easily have been another in a litany of post-October 1962 naval disasters; nothing short of a self-inflicted wound on the already battered prestige of the service.
When she departed Pearl Harbour, Zumwalt’s new ‘fleet’ would comprise his flagship and just two escorts, the Leahy class guided missile destroyer USS Worden (DLG-18) and the Farragut class destroyer USS Dewey (DDG-45).
McCain and his fellow ‘ready’ pilots had been listening to the radio, absorbing the state by state election returns as they were reported. The ‘results’ were mostly a succession of states voting Brenckmann. If it had been a boxing match the referee would have declared it a no contest half-way through round two!
It seemed that the GOP was also taking a real beating in Congress, and might end up with a majority reduced to two, three or four seats in the Senate by the time all the votes were counted.
In Congress, the Democrats were set for a majority of around a hundred-and-fifty, give or take half-a-dozen either way…
John McCain listened to the Hickham AFB Controller authorising him to continue his ascent to altitude.
“Climb to level four-one and circle right.”
He acknowledged the order.
“What have we got, Hickham Base?”
“We have a Warning Star VW-Zero-Four out of Midway Atoll tracking an unidentified intruder three-four-zero miles north-north-east of Kaua’i. Intruder is approaching on vector one-seven-five magnetic at three-three-zero knots. Close to visual range and report. Over.”
The Lockheed EC-121 Warning Star was the militarised variant of the L-1049 Super Constellation four-turboprop civilian airliner, configured in an early warning and electronic surveillance role. Each aircraft was equipped with radars in protective radomes above and below the central section of the fuselage. At their normal operating ceiling – between twenty and twenty-five thousand feet – under the right atmospheric conditions a Warning Star’s radars could see hundreds of miles beyond the visible horizon at sea level in every direction.
The type was flown, with only minor modifications, by both the US Air Force and the Navy. Air Force men called their aircraft ‘Connies’, a derivation of the original civilian ‘Constellation’, Navy men, probably just to be different, had always referred to their aircraft as Victor Wilkies, from the model designation VW, which, followed by two digits, identified upgraded and improved airframes as they became available.
VW-Zero-Four was a Navy bird, one of two normally based at Midway, the best part of thirteen hundred miles north west of Hickham Air Base.
“VW-Zero-Four has the ball,” McCain acknowledged. “Wait one while I confirm my intercept vector, please.”
“I’ve got the base upload on my screens, boss,” his back seat man confirmed. “Vector three-four-seven. Time to interception with full re-heat thirteen to fourteen minutes!”
McCain reported this to Hickham Control.
He had disengaged re-heat as the fighter had reached altitude, and begun to circle. He broke out of the turn and as the fearsome power came back on line, driving him back into his straps, he swung the Phantom’s nose to the north.
That was when a new voice came over the command circuit.
“This is Victor Wilkie Zero-Four, Devil One-oh-One. Comms check. Please copy.”
McCain replied: “Devil-oh-One, I copy that, Victor Wilkie Zero-Four.”
“The intruder is designated Bogey One. Bogey One is broadcasting a Soviet-type radar signature consistent with targeting sensors known to be associated with the deployment of airborne stand-off munitions. Bogey One has not responded to my hails at this time.”
Chapter 77
Wednesday 6th November, 1968
Tu-95K Amerikanskaya Mechta, 497 kilometres NW of Oahu
Andrei Kirov had moved forward into the Wireless Operator’s compartment behind the cockpit.
“The atmospherics are shit!” Vitaly Koslov observed unhappily. “Either that or those fucking Yanks keep switching frequencies too fast for me to catch up with them.”
“I thought there were international emergency frequencies?”
“There are but there’s nothing I can do if the fuckers won’t use them!”
Then they heard it, blasting through the static almost deafening them. Both men reached up to snatch away their headphones.
The wall of white noise died.
“This is United States Navy Devil One-oh-One. I am closing your left quarter. I have missile lock on you. Please acknowledge this transmission.”
The KGB man tr
anslated over the intercom, forgetting to switch to the restricted Wireless Operator-Pilot circuit.
In the meantime, the other aircraft’s pilot repeated his previous communication…in passable Russian.
