Hawk-1 banked sharply to port, trying to ‘walk’ his cannon fire into the rising enemy, but the collective closing speed was far too high and Thorne’s turn in toward them made the angle that much tighter. The tracer fell away behind as both Su-30s thundered past the F-35E just two hundred metres astern, their exhausts flaring as afterburners kicked in and the pair split to port and starboard in an attempt to confuse their enemy.
“Reuters’ fuckin’ Flankers…!” Thorne growled sourly to himself as he snapped his head from one side to the other and tried to keep both aircraft in sight, oblivious to the fact that Trumbull — devoid of the benefit of a G-suit — was too busy fighting unconsciousness and the desire to vomit to really take notice. “Talk about the ‘Red Carpet’ treatment!”
The moment the pair passed behind him, he immediately reversed his course and switched back onto a tight turn to starboard as the F-35 passed through 1,000 metres. The Lightning’s nose was still pointing away from the turning jets at an angle of greater than ninety degrees, however the missiles he carried inside his weapons bays were a generation ahead of those of his opponents.
The moment he was able to look over his right shoulder and see the nearest of the Sukhois, the targeting systems slaved to his HDMS picked up its heat source and ‘locked on’. The growling tone in his ear told him as much and he loosed a pair of his own heat seekers, both of the internal weapons bays in his lower fuselage opening just long enough to each eject one missile into the slipstream. The pair of AIM-9X Sidewinder AAMs dropped out of the openings and hissed away directly ahead for just a few metres before snapping sharply upward and away at an oblique angle to the north, immediately darting off in the direction of their target and locking onto the heat of its jet exhaust.
The reaction within the cockpits of the two Flankers was immediate: within a second of their rearward threat receivers detecting the missiles, each pilot threw his jet into a series of wild manoeuvres, decoy flares now spraying from their tails in an attempt to escape.
“Fuck! Watch your arse, Hawk-Two!” The flight commander called, catching sight of his wingman banking away to the west with the pair of Sidewinders in pursuit, his own decoy flares spewing from its tail in desperation. Although one of the deadly little missiles veered away at the last moment, distracted by a decoy flare, the other homed unerringly and hurtled on toward its target. As the Sidewinder drew to within a few dozen metres of the jet’s tail, Hawk-2’s pilot dumped another torrent of decoy flares and in a last, desperate attempt to break missile lock stood the aircraft on its tail and entered into a poststall manoeuvre instantly recognisable to all watching (save for Trumbull) as a ‘Cobra’.
The manoeuvre was so named because as the pilot pulls back sharply on the stick, the performing aircraft almost immediately flips upward into an angle of attack of between 90-120 degrees accompanied by an almost complete loss of airspeed that causes the plane to appear as if it is standing motionless on its tail. Drag on the rear of the aircraft then creates torque that pitches the nose forward once more, at which time a return to full power allows the aircraft to return to normal flight. The pattern of the movements through all of this broadly simulates the head of a cobra while striking its prey, hence the nickname.
Of limited real use in actual combat, the instinctive reaction by the Su-30’s pilot was in the vain hope that the combination of flares, the sudden change of angle and dramatic loss of speed might possibly either break the missiles targeting or at least cause it to overshoot. Unfortunately neither eventuated and the deadly little missile ploughed into the rear of the Sukhoi at two and a half times the speed of sound, its warhead detonating a microsecond later.
Everything aft of the wings disintegrated into a thick cloud of smoke and fire in that moment as the stricken jet reached the apex of its climb and found itself suddenly and totally devoid of thrust. It hung for a moment, nose pointing toward the heavens, before stalling completely and slowly turning over into a final dive earthward.
“Pugachev can kiss my ass!” Thorne muttered in soft elation as he watched the destruction of Hawk-2, the remark in reference to Chief Pilot Designer of the Sukhoi Design Bureau, Victor Pugachev, after whom the manoeuvre was often named. He then turned his attention to the second target and activated the cannon in the pod below the F-35’s belly.
“Get out! Get out!” Hawk-1’s pilot pleaded softly, alternating his gaze frantically between his wingman’s ruined aircraft and a search for the enemy he’d suddenly lost sight of in the confusion. Finally, as he executed a bank to port he hoped would bring the enemy in sight once more, he saw Hawk-2’s canopy fragment and fly away. The remainder of the wreck was shattered and torn apart as the pilot and weapons officer were fired from the cockpit in sequence by the rocket motors of their ejection seats.
“Hawk-One to Sentry… Hawk-One to Sentry… target sighted and engaged.” In those desperate seconds, an instinctive part of the commander’s subconscious recognised it was vital he report what was happening back to HQ. “Bogie identified as Lockheed Martin Foxtrot-Three-Five-Bee model.” The fleeting glimpse he’d caught so far hadn’t been clear enough to pick out the F-35E’s non-standard twin-cockpit and the pilot therefore identified the aircraft from its short take off and vectoring nozzles, incorrectly thinking it to be the single-seat ‘-B’ model. “Repeat — currently engaged in combat with F-35B Joint Strike Fighter.”
Hawk-1’s pilot wasn’t long searching for the Lightning, although it was far too late to do anything by the time it was located. Threat warning systems blared in his ears as enemy radar systems easily obtained lock on his own jet. A little more than a thousand metres away and now a similar distance higher in altitude, Thorne pushed the nose of his own jet down into a shallow dive and brought his gunsight to bear as the rotary cannon mounted in a stealthy pod beneath the F-35E’s belly let loose with a stream of 25mm tracer.
Bright detonations rippled across the fuselage and rear of the Sukhoi as its pilot realised far too late what was happening. Thorne ceased firing and dragged his stick back, climbing up and away and loath to get any closer as some of those impacts penetrated the skin of the aircraft’s forward fuselage fuel tank. Though mostly filled only with vapour, the subsequent explosion was still powerful enough to tear the aircraft completely in two just behind the cockpit. There was a second, much larger explosion a split-second later as the remaining fuel in its other tanks went up and the Flanker — what was left of it — disintegrated, wreckage and debris flying in all directions. No one had time to eject, and Sentry’s desperate radio replies went unheard.
Thorne quickly put some distance between the Lightning and the battle area as he climbed to 8,000 metres. He completed two wide 360-degree circuits with his radar in search mode and determined that there were no aircraft approaching he need be concerned about before shutting down his active systems once more and leaving them off. For a second time, the fleeting burst of emissions was detected by Sentry, now flying high over Germany, before disappearing into stealthy oblivion once more. Nevertheless, it left the Luftwaffe controllers in no doubt as to the outcome of the engagement.