The last surprise was at takeoff: these heavily laden aircraft used military power for takeoff, instead of fuel-gulping afterburner, with the help of four rocket packs attached to the rear fuselage to boost them off the ground. Even with the added boost, the fighters stayed at treetop level long after they left the runway so they could build up enough speed to safely raise the nose and climb without stalling. As soon as they were safely airborne and clear of any populated areas, the spent rocket packs were jettisoned; then, as soon as the strike force reached the Turkish coast of the Black Sea, the empty outboard tanks were jettisoned, and the planes could sweep their wings back to a more fuel-efficient 45 degrees. The tanks that dropped into the sea were recovered by the Turkish Jandarma for reuse.
Another Russian A-50 Airborne Warning and Control radar plane was up that night patrolling the Black Sea region, and again the NATO air forces under General Panchenko were prepared. A small twenty-aircraft Ukrainian strike force was sent straight north at high speed, aiming for the Russian naval base at Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula, along with six MiG-23s flying at high altitude on another anti-AWACS missile run from the west.
The Russian radar plane, which was orbiting over Nikolayev in southern Ukraine instead of over the Black Sea, immediately turned and headed farther north, vectoring in fighters from Simferopol and Krasnodar as it retreated. When the high-altitude MiGs fired their AA-9 missiles, the Russian AWACS shut down their radar, accelerated, and dispensed decoy chaff and flares.
At the same time, a Russian Antonov-12C four-engine turboprop plane accompanying the A-50 radar plane, carrying electronic jammers and other decoys and countermeasures, activated its powerful jammers, making it impossible for any radar transmitters, including the radars in the nose of the AA-9 missiles, to lock on …
… however, it also made it impossible for any other radars to operate normally as well, including the Russian fighter radars and ground-based radars. The An-12C shut down the early warning and intercept radars along the Crimea and at the naval base at Novorossiysk, leaving it wide open for attack. The naval facility was the headquarters for the Russian Fleet oiler and tanker fleets, and had many vital oil terminals and storage facilities as well as a long-range radar site and air defense missile facility. Being nearly surrounded by the Caucasus Mountains, it was naturally defended by steep ridges and high jagged coastal peaks, a cold, snowy Russian version of Rio de Janeiro.
Not one surface-to-air missile was fired as the Ukrainian attack force swept in. Flying up the coast of Turkey, then crossing into the republic of Georgia and following the Caucasus Mountains, they were completely undetected until just a few miles from Novorossiysk. The fixed SA-10 missile sites and long-range radar sites along the Black Sea coast were hit with dozens of cluster bomb packs and antipersonnel mines from the first group of MiG-27s and Sukhoi-17s, and dock and warehouse facilities and a few tankers in the naval shipyard area of the base were hit by TV- and laser-guided bombs. One MiG-23 flying a medium-altitude combat air patrol was hit by an infrared-guided anti-aircraft-artillery gun seconds before a direct hit by a TV-guided bomb from a MiG-27 took out the gun site.
But if the attack on Novorossiysk was unexpectedly easy, the attack on Krasnodar was all the more difficult.
Again, it was necessary for the second strike group to stay at low altitude over the Caucasus Mountains to hide in the radar clutter and avoid detection as long as possible, but the attack on Novorossiysk and the feint on the A-50 radar plane alerted all the other Russian bases in the area.
The short twenty-mile run from the Caucasus Mountains to Krasnodar became an almost impenetrable no-man’s-land. The Russians had wised up, and did not activate the SA-10 surface-to-air missile radars or their surveillance radars, but simply swept the skies with clouds of 23- and 57-millimeter antiaircraft gunfire, directed by electro-optical low-light cameras, by infrared sensors, or simply by sound. This forced the Ukrainian Su-17 and MiG-27 strike aircraft up above twelve thousand feet, which made their bombing less accurate and made them vulnerable to fighter attacks.
The MiG-23 fighters engaged the oncoming Russian air patrols, but again the Russian fighters had the advantage — the Ukrainian fighters were no match for the advanced Russian warplanes. Directed by the A-50 AWACS radar plane and armed with superior radars and weapons, the Ukrainian fighters were being shot down with fierce regularity — sometimes two MiG-23s would be shot down simultaneously by one Russian Sukhoi-27 fighter. But the Ukrainian fighters could not run as they did before — they had to keep the third strike team (along with the Domodedovo strike team) from being jumped by Russian fighters before they had a chance to attack the large industrial area and military airfield. They were taking a beating.
The MiG-27s and the Sukhoi-17s from the first bombing group broke the battle open, but at a very heavy price. After dropping their bombs on Novorossiysk and retreating back to Turkey, they arced north, climbed, and made a supersonic dash for Krasnodar at treetop level. The antiaircraft artillery was deadly for low-flying planes, but their range was far less than normal — possibly out of the range of standoff weapons. The Russian fighters had no choice but to disengage from the Ukrainian fighters and intercept the low-level attackers. This gave the Ukrainian fighters who had run out of weapons a chance to flee back to Turkey, and for the rest to set up an air patrol for the third strike team.
The tactic worked.
The Rostov-na-Donu and Domodedovo strike teams proceeded north unchallenged, along with twenty MiG-23s that still had weapons and were not shot up enough to abort.
The attackers from Strike Team Two were able to make high-altitude bomb releases on Krasnodar, and although the mines and bomblets scattered much more than desired and the sticks of bombs were not nearly as accurate, the airfield was rendered temporarily unusable and the air defense radar sites were seriously damaged.
The twenty MiG-27s and Su-17s from Strike Team One aborted their feint out of range of the murderous guns surrounding Krasnodar’s military airfield — right into the waiting gunsights and radar locks of the Russian fighters. In less than a minute, twenty Ukrainian fighter-bombers had been shot down.
Rostov-na-Donu — Rostov on the Don — was the capital of the industrial, mining, and agricultural region of southern Russia, located at the mouth of the Don River. After the breakup of the Soviet Union and the military clashes between Russia and Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Ukraine, the military airfield there grew in importance and size, until it had become a major heavy bomber, tactical bomber, and troop transport base.
Knocking out this base and its associated long-range air defense systems would be vital.
The city was out of range of the A-50 radar plane, so all of Rostov’s air defense radars were up and operating — the Charlie Flight Vampires had a field day launching HARM missiles. Using simultaneous launches, as many as eight surveillance, fighter-intercept, and surface-to-air guidance radars were destroyed at once. The smaller mobile SAM systems and antiaircraft-artillery gun sites were forced to switch to electro-optical or infrared guidance, which greatly reduced their effectiveness.