The Warbirds (26 page)

Time. How much? And how much could the men take?

Jack sat in the briefing room watching Fairly study the plan he had laid out for the squadron commander.

“It’s ambitious, Jack, considering the way we performed at Stamford. How do you propose we train for it?” Fairly asked.

Jack was ready with his answer. He outlined a series of training missions in which flights of four Phantoms would practice low-level runs over the water onto targets in Scotland. The same flights would also practice lay-down and twenty-degree dive-bombing out of a pop maneuver on nearby gunnery ranges.

“How will you put it all together so we know they’re ready and won’t self-destruct?”

“We put a low-level mission together with a range mission,” Jack said. “The first attack is hot and that’s the only pass they get. They’ve got to be over the target plus or minus fifteen seconds.”

Fairly stood and folded the maps. “Let’s get over to wing and sell Bull. If we’re going to run the first raid, we’re going to have to beat the 377th.” The two men hurried out of the building and nearly skidded to a halt in Bull Morgan’s new office in wing headquarters. One of Muddy Waters’ first changes had been to pull Morgan out of the 379th and make him the wing’s weapons-and-tactics officer. Steve Farrell, the squadron commander of the 377th and three of his pilots and wizzos had beaten them to Morgan.

Morgan told them to come back in an hour. “You snooze, you lose,” he said.

That afternoon they were back, Jack explaining the 379th’s plan. When he was finished Morgan said, “Not bad for a virgin. Start taking notes.”

For the next thirty seconds Morgan shot a series of questions at the pilot. After taking two pages of notes.
Jack looked up, hoping the major was finished. “When you’ve got the answers to those questions, come back. If you want to be the first to attack Woensdrecht, get your tail in gear. The 377th had got its act together.” Jack asked about the 377th’s plan. Morgan said, “There’s no freebies on this one, kiddo.”

Activity on the flight line and in the squadrons kept building for the next two weeks as the two squadrons pushed their crews through a series of missions. Maintenance had to keep up with the 377th’s and 379th’s demand that all of their Phantoms be ready every day. The 378th, the tortoise of the piece, slowly built momentum.

The 379th came alive, and lights in the squadron came on early in the morning for the first Go’s briefing. During the brief winter day the 379th tried to launch forty sorties. Maintenance protested, claiming they could not keep that many of each squadron’s twenty-four Phantoms operational. At sundown the last go would recover and peace would again settle over the quiet countryside. But activity on the flight line was already revving up as Maintenance readied the birds for the next day’s flying. The crews would return to the small briefing rooms in the squadron and rehash what had gone wrong on that day’s missions and what to do to fix it. Wives had no trouble finding their husbands when they didn’t come home. They just called the squadron.

Finally Jack and Fairly went back to Morgan’s office to convince the big man their squadron was ready. But again the 377th had beaten them to Morgan and they had to come back later. When they did get to Morgan, Jack was determined to sell the 377th. “Major, this is really a simple attack. It looks bad because we have two gaggles of F-4s approaching from opposite directions. Looks like a setup for the Keystone Kops. We don’t see it that way. It’s a highly efficient way to quickly get in and off a target. It is a matter of timing, and time over target is the critical element. In real life the frag patterns from the bombs would be a big concern. Woensdrecht is a big base so we’re using three thousand feet or twenty seconds for frag clearance between deliveries.”

“Convince me your crews can do it,” Morgan told him.

“We’ve run low levels to the ranges in the Wash. Every one of our crews hit their TOT within ten seconds.”

Morgan drummed the table with his fingers. “Make me an offer I can’t refuse.”

“No offers, Major. This is our show all the way or someone else does it.”

Morgan grinned, allowed a grin, nodded. “You’ve got the mission. But I’ve got to fly as tail-end Charlie to evaluate the mission.” Morgan meant that as the last aircraft across the target he would be following the other aircraft and could tell if they had met their TOTs and not gotten lost on the low-level route. In combat it would be a very dangerous slot.

“You’re gonna have one pissed crew,” Jack said. “But you’ve got it.”

On the morning of the raid all of the 379th’s Phantoms stood ready on the ramp. Waters and Gomez had driven down the long line in the DO’s pickup.

