Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (68 page)

“Satan Three, tally a third missile off the ground at Ally’s Twat!”

Mooman risked a glance away and saw the rolling dust plume of a third launch. Before he could say anything, the other element lead did. “Satan Four . . . Slapshot Six bearing three, one, zero . . .”

Good kid,
he thought.

The “Fighting Hawks” of the 23rd Tactical Fighter Squadron were a class act, and being the squadron commander was the high point of his career. Detached from the 52nd Tactical Fighter Wing out of Spangdahlem Air Base, West Germany, they flew F-16Cs and F-4Gs together as mixed pairs. It was a continuation of the Hunter-Killer concept that came out of Vietnam; the Phantom had the APR-47 for hunting SAMs and the Viper carried GP bombs, air-to-ground missiles, or cluster bombs to kill the thing.

He bunted, rolled inverted and hung upside down as dirt floated through the cockpit. A gum wrapper too . . .
sonavabitch
. . . Staring down at Iraq, he slapped the button four times then pulled directly for the earth. The floating crap disappeared with g’s and in an instant the Viper was 90 degrees to the ground. Mooman corkscrewed the jet, yanked the throttle back to idle, and looked for smoke trails.

One. Only one . . .

“Shit!”

Still pointed straight down at 13,000 feet, he pirouetted the Viper, putting its tail on Al Sharqat. Tensing his stomach muscles, Mooman immediately pulled back hard with his right hand and mashed the chaff button again with his left. The digital readout in his heads-up display (HUD) went to 7.1 g’s, and as the jet’s nose came up he rotated the throttle out, then shoved it into full afterburner.

“Satan Three’s tally the site . . . in from the southeast.”

The burner kicked, and the F-16 rocketed up as Mooman strained against the g-forces, watching. His ECM jamming pod was on automatic, so all he could do now was put out more chaff and fly better than a shot of scotch. Bunting to hold 60 degrees nose high, his eyes flickered to the HUD again as the fighter rolled off to the right: 19,200 feet and 360 knots.

Tugging the throttle back to mil power, the colonel braced his left hand on the rack running along the bottom of the canopy. He could twist against the g’s easier now, and did just that, looking back high over his tail.
That’s where the first missile should be . . .

Suddenly a flash of movement caught his eye, and Mooman felt ice shoot through him.
Mother of God
. . .

“Satan One, break!” His F-4 wingman saw it, too, and was trying to warn him.

“SAM . . . close aboard, break now!”

Reacting instantly, he threw the jet into a wild, descending corkscrew and groped for the chaff button. Heart in his throat, he gasped at the g’s and reefed back on the stick with all his might. As his helmet hit the seat, Mooman’s eyes grayed out and his skin itched, but he kept pulling back up through the horizon. Shaking his head to clear it, he swallowed hard and savagely bunted the Viper over.

“Satan Two . . . attacking Six . . . Ally’s Twat!”

The F-4G was trying to help by turning in as well. Flying reflexively, he barrel-rolled back to the right, his vision narrowing. The faint green symbology in his HUD went to gray.
Should be dead . . .
his mind processed that thought, along with the faint noise on the radio.
Talking . . .
Satan Three had come off the target, and there were secondary explosions . . . someone was asking about fuel.

“Satan One . . . ah, both SAMs missed aft. Third went ballistic . . . status?”

Ears ringing, Mooman rolled upright and stared straight ahead. Color returned to his vision and the HUD was green again. He took a deep breath and answered on the interflight VHF radio. “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride . . . I’m good.”

“Satan One . . . Satan Three.”

“Go.” Colonel Moody began arcing back west to keep the target area in sight.

“Looks like two launchers destroyed. Tally on the Straight Flush . . . can you hit it?”

Mooman blinked and craned his neck over the canopy rail. A cloud of dust had risen over the desert and was drifting south with the wind. Blacker smoke on the edges . . . He squinted and saw two distinct burning areas: revetments. Even from 15,000 feet they were plain enough now that he knew where to look. Running his eyes over the cockpit, he moved the fuel select knob back to NORM and checked the totalizer. His wing tanks were empty.

“Roger that . . . Satan One’s got about ten mikes on station.”

The rest of them came back with fuel and weapons remaining. There was one HARM left on Satan Four, and Moody’s two cans of CBU-58. Zippering the mike, he swung the Viper back around to the east and pulled the power back to hold 400 knots.

