Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (67 page)

There were several reasons for this. Coming out of Korea and into Vietnam, the United States was regarded as much more combat savvy than the French, and their designs reflected this. Additionally, Tel Aviv was wary of depending on a single source, and Paris had proved unreliable in the past. French aircraft were also complicated: maintenance was difficult, and they weren’t easy to fly. This was especially critical for an air force that relied heavily upon reservists and emergency postings, if needed, for their defense. Both the reserves and emergency postings were fully trained pilots who had already served their commitments and now held civilian jobs. They maintained lower levels of qualifications than the regulars but the idea was that, like the old British Volunteer Reserves and Auxiliary Air Force pilots, in a crisis they could be rapidly brought up to speed.

Pilots were selected a bit differently in Israel than in most countries. In advance of compulsory national service at eighteen years of age, if a boy had high grades from secondary school, was in excellent physical shape, and scored well on the aptitude tests, he could apply. Those considered were asked to a
gibush
, a second round of selection that included additional aptitude tests and unique problem-solving scenarios presented to the candidate. This was to weed out those who looked good on paper but couldn’t think on their feet. Other air forces, including the USAAF and Luftwaffe, had used a similar system prior to World War II.

Once selected, a cadet would enter a six-month preparatory phase that introduced basic academics with rudimentary infantry and officers’ training. The Basic phase came next, and for five months the cadet studied more infantry tactics, underwent survival training, and learned to parachute. He also continued elementary flying in a Grob trainer. Many were eliminated during this first year and sent back to the army for their national service. At the end of Basic, cadets were rank-ordered by flying skill, grades, and instructor evaluations. Those who had some aptitude but hadn’t qualified as pilot candidates were sent to navigator training. The others were divided into combat pilots, helicopter pilots, and transport pilots and from here would go to Primary.

This course took another six months and taught regular contact flying skills, takeoffs and landings, patterns, and elementary aerobatics. Whoever remained after this was sent to college for a year, courtesy of Ben-Gurion University, and permitted to choose one of four areas of study. Following this academic phase, the cadet had six more months of advanced training: formation flying, aerobatics, instrument flying, and of course, there were continuous evaluations. The abbreviated academic coursework was also completed, and the cadet had to endure a final committee review of all he’d done in the past three years. If he passed and graduated, the young man was given a B.A. or B.S. degree along with his lieutenant’s commission and wings.
^*
After this came a year of operational training in whichever aircraft the pilot had been selected to fly before a posting to a line squadron.

The men who fought the Yom Kippur War were aware that they were Israel’s first and best line of defense. Each squadron was a unit of precisely placed, mobile high explosives—aggressive, highly motivated men who would do what they had to do for the safety of their country. After the Bar-Lev Line was breached, the IAF went into crisis mode and began scrambling aircraft, like Tulip flight, to plug the gaps. There were F-4 squadrons, but they were primarily engaged in air-to-air combat and heavy bombing missions, so the majority of close air support and defense suppression missions fell to the A-4 Skyhawks.

Developed from a U.S. Navy requirement for a light attack jet aircraft, McDonnell-Douglas flew the prototype in June 1954, and it went out to the fleet in 1956. The design was relatively conventional: a low-delta-wing, single-seat fighter with one engine. The leading-edge flaps were aerodynamically activated, like those on the Bf 109s had been, so there was no extra mechanical weight. Also, the stubby little 26-foot wings were small enough that no folding mechanism was required—all of which meant that McDonnell was able to deliver a plane at 50 percent of specified gross weight.

The diminutive fighter was hard to see, which is good in any kind of fight. It was quick, simple, tough, and, as Giora Rom proved, easy to fly. Small though it was, the Skyhawk could carry a 9,900-pound weapons payload plus two 20 mm cannons. Capable of 650 mph, the A-4 climbed out at 8,400 feet per minute with a combat range around 600 miles, depending on its load. It was ideal for close air support. Equally important, the unit cost was about 25 percent of the Phantom’s—and it carried more bombs.

When the United States decided to sell F-104 Starfighters to the Royal Jordanian Air Force in the mid-1960s, the IAF saw an opportunity. Wanting an alternative to the French, Tel Aviv agreed not to object to the Jordanian sale if Washington would offer the IAF something just as good, and by 1966 Operation Rugby—delivery of Skyhawks to Israel—was under way. In the summer of 1967, while Robin Olds and the Wolfpack were killing MiGs, Israeli pilots were in Florida learning to fly their new jet. Though the Israelis were all qualified combat pilots, the Americans had weapons and techniques that the IAF hadn’t yet mastered such as air-to-air radar, catapult launches, and air refueling.

The first Skyhawks arrived by boat in Haifa a few days after Christmas 1967, and were immediately assembled. The IAF version, called the A-4H, had some modifications, including a different engine, the J52-P-8A. The Israelis had also replaced the 20 mm cannons with twin DEFA 30 mm guns and added a tailpipe extension to shield the engine from heat-seeking missiles. Though it performed well during the War of Attrition, the A-4 was hard hit during the Yom Kippur War.

Israel’s continuous struggle since independence had been overwhelmingly successful from a military standpoint, and though always outnumbered, superior training combined with good equipment had kept the edge. After all, it was no ideological struggle for Israel—it was survival. However, this string of victories led to some degree of overconfidence, and it caught up to the IDF in October 1973. Had it not been for the geography of Sinai and the Golan Heights
and
the skill of her fighter pilots, Israel would very likely have ceased to exist; or at least been driven to the point of using nuclear weapons.