“Impressive,” Gomez said. “Good for Maintenance. Fairly tells me this is all comm out. Let’s see if they can do it without talking on the radios.” Gomez turned the truck’s two UHF radios on.

A pickup sped down the line waving a yellow flag that signaled the crews to start engines. In rapid-fire sequence the Phantoms cranked while the crew chiefs hurried to disconnect power, button up panels and pull wheel chocks. A crew chief ran to the front of his bird and gave a thumbs-up. When each flight of four aircraft was ready, four rear canopies came down in unison, followed by the four front canopies. Each flight of four taxied to the takeoff end of the runway where quick-check crews from Maintenance ran around each plane giving it a final inspection, checking it for hydraulic leaks, tire cuts and panels that might have jiggled loose.

Fairly had selected a young crew, Broz and Ambler, to lead the mission. Jack objected, but Fairly overruled him. “I know you can do it, Jack. But you can’t lead every mission we fly. We’ve got to give some others a chance. And none of us is forever…”

The first four Phantoms now taxied onto the runway, a green light from the tower flashed and Broz led the first two birds in a formation takeoff. Ten seconds later the second two took off while the next four taxied into position, awaiting a green light. Twenty seconds later two more rolled down the runway, repeating the sequence. In less than three minutes twenty-four Phantoms had taken the active and launched in total radio silence.

The two colonels sat in the pickup. The launch was okay. Now they had to wait.

The first cell of twelve aircraft were broken up into three flights of four as Ambler guided them on a low-level route over the North Sea at a leisurely 420 knots using two stopwatches and his compass for dead reckoning to back up his inertial navigation set. The four aircraft flew in pairs, two thousand feet apart, while the second flight of four followed Broz two miles in trail.

Jack was in the third flight two miles behind the second. Like Bull, he was flying as tail end Charlie. It fell to Broz and Ambler to make each checkpoint on time or the entire cell would have to abort their part of the attack. At each checkpoint Jack would lift his plane to three hundred feet and make a comm out-turn with his wingman onto a new heading for the next leg, slam the bird back down on the deck. Sweat poured from both men as they labored toward their target.

“No way the Dutch are going to let us carry live ordnance over Woensdrecht,” Thunder said. “Besides, it’d shoot our fuel-flow right through the roof.”

“That’s why they have tankers, me lad. And that’s why we’re going to hit one after we come off target. Like for real.”

As they coasted in-between the Dutch islands of Voorne and Goeree south of Rotterdam Thunder switched on his radar, whose effective range for navigation was limited because of their low altitude. At forty miles the first traces of the Dutch coast started to paint on the scope.

“Damn,” Thunder said, “Ambler’s got us on course, on time.” He switched the radar back to standby.

Jack lifted his aircraft to one thousand feet as they flew up the Haring Vleit, one of Holland’s inland estuaries. “I
wish the Dutch would let us get down in the weeds on this one. No real low-level into the IP, no ordnance, just overfly the target.”

Thunder grunted and turned the radar back on. He broke their Initial Point, the Dutch village of Akker, out of the ground clutter on his scope.

“IP two minutes, on time,” he said.

Jack concentrated on turning the IP exactly on time as he accelerated to 480 knots.

Each pair of Phantoms in the twelve aircraft cell overflew the IP at precise twenty-second intervals. Jack varied his heading slightly to separate from his wingman for a pop onto the target they had selected—the control tower—carrying his pop high to give Thunder a chance to check visually how the raid was developing. Thunder could see the smoke trails of the second cell splitting into two arms as it converged on the base from the south. “If they’re early, we’re dead.” This was turning out to be no milk run.

On the ground a Dutch officer noted the exact time each bird overflew its target. The first cell took exactly one minute and forty seconds to attack the base. Jack rejoined his wingman on the southern edge of the base as the second wave started their attack. By splitting into a pincer movement the inbound F-4s left an escape route up the middle for Jack’s cell.

Jack and Thunder twisted around, back and forth, as they tracked the inbound attackers flashing by them on both sides. “Hot damn,” Jack shouted. “We did it. Right on time.” Easing the throttles back, he decelerated to 420 knots and flew out the Wester Schelde, the waterway that led to Antwerp, then joined up with his flight and headed for a rendezvous with a tanker. He could hear Thunder humming. One hour twenty minutes after takeoff they recovered at Stonewood.