“Eto D'yavol Odin-o-Odin. YA zakryvayu vashu levuyu chetvert'. U menya yest' raketnyy zamok na vas. Pozhaluysta, podtverdite etu peredachu,” the American, probably one of the pilots of the two fast-approaching contacts Tatyana Zhukov was monitoring on the bomber’s radar, promptly repeated the communication in quirky, slightly stumbling Muscovite Russian.
Vitaly Koslov punched the big man’s shoulder.
“This is the Amerikanskaya Mechta,” the KGB man – technically, ‘former’ KGB man, he realised – blurted before he got control of his angst. “This is the American Dreamer; I and my crew wish to defect. I repeat, we wish to defect and to claim political asylum in the United States. Over.”
“I copy that, American Dreamer.”
This sounded like another man’s voice.
“Please keep this channel open. Devil One-oh-One out.”
Andrei and the Vitaly Koslov shrugged at each other.
“They have missile lock!” Olga Petrovna reported. “No… No, forget that. I think they’re too close for their targeting radars to acquire lock…”
“That would be because one of them is less than one hundred metres off my left cockpit window,” Dmitry Akimov reported dourly.
“The other one is under the tail,” Pavel Onishken added, a little vexed. “The bastard slid in from seven o’clock low to keep out of my arc of fire!”
“American Dreamer. American Dreamer, this is Devil One-oh-One at your port nine-o’clock. Please make your course zero-nine-zero magnetic. Please know that I am authorised to use lethal force if you fail to obey this or any future order. Out.”
“I heard that,” Dmitry Akimov confirmed.
Andrei Kirov felt the great bomber begin to turn.
Nothing happened very fast when a Tu-95 manoeuvred.
The big man touched the stud at his throat.
“We will conform to all orders, Devil One-oh-One.”
“I copy that.”
Ten minutes passed in which the two McDonnell Douglas F-4 II Phantoms floated off the Tu-95’s wingtips, or took turns weaving above and below the lumbering colossus.
Dmitry Akimov’s voice broke the intercom silence.
“Tell the Yankees that because we were forced to fly a complex course to reach this location, that we have sufficient fuel to reach the East Coast of America but without any safety margin.”
Andrei called up Devil One-oh-One.
He dutifully reported Akimov’s words.
“Define complex course?” The other man invited him.
He explained that the bomber had been participating in a long-range maritime intelligence gathering operation prior to breaking away to the East. They had already been in the air nearly fifteen hours.
“I am awaiting instructions at this time,” he was informed. “I suggest you run as thin a mixture as possible and circle left at your present altitude to conserve fuel.”
More minutes went by.
“I have another contact incoming!” Tatyana called. “Then, and two more fast contacts coming up behind it.”
“A tanker to top off our friends’ tanks, and two more little friends,” Dmitry Akimov sighed. “Just to make us feel at home…”
He sounded resigned.
Perhaps, the Yankees would make them circle until their tanks ran dry and they fell into the Pacific, eight thousand metres below…
“This is Devil One-oh-One. Please confirm your estimated maximum airborne endurance, American Dreamer.”
Marco Pevkur had been listening in.
“Five hours absolute maximum at most economic revs.”
Andrei told the American pilot the news.
He acknowledged this and fell silent again.
The four F-4 Phantoms had adopted a top cover screening position while the Tu-95 began to carve lazy eleven-kilometre diameter circles in the sky.
“Devil One-oh-One to American Dreamer. Hawaii Air Defence Command will not permit you to approach or land with your weapons payload on board. Please specify why you have not jettisoned your Raduga cruise missile?”
“That is complicated,” Andrei apologised. He hesitated, trying to predict the other man’s – and his superiors’ back on the Hawaiian Islands – likely response to the truth. He explained, anyway.
The other man listened.
Andrei could swear he heard him whistle, giving him confidence that his exposition had communicated the salient factors to the calm, authoritative man in the leading US Navy fighter, who probably had his, and his comrades’ lives in his hands.
“Heck, I think I’d defect too if I thought my people were trying their darndest to vaporise me!”
Chapter 78
Wednesday 6th November, 1968
CIC, USS Enterprise (CVN-65), Pearl Harbour
Notwithstanding Rear Admiral Elmo ‘Bud’ Zumwalt - partly because of the way he had politicked his way up the career ladder, adroitly manoeuvring around the wreckage of other men’s illustrious careers in the wake of the Navy’s serial disasters on the day of, and in the years since the October War - was not a very popular, or well-liked man in the US Navy, he had, nonetheless, retained a small circle of very loyal friends. It happened that he had been lunching with one such on board the Big E when the message had come through from the Hawaiian Air Defence Command Headquarters in Honolulu.
