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I look out the canopy at the Georgian countryside passing underneath the Tomcat. My wingman matched my path a mile to starboard as we pressed deeper into Russian territory to deliver our 2000 lb bombs onto a major trainyard.
Dozens of vehicles and hundreds of soldiers had passed through that yard in the last few days, heading toward the front line against the remaining Georgian forces. After the Russians had mounted a massed missile strike against my home carrier, the gloves had come off and all of us in CVN-72's air wing were all eager to pay the attack back with interest.
We had pushed through the hole we tore in the enemy air defense yesterday, and had managed to avoid enemy CAPs this far.
"Uzi 1-1, Focus, enemy 2 ship. BRA 325 at 30, 28000. Hot."
My blood ran cold as the call from Focus, our AWACS, came across the radio. I'd hoped that by remaining low, only 5,000 feet above sea level, which was roughly 3,500 off the deck, we'd slip through without the Russian pilots being able to pick us out of the ground clutter.
I keyed the radio, "Uzi 1-2, you're cleared to engage bandits."
Jester, my RIO for this mission, already working away at the RADAR in the back seat, "Target locked boss!" I grunted in acknowledgment as a diamond appeared on my HUD. Reaching over, I swapped the HSD for the TDI with a flip of a switch, which showed me Jester had locked up the rearmost bandit.
The calls from Focus hung in the back of my mind, I recognized them, but my attention was firmly on the here and now. Between my wingman and I, we only had 4 long-range "Phoenix" missiles, and 4 short-range "Sidewinders", and the sky was sprouting bandits at an alarming rate.
"Uzi 1-2, Fox3!"
Looking over my right shoulder, I watch as the smoke trails rip from the F-14, the missiles blasting off in search of the targets. I hold my own missiles, and wait to see what my wingman gets with his.
The RWR's warble swaps to an urgent beeping as Jester shouts, "Missile track, 11 o'clock high!"
Pushing the throttle to full mil power, I snap roll to the left and peel away for a moment before leveling out and scanning the sky. A pair of black specks against the white clouds sit in sharp contrast, punctuated by puffs of fire and smoke. "Uzi 1-2, splash 1, splash 2!"
The RWR calms back to the steady warbling of search RADAR, and I reverse course, pulling back in. Another pair of contacts show on the TDI. "Jester, gimme a bandit."
"No can do, boss."
Biting back a snarky remark, I grumble inwardly. Jester knew his systems like no other, but he was religiously by the book. Even in cases where we had no other friendlies aside from our wingman were within 200 miles. "Lock a target off our nose!" I snap, flipping another switch to swap the VDI over to the TV camera.
The target symbology appeared on my HUD, the bandit sat 18 miles out. And a glance at the speedometer told me my closure rate was nearly my own speed. The magnified camera let me see that it was clearly not a Hornet or Tomcat, though I was unsure if we were after a MiG-23 or a 25.
The bottom of my HUD displayed "PH 2", I didn't remember swapping to the Phoenixes. Thank heaven for muscle memory. I pulled my nose ahead of the bandit's path, now clear in the TV image as a swing-wing–Flogger, I thought–and I squeezed the trigger past the first, and into the second detent. Just the same as I would do for taking a shot at one of the damned squirrels that always ate up the pecans in the fall.
After three long seconds, the Phoenix leapt off the rail and left a white streak of smoke as it raced towards its target. Easing my pull on the stick, I let the nose drop back into lag pursuit of the bandit. Keeping him square in the radar cone as the Phoenix closed the gap.
The smoke trail ended as the rocket motor burned all its fuel, and then another flash of smoke and fire. The Flogger fell to the earth, no chute in sight. Must have hit the cockpit directly. Jester called out with glee "Splash 1! Good shot boss!"
Rolling level, I eased back on the throttle. Scanning the sky and surroundings. I found myself alone in the sky again.Jester, I have no eyes on 1-2, you got anything?”
“Nada boss, no chutes, no wreckage.”
I keyed the radio, “Uzi 1-2, are you up?” The question lingered for several long seconds, “Uzi 1-2. Do you copy?” the only response being static.
“Swing around, if we can spot them-”
“No dice Jester, gimme waypoint 3.” I ordered, indicating to give me direction to the target position.
“If we get CSAR here they can get our boys before the Ruskies grab them.”
“We don’t have the time, our orders are to get this ordinance on target, and you know they already have more bandits moving on us. Either Xerox and Muskrat punched out and they’ll have to E&E, or it’s a moot point.”
