In the backseat, Pacer kept the target firmly in the crosshairs of the laser designator. Each man voluntarily tightened his abdominal and core muscles and began short shallow breathes, a process called the anti-G straining maneuver. At the same time, their G suits inflated to compensate against the force of acceleration, which was attempting to pull all of their blood from their heads to their feet. Defeating inertial acceleration meant living to fly and fight another day. If they lost the battle, Gadget would black out within a second or two, the F-15 flying into the earth that rapidly passed by only 150 feet underneath the right wing tip.
All four inert BLU-121s hit their targets within the span of a tenth of a second. Had they been live bombs, they would have all detonated at the same instant about 20 feet past the doors they had just penetrated.
Gadget and Pacer were the top scorers during this training exercise and were easy picks to be one of two aircraft to make a simultaneous run on day thirteen to cap off the IAF’s time in Australia. The squadron commander made the decision to launch a night attack shortly after sunset on July 27, 2011. He had all of his pilots ferried to a clearing about one mile north of the target hill, along with several cases of beer. His Australian hosts supplied two Weber grills and a cooler full of steaks. His men were in place and well fed as night descended on the Delamere range. In the crowd of men, all in a celebratory mood, were the two senior officers of Olympus. The availability of this weapon system had already influenced their planning and they were eager to return to Tel Aviv to make alterations.
At exactly 7:00 p.m., two F-15I Ra’am fighter bombers streaked out of the east, the two planes only a hundred yards apart and flying at an altitude of 175 feet above the earth. To increase the show for his men, the squadron commander had the fusing on each bomb set to detonate only five feet after penetrating the plywood doors. The pass was perfect and each bomb struck its target at the same instant, their warheads of 355 pounds of AFX-757 explosive detonating only one millisecond apart. The thermobaric explosions lit up the night sky for just an instant. The booms of the two explosions hit the assembled Israeli airmen with just a split moment’s difference, but still enough to clearly discern two distinct blasts. Men were high fiving each other and offering toasts with half empty beer bottles.
This group of flyers was ready to go operational. They would begin their long journey home the next morning.
30 — The Team at Ras-Al-Khaimah
On September 12, 2011, Gennady Masrov showed up at the offices of Swiss-Arab Air Cargo unannounced. Much had changed since the speech he gave to introduce himself to his new team at the start of February more than seven months earlier. The small cargo airline was growing rapidly under the day-to-day leadership of the Russian manager who had been brought in by Masrov in the middle of March.
The company had purchased two Ilyushin-76TD cargo planes. Unfortunately, the planes came with D-30Kp-2 engines, not the new high-bypass turbofan engines that Masrov wanted. But they were still impressive aircraft. Each plane could carry a payload of up to 110,000 pounds and, with a typical payload of about 50,000 pounds, could fly 4,500 miles without refueling. They were proven airframes — the jet age version of the DC-3 of World War II era.
The company had also purchased two CASA C-212 turboprop cargo aircraft. They were tiny compared to the Ilyushins, but they were economical to operate and perfect for the growing trade and mail volume across the Saudi peninsula. Even more exciting, rumors circulated through the company that they were looking to purchase two or three Ilyushin 78 “Midas” aerial refueling tankers. The Midas was a variant of the Il-76 modified to carry a little over 34,000 gallons of fuel that could be transferred to three aircraft at a time using drogues trailing from each wingtip and from the fuselage. It was said that the growing military air forces of the region, especially the Royal Saudi Air Force and the Indian Air Force, were willing to pay attractive rates to private companies that could provide reliable airborne refueling capacity.
With these aircraft added to the legacy fleet, the company had hired pilots in large numbers. The Ilyushin 76 Candid required a crew of seven: two pilots, a flight engineer, navigator, radio operator and two cargo masters. The company now had twenty-six employees just to crew the two Ilyushins. Ads were running online to recruit more experienced air crewmen and mechanics.
But of all the new employees for the Il-76s, the two senior Ilyushin pilots stood out. One was a Russian named Oleg Kolikov, in his fifties. Oleg was handsome and had the personality of a man with the world at his fingertips. Better yet for Swiss-Arab Air Cargo, he had almost 10,000 hours of flight time piloting the Il-76, having first earned his wings flying the big plane into and out of Afghanistan for the Soviet armed forces during the 1980s. There was hardly a rivet on the plane that he didn’t know.
He had become famous in the Soviet Union by successfully landing an Il-76 that had been hit by an American-made Singer antiaircraft missile fired by the Mujahedeen. The missile’s warhead had exploded just under the plane’s right wing, its course having been diverted ever so slightly as it tracked a red hot flare fired defensively by the big plane’s recently installed flare dispenser. The course deflection was just enough to keep the plane from losing its wing and plummeting to the earth from 12,000 feet. But the explosion had sent shrapnel upward that penetrated each of the two starboard engines, their delicate turbines being damaged enough that both engines disintegrated in fiery displays. A piece of shrapnel punched through the cockpit wall and lodged itself in the right leg of the co-pilot, effectively putting the man out of action. In the cargo hold, 94 Soviet soldiers suddenly converted from atheists to true believers, each man praying for his life.
Kolikov kept his cool throughout, ordering his flight engineer to cut the fuel to each starboard engine, thereby allowing the wind to smother the fires. He turned the plane around and headed back to the big airfield at Bagram on just his two remaining engines. He had to fight the tremendous yaw force being put on the airplane by the two port side engines — the nose of the plane wanting to rotate to the right on its axis — threatening to deprive the wings of lift in the process. Thinking quickly, Kolikov had gone to full power on engine two, the inboard port side engine, and minimal power on engine one, the outboard port side engine. With his feet, he maintained almost full left rudder, keeping the big plane’s nose pointed forward. Thankfully, his landing gear deployed and he evacuated his plane with no loss of life. The Soviet military at the time was desperate for heroes and the state media had their man. The press rightly called it a miraculous display of flying. Kolikov was awarded the medal for Distinction in Military Service, First Class.
The other senior pilot was an American named James Miller, but everyone called him Captain Jim. Jim was 62 and had impulsively accepted an early retirement offer two and a half years earlier, shortly after his 60 birthday. His career as a captain flying 747 jetliners for United Airlines had voluntarily come to an end when he convinced himself that the airline was only weeks from another bankruptcy filing. Accepting the early retirement buyout, his advisors assured him, would protect his pension.