“One-One, start a right turn, heading zero-two-zero, altitude one- fifty, touchdown point in two miles, advise when you have the runway in sight.”
“Runway?” Cheshire exclaimed. “I don’t see no freakin’ runway!” Elliott started his tight right turn. The mountains were everywhere— they were in a deep river valley, with sharply rising mountainous terrain in every direction except behind them, toward the sea. Straight ahead, the mountains were less than four miles away — it would take every bit of power, and a lot of prayers, if they had to climb out of this defile right now. He couldn’t afford to make careful, cautious turns now — every turn had to be at forty degrees of bank, crisp and positive, so he could line up on the center of the cave.
The glow from the cave got brighter, and wider, and taller… and then, suddenly, the entire outline of the hollow in the mountain was outlined in dull yellow. It was enormous, more than 600 feet across and 200 feet high. Now, a bit closer in, the outline of the edge of a runway could be seen, inside the cave\ “Co, you… you see what I see?”
“I see it,” Cheshire breathed, “but I don’t freakin’ believe it.” “One-One, Hualien final controller,” the radar controller radioed, “proceed visually. If unable, execute missed approach instructions immediately. You have ten seconds until your missed approach point.”
“No… no, we got the field… uh, we got it in sight,” Elliott responded. “Proceeding visually.”
“Roger,” the controller said — the EB-52’s pilots could practically hear a huge sigh of relief from the controller. “Remain this frequency for ground controller. Max runway length one thousand eight hundred meters, approximately six thousand feet, favor the right side of the runway. Welcome.”
The controller’s voice sounded so relieved and casual, almost ecstatic, that Brad Elliott felt as if he were in a dream — because he was still far from home free right now. He felt as if the Megafortress’s pointed SST nose was the end of a piece of thread, and the cave mouth was the eye of a needle, and the Megafortress was barely small enough to squeeze inside! “Flaps full, airbrakes six!” Elliott ordered. “My God, I don’t believe it!”
It was way, way too late to go around at this point — even the power of the Megafortress’s CF6 turbofans couldn’t fly it clear of the mountain now. Even a ninety-degree bank turn with maximum back pressure and clinging to the edge of the stall wouldn’t save them. They either landed now, or they would die in the blink of an eye. The right wingtip dipped, pushed down by a gust of wind right at the mouth of the cave, and for an instant Elliott thought he wouldn’t be able to raise the wingtip fast enough before it crashed into the side of the cave and spun them around inside. He forced the image of death out of his mind’s eye.
The Megafortress touched down several hundred feet from the edge of the cliff — Elliott landed way long, a poor touchdown even on a normal runway in perfect conditions. He didn’t wait until the front trucks were on the ground; he pulled the throttles to idle, jammed the thrust reverser levers full down, waited as long as he possibly could stand for the reversers to deploy, then started to shove the throttles forward. There was a huge black aircraft barrier net at the end of the concrete, and it was right there, right in front of them! Elliott kept on shoving the throttles forward, almost into military power. The Megafortress began to shake as if they were in an earthquake.
“Ninety knots! ” Cheshire shouted. Elliott tapped the brakes and felt the pressure on his shoulder harness — good, they had brakes! He pressed the toe brakes farther, and the Megafortress responded. Thrust reversers still on, he pressed the brakes farther, right up to where he could feel the anti-skid system begin to cycle the hydraulic power in the brakes on and off. He depressed the toe brakes all the way, no more time to tap or save the brakes.
Full brake power, full reverse thrust, and the barrier was still rushing up to meet them. A little more than a hundred feet beyond the barrier was a steel jet exhaust blast fence, and then the back of the cave wall itself — complete darkness, cold deadly granite. It was very much like the end of the line in a subway tunnel.
But they did stop in time — the retracted nose of the EB-52 missed the barrier net by less than half the length of the aircraft. Except for test flights, it was the shortest landing any of them had ever made in an EB- 52 bomber — less than 6,000 feet. They used 50 percent less runway than they had ever used before. A “follow-me” truck appeared off their right wingtip, and a ground crewman on the back of the truck beckoned to them with a yellow-lensed flashlight and a hearty wave. Elliott deactivated the thrust reversers, grabbed the steering knob, and gently eased the throttles forward.
Taxiing inside the cave was like driving through a low-ceiling indoor parking garage with a high-profile vehicle. Everywhere they looked, they saw cheering soldiers, some jumping up and down in happiness as they held their ears against the bone-jarring noise and echo — Elliott and Cheshire mercifully shut down two engines to cut down on the noise. They were directed to a parking spot just off the edge of the runway, just a few hundred feet behind Jon Masters’s DC-10 tanker and satellite launch plane.
The four bomber crewmen were instantly mobbed the moment they opened the lower hatch and climbed out. The first to greet them were Wendy McLanahan, Jon Masters, Paul White, and Hal Briggs. Wendy hugged her husband so tightly he thought he heard some neck vertebrae snap, but he hugged her just as closely and as tightly. “Patrick, oh God, you should have seen you fly into the cave! ” Wendy exclaimed through tears of relief and joy. “I swear, it was like watching a bat fly into a tiny hole in the wall! I saw the wingtip down, and I thought you weren’t going to make it!”
After everyone climbed out of the Megafortress, they had a moment to look at the incredible structure. It was an immense underground airfield, with a single 200-foot-wide, 6,000-foot-long runway in the middle of the gigantic structure! On the other side of the runway were a line of about a dozen Taiwanese F-16 fighters — the Taiwanese had actually managed to land F-16 Fighting Falcons in the cave! — along with a few S-70 helicopters and S-2 Tracker turboprop maritime surveillance planes. Patrick McLanahan and Brad Elliott had a grim feeling that those planes represented what was left of the entire Republic of China air force.
After shutdown, the stunned American crew members were met by several officers and several more armed guards. The senior officer stepped forward, shook their hands excitedly with a broad smile, and said in very practiced English, “Welcome to Kai-Shan, my Flying Tiger friends, welcome. I am Brigadier General Hsiao Jason, commander of this installation. You must be General Elliott, and you are Colonel McLanahan.” Both of them were still too stunned to respond, which pleased Hsiao immensely. “You and your men are suffering from Kai-Shan Psychosis, the inability to do anything but stare up at the ceiling, the instant abandonment of all military courtesies and even coherent speech,” Hsiao said with a smile. “The disease will affect you long after you leave this place, I assure you. Please follow.”
Indeed, it was hard to keep from staring at the detail of the huge underground facility. The ceiling was geodetic reinforced steel honeycomb, with segments three inches thick widening to six inches toward the ceiling and ventilator openings interspersed throughout — it was like a huge modern subway terminal, only several times larger. Several steel support columns, spaced every thousand feet on either side of the runway, soared into the sky from floor to ceiling, set just a few feet from the edge of the runway. The runway itself was concrete, with arresting wires a few hundred feet from the approach end to stop aircraft equipped with tail hooks — and, Briggs noted, all of the Taiwanese F-16 fighters and S-2 Trackers had tail hooks. Looking out the open mouth of the cave, all they could see were mountains — a straight-in approach to Kai-Shan was not possible.