A muted click came from the back seat, “You're on WP3 boss.”
I flipped the lower display back to the HSD, and switched over to Ground mode for the HUD. We were 35 miles from the target, with it squarely behind us. I toggle the weapon selector back to off, “We’re on Mk84s?”
“Aye aye.”
“Set it to pairs. And make sure it’s on CCIP” I’d initially planned on dropping each of the 4 bombs separately, to maximize the carnage, but I doubted I’d have that luxury. I rolled the Tomcat on her side again and pulled the nose around to our course.
“You got it, pairs, CMD-Pilot selected.”
“Jester.”
“Yeah boss?”
“Did I misread our briefing, or weren’t we supposed to have a TARCAP for this strike?”
“That’s what I thought too, but Focus had Enfield flight hold back at the IP.”
I nodded, “Above our pay grade I guess.”
After a few minutes, a city poked out of the grassy fields. And Jester said, “Train station in sight. Go get some.”
I pitched up, SOP for a bomb run was to dive from 20,000 feet, and release around 12,000. But SOP was long and gone for this run. I leveled off at 5,000 feet, just in time to see the first group of tracers lobbed up at us. “Seems we caught them out of sorts, not near as much triple A as I’d expect.”
“Want me to ask ‘em for more boss? Or you could go around, give ‘em a chance to get ready.”
I snorted a laugh and flipped the TV camera back on, the image now slaved to the predicted impact point of my ordinance. Angling down just enough to see the pipper at the bottom of the HUD, I split my attention between the middle screen and the HUD. When the image was filled with a train engine, I hit the button on top of the stick until I felt the bombs release and my plane jump up from the loss of weight. “Pickle! 84s away!”
I banked away and rolled onto the throttle, I could see Jester craning his head around in my mirror. “Impact! You wrecked the station, and a couple of trucks.”
“Hold on, making the second pass.” I pushed the throttles to the detent again, and cranked back on the stick. Focusing on the HUD alone, I lined up on what I thought was the parking area for more vehicles, but the smoke from the first impact made it difficult to say. The pipper crossed over the target area, and I hit the release again “84s away! Calling it in.”
Rolling out from the target again, having to thrown in a few more jinks as the AAA fire picked up, I changed to the main channel. “Focus, Uzi 1 flight. Ordinance delivered. Good effect on target.”
“Bravo Zulu Uzi 1. You are clear to RTB.”
“Uzi 1 copies.”
Turning the TV camera off again, I toggle the navigation system to TACAN and reorient myself.
“Nails! 7 o’clock, 8 o’clock, and 3 o’clock.”
I shift my attention to the RWR panel, and true to Jester’s calls, we had RADAR indicators from our 3 to our 9 line.
“Uzi 1, Focus, you have beaucoup bandits closing on you, multiple vectors. Get out of there.”
I assessed the situation as rapidly as I could. Approximately the full Russian Air Force was closing on me, we were 160 miles as the crow flies back to the Lincoln, I had just over 12,000 lbs of fuel remaining and was presently pulling 4K lbs per hour in each engine. Taking the full dog leg path back to circumvent the SAM threat would leave me with nearly 300 miles to fly. While being chased, across open air. And I had a pair of Sidewinders and a single Phoenix… And my full load of 676 rounds for the Vulcan.
“What’s the plan boss?”
“We’re gonna book it straight for the boat. And hope that we meet up with friends before Ivan catches us.”
“You mean over fly the SAMs? Are you nuts?”
“Yes. Because we’re gonna use the mountains to mask our approach to the ocean, and hope that we transit the final sprint fast enough that they can’t get us locked up.”
“I don’t like this plan boss.”
“Too bad, pick up your feet, we’re gonna pretend to be jarheads.”
I snap the Tomcat over and make a course for the nearest of the southern facing valleys. Slamming the throttle through the detent to full afterburner, the Tomcat surges as Jester and I are pushed back into our seats. Angling into a dive, we punch through the sound barrier leveling off at just under a thousand feet from the deck. I drop out of burner to military power as we close on the mouth of the valley, right when the RWR started its warning warble of a search RADAR lock.
“Nails! 5 o’clock”
“I know Jester.”
“Shit, nails, 9 o’clock.”
I crank the stick over to turn through the valley as it swings to the west. “I know Jester.”
“Nails at 4 o’clock and 6 o’clock.”
“I GOT IT! Now let me damn well fly! And let me know if they shoot a missile!”
