The radio frequency was crowded. The strike leader was talking to the E-2 Hawkeye, the RA-5C was chattering about a fishing boat that he had chased away from the target and the cloud cover, someone had a hydraulic problem, the tankers wanted to change the poststrike rendezvous position because the carrier wasn’t where it was supposed to be when this evolution was put together, and one of the EA-6s was late getting launched and was going to be late getting to its assigned position. Situation normal, Jake thought.
He checked the position of his wingmen regularly, yet he spent most of his time scanning the sky and staying in proper position in relation to the strike leader. When he had a spare second he brought his eyes back into the cockpit to check his engine instruments and fuel.
The cumulus clouds below thickened as the strike group approached the coast of Luzon. The bases were at 4,000 feet, but the tops were building. From 23,000 feet the clouds seemed to cover about fifty percent of the sea below.
Would there be holes over the target big enough to bomb through?
The twenty-six bombers and their two EA-6 escorts began their descent toward their roll-in altitude of 15,000 feet. The leader left his throttle alone, so the airspeed began to increase. The faster the strike could close a Soviet task group, the fewer missiles and less flak it would encounter. In aerial warfare, speed is life.
Now CAG was on the radio. He was at 30,000 feet over the target in an F-4. “Where are the Flashlights?”
Flashlight was the F-4 that would illuminate the target with the laser designator. Actually there were two F-4s, both carrying hand-held laser designators. The pilots would have to find a hole in the clouds so the RIOs — radar intercept officers— could aim the designators, then they would have to maneuver to keep the target in sight and avoid colliding with one another. In a real attack on Soviet ships, the pilots would also be dodging missiles and flak.
“Uh, Flashlight is trying to find the target.”
The F-4’s electronic system was designed to find and track other airborne targets, not find the remnants of a wrecked ship resting on a reef. The A-6s’ systems, however, were working fine. Flap had the target and Jake was getting steering and distance. In the planning sessions he had argued that A-6s should carry the designators but had been overruled.
“Ten miles to roll-in,” Flap told Jake. The strike was passing 20,000 feet. Now the strike leader dropped his nose farther, giving the group about 4,000 feet a minute down. Three hundred twenty knots indicated and increasing.
Passing 18,000 feet Jake pumped his arm at the A-6 on his left side. Flap did the same to the man on his right. The Intruder formation shifted to echelon.
The tops of the clouds were closer. Still some holes, but the target wasn’t visible through them.
The situation was deteriorating fast. Without holes in the clouds, the F-4s carrying bombs could not find the target. The A-7s might be able to, but not in formation since the pilots could not fly formation and work their radars and computers too. The A-6s could break off at any point and make a system attack on the target, individually or in pairs. This was the edge an all-weather, two-man airplane gave you.
The strike leader, Gold One, knew all this. He had only seconds to decide.
“This is Gold One. Let’s go to Plan Bravo. Plan Bravo.”
Jake Grafton lowered his nose still farther. Now he wanted to descend below the formation. The A-7s were shallowing their dive, which helped.
Flap was on the ICS: “Target’s twenty degrees left. Master Arm on.”
“Kiss off,” Jake told him, and Flap took a few seconds to splay his fingers at the wingman on his right as Jake turned left to center steering and dropped his nose still more. Fifteen degrees down now, going faster than a raped ape, the plane pushing against the sonic shock wave and vibrating slightly, nothing but clouds visible in the windscreen dead ahead. The other A-6s would continue on course for four seconds each, then turn toward the target. All six would run the target individually.
“We’re in attack,” Flap announced, and sure enough, the attack symbology appeared on the VDI in front of Jake.
“War Ace One’s in hot,” he announced on the radio.
He took one more quick look around to ensure the other airplanes in this gaggle were clear.
Something on his left wing caught his eye. His eyes focused.
The bomb on Station One, the station nearest the left wing tip—the propeller on the mechanical fuse was spinning! The fuse was arming.
He gaped for half a second, unwilling to believe his eyes.
The propeller was spinning.
One bomb in a thousand, they say, will detonate at the end of arming time. The propeller will spin for 8.5 seconds to line up the firing circuit.
He could drop it now!
His thumb moved toward the pickle. The master armament switch was already on. All he had to do was squeeze the commit trigger and push the pickle. The bomb would fall away and be clear of the plane when the fuse finished arming. If it blew then…
He would still be within the blast envelope.
All these thoughts shot through his mind in less than a second. Even while he was considering he scanned the instruments to ensure he was tracking steering with his wings level.
He looked outside again. The propeller was stopped.
The bomb was armed! And it hadn’t exploded. Okay, we’ve dodged the first bullet.
He pushed the radio transmit button as he retarded the throttles and raised the nose. “War Ace One has an armed bomb on the rack. Breaking off the attack and turning north at…” He looked at the altimeter. He was descending through 12,000 feet. “… At twelve thousand.”
He grabbed the stick with his left hand and used his right to move the Master Arm switch to the safe position.
Everyone was talking on the radio — A-6s calling in hot, the A-7s breaking up for dives, F-4s looking for holes — probably no one heard Jake’s transmission.
“Station One,” he told Flap on the ICS when he had his left hand back on the throttles, talking over the gabble on the radio. “The bomb is armed.”
He concentrated on flying the plane, on getting the nose up and turning to the north. He was in the clouds now, bouncing around in turbulence. A northerly heading should take him out from under the strike gaggle, which was circling the target to the south.
“The arming wire pulled out of the fuse somehow,” he told Flap. “I saw the propeller spinning. The fucking thing is armed.”
He looked again at the offending weapon. Now he saw that the thermal protective coating was peeled back somewhat. The Navy sprayed all its weapons with a plastic thermal coating after experiencing several major flight-deck fires in which bombs cooked off. The coating must have had a flaw in it, something for the slipstream to work on. The slipstream peeled the coating, which pulled the arming wire.
A two-thousand-pound bomb…if it detonated under the wing, the airplane would be instantly obliterated. The fuel in the plane would probably explode. So would the other three weapons hanging on the plane. Not that he or Flap would care. They would already be dead, their bodies crushed by the initial blast and torn into a thousand pieces.
And this turbulence…it could set off that fuse.
He retarded the throttles. Almost to idle. Cracked the speed brakes to help slow down.
“Let’s climb out of this crap,” Flap suggested.
Jake slipped the speed brakes back in and raised the nose. He added power.
Finally he stabilized at an indicated 250 knots.
“Cubi?” Flap asked.
“Yeah.”
Flap hit a switch and the computer steering went right. Jake looked at the repeater between his legs. The steering bug was at One Six Zero degrees, eighty miles. Flap dialed in the Cubi TACAN station.