Battle Born (4 page)

“Not yet,” the OSO responded. “The radar predictions said we won’t see the targets until four NAP if we stay low—we’d need to go up to two thousand to see it sooner. Let’s get back on planned track, and then give me another jink so I can get a better—”

“Bandits!” the DSO interrupted. “Eight o’clock, fifteen miles and closing! I think it’s an F-14—no,
two
F-14s! Give me a hard left thirty!”

“I’ll lose my look down the canyon!” the OSO objected. But the pilot rolled into a hard ninety-degree bank turn, rolling out just far enough to track perpendicular to the fighter. “Reverse as fast as you can!” the OSO said. “I need one last look down that canyon!”

“Clear to turn back!” the DSO said after only a few seconds. The pilot started a right turn. “Trackbreakers active! Bandits never turned. They’re nine o’clock, nine miles.”

“Give me a vertical jink now!” the OSO said.

“Negative!” the DSO interjected. “We’ll be highlighted against the horizon! If the fighter gets a visual on us, he’s got us!”

“I need the altitude!” the OSO cried. “I can’t see shit!”

“If we climb, he’ll spot us!” the pilot protested.

“Then center up!” shouted the OSO. “I’ll try to get a lock close-in.” He knew he’d have only seconds to see the target on radar before bomb release.

Sure enough, as they closed in on the target, all he could see on the digital radar screen was dark green, interspersed with flecks of white. The terrain was shadowing every bit of ground radar returns. Nothing showed up on the MTA display—no moving targets at all.

“Twenty TG,” the OSO said. “Action left thirty. I need one thousand feet, pilot, and I need it
now.
”

“All right,” the pilot said. “You got about five seconds.” He spun the clearance plane switch and they climbed. “You get your fix, Long Dong?”

The last climb did it. The cross hairs fell on a lone radar return in the very southern edge of the gully. When the pilot rolled out of the turn, the OSO snapped a patch image of the last target. “Got it! Steering is good!” he said. Damn, what a relief. His cross hairs were nestled right over a long, thin target, small and partially hidden. Magnifying the radar image showed a definite Scud transporter-erector-launcher on the move. A small, mobile target—max points if they hit it. “Let’s nail this sucker! Fifteen TG! Ten . . . doors coming open . . . five . . . bombs away!” The pilots could see the target, a white trailer with an old sewer pipe strapped atop it, configured to look somewhat like a Scud missile. “Doors coming closed . . .”

“We got it!” the copilot shouted happily. “We nailed it!”

“Let’s start a right turn to two-four-three,” the OSO said.

But just as they zoomed past the target area and crossed over the southern edge of the gully, a flurry of smoky SAMs filled the sky. “I’ve got SA-3s, SA-6s,
SA-8s, and triple-A all around us!” the DSO shouted. “
Scram! Scram left
!”

The B-1 snap-rolled to the left so hard that the OSO’s head hit the right bulkhead. Then he was thrown forward as the bomber quickly decelerated. He cried out in pain, his vision swimming with stars.

The pilot threw in forty degrees of bank and pulled on the stick to 2.5 Gs—almost tripling their weight—then pulled the throttles to idle to slow to cornering velocity.

“C’mon, Rodeo, turn!” the OSO shouted. “Pop the brakes! Go to ninety degrees bank!”

“We’re restricted . . .”

“We’re gonna get hosed if you don’t get that nose around, pilot!” the OSO said. “Pop the brakes! You’re VMC. Go to ninety degrees bank!”

“Speedbrakes coming out,” the pilot shouted on interphone, then flipped the speedbrake OVERRIDE switches and thumbed them to decelerate even faster. The “scram” maneuver was an emergency turn designed to get away from ground threats as quickly as possible. It meant instantly slowing the B-1 bomber to cornering velocity, a speed that increased the turn rate but wouldn’t normally sacrifice controllability.

“SA-8! Zeus-23! Eight o’clock, lethal range!” The electronic countermeasures system was ejecting chaff and flares as fast as possible, but the threats stayed locked on. The sky was suddenly filled with white lines—smoky SAMs, dozens of them, flitting around them like bees around a hive. Several of the little paper rockets hit the Bone, though there was no way they could do any actual damage—they weighed less than two pounds and were as fragile as a toy.

