Ormack took a firm grip on the control wheel with his right hand, reached down to the instrument panel near his left knee, and flipped a switch. A red light on the forward instrument panel marked GEAR UNSAFE — in English, McLanahan was surprised to see — had been on since takeoff. The red light went out and a loud rumbling in the forward part of the Fi-170 subsided — for about five seconds, when the red light popped back on and the rumbling returned. “Nose gear flopped back down,” Ormack said. “We’ll leave it where it is for now. Any restriction on releasing weapons with gear down?”
“Maintain zero sideslip and no turns or descents for ten seconds,” Luger replied.
“Easy for you to say,” Ormack said. “I’m fighting this trim wheel. It’ll kill us for sure.”
“Just don’t let it descend after release — a slight climb is okay,” Luger said. “Patrick, you’ll have to open the doors manually to avoid putting the whole hydraulic system into standby. The switch is right below the window lever, to the right of the weapons-selector switch.”
“Got it. One-twenty TG.” McLanahan quickly inventoried their remaining weapons: two semiactive radar-homing AA-8 air-to-air missiles in the far outboard weapons bays and two cluster-bomb cruise missiles in the center bomb bay. At first they had no intention of attacking anything — they were going to fly Tuman out of Lithuania and into Sweden or Norway. The bomber had numerous malfunctions, and as in the Old Dog mission of years past, they had no flying safety equipment, no charts (except for the computerized navigation system), and no real plan of action except to survive.
But as soon as they were airborne they heard radio messages from Lithuanian Self-Defense Force units all over the country, pleading for assistance.
Towns and cities were under attack everywhere, mostly from Byelorussian troops that were already stationed in the country as part of the Commonwealth defense forces, but more and more from Byelorussian armored units from Kalinin oblast. They had enough fuel for several hours of flying, and verified targets were popping up on radar and on the infrared scanner, so they went to work.
In less than thirty minutes McLanahan and crew had attacked a column of tanks close to Vilnius with two cluster-bomb units, and they had hit a Mil-24 attack helicopter with an infrared-guided AA-7 missile shortly after takeoff. One more attack and their debt to the Lithuanians for securing Fisikous would be paid and they’d be flying for themselves and their own survival.
“One hundred TG,” McLanahan announced. “Center the needle, ten right.” He did some rough mental calculations — range to the target, altitude, and speed — then designated a second target about three thousand feet from the first. He planned on dropping the second cluster bomb right at the edge of the bomb’s destructive radius in order to take out as many of the tanks as possible. “I’ve got the second target set,” he said. “TG is counting down to second weapon release.” The time-to-go indicator jumped to one hundred and twenty seconds. “I’ll drop the first CBU manually at thirty TG, then switch to auto for the last release. Our escape turn will be a right turn at max bank, heading three-four-zero, and a descent to four hundred feet — er, I mean one hundred and twenty meters.”
“Our emergency MEA is four hundred meters,” Luger added. “That’ll clear all terrain and towers all the way to the coast.”
McLanahan pointed to the threat-warning receiver as a circle appeared on the screen. On an American threat-receiver, a warning tone would be heard on the interphone and the threat would be identified by its radar characteristics — antiaircraft artillery, surface-to-air missile, fighter, or search radar — but since this was a Soviet aircraft, there was no warning, so everyone was watching the scope carefully: only “enemy”—i.e. American or NATO-threats would be identified. “There’s a radar in that armored column, probably a triple-A. If we overfly that column, we’re dead. They don’t seem to be locked on us right now.”
“Remember, guys, when the bomb doors come open, our radar cross-section will jump,” Luger said. “The bomb doors are composites, but the bomb racks and inner structure are steel — our RCS will go up by six hundred—”
Suddenly a second circle appeared on the threat scope, this time behind them. “Got a radar behind us,” McLanahan said. “He’s changing positions back there … looks like a fighter.” He made sure that the four push-on light switches underneath the radar-warning receiver’s display unit were on. “Jammers are active.”
“Remember, we’ve got track breakers only,” Luger reminded them. To avoid being detected by undue electronic emissions, the jammers on the stealth bomber were rather simple “track breakers,” designed to momentarily disrupt only missile uplink signals, not search or tracking radars. “He can still track us and close to gun range.
“Sixty TG. Doors coming open at forty TG.” The small circle on the radar-warning receiver disappeared. “He’s gone into standby — he might have us visual or locked up on infrared. You got an infrared-warning mode on this thing, Dave?”
“Mode switch to KF — don’t ask me what KF stands for — and press the quadrant button on the lower-left side three times. It’s a full three-sixty scanner but it only looks in one direction at a time.” The screen changed — now it showed a simple T in the center of the screen, with a single bright dot at the two o’clock position. “It’s like the AAR-47 now,” Luger added, “so imagine you’re sitting facing backwards, so when the dot is on the right side of the scope the threat is on the left side of the—”
Suddenly two large red lights began blinking just above the threat scope. “Missile launch!” McLanahan cried out. “Where’s the chaff and flares …?”
“Don’t break!” Luger said. “Stay on the bomb run. We don’t use flares. Hit that button right there.”
From a launcher in the tail, a small, slender rocket shot into space behind the bomber. Steered by a small pulse-Doppler radar in the tail, the rocket maneuvered until it was heading directly for the incoming enemy missile; then, when it was within a hundred meters or so from the missile, it exploded. The ten-kilo high-explosive warhead ignited a cloud of aluminum powder, blinding the missile’s seeker head, and the warhead also sent a cloud of small pellets into the path of the missile.
The crew didn’t see any of that, however — what they saw was the bright dot on the infrared warning receiver wildly turn away until it was off the scope. “Whatever you punched out, it worked,” Ormack said. “I’m centered up. Bomb doors!”
“Doors coming open,” McLanahan acknowledged. He hit the electrically operated door-unlatch switch, which allowed the selected bomb-bay doors to free-fall open. “Centerline doors open… five seconds… three, two, one, release.” He hit the MANUAL RELEASE button, letting the first Fisikous X-27 cruise missile fly.
Unlike its smarter cousins from the United States, the X-27 could fly only straight ahead, and it had to be pre-programmed for its release points, but once deployed it was a devastating weapon. Like the JP-233 cluster-bomb unit from England, the X-27 sowed several different types of bomblets in its flight path: antitank and antipersonnel bomblets and delayed-action antivehicle mines.
The X-27 covered forty thousand square feet with explosive devastation, punching holes in main battle tanks and destroying light vehicles; the delayed-action mines, spread out several dozen meters away from the cruise missile’s flight path, would ensure that the entire roadway was closed off by destroying any vehicles that tried to pass around the destroyed or damaged ones.
Thirty seconds after the first missile was released, and just a half-mile from the column, the second one was released. McLanahan motored the bomb doors closed, and Ormack turned the American-designed, Soviet-made bomber northwest toward the Baltic. With the flight-control system out of BOMB mode, the flight-control computers could be deactivated and Ormack could hand-fly the huge bomber without the spurious autopilot inputs.