The cannon shells hit with the force of Thor’s hammer along the bottom of the fuselage and left wing of Furness’ bomber, shaking the plane so badly that Furness thought she’d go into a stall or spin. The MASTER CAUTION light snapped on, several yellow caution lights illuminated on the forward instrument panel, and the navigation computers and most other control and display screens and systems went dark.
The F-16 passed less than half a wingspan away — no more than thirty or forty feet. Their supersonic shock wave smashed into the formation of Vampire bombers, threatening to twist them inside out and upside down. Rebecca saw Paula Norton’s plane cartwheel over into a complete roll, caught in the hurricane-like twisting forces of the F-16’s vortices — and it was plummeting right into Furness’ plane. Furness grabbed her control stick with both hands and pulled sharply to the left to get away from the second RF-111. The cockpit filled with debris from the negative G-forces as the bomber sliced over and down. There wasn’t any way Rebecca could control the roll — her controls froze. The roll continued, one after another, and Rebecca couldn’t stop it.
Fogelman kept screaming, “You have it? Shit, lady, do you have it?” He was frantically looking four directions at once — at the engine instruments, which were probably close to Greek to him; out the window; at his radarscope for some inexplicable reason; and at the ejection handles on the center console next to his left knee.
“I got it, Fogelman, I got it!” she shouted back, first on interphone and then cross-cockpit. He was so excited, with his oxygen mask, arms, and head flailing around so much, that Rebecca found herself watching the ejection handles, ready to block any attempt Fogelman might make to pull one and punch them out.
“I feel a vibration,” Fogelman shouted. “Right under my feet. Did Norton hit us? Jesus, we almost got plastered by those F-16s! All my stuff is out …”
“Fuck that!” Furness shouted. “I got the airplane — I got it …” But maybe I don’t, she thought in horror. The nose stayed high and wouldn’t come down, the aft end stayed low, and the left roll continued despite her efforts. She mashed the autopilot disconnect lever and brought the throttles to IDLE. No change.
“Eject! Eject!” Fogelman suddenly screamed. Furness saw him make a grab for the right ejection lever and she pushed his hand away.
“No!” Furness shouted. “What the fuck are you doing? We’ve still got ten thousand feet to work this.” She stomped on the left rudder petal with all her might. Suddenly the roll stopped — or did it? The turn-coordinator ball was still hard left and the turn needle was oscillating, although it appeared that the horizon had stopped rolling. She kept the left rudder pushed in, despite her desire to straighten out. Sure enough, the turn needle straightened and the rolling stopped, although the nose was still high over the horizon and the ball was still hard left. The altimeter was still unwinding — they were passing through ten thousand feet above sea level, the recommended safe ejection altitude. Furness pushed the control stick full forward.
“What are you doing?” Fogelman demanded. He tried to haul back on the control stick, but Furness managed to overpower him, and he eventually gave up. “Don’t dive! We’re already past ten thousand!”
“We’re in a flat spin,” Furness said calmly as she shoved the wing-sweep handle full forward. The airspeed-indicator tape was reading zero, a strange sensation since they were still thousands of feet in the air. “We’ve got no airspeed. Hold on — and keep your hands away from the fucking controls!” She shoved the nose seemingly straight down at the ocean. They plunged through a cloud deck, and Rebecca had to fight off a tremendous wave of nausea and vertigo. Her head was spinning wildly, to the right this time, and only by gluing her eyes to the instruments was she able to hang on. A few seconds later they popped through the cloud deck, and all they could see was blue ocean and wind-tossed whitecaps below. Slowly the airspeed began to rise, and when it climbed over one-fifty, she pulled back on the control stick slowly, not letting the airspeed bleed below one-fifty, and fed in power — thankfully, both engines had not stalled and responded immediately. The nose finally rested above the horizon, and she leveled off at about six thousand feet — they had lost over eleven thousand feet of altitude in about thirty seconds.
Carefully Rebecca tried some gentle pitch movements — no problem. But when she tried a gentle left turn, she noticed that the left spoiler, a fence-like drag device atop each wing used to help make crisper turns, would not deploy. “Looks like we got a damaged spoiler actuator on the left wing,” she said. “We’ll have to lock out the spoilers for the rest of the flight. I think the recon pod got creamed by that bomb, but it’s not serious.” On the primary radio tuned to the GUARD emergency frequency, she called, “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Thunder Zero-One on GUARD, midair collision with two Foxtrot-One-Six fighter planes, approximate position seven-zero-miles east-north-east of Brunswick, Maine, altitude zero-six thousand feet.” She wasn’t about to say that a friendly F-16 fighter had nearly succeeded in shooting her out of the sky. “My flight is split up and I am in marginal VMC. Thunder Flight, check in on GUARD frequency with status and altitude, over.”
“Thunder Zero-Two on GUARD, loud and clear, code one, one-seven-thousand feet, holding hands with Zero-Four,” Joe Johnson replied, signifying that they were undamaged and that Kelly in Thunder Zero-Four was with him.
“Thunder Zero-Four on GUARD,” Frank Kelly replied shakily, “loud and clear, scared shitless but code one.” No reply from Thunder Zero-Three.
“Thunder Zero-Three, this is Thunder Zero-One on GUARD,” Furness radioed, “report up on GUARD frequency. Over.” No response. “Zero-Three, come up on GUARD frequency immediately, over.” Still no response. “Paula, Ted, dammit, come up on any radio if you can! Key your mike three times if you can hear me. Zero-Three, come in!” Rebecca couldn’t believe it — they had lost Paula Norton and Ted Little. She obviously couldn’t recover from the—
“Becky!” Norton shouted over the GUARD frequency. “Thunder Zero-Three’s up on GUARD. Anybody hear me?”
“Paula, this is Rebecca. Are you all right? Where are you? What’s your altitude?”
“We’re okay,” Norton replied, her voice shaking with excitement, fear, and exhilaration all at once. “Ted hit his head — he’s a little loopy but he’s okay. I’m at one-two thousand feet. I stalled my left engine and it took a few tries to get it restarted, but I’m in the green. I have no damned idea where I am — Brunswick VOR’s not on the air, and the nav stuff is out.”
“Are you VFR, Zero-Three?”
“Negative. Visibility is poor with snow. Not picking up any ice yet, though.”
“All right, Zero-Three, you can start a climb to one-six thousand,” Furness said. “We’ll try to get a contact to you.”
“Roger,” Norton replied. “Leaving twelve for sixteen — thank God.”
“Zero-Three, Zero-Two’s got a lock on you,” Johnson radioed, indicating that his attack radar was locked on to Norton’s plane. “We’re at your four o’clock position high at five miles. You’re clear to climb to sixteen thousand five hundred.”
“Roger. Zero-Three’s leaving fourteen for sixteen-five,” Norton announced.
“Zero-One copies, I’m leaving eight for fifteen-five.” Rebecca had to give Norton a lot of credit for bringing it back under control.
By the time Rebecca climbed up to altitude, Thunder Zero-Two and Zero-Four, now with Zero-Three within visual range of them, had moved to within a mile. Because Fogelman’s nav gear wasn’t running, Rebecca put Johnson in the lead and got on his right wing, with Kelly flying beside Furness so he could look her plane over carefully. After coordinating what they would do, Furness moved to twice route-formation distance, about a half-mile from Johnson, and Kelly crossed under and to her left wing, looking at the damage: