Air Force Eagles (28 page)

The T-6 disappeared momentarily in an incandescent ball of flame and smoke as the twelve rockets left their rails. Seven of them missed the PO-2 entirely. Two hit its wings, one passed harmlessly through the fuselage, one hit its fuel tank, and one exploded when it struck La Woon Yung in the back. He had been a hero for exactly twenty-four hours.

"Great shooting, Coleman. That gives you number four."

In the front seat, ecstatic, Coleman missed the irony.

***

Chapter 6

Panmunjom, Korea/September 22, 1952

At Kaesong, the only real agreement had been to move the conference site to Panmunjom, where the peace talks quickly grounded to a halt over a single issue—the forced repatriation of Chinese and North Korean prisoners. The United Nations insisted that it would not force anyone to return to North Korea or China against their will, while the Communists insisted that it was not a negotiable matter. While the perfectly uniformed, frigidly discourteous negotiators fumed at each other across their green baize-covered tables, neatly punctuated with water carafes and lined tablets, terrified young infantrymen on both sides died in petty attacks across the bloody ridge lines. Simultaneously, ominously, the biggest buildup of airpower in the jet age began. By September, U.S. intelligence reported that the Communist air order of battle had seven thousand planes, primarily jet fighters and jet bombers, disposed in an arc around Korea. At the sharp end of the United Nations stick were less than two hundred Sabres.

*

West of MiG Alley/September 22, 1952

There might be seven thousand enemy planes out there—but Marshall wasn't getting any more MiGs than he was getting sex. He wondered what Saundra was doing; the time difference made it hard to compute—he figured she'd be working at the office. It was six at night in Los Angeles—and yesterday! He could hardly wait to recross the international date line on his way back to revive their marriage.

Yet other than the pain of missing her, he was content. His new tactics saved fuel and added spectacularly to the loiter time in MiG Alley. Ostrowski had ordered the two other squadrons to follow suit and today he was flying lead with Baker Squadron, Menard on his wing, and a sour-faced Coleman in the number three position to see how things worked.

It had been an improbable week. They had flown twelve sorties and engaged only three times, but Fitzpatrick had knocked down his first MiG with a long-range deflection shot. The gun-camera films looked like an Annie Oakley trick. The MiG was just barely visible, high in the corner of the frame, when Fitz's tracers arched out like a necklace of car headlights on a hill, and blam! no more MiG.

Strangely, Fitzpatrick had seemed discomfited rather than pleased. Menard was far more elated when he got a probable. The only thing assuaging Marshall's fast-deflating ego was the fact that Coleman hadn't scored either, mostly because he persisted in spending time down on the deck looking for more sitting-duck TU-2s. Well, he wouldn't today, not with Bones Marshall leading. He laughed at the memory of Coleman's face when he announced that the flight would turn off its IFF—Identification, Friend or Foe—signal as soon as it reached altitude and maintain radio silence. Fitzpatrick had shrugged and Menard was too green to know that it meant they were going to penetrate Manchuria.

All the recent intelligence briefings had confirmed what everyone had long suspected—the Russians were flying the MiGs. One pale faced, red-haired pilot had been observed bailing out. More important, they were operating the extensive ground radar control net. All enemy communications were now in Russian.

The Russian ground controllers exercised authority that was unbelievable to an American pilot. Ground told them when to take off, where to go, when and if to attack, what field to return to. Even more incredible, the pilot even asked for decisions about whether to eject from a damaged MiG. It was absurd—there was no way any ground controller, no matter how experienced, could tell what to do in a dogfight, or analyze what was wrong with a shot-up MiG. Yet the report was comforting—it left the airborne initiative in American hands despite the disparity in numbers.

Immediately alert as his earphones buzzed with preliminary static, he heard Dentist calling, "Hemlock Leader, I have forty-plus MiGs climbing through twenty-five thousand at Antung." The controller's Southern drawl brought back unpleasant memories of Tuskegee.

He didn't acknowledge the call. He was already clearly illegal, over the Yellow Sea, thirty miles north of the Manchurian border.