The pilot kept the back pressure on his control stick right at 2.5 Gs until the bomber had decelerated to their planned cornering velocity, then shoved the throttles to
max afterburner. The maneuver worked. By the time he had plugged in the afterburners, they were headed virtually in the opposite direction. He pushed the control stick right to roll wings-level and thumbed the speed-brake control to retract the speedbrakes so they could recover their lost airspeed . . .

. . . except that the bomber never rolled upright. They were still in a steep bank. “Damn! Damn! Damn!” the pilot kept shouting. “What’s happening here?” The TERFLW
FAIL
warning tone sounded, a continuous low tone signaling that the terrain-following system had failed. The system automatically performed a 3-G fail-safe pull-up, designed to fly the bomber away from the ground—but if it was in a steep bank angle, a fly-up would drive it into the ground unless the pilots intervened quickly. “
Shit
, what’s going on?” yelled the pilot. “It won’t roll wings-level! Mad Dog, get on your stick. I think my controls failed!”

“Get the nose down! Airspeed!” the copilot shouted as he grabbed for his stick. He tried to move it, but the bomber would not respond. He checked the flight control indicators. “Retract your speedbrakes! Spoilers are still up.” The pilot thumbed the switch to retract them, but there was no change. “Check my
OVERRIDE
switches!” he yelled.

The copilot reached over to the center console and checked the switches. “Spoiler OVERRIDE switches are normal,” he said. “What’s going on?”

The OSO could feel a definite sink building—it felt like the bomber was mushing, on the verge of a stall. It was yawing to the left as well, as if the pilot had pulled back power on the left engines. “Roll out! Roll out!” he shouted on interphone. “TF fail! You got it, pilot? Altitude!” But he didn’t have it.

The pilot saw his altimeter beginning to spin down faster and faster. He felt a weightless sensation, felt his
body floating in his straps. They were going in! Oh shit! Oh shit!

No choice, no warning—the pilot put his hand on his ejection lever, closed his eyes, and pulled.

Without warning, the upper hatch over each crew member’s station popped free, followed by a roar of windblast and a cloud of debris and dust that enveloped the aft compartment a split second before the rocket motors blasted the pilot up the ejection seat rails. A crushing blow slammed against his right shoulder, and he felt his body tumbling hard through the sky as it was snatched into the slipstream.

The last thing he remembered was seeing the sleek, deadly looking B-1B slide underneath him, still in a moderate left bank but with the nose up in a gentle climb. The pain in his shoulder was excruciating. He saw a tremendous fireball, a massive cloud of fire as big as the mountains surrounding his home back in Reno . . .

. . . and he saw two ejection seats, with partially inflated parachutes, fly right into that hellish wall of flames.

Seconds later he felt a sharp blow to his back and head . . . and then everything went black.

WONJU AIR BASE, REPUBLIC OF KOREA
THAT SAME TIME

I
n recent months Wonju Air Base had been placed on alert at least once a day, so when the Klaxon sounded that night, the ROK crews assumed it was more of the same. They ran to their planes and prepared to launch their fighters with surprising calm.

Because Wonju was South Korea’s northernmost air
defense installation, less than thirty miles from the Demilitarized Zone and about one hundred miles from the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, it would always be one of the first to react to any incursion by North Korean attackers. Wonju had a mixed fleet of aircraft. The primary air defense weapon was the F-16K, a fighter license-built in South Korea by a conglomerate of Korean heavy equipment manufacturers. The fighters were designed to respond to a massive invasion force, so had only one centerline external fuel tank; but they carried two radar-guided AIM-120 AMRAAMs (advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles) and eight AIM-9M Sidewinder short-range heat-seeking missiles, plus 200 rounds for the 20-millimeter cannon. A minimum of twelve F-16Ks pulled round-the-clock alert at Wonju.

The base’s fleet also included a number of French-built Mirage F1 fighters, American-built F-5 fighters for daylight intercepts—the North Korean Air Force was ill equipped to fight at night—and American-built F-4E Phantom jets for both bombing and air defense work. The alert fleet of twelve F-4Es was loaded with high-explosive and incendiary “firestorm” bombs specifically targeted for low-level, high-speed bombing raids of key selected North Korean targets, should the expected—many said inevitable—invasion from the North take place.

