Bauer and his crew spotted the launch immediately, although none of them knew what they were now facing save for the obvious fact that whatever was at the head of these new smoke trails was approaching at an incredibly fast rate. In the last seconds of his life, Oberstleutnant Bauer began to suspect that perhaps these were rockets… guided rockets much like the new Dreizack missiles the Kriegsmarine had been testing against surface ships. Even so, he couldn’t believe that such a guided rocket could travel so fast, or so accurately that it might be able to hit an aircraft in flight.
His B-10A was shattered seconds later by the direct hit of an AIM-120D, the 22kg fragmentation warhead vaporising Bauer and everything else forward of the wing. The remains of seven other aircraft fell out of formation at the same time as each one of the AMRAAMs struck their intended target head-on, hurtling past flights of shocked and incredulous fighter pilots in the process. Some fell in sheets of fire as the warheads set fire to fuel tanks or blew off the wings that held them. Two of those eight disintegrated completely as the bombs in their bellies, detonated in far larger secondary explosions that proceeded to indiscriminately take out another six bombers around them that also fell out of formation and plummeted toward the distant sea below in flames.
Just six of the lead formation now remained as the fighters of JG54 dumped their auxiliary fuel tanks and turned toward the pair of far off attackers, their pilots struggling to understand what had just transpired. Davies launched his second salvo of six missiles from his internal weapons bay, and they too hurtled toward the enemy, with a flight time of less than forty seconds. The rest of SKG1’s lead formation fell from the sky a moment later, destroyed completely by the deadly guided weapons.
“I’m out of missiles… the next formation’s your show, Alec,” Davies called out, forcing any elation out of his system as he reminded himself the job was far from over. “Remember to stay as high as you can: your service ceiling’s about fifteen thousand feet better than theirs, and you can use that to your advantage when things get personal… tally ho, buddy!”
Steeling his nerves, Trumbull pulled back slightly on the Lightning’s stick and sought higher altitude. The HUD built into his helmet sighting system clearly picked out the mass of potential targets ahead of him, and it was relatively easy to identify the fixed formation of bombers in contrast to the faster fighter escorts that flew in smaller groups, and were now all racing ahead of their charges in a desperate attempt to intercept.
He used the buttons on his control yoke to cycle through the range of targets until his systems had locked onto one of the eighteen bombers of the second formation — what had now rather unexpectedly become the lead formation.
“Weapons: select ‘Fox-Three’…” Thorne had taught him the standard NATO brevity codes for weapons launch in air-to-air combat, and ‘Fox-Three’ was the appropriate call for release of an active radar-guided missile. The verbal command was instantly recognised by his avionics systems, and the first of his twelve AMRAAMs was assigned as a green box appeared around the selected target, below which the range reading displayed as -35246- and continuing to fall at a great rate.
One after another, Trumbull released all twelve of his own AMRAAMs, cycling through target after target as each missile streaked away from beneath his wings. By the time the last two had left his internal weapon bays, the first of the missiles was just ten seconds away from impact. He waited with his heart in his mouth as the jet continued to climb through 12,000m, watching desperately as a dozen more streaks of grey arrowed in toward an enemy that still invisible to the naked eye.
One of his AIM-120s malfunctioned midway through its flight, suddenly losing lock and veering off into the blue at an oblique angle before its failsafe systems caused it to self-destruct a moment later. The remaining missiles ran as true as the others, and eleven more of the huge bombers were blasted from the skies in clouds of smoke and flame, leaving just seven of that second group to fly on through the debris.
It worked! Trumbull could hardly control his elation, but his instincts kept him cool and he immediately activated the gun pod beneath his aircraft’s belly.
“‘Fox-Four’ now, Harbinger,” Davies broke in across the radio, confirming it was time to switch to cannon. “Take what’s left of the front formation, while I see if I can break up the group at the rear… that should keep us out of each other’s way. Watch for the fighters, and remember to keep your altitude and your speed up!”
The Raptor’s afterburners flared and it pulled easily away, climbing beyond even the Lightning’s service ceiling of 18,000 metres as Trumbull locked onto the nearest of the remaining bombers with his radar predictor. The circular, green ‘pipper’ gunsight that appeared in his HMDS wavered and bobbed as he lowered the nose slightly to bring the central aiming dot to bear on the luminous square surrounding the target.
He checked the ammo count in the top corner of the readout to confirm what he already knew: 220 rounds of ammunition to feed the four-barrel cannon beneath him. He gave a reassuring grin as the jet roared on at close to the speed of sound. His old Spitfire had carried eight machine guns, and each of those had carried only 300 machine gun rounds: with the massive hitting power of the F-35’s 25mm cannon and radar-assisted gunnery, he was certain he’d be able to take out quite a few aircraft. He was feeling quite confident as he and Davies reached the closing J-4A fighters, the German pilots staring on in stunned impotence as both jets roared past above, well out of range.
Alec Trumbull missed his target completely on the first pass, badly underestimating his approach speed and hurtling through the group of remaining bombers before he’d even squeezed off a shot. The late burst he did eventually fire out of reflex was long, and sprayed sixty wasted rounds through empty sky before he could relax his grip on the trigger. Cursing the mistake, but also learning from the experience, he jerked back on the controls and took the F-35E upward again before stunned fighter pilots or B-10A gunners could target him, barely losing airspeed. A few streams of tracer followed him but they too were wasted, falling away far short.
He circled tightly around in the open space between the formations, climbing back above the enemy once more and turning back on one of the bombers from behind. This time, prepared gunners began to send deadly fingers of tracer out to meet him as he closed the distance, but again they found it difficult to fire accurately on an enemy that moved twice as fast as anything they’d trained for. At a range of fifteen hundred metres, gunsight centred on his target at the rear of the group, Trumbull opened up again with a pair of short bursts that filled the air about his target with shells. The second of the tracer streams tore across the back and wings of the bomber, turning it into a ball of fire in an instant as fuel tanks went up.
He pulled up again and swept past above the flight, clawing his way skyward as the German fighters milled about below in a state of disarray, unable to give chase or even reach his altitude. Trumbull gave the Lightning some room, banking around again and cutting back his throttles just a fraction as the remaining six pilots of that second formation finally lost their nerve and broke ranks, turning away from their approach to target.