Supersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (34 page)

The missiles were excruciating to operate for a fighter pilot used to closing up behind an enemy, pressing a trigger, and watching the metal fly. The F-4 carried four AIM-7 radar-guided Sparrows and four AIM-9 heat-seeking Sidewinders.

Carried partially embedded in the Phantom’s belly, the fourhundred-pound Sparrow had a sixty-five-pound warhead. The Phantom’s radar would lock onto a target, creating a “beam” for the AIM-7 to follow to the target. But launching the AIM-7 was complex and time-consuming. Once launched, the Phantom’s radar had to continue to lock onto the target, or the Sparrow would go out of control.

Launching the Sidewinder was slightly less complex but still nerveracking, as the pilot had to wait until a tone in his headset confirmed that the missile was ready to fire. Carrying a smaller twenty-five-pound warhead, the Sidewinder used an infrared sensor to seek out the heat from the enemy’s engine exhaust. To make a good Sidewinder shot, the Phantom had to fly into a thirty-degree cone within a mile of the aircraft, set up, hear the buzz that said the missile was ready, then fire. Far different from pulling a trigger.

Both missiles had proximity fuses, but both had minimum ranges—you couldn’t get closer than three thousand feet to the enemy, or the missile would disarm as a safety precaution. The real problem, however, the one that drove air crews crazy, was that both missiles were extremely unreliable, often going wildly out of control after their launch.

Tom wondered what was going on at the enemy airfields below. The Vietnam People’s Air Force (VPAF) had very few aircraft deployed in combat, perhaps fifteen of the modern delta-wing MiG-21s and a mix of fifty MiG-15s and 17s, mostly the latter. They very sensibly did not try to engage the Americans in air combat. Instead their mission was to make the fighter-bombers drop their bombs before they reached their targets. Once that was done, the MiGs would disappear, their mission accomplished.

Their tactics were just as Steve O’Malley had described them. Under ground control, they would track a formation of the F-105s and, whenever possible, attack from the rear with their Atoll missiles, an unabashed copy of the Sidewinder, but with improved performance. Or they might spill out of a cloud bank in a slashing attack, trying for the same goal—to make the 105s jettison their load. It was a very clever, very economical way to fight a war—but it was frustrating to the American pilots who wanted to score victories.

Shannon chuckled to himself. At forty-eight years old he’d come out to Ubon a complete green bean compared to the men in his wing and within ninety days had scored two kills. He wasn’t too proud of one of them, a MiG-15b, the two-seat version of the famous fighter. It must have been lost on a training flight, flying in a slight curve, as if it was signaling ground control for assistance. Tom found it quite by accident, coming back from Hanoi, and killed it with one Sidewinder that went right up the MiG’s tailpipe.

The other was a legitimate victory. A MiG-17 had tried to lure him down to a turning fight at about ten thousand feet. The MiG was serving as a decoy to another flight of MiG-17s up above them, but the Vietnamese pilot made the mistake of flying straight and level long enough for Tom’s Sparrow to guide in and blow him up.

The victories were far more important than just raising Tom’s score, for they raised the morale of the Sixth TFW and firmly put him in the saddle as a leader to be respected. As for Pavone, he couldn’t contain his elation. He had two victories, too, and he let no one forget it, particularly pilots he had flown with before Shannon’s arrival. And the victories permitted Shannon to train his wing harder. The Australian No. 79 Fighter Squadron, equipped with the big-engine CA-27 Avon F-86 Sabres, was based at Ubon. These were hot airplanes, perfect to simulate the MiGs the Cougars were encountering in Vietnam. Shannon asked the Australian commander to scramble two Sabres twice a day to intercept his Phantoms as they returned from combat. Most of the Phantom pilots had little or no air-to-air combat experience, and the education the Australian Sabres provided was invaluable. The Cougar pilots loved it, and the Australians liked nothing better than attacking the incoming Phantoms. Many an argument about who shot down who was settled later in the evening at the bar.

Tom was tired. He worked hard at his job, flying every day if he could. When he wasn’t flying he was massaging the squadron, visiting every area from armament to the motor pool, not as a CO on inspection but as a leader trying to learn. Within sixty days of his arrival, he knew virtually everyone in the wing by their first names and he could usually make some mental association to remember their family or their new baby or their last court-martial.