I wrench the stick in the other direction pushing the nose farther down, scanning the gauges the whole time. The RADAR altimeter insistently beeps over and over as I throw the Tomcat around to race through the mountain valleys. The RWR’s constant warble is punctuated by Jester’s swearing, “Missile trail, 5 o’clock!”
Ahead of me, the valley I was racing through closed off and ascended to a ridge line, pulling up I aimed to cut over the ridge as close as I could and snapped the Tomcat inverted to dive down the opposing side before returning upright enough to bank to the east and follow the new valley in roughly the right direction for the coast.
Jester says, “Oh shit shit shit. Boss, I wanna go home now.”
“Working on it!” I snapped, pushing the plane and myself to our limits. With our ducking in and out of the valleys, the TACAN signal was intermittent. And for the present, I had no idea on how far home was. But, South was my path back.
“Boss, 8 o’clock. Missile!”
I swing the plane towards the ridge on my right, again clearing it as close as I can before inverting and diving into the new, unknown valley on the far side, hoping to keep solid dirt between me and any weapons that Ivan was flinging my way. As I came over the ridge, the TACAN briefly showed the distance home, another 100 miles. Maybe 40 to the coast, if we were lucky. Unluckily for us, the valley was turning farther east as we raced through it.
“Still got a few guys hanging on. Shit, another missile!”
Thank God, the valley we were in came to a Y, with the new third leg turning back to the south. I looked over at the airspeed, we were just north of Mach 1. “Hold on!” I stood the Tomcat up on her starboard wing and pulled back hard pushing the throttle back to full burner, the airframe shuddered and creaked under strain and my vision tunneled in, the RWR beeping angrily at the active missile lock illuminating us.
I automatically fall back on my G-LOC training and breathing in sharply and forcing the air back out, almost like I was saying “Hoook!” The G-Suit squeezed down hard on my legs and lower back, fighting against inertia's attempt to shove all my blood into my feet. The valley wall still filled my HUD, and if I didn’t keep it together, we were going to lawn dart. I fought to stay awake and keep up my pull on the stick. The valley wall steepens, evens out, then falls away as the nose of my bird points down the valley, angling us nearly due south again. The RWR drops back to its less annoyed warble as the mountain ridge looms over our right side, and the RADAR altimeter showed that I was less than 200 feet from the ground, the needle jumping up and down as it picked up both trees and the ground. I pull the back out of the burner, with us now at 9500 pounds of fuel.
“You OK Jester?”
“Ask me once we’re back on the ship you ass!”
“80 miles before we get there.”
I pushed the Tomcat through the winding valley and gritted my teeth as it again, narrowed and raised up to a ridge. Once more I took us up, rolled over and dove along the descending slope. Instead of more ridges and valleys, the mountains gave way to flat plains, and the coast to our south, a good 20 miles away.
“Uzi 1, Focus. Good to see you, we saw a missile fired at you, then you dropped off our scope. We thought you were dead.”
“Not yet, but the day’s still young.”
Sticking to the deck, I race us towards water, at one point taking the Tomcat between two stands of particularly tall trees.
“Uzi 1, Focus. BRA, 325 for 15, 5000 hot.”
Jester asks, “We, uh, we gonna make it boss?”
“Dunno, I’m outta tricks.”
“This is Enfield 3-1, we have track on the bandit. On our way, ETA, 7 mikes.”
I gulp as we race for safety. Seven minutes? Might as well be 7 hours. If the bandit behind us has any missiles left we’re going down.
I keep us low, racing along at Mach 1.2 Anxiously anticipating the RWR to swap its insistent warble for the beep of a missile track. But it remains the same. Is the bandit out of missiles? Is he down to heat seekers? Is he not able to pick us out of the ground clutter for a solid lock? I push the thought aside as the only way I’ll have an answer is if we make it, or we get spread over a half-kilometer trail in a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
The grassy fields briefly change to a strip of sand, then water as we blast past the coast, hopefully no one was having a beach picnic where we flew over. “Uzi 1-1, feet wet.”
“Uzi 1, Focus, BRA, 330, 8 miles, 3000 feet. Cold.”
I let out a sigh of relief as Enfield swings in overhead from my left, further encouraging my pursuer to head home. Or to chase him down and bag another kill.
“Uzi 1-1 acknowledges.”
I roll back on the throttle and pitch up to level out at 8,000 feet.
“Hey Jester.”
“Yeah boss?”
“You’re welcome.”
“Screw you too boss.”