“One is contact the two burning launchers.”

It was a start point for a visual talk-on. Three was a brand-new captain called Scorch, but he was already a combat flight lead. “Rog . . . take the distance between the burning targets as one unit . . . go one unit southeast under the smoke to a small hill . . .”

Mooman did it and found the hill. There was something on top of it, something big enough to cast a shadow. “Contact . . . and vehicles on top.”

“Straight Flush. Third launcher is due east one unit.”

From long habit, Colonel Moody’s fingers danced over the cockpit just to make sure. Master Arm . . . camera . . . A/G master mode . . . He looked up through the HUD and flicked the drift cutout switch off so that his bombing symbology would show the winds. Twisting around again, he found the Phantom hanging back two miles at his seven o’clock. Attacking with the wind was better, but there wasn’t enough time. He held the two-way mike switch aft. “Satan Four . . . Slapshot Six, Ally’s Twat. One’s in from the northwest.”

The reply was immediate. “Satan Four, attacking Six.”

Mooman had already flown the Viper to a decent offset position, so he pulled sideways, then rolled inverted, slid the throttle back, and sliced toward the ground. At the top of the HUD was a little bore sight cross and he played the roll-in to put this cross above the hill.

“Satan Four . . . Magnum Six, Ally’s Twat!”

Snapping the jet upright, Moody leveled his wings and pulled the throttle all the way to idle. If he didn’t, he’d be supersonic, and that would spoil his aim. The long continuously computed impact point (CCIP) line hung down the HUD like a pendulum, and at the base was a little circle with a pipper. He kept this frozen in place as the altitude unwound.

13,500 feet.

He saw another big white smoke trail, but this one was going down, not coming up. It was a HARM from the other Phantom, Satan Four.

12,000 feet.

Fanning open the speed brakes, Mooman kept the Viper at 450 knots, hoping the HARM would keep the little fuckers’ heads down. As soon as he thought it, another dirty brown mushroom cloud bloomed next to the hill.
Shit . . .

“Satan, head’s up! SAM in the air from Ally’s Twat.”

Twitching the stick, he kept the CCIP line running through the target and ignored the missile. Best way to beat that thing was to kill the Straight Flush.

10,500 feet. Almost there . . .
almost
. The pipper was just under the hill.

“Triple-A . . . ten thousand . . . head’s up, One!”

Several flashes . . . but as time slowed down, he saw nothing except the pipper.
There!
It was on the base of the hill. Bunting slightly, Mooman froze the tiny dot on the cluster of vehicles and mashed down on the red pickle button.

The SAM began its climbing turn. Some Eagle flight named Scoff was talking about airborne MiGs, and the AWACS was asking for Satan’s position. The jet rocked as the cans of CBU fell free, so Mooman closed the speed brakes, shoved the throttle to mil, and pulled back on the stick. Slapping out a few more chaff bundles, he cranked over sideways to look for Triple-A, then abruptly banked up hard to the right . . . then to the left. Being predictable during a fight was stupid. Proving the point, a cluster of white puffies suddenly appeared exactly where he’d been.

Triple-A, probably 57 mm. Twitching his tail again, he pumped some chaff, but didn’t put out any flares. Lots of SAMs could launch optically, and they would if they saw flares. Passing 13,000 feet, Mooman shoved the burner in and began an easy turn back to the north. The RWR scope was hopelessly cluttered with symbols.

“Satan Three . . . tied . . . visual.” Meaning he had a radar lock and could see his leader.
Kid’s got great eyes
. . .

“Posit?” he snapped back.

“Ten south of Key West . . . over the highway, northbound . . . four point two.”

Moody pictured it in his head and glanced down at his multifunction display (MFD)—sort of a god’s-eye electronic map in this case. Scorch was farther south than he was and had 4,200 pounds of gas remaining. The kid had already proven he could take care of himself. “Satan Three, cleared to the Gates above thirty K . . . we’ll meet up with Arco 54 . . . remain this Victor.”

“Three copies all. Good hit with secondarys . . . stick a fork in ’im, he’s done.”

The colonel threw his head back and laughed. Cocky bastard. Still, why not? The captain was, what, twenty-five years old and leading around $100 million worth of aircraft in combat and killing gomers? Leveling off, he unhooked the sweaty mask and stared out at Mosul. They’d blown the SAMs there to bits during the first two weeks of the war, but there were still MiGs, so most fighters returning north gave the place a wide berth.