There was another lesson here as well. Namely, that close air support without air superiority is a costly business, and this no longer applied to just enemy fighters. Air superiority now included operating in a SAM-free environment. Anti-aircraft artillery and MANPADs would always be present, but they were a risk that had to be taken. Larger fixed SAMs could be avoided or destroyed, but the new mobile SAMs had changed the battlefield. They had to be dealt with before close air support aircraft and helicopters could roam about with impunity. Altitude, either high or low, was no longer an exclusion zone, at least not without jamming. Medium altitude was untenable against SAMs, and low altitude without countermeasures was equally dangerous.

Therefore, in any future battle all the elements had to come together. Jamming—the stand-off type against early warning and search radars, plus tactical systems that kept fighters alive in battle—was essential. Countermeasures such as chaff and flares had to be fully integrated. Automatic options were needed if certain types of guidance were sensed, along with a manual capability the pilot could use at will. Most of all, fighter pilots had to go into future conflicts prepared to be flexible, as always. Those who planned such wars needed the creative willingness to realize that there is no one solution to a tactical problem. Hard lessons need to be remembered, but tactics should be derived against the next threat, not for the last one.

Vietnam and the Arab-Israeli wars should have been a warning, but they were not immediately regarded that way by Washington. In all fairness, the Soviet Union was still the main threat for the West, and the U.S. military had learned from their experience and those of others. Air-to-air combat would always be a critical fighter pilot skill, but American primacy in that area nearly eliminated such a threat from enemy pilots. The real danger, far more extensive and far more lethal, came from air defense systems. Vast networks of SAMs, plus radars and all the weapons that could be guided from them, had replaced most of the air threats. The guard was changing from the glory days of mass dogfights to a new age of supersonic missiles and radar-guided anti-aircraft fire.

Electronic and passive countermeasures were now constantly being developed and refined, much as better engines and guns had been a few decades earlier. Aircraft development was generally veering away from single-mission aircraft, and the age of the multirole fighter was at hand. Advances in ergonomics, microtechnology, and computers had improved designs to the point where vast amounts of information could be processed by one pilot. This rapidly brought an end to the need for two-seat tactical aircraft.

As the threat from the East diminished and the Soviet Union careened toward a bloodless economic collapse, many believed that the time of danger was over. It was a fond wish but a wish nonetheless—flawed and as dangerous as those that emerged in 1918, 1945, and 1953. Proxy fights would continue, but the new wars were increasingly fought between violently opposed ideologies rather than socioeconomic systems. In less than two decades, the West would face an unexpected threat that would shape the world of the fighter pilot for decades to come.

CHAPTER 15

THE CIRCLE CLOSES

F
EBRUARY
6, 1991

N
ORTHERN
I
RAQ

“
SAM IN THE
air! SA-6 . . .
two
SAMs . . . over Ally’s Twat . . . northbound!”

The F-16 flipped over and pulled sideways to put the incoming missiles off its left wing. Popping upright, the pilot gasped, rolled slightly to see over his canopy rail, then stared down at the mottled brown landscape. Twenty miles farther east, next to the gray-green Tigris River, it was darker, but here the tan plumes were easy to see, hanging in the air over the launch sites. The missiles were plain enough; dirty white fingers reaching up through a light blue sky, at three times the speed of sound. He had only seconds to react.

Lt. Col. Dave “Mooman” Moody slapped the chaff dispense button on the left bulkhead, then keyed the mike.

“Satan Two . . . Slapshot Six . . . bearing two, zero, zero . . .”

He banked a bit harder, nudged the throttle against the mil power stop, and punched out a few more chaff bundles.
Question marks,
he thought.
They look like fucking question marks.
Both of the smoke trails were bending around to the north at his two-ship. He’d split his flight of four, and the other pair, called an element, had gone east of the Al Sharqat target area. Called “Ally’s Twat,” of course, it lay off Highway One just west of the Tigris River. South of Mosul and due west of Kirkuk, Sharqat was the site of a major military complex. Intel also said it was a possible chemical weapons depot, or maybe even a nuclear research facility.

The colonel shrugged; either way, it was just a target. What made it suspicious, though, were the defenses. It had been ringed by SA-2 and SA-3 batteries, but over the past two days his squadron had destroyed them and their early-warning radars. The remaining SAMs were nasty. Short-ranged, very fast, and tough to jam, the SA-8s had to go before strikers could get in and flatten the place—and they’d be here in fifteen minutes. Bareta, Hodja, and Phaser—twelve more of his Viper brothers.

“Satan Two . . . Magnum Six . . . Ally’s Twat.”

Mooman glanced back to his left seven o’clock position. The big, dark F-4G was plain to see about 9,000 feet behind him, and so was the immense bright white cloud erupting beneath its wing. The trail detached itself from the fighter, and the high-speed anti-radiation missile in front of the smoke wobbled a moment. Then it turned and abruptly pitched down at the crappy little village to the south.

“. . . and another raghead on a cell phone bites the dust,” the colonel muttered.

From the corner of his eye he saw the Phantom crank back toward him, digging down hard to get the nose around. As it disappeared past his tail Mooman stared at the SAMs. They’d finished the turn and both were pointing northwest of the village—at him. Holding the F-16 rock steady, he eyeballed the ALR-69 radar warning receiver (RWR), then popped the chaff button two more times. The RWR soaked up radar beams of all types, then compared them to a library in its memory. It also measured the signal’s angle of arrival and put a matching symbol on the display.

In this case it was a Straight Flush fire control radar that was tracking him. The signal would bounce off his jet, and a smaller antenna within the missile’s seeker head would “see” it. In fractions of a second, angular differences were measured and the missile fins moved accordingly. Semi-active radar homing gave quicker corrections and was much, much more difficult to defeat than the older command-guided SA-2 system.