"Hemlock Leader, Bandit Flight Two, another twenty plus MiGs climbing through twenty thousand at Antung. Acknowledge." It sounded like
Aaaahknldge.

Good. Sixty to four—the odds were just about right, for this time the F-86s would have the altitude and speed. One slashing attack through the MiG train, clobber a few MiGs, then back across the Yalu to the regular patrol point to switch on the IFF with nobody the wiser.

"Hemlock Leader, acknowledge if you read. Bandit Flight One now splitting up, about half going heading three-sixty, half one-eighty. Over."

Splitting up! Even better, now the odds were down to maybe five to one, less than the current eight-to-one kill ratio, Sabres to MiGs.

As his eyes made the customary circuit around the sky, a quick glance in the cockpit to check the instruments, then out to check the sky again, Marshall picked up the MiGs, the two flights drawing apart like frightened schools offish. The group heading south was a more attractive target, because the line of attack would take the F-86s directly toward the Yalu. But he could see Bandit Flight Two also headed south—too many to run into after a fight.

And the group going north were probably new arrivals, out on an area familiarization flight, a bunch of Ivans just in from the farm. With a hunter's skill he closed, positioning his Sabres above three flights, eight MiGs each, level at thirty-five thousand feet, all utterly unaware that there was an American within a hundred kilometers.

Without a word, Marshall punched off his tanks, and a quick glance showed him that the other three in the flight had followed suit.

Marshall put the nose of his Sabre down. "Hemlock Leader will take the second pair, second flight, last section. Hemlock Three, you take the first pair. We'll dive right through them, then turn and head south."

There were no acknowledgments as the four Sabres, yellow stripes on silver skins, dove toward the unsuspecting MiGs.

A look back showed that Menard was right where he should be, protecting him, letting him devote all his attention to the shooting. He was turning out to be a good wingman, a good man.

Taking the classic high-side approach, Marshall closed to two hundred yards and began firing. Shedding pieces from its tail like a molting pigeon, the MiG rolled sharply as the pilot ejected without asking the ground controllers anything.

Tabasco-hot pride surged through Marshall. Shouting "Goddamn, that makes it official, I'm an ace!" he jerked the controls to shift his sights to the next plane, flying straight and level, still unaware that the Sabres were on top of it. As the pipper covered the MiG, Marshall squeezed the trigger, and the violent concentration of hits blew parts from the aircraft, slowing it as if it had thrown an anchor overboard.

As he screamed, "That's six!" his aircraft shook with a jarring thud like a motorboat hitting a submerged log.

"Red Leader's hit!" he called as his power fell off and eye-watering smoke from burning oil and hydraulic fluid poured into the cockpit from his pressurization ducts.

Retarding the throttle, he threw the stick over, blue sky and green-gray earth swapping places as he went inverted, tugging hard on the stick to enter a steep dive. Looking behind, he could see Menard was climbing away with two MiGs on his tail. Where were Coleman and Fitz?

Leveling off at fifteen thousand feet, Marshall eased the throttle back on and the engine responded with power. As he peered through the oil-smeared canopy he realized with relief that he hadn't been hit after all, that the burning fluids he'd smelled had been sucked out of the debris of the MiG to burn in his engine and to blow through the pressurization system into the cockpit.

Climbing back up to rejoin Menard, he looked for MiGs, Coleman and Fitzpatrick—in that order. His neck was chafed and sore from swiveling, but he didn't see the four MiGs attacking until their cannon shells pounded his fuselage. Half-rolling instinctively, he split-S'd away, sticking the powder-blackened Sabre nose straight toward the green-brown hills below, hoping that Menard or Coleman could come to his assistance.

Two of the MiGs stayed with him. They were obviously honchos, patient, content to have him diving toward the north away from the Yalu and the safety of his own lines, knowing that he was already short of fuel and ammunition.