Apparently, he was the senior contactable officer on the spot, attempts - probably desperate attempts – to locate and contact two more senior officers having thus far, failed. Therefore, until somebody told him otherwise, he was IT! Serendipitously, it happened that he was on board a ship with a fully functioning, combat-tested Command-Information-Centre capable of managing practically any imaginable three-dimensional battle space.
“We don’t know if its three-megaton warhead will go off if that Russian plane attempts to land with it?” He asked, phlegmatically.
There was no need to convert a problem into a crisis.
“No, sir.”
“So, the scenario is that they may not have enough fuel to make it to the East Coast,” Zumwalt thought out aloud, “and they can’t fly home, obviously. So, what else does that leave us with?”
It was a rhetorical question.
The bomb was the issue.
That aircraft was not going to be allowed to approach US soil with it on board.
In fact, even if the American Dreamer – that was an odd name for a Tupolev Tu-95 Bear bomber – had not been carrying nuclear weapons, ticking or not, beneath its belly or in its cavernous bomb bays, he would not have allowed it to land at Hickham, and he certainly would not have allowed it to go on its way towards the West Coast unmolested.
If the bomber was carrying a Raduga Kh-20, that reduced, without completely ruling out the possibility, it was also carrying other special munitions internally.
First things first; that missile had to be jettisoned.
Why hadn’t that happened yet?
Okay, so that aircraft was not going to be landing at Hickham-Honolulu Airport, or flying on to North America. What did that leave?
Midway?
The strip at Midway was way too short for everything he knew about the landing characteristics of a Bear – the NATO name for the aircraft type – but that was the best offer he planned to make to the defecting crew of that aircraft.
Assuming they jettisoned the Raduga he might give them three choices: on, put the bomber on auto pilot, set to slowly descend, and abandon the aircraft; two, for the crew to abandon the aircraft in level flight, after which it would be shot down; three, fly north of the Hawaiian chain of islands and take their chances attempting a landing on Midway.
Zumwalt had had no suspicion that the Paracels operation had been so regally lambasted at Pearl Harbour, or back stateside until the Big E had docked.
&n
bsp; That had stung.
Jesus, his men, and he certainly, had not joined the US Navy to die horribly in some valiantly mismanaged foul up like those which had happened in the Atlantic in 1963 which had resulted in the loss of the Scorpion, or the catalogue of blunders and miscommunications which had led to the shameful – for the service he still loved – first and second battles of Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf; and as for the Ranger’s task force walking into that shooting gallery in the Tsushima Strait, well, somebody ought to have been fucking keel-hauled over that!
So, yes, he had designed a win-win battle to give the Chinese and their Korean surrogates a bloody nose, and to demonstrate to the rest of the fleet in the Far East that the Navy could, and should in future, fight to its strengths; not try to get around its weaknesses and shortcomings with shows of self-defeating bravado!
They would have given him a medal if he had got into a close quarters dogfight; as it was, he had won easy, not lost a single man. Not one of his ships had been damaged and the only vessel which had ever been in any danger – and that remote in the extreme in his humble opinion – the USS Agerholm, had never been in any way, as ‘exposed’ or ‘out on a limb’ as his detractors claimed.
The Navy’s job was not to accumulate martyrs and dead heroes, it was to win America’s wars far enough away from home to enable the men and women on Main Street to bring up their kids and go about their business in safety!
“Give me a direct link to Admiral McCain’s son,” he demanded, relaxing in his command chair as if he did not have a care in the world.
He guessed that, for middlingly good reasons, Commander John McCain III was not his greatest admirer.
No problem, he would rather have VF-74’s veteran commander on the spot than some hot shot fighter jockey straight out of flight deck school back home.
“Devil One-oh-One is on the circuit, sir.”
The hardest decisions were the easiest; at least in the sense that they had to be made, usually sooner rather than later. All decision-making processes involved a hierarchy of risks and benefits, once the bottom line had been identified the answer tended to be patently obvious.