While they were up on the upper-floor “catwalk” in the hangar, they had a good opportunity to look at the EB-52C escort bomber that was in the hangar with their B-2. Unlike the B-2, where there was little activity, the technicians and munitions maintenance crews were swarming around the Megafortress like worker bees in a hive.
It had to be the weirdest plane — and the most deadly looking plane — either of them had ever seen. The long, sleek, pointed nose was canted down in taxi position, with the aerodynamically raked windscreens looking Oriental and menacing. The dorsal SAR synthetic aperture radar radome, which ran from just aft of the crew compartment and ended in a neat fairing that blended back into the fuselage and the diagonal stabilators near the aft end, made the Megafortress seem broad-shouldered and evil, like some warlock’s hunchbacked assistant. The pointed aerodynamic tip tanks, two on each wingtip, looked like twin stilettos challenging all comers, like lowered lances held by charging knights on horseback. Short low-drag pylons mounted between the inboard engine nacelles and the ebony fuselage on each side held six AIM-120 Scorpion air-to-air missiles, their red ground-safety streamers still visible.
Faired under the wings were sensor pods that contained laser target designators, infrared scanners, telescopic cameras for long-range air-target identification, and millimeter-wave radars to scan for large metallic objects hidden by trees or fog that normally could not be picked up by other sensors, such as tanks and armored vehicles. This was one of the older Megafortress escort bombers — it still had the older, conventional metal wings that drooped so far down that the wingtips were only a few feet above the ground and had to be supported by “pogo” wheels. The new Megafortress wings were made of composite materials and wouldn’t sag one inch, even fully loaded with fuel and weapons.
Other weapons were just being uploaded, and Henry Cobb, who had had little experience with the Megafortress project, could only shake his head in amazement. The forward section of the bomb bay contained two four-round clip-in racks that held AGM-136 TACIT RAINBOW antiradar cruise missiles. The aft bomb bay contained a Common Strategy Rotary Launcher filled with smooth, oblong-bodied missiles — eight TV-guided AGM-84E SLAMs, or Standoff Land Attack Missiles.
“Looks like the Megafortresses are getting loaded for bear,” Cobb remarked. They could also see the loading procedures for the Stinger airmine rockets in the tail launcher.
Watching this Megafortress getting ready for combat made McLanahan feel strange — a crashing wave of deja vu was descending on him. The hangar in a remote location, the weapons loaded and ready, the plane fueled and ready to go — it was horribly like the last time he had taken a B-52 into combat all those years ago.
But that wasn’t his bird now. He had a new one, a bigger, darker, more lethal one — the B-2 Black Knight, modified like the EB-52 to be a strategic escort bomber. All of the B-2’s weapons were internal, and the sophisticated sensors were buried within the wing leading edges or in the sensor bay in the nose under the crew compartment. The reconnaissance pods were gone, to be replaced by rotary launchers that would carry much more lethal warloads than cameras and radars.
The B-2’s ground crew had just arrived for the pre-takeoff inspection, and since the two crewmen were awake at least an hour before they intended, they had time to look over their Black Knight before reporting to the briefing room. They found little changed. The maintenance crews were going through a normal pre-flight as if the plane were going on another training sortie — they were less than four hours from takeoff and no weapons had been uploaded yet. “Where are the missiles?” Cobb asked McLanahan. “I thought we were loading up on Harpoons or SLAMs for this run.”
“Won’t know what we’ll be doing for at least another two hours yet,” Patrick replied. “We don’t know yet if we’re going after ships, or radars, or ground targets — it could be anything. Once the Joint Battle Staff decides, it’ll take them just a few minutes to snap those launchers and bomb racks in and do a ground check. They can probably do it while other planes are launching.”
They completed a casual walkaround inspection, chatting with the maintenance crews along the way. It was apparent that each and every one of them was just as apprehensive, just as nervous, just as concerned for what was happening on Andersen Air Force Base and in the rest of the Pacific as Cobb and McLanahan.
One of the munitions maintenance men stopped inspecting a SLAM missile seeker head when McLanahan greeted him. “Think we’ll be flying tonight, sir?” the man asked. The “we” was not just a demonstrative — ground crews were just as emotionally and professionally tied to their aircraft as the flight crews. When McLanahan’s B-2 rolled down the runway, a hundred other minds and hearts were right in there with him.
“Wish I could tell you, Paul,” Patrick said. “They tell us to be ready, that’s all.”
The man stepped closer to McLanahan, as if afraid to ask the question that had obviously been nagging at his consciousness: “Are you scared, sir?” he asked in a low voice.
Patrick looked back at the man with a touch of astonishment at the question. Before he could reply, however, some other technician had pulled the man away. “That’s McLanahan, you butthead. He’s the best there is,” Patrick heard the second tech tell him. “He’s too good to get scared.” None of the other crew chiefs dared to speak with the two aviators.
Cobb and McLanahan finished their inspection, checked in with the security guard, who inspected their bags before allowing them to leave, and then the two B-2 crew members stepped out of the hangar into the twilight.
Unlike the controlled, calm tension inside hangar 509, outside it was sheer bedlam. The ramp space in front of the hangars was the only clear space as far as either man could see — the rest of the base was filled with aircraft of every possible description, and the access roads and taxiways were clogged with maintenance and support vehicles.
The north ramp to their far right was choked full of cargo aircraft — C-141 Starlifters, C-5 Galaxys, and C-130 Hercules planes, all surrounded by cargo-handling equipment offloading their precious pallets of spare parts, personnel, weapons, and other supplies. Like a line of ants along a crack in a sidewalk, there was a steady stream of forklift trucks, tractor-trailers, flatbed trucks, and “mules” carrying supplies from the aircraft to the inspection and distribution warehouses. Every few minutes, another cargo plane would arrive on one of the Andersen AFB’s twin parallel runways, taxi off to a waiting area, then be met by a “Follow-Me” truck which would direct it to another parking spot. Empty cargo planes that had crews with duty day hours remaining went to a refueling pit on the south side of the base and were immediately marshaled to the end of the runway for takeoff; planes that were not due to take off until later were directed to waiting areas along the northeast side of the base, at the edge of the steep cliffs of Pati Point.
West of the north ramp, near the north end of the east runway, were the parking spots for the aerial refueling tankers. These were perhaps the most important aircraft on Guam. The KC-135 Stratotanker, KC-10 Extender, and KC-130 Hercules tankers provided the only means for most of the Air Battle Force’s aircraft to conduct strike operations from Guam — indeed, most of the aircraft there could not have arrived without the tankers supplying them fuel. Tankers were airborne almost continually in support of flight operations, and several tankers were on “strip alert” status to respond to emergency requests of fuel. The tankers also acted as cargo aircraft themselves — one KC-10 tanker could deploy all of the support personnel, equipment, and spare parts for six F-16 fighters from Hawaii to Guam, and refuel those six planes, all on the same trip.