Two days later, Ambler Furry saw the sign, gave a belly laugh, and opened the door.
“What’s so goddamn funny?” Matt said when he saw his wizzo.
“You trying to work.” He looked around the room. “This place is a disaster area.”
“Yeah. I’Ve been living here trying to make something come together. What a can of worms.”
Furry walked over to the wall chart Matt had been working on. “What’s the problem?”
“It’s the operations order. We’re supposed to attack Ahlhorn Air Base in northern Germany.”
“I’ve done that before,” Furry said. “Poor Ahlhorn, it always gets attacked ‘cause it’s smack in the middle of a low-fly area. We can really get down in the weeds and root around.”
“Big deal,” Matt said. “The operations order says we got to attack from the northwest. We’ll all be sitting ducks running in from the same direction. You’d think the Air Force would’ve learned something from Vietnam and the raid on Libya in ‘86. If we put our attacking aircraft on the same route, we’re nothing but cannon fodder.”
“Use corridor tactics,” Furry advised, still looking at the chart. “There is a difference between opening a corridor and flying the same route.”
“We’ll be up to our ass in air defenders trying to hose us out of the sky. If we’re in a corridor, they’ll know right where to find us.”
“If you’re up to your eyeballs in Gomers — you’re in combat,” Furry said.
“Another one of your ‘rules'?” Matt asked. His frustration was building. “You got one for a goat screw like this one?”
“Yeah. When in doubt, use industrial strength deterrence.”
“On who?” Matt was now shouting, his frustration breaking through.
“On the air defenders, who else?” Furry beat a hasty retreat out the door as Matt started throwing things at him, rearranging the litter in the room.
“You realize I’m violating my number one ‘Rule for Survival,’ “ Furry said over the intercom. They were parked at the end of the runway getting a “quick check” before takeoff. Eleven other F-15Es stretched out behind them on the taxiway, all part of the strike package on Ahlhorn.
“Never forget your aircraft was made by the lowest bidder?” Matt asked.
“Nope. Never fly in the same cockpit with anyone braver than you are.”
“You keep changing the order.”
“Priorities are man-made, not God-made.”
“Another rule?”
“Yep, and common sense.”
“Keep the faith, babes, this’ll work,” Matt reassured his backseater. The raid plan Matt had finally devised was based on one of the Rules of Engagement in the operations orders. The defenders had to honor any threat the attackers presented, take evasive action, and follow a formula for attrition. Then Matt developed a way to open up the corridor and at the same time vary the flight routes into the target area. When they were near the base, they would use standoff tactics and simulate tossing GBU-24s, two-thousand-pound, laser-guided smart bombs with great glide capabilities.
The crew chiefs who were quick-checking the jets were finished and Matt called the tower for takeoff. Three minutes later, the strike force was airborne and headed out over the North Sea toward the Continent.
The defender’s response to the attack developed much as Matt had predicted. The Dutch had scrambled six F-16s out of their base at Leeuwarden and established a combat air patrol, or CAP, over the North Sea. The Luftwaffe scrambled eight F-4s out of Jever into two CAPs, one high and one low, inside the low-flying area around Ahlhorn. It was going to be a tough day and the Eagles would have to fight their way in. But Matt had other ideas about getting out.
The Eagles were flying at two hundred feet above the dull gray waters of the North Sea. They were ingressing in elements of two. Each pair, or element, were in a combat-spread formation about two thousand feet apart and two miles in trail behind the element in front. From a high-flying bird’s point of view, it resembled a ladder. But this ladder had fangs and snaked its way over the ground.
The Dutch CAP got the first surprise when Band Box, the call sign for the Dutch Military Radar Control Post, vectored the F-16s in pairs onto the low-flying F-15s. Like most singleseat fighter jocks, the Dutch pilots didn’t really believe the Eagle was a true dual-role fighter that could instantly switch from a ground attack, dropping-bombs-on-the-bad-guy fighter-bomber mode, to an air-to-air role. They laughingly referred to the Eagle as the Mud Hen, claiming that dropping iron bombs was strictly “moving mud.” The F-15 pilots thought the Fast Pack fuel tanks strapped to the sides of its fuselage gave the aircraft a slightly bloated appearance, earning it the nickname Beagle. But the Dutch pilots were about to discover it was no dog.
Matt and his wingman were in the lead and split apart when their radars picked up the fighters coming at them. Each engaged a separate pair of F-16s, and both simulated a launch of two AIM-120s, the AMRAAM, when they were still miles apart. Four AMRAAMs coming their way was too potent a threat to be ignored and the Dutch F-16s broke off their attack, taking evasive maneuvers according to the ROE. While Matt and his wingman rejoined and continued on their way to the target, the Dutch contended with the AMRAAMs. When they did get their act together, the ROE had cut their numbers in half and two more simulated AMRAAMs were coming at them. These two missiles had been launched by the third element of F-15s that were now in range. The ballet repeated itself and two remaining F-16s decided enough was enough and that they would engage the F-15s on their way back. Besides, they needed some time to think about the new tactics the F-15s were using.
Now the F-15s were coasting in, flying down the estuary of the Weser River. “I’ve seen this before,” Furry grunted from the pit, remembering when he had been on a similar mission in the past led by Jack Locke. How many years ago was that? he thought. Furry had been a second lieutenant, the wing’s basket case, barely able to scramble aboard the F-4 the 45th was flying then. And Locke had been an up-and-coming tiger, demonstrating his tactical skills on Ahlhorn. Ithad been the wing’s final exercise before they went to war in the Persian Gulf. Many of those warbirds had not returned.
“Multiple hits, twelve o’clock at forty-five miles,” Matt’s wingman called over the UHF. He was painting the Luftwaffe CAP on his radar. But this time, Matt told the second and fourth element of F-15s following him to engage. Part of Matt’s plan was to hide pairs of F-15s in the strike package that were configured strictly for air-to-air. The Luftwaffe F-4s were waiting for the F-15s to penetrate the low-flying area and were surprised when they heard their radar controller radio that four Eagles were surging out of the attackers at them. Suddenly, the eight F-4s found their hands full of missile launch calls and F-15s. It wasn’t what they had expected and the F-4s lost interest in the strike package that sneaked past them on the deck. The TEWS in Matt’s bird came alive with a loud howl of chirps and squeaks warning them of radar ground threats near the base. “Mostly Hawks,” Furry said. He had a healthy respect for what the American-made surface-to-air missile could do and was glad they were using standoff tactics. Distance would offer them protection.
When they were within ten miles of the base, Furry had his target, the command post bunker, identified on the targeting FLIR and called, “Designating.” Matt knew they were onto their target as his head twisted back and forth, looking for the Luftwaffe HICAP that was out there looking for them. “Shitfuckhate!” Furry yelled. He had a malfunction in the laser illuminator in the left LANTIRN pod. Now they had to use the Target FLIR for the primary delivery mode and not a highly accurate laser delivery. His fingers flew over the hand controllers and he drove the Forward Looking Infrared’s cross hairs over the bunker and tried to lock on. No luck. He needed a sharper contrast on the target to get the system to lock on for guidance. “No lock, no lock. Drive in closer.”