At the sound of the Klaxon, all alert crews went to their fighters and bombers, started engines, and monitored the air defense network. Even though they were in a heightened state of alert, no planes launched. A “launch on alert” could set off an uncontrollable military escalation between North and South in minutes. With engines running, the entire alert force could be in the air in less than two minutes. With planes taking off every fifteen seconds from the main runway and the two taxiways, twenty-four warplanes could be in the
sky from this base alone in less time than it took a highspeed attacker to fly ten miles.

The crews listened and waited. Was it the actual invasion this time? Was this the big showdown between the Communists and the South here at last?

“Unidentified aircraft heading south at three-four-zero degrees bearing from Wonju, fifteen miles, you are in danger of crossing the Demilitarized Zone at your present heading and airspeed,” the South Korean air defense controller warned. “This is your final warning. If you cross restricted airspace, you will be fired upon. Unidentified aircraft, turn north immediately or you will be fired upon.” At that same moment, two green lights flashed on the flight-line ready board. The first two South Korean F-16s had launch clearance.

As soon as they were airborne, the lead pilot switched his wingman to the air defense controller’s call-up frequency. “Sapphire Command, Tiger flight of two, passing three thousand, check.”

“Two,” his wingman replied.

“Tiger flight, Sapphire Command reads you loud and clear,” the controller responded. “Switch to blue seven.”

“Tiger flight going to blue seven now.” After receiving a curt “Two” from his wingman—any good wing-man will answer all calls with little more than his position in the formation—the two pilots changed over to a secure HAVE QUICK radio frequency. The channel “hopped” to different frequencies at irregular intervals, making it difficult for outsiders to eavesdrop. “Sapphire, Tiger flight with you passing four thousand, check.”

“Two.”

“Tiger flight, this is Sapphire Control, read you loud and clear,” the air defense controller responded, his voice now slightly garbled by the computer-controlled
frequency-hopping algorithm. “Say position from Solar.”

The lead pilot flipped his navigation system to the Solar way point, an imaginary point from which they could give position reports without revealing their position to outsiders. “Tiger flight is zero-six-three degrees bearing and oneniner miles from Solar.”

“Roger, Tiger flight. Fly heading two-niner-five and take base plus one-four.” Base altitude today was ten thousand feet, so the F-16s started a climb to twenty-four thousand feet. A few minutes later, when they were less than twenty miles from the DMZ, the controller called, “Linear.”

The lead F-16 pilot activated his APG-66 attack radar, and seconds later the radar locked onto a target directly off the nose. “Tiger flight is tied on, bogey bearing two-niner-seven, range thirty-two, low, speed three-zero-zero.”

“Tiger flight, that’s your bogey,” the controller replied.

The F-16’s APG-66 pulse-Doppler radar could track several targets simultaneously, but just for good measure the lead ROK pilot broke lock on the target and let the radar scan the sky again. No more targets. A lone invader from the North? The North rarely flew single-ship. A tight formation of many invaders? The Communist fliers were not known for their formation flying skills in daytime, and they rarely flew at all at night, much less in formation.

But the ROK pilot had learned never to rely on such assumptions. It was always better to assume there were numerous attackers out there. “Tiger flight, tactical spread, now.”

“Two.” The second F-16 left his leader’s right wing-tip and spread out several hundred feet laterally and two hundred feet above, close enough to keep his leader
in sight in the darkness but still be able to move and react quickly if the tactical situation changed. The Communist pilot might be able to see two targets on his radar screen—if he bothered to turn his radar on. So far, there was not one squeak from the threat-warning receiver, meaning he was not using his attack radar. Some of the North’s advanced J-7 and MiG-29 fighters purchased from China had infrared tracking devices and infrared-homing missiles, so radar wasn’t necessary close-in, but it was still very strange for an attacker to charge blindly into enemy territory without using radar.

The target continued across the DMZ without the slightest change in airspeed, altitude, or heading. The Communists had just committed an overt act of war, breaking the fragile truce between North and South.

The second Korean War was under way.

To the ROK pilot, this was not just an act of war—this was an act of barbarism. The two nations had been struggling for years to make peace and eventually reunite their two countries. Covert probes by North Korean special forces and provocative but nonaggressive border “incidents,” meant to trip the South into reacting with force for propaganda purposes, were bad enough. But this was a deliberate air-attack profile.