“What do you think?” Tom asked Waters as they watched the Phantoms taxi back in.

“Depends on what the crews think,” Waters said.

The crews crowded into the squadron’s main briefing room, exhilarated by how they had beat up the Dutch base.
Then the phone call they were waiting for came—the Dutch officer reported that all twenty-four aircraft had made their times over target within five seconds. Jack was standing in the back of the briefing room, when Bull pounded him on the shoulder, congratulating him.

“Bull, as long as we made our TOTs it was pretty much a piece of cake. Why did the Old Man make such a big deal out of it?”

“Confidence builder, maybe. For you and Maintenance. Waters doesn’t want to waste any of you budding aerial assassins.” His shark grin was back in place. “But wait till the next one, buddy. You’re in for a surprise.”

The next day the 377th launched on their raid, determined to repeat the success of the 379th. After watching them launch, Waters and Gomez joined Bull by the 379th duty desk. The command post soon called with news that six Phantoms were ten minutes out, and a voice from down the hall sang out, “They can’t hack it.” The building echoed with jeers and catcalls.

“That’s probably C.J.,” Bull grinned. The major picked up the mike to the squadron’s PA system, “You mud movers, come on out of this den of iniquity and meet the latest addition to the wing.” The two colonels, Morgan and a puzzled 379th wandered out onto the concrete apron to await the latest arrivals.

“Who the hell is C.J.?” Jack asked Morgan as they stood waiting.

“Charles Justin Conlan,” Bull told him, “an absolute madman. And if you think he’s crazy, wait until you meet his bear.”

“This guy has a pet bear?”

“C.J. is bringing in six G-models for us from the States.”

“Oh…great.” Jack had forgotten for the moment that a wizzo in an F-4G was called a bear. “How did the old man get Wild Weasels? I thought they were all dedicated to NATO and that the big-boy F-16 wings wanted every one the Air Force owns to support them.”

“You’ll get your answers tomorrow,” Morgan told him as he started to pace back and forth.

In the distance Jack could see the telltale black exhaust
trails of five Phantoms approach the base at twelve hundred feet. “I thought the regs called for radar approaches after a ferry mission,” he said. “That looks like an overhead recovery. What the hell sort of formation is that? There’s only five birds, where’s the sixth?”

Morgan shook his head, laughing at Jack’s questions. Overhead recoveries are flown out of an echelon formation and these five new birds were coming down final in a perfect vee-formation.

As they crossed the approach end of the runway, the tail-end Phantom on the left arm of the vee peeled off first, bleeding off airspeed and circling to land. At precise five-second intervals the F-4s broke formation in order, working up and around the vee.

It was when the last plane was on downwind that the sixth bird shot down the runway at twelve hundred feet and 600 knots. At mid-field the new pilot reefed the fighter into a climb, heading for the cloud deck above them. As he disappeared into the clouds a few of the sharper-eyed observers could have sworn the pilot aileron rolled the F-4G.

“I don’t believe
that
,” Jack muttered.

Morgan smiled. “C.J.’s calling the tower right now with the exact altitude of the cloud bases. Good information for them to know when the 377th recovers.”

Now the five Wild Weasels taxied in and lined up in front of the crowd. They did not shut down engines but waited until the sixth bird had landed and taxied into the lineup. On an unspoken signal they cut engines in unison, the front six canopies opened together, followed by the six rear canopies. The solo pilot almost leaped out of his bird, scrambling down the recessed footholds on the left side of the fuselage. Once on the ground he twisted off his helmet, revealing a bald head with a brown fringe of hair above his ears. Jack thought immediately of a Trappist monk as he studied the skinny, freckle-faced major. “That’s a fighter pilot?”

“C.J. is all of that,” Morgan said. “If that bothers you check out his bear.” Jack switched his attention to the man climbing out of the rear cockpit. “That’s Stan-the-Man Benton.” They watched as a young, pudgy version
of Winston Churchill reached the ground and unzipped the breast pocket of his flight suit, actually pulling out a stogie to complete the image. “They say he’s close to being an alcoholic,” Morgan said. “Probably goes with the territory if you fly in C.J.’s pit.”