Nudging the stick, he headed directly for the air base south of town. After all, it was on the way home. Maybe the Rags would be stupid enough to scramble a few of their shitty jets and make his day complete. Mooman chuckled and adjusted his air-to-air radar to search low. Fuck ’em in the heart . . . then there’d be a few that wouldn’t be coming back.

Three hundred and sixty miles to the south, a pair of U.S. Navy Hornets wheeled over the plains northwest of Basra. Powerful twin-engine fighters, these F/A-18s belonged to the “Dambusters” of VFA-195, and today they were out hunting. The city sprawled out from the west bank of the Tigris River like a gray ink blot and beyond its muddy banks lay Iran; a huge spiderweb of deserted revetments, roads, and cantonments covered the ground there like some grotesque tattoo. West of the city the north-south-running airfield was plain to see, as were the mounds and revetments of several SA-3 sites. The river area was dark brown with green edges that rapidly vanished a mile or so from water.

“What a shithole,” Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Ashby muttered into his sweaty mask as he stared out over the canopy rail. Leading Hobo flight, he’d been launched off the USS
Midway
in the Persian Gulf to find an enemy helicopter. Specifically, an Iraqi Super Frelon loaded with Exocet anti-ship missiles. Ashby, known as “Bones,” was well aware that the 1,500-pound missile could reach 100 miles into the Gulf. One just like it had hit the destroyer USS
Stark
three years ago and killed nearly forty Americans.
And that was when Saddam was our buddy.
He shook his head disgustedly.

“Hobo Two’s Joker.”

He zippered the mike and looked at his own fuel. Ten more minutes, maybe. Pulling the jet around to the west, he twisted the RWR volume up a tad. It had been relatively quiet so far, but you just never knew. Cranking up again, Bones rolled out heading southeast and stared through his HUD. A little green diamond showed the location of coordinates he’d been given before the mission. It was sitting nicely over empty ground. No helo. He sighed and eyeballed the SAM sites off to the southeast. A few white puffy blotches appeared, then some black ones a bit higher.

“Triple-A over Basra,” his wingman chimed in on the interflight UHF frequency.

“Got it . . . not a factor.”

For the third time he began a quick, methodical scan around the diamond. Each time he’d run in from another angle, knowing very well the differences that sun and terrain could make. Still, at 450 knots there was never much time. Pushing his visor up, Jeff rubbed his eyes and sighed again. One more, then he’d—

A shadow on the ground.

Using his left index finger, Jeff slewed a little knob on the right throttle and moved the diamond over the dark asterisk shape on the desert floor. Glancing down to his right MFD, he squinted at the grainy TV picture and slowly smiled.

“Gotcha.”

The ugly six-bladed copter squatted on the ground, partially covered by netting.
That’s why I didn’t see it.
It was the shadow of the rotor blades that had caught his eye. “Hobo Two . . . One’s tally the target . . . off the nose, ah . . . four miles.”

“Ah . . . Hobo Two’s blind.”

Perfect. Fucking perfect. Jeff looked up and around but couldn’t see him. Eyeballing the radar, there was nothing there either.
Must be behind me
. At least they wouldn’t hit each other.

The pilot’s hands moved around the cockpit, touching the master arm switch, flipping the wafer knob to check his wing tanks, and turning up the intensity of his HUD. There wasn’t fuel enough for anything fancy. “Hobo One’s attacking.”

Everything was set, and for once the Walleye’s picture was fairly clear. Pulling the throttles back a knob width, he eased the nose over to set up a long, shallow dive. The AGM-42 had no rocket motor; it was essentially a guided glide munition that used the dropping jet’s speed to get to a target. Through a TV camera mounted on the front of the bomb, the pilot designated, or “locked,” the weapon. Once released, the Hornet could maneuver as needed, since the fins steered the Walleye directly to the designated point. This one was a Fat Albert, a 2,000-pound Walleye II that could drop a bridge and would make a mess out of this crappy little helicopter. Bones grinned at that and checked the aiming cross. It was steady on the intakes above the cockpit.

He pushed up the throttles and the Hornet lunged forward. Ashby glanced at the HUD; nearly 500 knots. Then back to the MFD and saw the pointing cross was steady. Then back to the HUD—range to the diamond was 8.7 nautical miles. He paused, then jabbed down on the red pickle button. The fighter immediately lurched as the big Walleye dropped free.