It was so easy to do little things to improve morale. The armament people worked hard and sometimes didn’t finish in time to get to the mess hall for a meal. Shannon ordered the dining facilities to stay open until the last man was fed, regardless of the hour. The curious thing was that it not only improved the morale of the armament guys, it made the mess-hall people feel like they were important, and their morale improved as well. It didn’t hurt that Tom sometimes went down and drank with the enlisted men. It was strictly against protocol, but you could learn a lot listening to smart young airmen whose inhibitions were loosened by a couple of beers and who were pleased to have their CO tipping one back with them.

The flying was arduous. The rules of engagement made nonsense of targeting. Rice- and truck-laden ships in the harbor at Haiphong, perfect targets for both their missiles and bombs, were off-limits, their cargo having to be picked off bag by bag, truck by truck, on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Worse, they forced the attacks into a routine pattern of times, routes, and altitudes that removed every element of surprise. In essence the American effort became a colossal school of aerial warfare, with the Americans the instructors, the North Vietnamese the very apt pupils.

Tom admired the enemy for their effective responses to the weak American ploys. McNamara ruled that dikes would not be attacked, because for reasons of world opinion he didn’t wish to reduce the North Vietnamese food supply. The enemy responded by promptly moving their formidable anti-aircraft guns to the dikes, where they could operate with impunity. When the USAF revised its tactics, going in low to offset the surface-to-air missiles, the enemy brought up enormous amounts of anti-aircraft artillery, supplied by Russia and China. Then when the USAF came up with electronic equipment such as the QRC-160 pods that effectively jammed radars, they brought in more aircraft to vary the threat.

Shannon’s wing was flying with borrowed QRC-160 pods today. The F-105s had adopted the “pod formation” with them, maximizing their ability to jam enemy electronic systems. As the F-4s were pretending to be F-105s, they had to have the QRC-160s as well.

It was one more place where Steve O’Malley had proved his worth. Although the idea of the F-4s masquerading as F-105s had been Shannon’s, he had delegated the intricate planning of the mission to O’Malley, Pavone, and two other flight leaders to work out the details.

O’Malley had thrown himself into the project, determining the key points on the routes in and out, the force to use, the refueling points, all the details of radio communications, anti-aircraft suppression, and the electronic countermeasures. When he asked for QRC-160 pods from Seventh Air Force, he met immediate resistance, because they were in short supply. O’Malley flew to Saigon, made the right contacts, and swore on his life that he would have the pods back in seven days. Then he waited until he had personally seen the pods loaded onto a C-130 bound for Ubon before he took off himself. He beat the C-130 to Ubon, of course, and was there to off-load the QRC-160 pods and supervise their installation on the Phantoms.

At one point O’Malley came to Shannon, cautioning him on how narrow the margin for success was. The MiGs were very short-ranged, and if the North Vietnamese committed them to combat, they would be in the air for only about one hour at the maximum. If they launched too soon, they’d be landing before the Phantoms arrived; if they waited, the Phantoms would be gone before they could get there. Shannon decided to stagger the flights of Phantoms, so that they would arrive over the target area in five-minute intervals—at least someone would get a shot if the MiGs showed up.

Shannon glanced at the clock and remembered the three basic advantages they had, besides surprise. First of all, they had altitude, and that meant energy. Second, the silver MiGs would be coming up through the clouds, and that meant they would be visible. Third, and most important, in this environment the Americans knew where all the airplanes were, so he had ruled it a “missile-free” environment. The Phantoms could fire their missiles without getting a visual identification.

Pavone called, “Time over target.”

The ground was still completely overcast, with the tops of the clouds around seven thousand feet. They were right on the money on time, directly over the Phuc Yen airfield, but where were the MiGs? Had someone slipped up? Were the call signs too obvious? O’Malley was a car guy, and he had designated the flights by makes of cars. Shannon was lead in Cadillac flight, O’Malley was leading Plymouth flight, and so on. Did that tip the North Vietnamese off?

Shannon began a slow 180-degree turn, calling out, “Visual ID required.”

With one flight of Phantoms over the target and another arriving in four minutes, it was no longer a missile-free environment.

Plymouth flight arrived—just as the MiGs began popping up through the overcast, expecting to find a sky full of Republic F-105s but instead finding Phantoms screaming down on them.

Shannon picked up a silver MiG-21, its delta shape shining brightly against the clouds below. Long before, he and Pavone had done the intricate teamwork necessary to set the missiles up, doing the “switchology,” throwing the switches in the right sequence, letting the missiles come online so that they could be fired. Pavone was eager but inexperienced, his focus entirely within the cockpit, checking the radar and the warning lights. Tom’s vast combat experience now asserted itself. As he pursued the MiG, its pilot probably wondering Custer-like where all the fucking F-4s had come from, Shannon possessed in abundance what fighter pilots called situational awareness. He took in the entire combat situation, from horizon to horizon and from the ground up. His mind picked each of the MiGs, climbing toward them at near supersonic speed, and he automatically estimated where they would be in the next minute. He did the same with the American planes, even though the sky had become a whirling windmill of fighters.

Fighting the MiG-21 required finesse. A tiny airplane with a big engine, it was faster and more maneuverable at higher altitudes than the F-4. The Phantom’s great advantage was its colossal energy that it gained in vertical maneuvers, offsetting the MiG’s ability to turn.

Just like Wildcats and Zeros
, Shannon thought as Pavone, breathing hard, yelled, “We’ve got a lock.”

Shannon hit the auto-acquisition switch, put the pipper on the MiG, and launched a Sparrow. He cursed to himself when he saw the agile MiG disappear into a cloud and the Sparrow begin to tumble wildly.

Shannon thought,
Shit, I’m getting old, my reflexes are off—

Just then he saw another MiG appear in his ten o’clock position, coming fast. He slammed the afterburner, pulling the Phantom up in a forty-five-degree climb. The MiG was turning to the left and Shannon barrel-rolled to the right. Just as he had anticipated, he was now above the MiG, inverted, and able to keep on turning behind him, closing the range to 1,500 yards and using a twenty-degree deflection angle. Now he passed below the MiG, framing it in his sights, a silver triangle against the sun as he launched two Sidewinders. The first one hit the right wing of the MiG, blowing it off; the second passed through the fireball.

Pavone was beside himself. “Hot damn, we got three now, skipper; let’s get another gomer while we’re here.”

Shannon grunted under the five g’s he was pulling as he arced the Phantom around, thinking, idiotically enough,
Get’em while they’re hot,
the old ball-game chant of the hot dog vendor. Exulting in the swift changes in direction, the spinning reversal of sky and ground as he rolled, the g-forces slamming him into his seat, he burned with the adrenaline coursing through him.

As he turned he saw O’Malley’s Phantom fire two Sidewinders against another MiG. The first missile tumbled out of control, but the second one blew the vertical surface off the enemy plane, sending it rolling swiftly to the ground. It was O’Malley’s first kill and Shannon knew how he felt as he turned on a MiG that had apparently overshot its target and was flashing through the center of the combat, diving down toward the airfield at Phuc Yen.

Pavone yelled, “Get him,” and then, “Lock on.”

Shannon hesitated—he had the MiG in his sights, but he was too close for the Sparrow and he switched to a Sidewinder. There was an eternity before he heard the buzz and launched it to fly like the maniacal robot it was, straight down after the fleeing MiG, smashing into its tailpipe, just as it was designed to do. The pilot did not eject.

Pavone was screaming, “I got four! I got four! Goddammit, I got four!”

“Shut up, Pavone; we’re getting short on fuel—”

And there it was, a MiG-21 following a Phantom down in a course to the southeast. Shannon rolled the Phantom over, acquired the MiG in his sight, and followed it, holding his fire until Pavone yelled that he had a lock.

O’Malley’s voice came over the radio.

“Cadillac One, break right; there’s two MiG-17s coming behind you;
break, break, break!
”

Shannon heard the warning, decided he had five more seconds, and launched his two Sparrows as the 37mm cannon shells of the MiGs clawed through his wings and fuselage.

The broken Phantom, shedding parts amid a ball of flame and smoke, went inverted, and Shannon yelled to Pavone, “Eject, eject, eject,” as he pulled his own ejection seat handle that would eject Pavone first.