“One-Five coming left,” the tanker pilot again reported. Mundy turned his attention back to the tanker — and the world started to spin on him.
“641, down two… 641, down four… come left, 641…”
Mundy thought that he was in a tight left diving spiral, and he instinctively tried to compensate by rolling right and climbing. The combination of the left turn, no visual horizon, and his head movement to the right to check the fuel gauge caused the “spins.” He recognized it, hit the NWS A/R DISC MSL STEP button on the outside of his control stick, pushed the stick forward, and transitioned to his heads-up display to get his bearings back. “One-Five, disconnect,” the boom operator reported.
“641, disconnect,” Mundy confirmed. His first priority was separation. He descended a few hundred feet and pulled a little power back. His head was still telling him he was in a hard left diving death-spiral, but for now his hands were believing his eyes, and his eyes were watching the flight instruments, which were telling the truth. “Ah… roger, I got about three thousand pounds, fuel transfer looks good, let's get 642 on the boom to make sure he can get his gas, then I’ll cycle back on to top off.”
It was a pretty weak excuse — boom operators could recognize the onset of spatial disorientation and were usually quick to either call a disconnect or guide the receiver pilot back — but everyone allowed Mundy to keep his pride. “Rrrr… roger, 641,” the boom operator responded, his voice telling everyone that he knew what was really happening. “You’re cleared to the right wing.” When Mundy was out of view of the boom operator, he called, “642, cleared to the contact position, One-Five ready.”
It was a tremendous relief to climb safely away from the tanker. Once safely on the tanker’s wingtip, flying very loose relaxed formation, Mundy dropped his oxygen mask, found a handkerchief in his left flight suit leg pocket, blew his nose, then massaged his sinuses to try to clear his head. No damn good. He had no choice — he retrieved a tiny bottle of nasal spray from his left leg pocket. Right surgeons would argue, but the fighter pilot’s unwritten but widely followed credo was, “Don’t Hesitate: Self-Medicate.”
The secure-voice UHF radio crackled to life: “November-Juliet-641 flight. Control, say status.”
“641 in the green, eight-point-one,” Mundy replied. He was about three thousand pounds shy of a full fuel load. “642’s on the boom.” Actually, Humphrey was having just as much trouble as Mundy did staying on the boom, but that was part of the new-guy jitters as well. Humphrey was a good stick, a good wingman.
“We’re tracking a pop-up target about one hundred and twenty miles bull’s-eye,” the controller said. “Bull’s-eye,” the navigation reference point for the air intercepts, was Atlantic City International. “Too far out for a good track. We’re doing a manual groundspeed, and he’s gone from two-forty to about three hundred in the past few minutes. Better top off and stand by to go take a look.”
“641 copies.” Mundy knew that the AW ACS controllers had three minutes from first detection to decide if an unknown aircraft was a hostile or not — that’s how much time Mundy had to get his gas. He rocked his mike button forward to the VHF channeclass="underline" “642, I need to cycle back on. What’s your status?”
At that moment the boom operator reported, “Forward limit disconnect, 642.” The boom nozzle popped free of the receptacle on the F-16’s spine behind the cockpit, the lights illuminating a brief spray of fuel vapor. Humphrey had slid in so far that his F-16’s vertical stabilizer was dangerously close to the Stratotanker’s tail. He descended slightly and quickly backed away.,
“I’m showing ten-point-one,” Humphrey radioed. “One more plug and I should be full.”
“Better let me get in there, — 42,” Mundy said. “We might have visitors.”
“Roger,” Humphrey acknowledged. “Clearing to the left wing.”
“Copy, 642, clear to the tanker’s left wing.” As Humphrey moved away from the boom, the boom operator said, “641, cleared to the contact position, One-Five ready.”
“641, moving in…”
“Taking fuel, 641, no leaks”
Mundy was doing pretty well this time — in fact, he was so steady, and concentrating so hard on staying that way, that a new problem cropped up: autokinesis. The green “forward/aft” director light suddenly seemed to move, not up and down along the row of director lights, but in a slow clockwise spiral. Mundy knew what it was — a form of spatial disorientation when a stationary point of light would appear to move by itself, following tiny movements of the eyeballs. He tried hard not to follow the light, but there was no way of stopping the slight, almost subconscious commands to go to the flight controls.
“641, stabilize… down four… ”
It was no use — the spinning was getting worse by the second. Mundy hit the disconnect button just as the director light hit the aft limit: “641, disconnect…”
“641, breakaway, breakaway, breakaway/” the boom operator shouted on the radio. Mundy’s reaction was automatic: throttle to idle, nose down, positive rate of descent. He glanced up and saw the boom operator’s observation window just a few scant feet away — he had come just a few milliseconds from hitting the tanker. The tanker pilot had cobbed his four throttles to military power and hauled back on the stick at the “breakaway” call, and they had still avoided hitting each other by less than a yard.
Get on the instruments, Mundy commanded himself. The sudden deceleration was causing his head to spin downwards, making him pull the F-16’s nose up, but he knew it would cause a collision if he let that happen. He choked back the overwhelming sensation of tumbling and spinning and focused on the attitude indicator, forcing it to stay at wings level and 5 degrees nose down. He saw the altimeter spinning downwards and applied a little power to level off. “641 is clear, One-Five,” he radioed. Mundy took his hands off the control stick momentarily, felt around his right instrument panel, and flipped on all the exterior lights.
“I’ve got a visual on you, 641,” the boom operator said. “Our next turn is coming up. Do you have a visual on us?” “I’ve got a pretty good case of the leans,” Mundy said, still staring at the attitude indicator but finally getting enough stability back to glance at the heads-up display and other indicators. “I’ll stay straight and level at the bottom of the block. Make your turn in the anchor. 642, come join on me after you’ve made the turn. I’ll let Liberty know what’s going on.” He pressed the mike button aft to the SECURE UHF position: “Control, 641 flight is rejoining, two in the green, about eleven apiece.”
“Copy, 641,” the weapons controller aboard the AW ACS radar plane responded. “641 flight, vector heading one-six- zero, your bogey is at one hundred bull’s-eye low, speed three-twenty, ID only, report tied on.”
“641 flight copies, check.”
“Two,” Humphrey replied.
“641 turning right,” Mundy radioed. His case of the leans was just about cleared up, but his congestion was as bad as ever and probably getting worse. The shit was starting to pile up, he warned himself… “642, I’m at zero-two- zero for seventy-five bull’s-eye at angels seventeen.”
“Tallyho.” Humphrey had visual contact on him, so Mundy pushed the throttle up to military power, got on his vector heading, and started his pursuit. Humphrey would catch up as he could, and report when he was back in formation with his leader.
With a closure rate of almost a thousand miles per hour, the intercept did not take long. Mundy’s radar found a lone blip on the screen about seventy miles from the New Jersey coast. Mundy used the radar cursor control on the throttle quadrant to move the cursor on the radar return, then hit his DESIGNATE TARGET button on his control stick and received an audio LOCK in his headphones and a LOCK indication on his heads-up display. He then hit the IFF INTERROGATE button on his control stick, and a row of code letters appeared on his radarscope, 1X 2X 3X 4X CX, which meant that the target he had locked on to was transmitting no air traffic control signals. With wackos like Cazaux flying around, this was definitely a hostile act, not to mention a really stupid thing to do — if I had an IFF or radio malfunction at night, Mundy thought, I wouldn’t fly anywhere near U.S. airspace these days.