The R-33 missile was not a typical weapon of the MiG-23 fighter — the Flogger’s radar could provide only basic navigation information and no guidance signals — but the power of the Mainstay’s radar sealed its own fate.
Out of ten missiles launched against the Russian Mainstay, two hit home.
The 380,000-pound aircraft lost the rotodome and its vertical stabilizer, but the main crew compartment stayed virtually intact. Its crew of twenty-four officers, who watched the R-33 missiles home in on them on radar, were alive to feel the impact as the huge aircraft crashed into the Black Sea.
They joined the aircraft cruiser Novorossiysk on its way to the bottom of the Black Sea, and because it was easily the biggest, most easily identifiable target for the relatively inexperienced Ukrainian pilots, six of the twenty Kh-59 missiles that survived their short flight hit the cruiser. With its landing deck full of Yak-38 Forger aircraft ready to launch in support of fleet defense, the fires and destruction on board the 43,000-ton vessel were devastating and complete—356 officers and seamen would perish in the attack.
THIRTY-SEVEN
“Thunder One-One, many bandits at one o’clock, twenty miles, high. Chicks at two o’clock, seventy miles. Burner disengage east, bugout south. Acknowledge.”
“Banjo, One-One copies, we’re outta here,” Rebecca Furness replied. She swept the wings of her Vampire all the way back to 72.5 degrees, shoved the throttles into full afterburner, and began to accelerate past Mach-one. “Let’s get the Sidewinders on-line, Mark,” she said.
“They’re ready to go,” Fogelman replied. “The HARM is ready to jettison too if you want to get rid of it. I’ve got trackbreakers on and countermeasures set.”
The one remaining AGM-88 antiradar missile on the number-five pylon did not limit their top speed at all, but it did increase drag slightly and made the ride a little choppier. “We’ll try to hang on to it for now,” Furness replied. “We’ll need all the HARMs we can—”
Their E-3 AWACS radar plane orbiting over central Turkey suddenly radioed, “ ‘Apex,’ Thunder, twelve o’clock, fifteen miles … ‘Apex,’ Thunder, twelve o’clock … ‘Apex’ …”
“Missile launch!” Fogelman shouted. “The Russian fighters are launching missiles! But we don’t have a missile-launch indication or an uplink signal. I don’t know where they are.”
“It’s an IRSTS attack,” Furness said. The Russian IRSTS, or Infrared Search and Track System, allowed fighters to launch air-to-air missiles by combining range information from a ground or airborne radar with a heat-seeking sensor on their planes. The fighter radar needed to be turned on only for the missile’s last seconds of flight. “Stand by, the uplink should be coming.”
Suddenly a bat-wing symbol appeared directly in front of them on the threat warning scope, well within lethal range, and they got a bright red MISSILE LAUNCH indication and a fast deedledeedledeedle warning tone in their helmets.
“Fighter attack off the nose!” Fogelman shouted. He used two fingers to eject chaff bundles out of both left and right internal dispensers. “Chaff’s out! Vertical jinks!”
They could not perform a break maneuver or a hard turn to try to throw the missile off, because they would only further highlight themselves — they had to hope their jammers would take care of the missile uplink and the enemy fighter radars would lock on to the decoy chaff instead.
The sky was filled with air-to-air missiles fired at them — the Russian fighters were close enough now so that they could see the missiles in the night sky as tiny winks of light as they launched. A missile exploded about two hundred yards off their left wing, close enough for them to feel the shock wave against their aircraft.
“Thunder, many bandits twelve o’clock high, twelve miles, line abreast, continue burner east, junk ’em, and hunker down.” The AWACS controller’s brevity messages were ones of desperation — he was telling Furness and Fogelman to fly balls-to-the-wall right through the line of Russian fighters, continue electronic countermeasures, and hope for the best. “First bandits now at ten miles, twelve o’clock. I’ve got bandits hooking north — they’re expecting you to break south after the merge. Recommend you continue to extend eastbound at best speed. Lead bandits five miles.”
Just then Furness heard it — the unmistakable growling of an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile locked on to a target. She did not hesitate, but squeezed the safety release button on her control stick and hit the launch button. The small heat-seeker on the left pylon darted out into space and was quickly lost from view.
“Thunder, bandits breaking left and right … head’s down.” The missile missed.
But it still had a good effect — the Russian attack formation had been broken up and was now on the defensive. “Banjo, can you get us the hell out of here?”
“Thunder, bandits at your ten o’clock, twenty miles high,” the controller responded. “What state heat, Thunder?”
“Thunder has one.”
“Roger, Thunder, snap to zero-three-zero nose high to engage.”
“Yeah, baby, I like it,” Fogelman exclaimed. “Let’s get ’em.” The AWACS controller was suggesting that they try to scatter the Russian fighters who were maneuvering to get a tail shot on them by trying a “snap shot” with their last Sidewinder missile — if they could get those fighters to turn away, even for a few moments, they had a chance to get away.
Furness rolled into a hard left turn toward the middle of the Black Sea — it was a totally unexpected move, with the safety of the northern Turkish coast only sixty miles to the south — and as soon as she raised the nose to 20 degrees above the horizon, she immediately got a growling tone and punched off the last remaining Sidewinder missile at the approaching Russian fighters. She then banked hard right, descended to two hundred feet above the sea, and began a full-afterburner power run to Turkey. They were out of weapons — speed and low level was their only hope now. “Gimme the TFRs, Mark,” Furness said.
Fogelman already had his hands on the terrain-following radar switches, and he set them up as soon as Furness gave the word. “TFRs engaged, left TF, right SIT, hard ride.”
“Thanks, Mark. Good work.” Two vertical lines on the E-scope told them the system was in “LARA override,” meaning their altitude over the water was controlled by the radar altimeter until they got within a few miles of the shoreline. On the command net, she radioed, “Banjo, Thunder is ‘Winchester,’ request bogey-dope and vector to home plate.”
“Thunder, your bandits are at five o’clock, fifteen miles high, converging rapidly, additional bandits at seven o’clock, twelve miles, recommend … ‘Apex,’ Thunder, Apex, seven o’clock, eleven miles.”
Fogelman was practically sitting backwards in his seat searching visually for the missiles. He then set the threat scope to IR, which used a heat-seeking sensor atop the vertical stabilizer to scan for heat sources behind them. “I don’t see them, Becky,” he said. “Nothing on the—”
Just then they got a MISSILE LAUNCH light on their instrument panel and a warning tone — the threat scope had picked up another Russian fighter launching missiles and automatically ejected both chaff and heat-seeking decoy flares. Furness shoved power to zone 5 afterburner, rolled into a 90-degree left bank, pulled on the control stick until the stall-warning horn blared, and released the back pressure on the stick. As soon as she did so, there was a terrific explosion less than one hundred feet from their right wingtip.
“Chaff and flares!” Furness shouted. Fogelman ejected more chaff and flares, and Furness rolled into a hard right turn. She had to sweep the wings forward to 54 degrees to keep from stalling the Vampire from all the hard turning.