He rolled level, and the yellow-red lines of cannon fire reached out for him. Marshall half-rolled once more, diving for the deck, no longer worried about having enough fuel to get home, or finding Menard, just concentrating on shaking these two implacable enemies. It was his last dive—he was out of altitude and damn near out of ideas. He headed for the coast, jinking at low level below the ridges, the trees just a blur, throttle to the firewall, waiting for the MiGs to finish him off. A black wall of flak opened up ahead of him, shutting off the horizon like a theater curtain dropping.

A glance told him he was passing over the edge of Feng-cheng, a new airfield stocked with MiGs and studded with radar-directed antiaircraft guns. Flying in a filthy black cocoon of flak, he skipped like an airborne Eliza from one smoky, iron-filled cloud to the next.

"Keep on, one more minute, I'll be out of here ..."

An explosion like colliding locomotives shattered the airplane, and the Sabre went slack in his hands as life drained out of it. Choking in the black smoke that filled the cockpit, he eased the canopy partially open, trading the risk of sucking flames into the cockpit for enough visibility to see the instrument panel.

His tailpipe temperature soaring into the red confirmed the fire down below; he could blow up in the next second. Where were the MiGs? He looked behind him, then sacrificed some of his precious speed to roll the aircraft steeply left and right to make sure he was alone. The MiGs were gone, either called home, or confident that he was a goner.

Speed leaked from the Sabre like sugar from a punctured bag as he limped along a river at 160 knots, flying nose up, defenseless. His compass spun mindlessly, but the sun told him he was heading west, toward the Yellow Sea, toward the coast where a Sea-Air Rescue Albatross might come to rescue him. There'd be a chance for rescue off the coast—and he didn't want to eject in Manchuria. "As long as the damn thing keeps flying, I'll fly it."

Cannon shells shook the Sabre again as a flight of two North Korean Yak 9s closed behind him. Piston-engined fighters from the Second World War, resembling a cross between a Mustang and a Spitfire, they were far faster than his crippled F-86. Scared as he was, he knew the glee the two Yak pilots felt, sitting there, pumping cannon shells into his Sabre, knowing that even crippled, he'd count as a kill. The F-86 sagged as every emergency light on Marshall's instrument panel lit up. Ahead, the river's delta land looked reasonably flat. He blew the canopy and cut the throttle, deciding to belly in before they blew him up.

Touching down at 120 knots, the nose bulldozed into the river's edge, sending aircraft tumbling end-over-end like a tossed boomerang. With a suction pump squash, it plopped down, disappearing right-side up in a geyser of debris. The F-86 surfaced like a marsh-mallow in a cup of chocolate, and Bones sat in the cockpit, not certain if he were still alive, hoping that the plane didn't burn, that his ejection seat wouldn't fire.

Reaching up to grab the cockpit side to crawl out, a blinding pain from his left arm told him he was alive and badly hurt. With agonizing effort, he pushed himself upright with his legs alone, steadied himself, then slid over the cockpit side to fall face down into the mud welling up over the wing, wishing desperately that it was a dream, that he was really home in bed with Saundra.

The two Yaks turned in, guns spitting, the ground erupting in four lines, a mud picket fence rising and falling from the muck-sucking explosions of the cannon shells. Bones hugged the wet earth face down, the pain in his arm as excruciating as the terror in his heart.

Satisfied, the victorious Yaks came back one last time, a hundred meters in the lead. Marshall peeked up to see the first Yak do an impeccable victory roll just over his head, the pilot's head briefly visible in the cockpit as it snapped past him. The second Yak pilot, probably an excited kid just out of flying school, came in a little lower on his pass and forgot to keep forward pressure on his stick at the top of the roll. Dishing out at the three-quarter point, he went nose down into the river bed, punctuating the end of his short life with a magnificent explosion of gas, oil, and mud.

Bones let the silence descend for the second time in five minutes, wondering despite his pain if he could claim the Yak as his third kill of the day.

*

Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska/ September 22, 1952

"Sit down, Riley. Do you know why you are here?"

General Curtis E. LeMay was only forty-six, but a decade of war and responsibility had chiseled his perpetually unshaven face into a harsh mask. His voice was low and slickly abrasive, a well-lubricated grinding wheel honing every word razor sharp.