“One more thing, Dick — nothing to do with Fogelman. I’ve noticed that things seem really … well, tense around here. Is anything imminent? Are we going to be mobilized?”
“Who the hell knows, Rebecca?” Hembree replied irritably. “Nothing specific has come down. Everyone’s looking for another Desert Storm, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. No, no one’s going anywhere. You just worry about your flight for now. Both Cole and Lachemann want to see the bomb-run video when your planes land, and they want to see shacks. Let’s make sure it happens.” Hembree stormed out of the office.
Well, that was a great way to start the morning. Chewed out by the squadron commander. And now she had to go fly with Fogelman, the little sonofabitch.
About an hour later, after a quiet breakfast during which Furness and Fogelman silently glared at one another and other crewdogs avoided the lightning bolts shooting between them, the flight held a mass briefing at the squadron. As promised, Brigadier General Cole and Major General Lachemann, a tall, hefty man with dark hair, dark complexion, and an even darker mood, sat in on the briefing. It was times like this, Rebecca thought as she stood to begin the briefing, that she wished she wasn’t a flight commander.
After a few minutes, Furness was about to run through the sortie when a beeper on the two-star general’s belt went off, and he and Cole quietly excused themselves, ordered that the briefing continue without calling the room to attention, and trotted out. For the first time that morning, Furness felt able to relax and continued her briefing. She spoke about the mission objectives, training rules, the tactical situation, current intelligence, the overall route, formation procedures, force timing, and join-up and recovery procedures.
When she was finished, Larry Tobias then briefed the low-level flying route. Furness asked for questions, then concluded the briefing and turned it over to Colonel Hembree.
“As you can see,” Hembree began, “we’ve got some high-powered visibility today. Everyone wants to know how the Reserve fast-burners will perform. What the generals want is shack scores. What I want is safe, heads-up flying. I want it done right. I want a successful completion of our training objectives, but if the shit starts piling up and you are getting overloaded, fly your airplane right-side up and away from the ground, stop whatever you’re doing, and think. Fly aggressively, but fly safe and fly smart. Now get out there and let’s show these off-base generals what the Eagles can do.”
The crews headed out to collect their gear, and loaded up into crew buses and headed to the flight line. One by one, the bus driver deposited the crews in front of their planes. The crew chiefs for each plane, who had already been out on the flight line for the past five hours, thankfully jumped on board the crew bus to get warm as it stopped, and the crews went over the maintenance logs and preflight inspection checklists in the warmth of the bus before venturing out into the cold. After reviewing the maintenance log, they collected their gear and headed toward the plane.
Working the RF-111G Vampire bomber could best be described as a series of checklists — virtually nothing was done in or around the plane, on the ground or in the air, without referring to a checklist. Before even setting a bag inside the cockpit, the first few items of the Before Preflight Inspection checklist were run right from the ladder, looking into the cockpit with a flashlight without touching anything: external power disconnected, ejection handles and capsule life support systems levers pinned, and battery and external power switches off. It was dangerous just getting near the sleek, deadly aircraft without double-checking to make sure it was safe to start working around it.
After stowing all the personal gear in the plane, the Power-Off Exterior Inspection, or “walkaround,” was next. Usually this inspection was accomplished by both crewmembers, especially with weapons aboard, but Furness and Fogelman only had the reconnaissance pods uploaded, so Fogelman went right to work preflighting the camera pods.
The RF-111G reconnaissance plane carried two electronic reconnaissance pods, mounted like external fuel tanks on the number three and six wing weapon pylons. The UPD-8 pod, mounted on the right-wing pylon, was a synthetic aperture radar that took high-resolution radar images of terrain or seas around the plane for a range of up to fifty miles. The radar images could pick out small vehicles hidden under foliage or in bad weather, and had enough resolution to pick out tank tracks in sand or dirt. The AN/ATR-18 Tactical Air Reconnaissance System pod on the left wing was similar to standard optical camera pods, with telescopic, wide field-of-view, panoramic, and infrared cameras for use at night, but the photographs were digitized, stored on computer chips, and data-linked to ground stations up to two hundred miles away. In this way, the results of their photo runs could be transmitted and distributed to friendly forces hours before the plane landed and hours before standard film images were available.
Fogelman simply assumed everything was okay, swept his flashlight around the pods, then scrambled back up into the cockpit to get out of the cold. He stowed his flying jacket behind his seat, closed both canopies, and slapped his left fist against his open right hand, a signal to the crew chief to get warm air flowing inside the cockpit.
The crew chief, Staff Sergeant Ken Brodie, trotted around to Rebecca Furness. He knew that the reconnaissance pods needed power soon to keep from “cold-soaking” the electronics, and he knew that it was damn cold in the cockpit — but he also knew that the external power cart would create a lot of noise, especially for someone up inside the wheel-well areas as Furness was, so he thought it would be better to ask first: “The wizzo wants power,” he hollered in her ear over the sound of power carts starting up nearby.
That was the first time Rebecca noticed that Fogelman wasn’t going to do the walkaround with her, and it made her angry. “Wait until I’m clear of the main wheel well,” Furness told Brodie. “Let him cold-soak for a while.”
A few minutes after that, Rebecca finished her exterior inspection, climbed into the cockpit, and began her interior power-off, before engine-start, and engine-start checklists. At the briefed time, Furness called for the crew chief to get into position and began the engine-start procedures. Two minutes later, the engines were started and the power-on preflights were begun.
Most of the upgrades on the RF-111G Vampire bomber had been done on the weapon systems officer’s side. The navigation, bombing, and reconnaissance avionics were all high-speed digital systems, so getting the ship ready to navigate was virtually automatic and very easy: turn ten switches from OFF to ON or STBY.
All that was left was to preflight the rest of the avionics, check the mission computer for the proper preset data points, and check the reconnaissance pods. All the checks were automatic and mostly done by computer. Preflighting the reconnaissance pods was simply a matter of making sure they had power, checking the data-link system was active, and making sure the radar could transmit — Fogelman did all his checks without referring to his checklist. In less than fifteen minutes, he was ready to go.
Rebecca’s checks took substantially longer. After twenty-five minutes, her checks were complete. At the preplanned check-in time, she switched to the squadron common frequency. “Thunder Flight, Thunder One, check in and advise ready to taxi.”
“Two.”
“Three. Getting a new videotape. Ready in two.”
“Four.”
“Five.”
“Six. I need a few more minutes.” Everyone was on frequency. As usual, Paula Norton needed more time to complete the exhaustive after engine-start and before-taxi checklists.