“I couldn’t convince Morris of anything,” Hawkins said.
“Maybe you didn’t try hard enough,” Waters said, stood up and left.
Back in his office, Waters shut the door and slumped into his chair. Things clearly were worse than when the wing was in Egypt. Shaw had problems like lousy base housing and schools. Mine are worse, the wing has forgotten how to fight, Waters realized. Courtesy of Mad Stanley. Commanding a wing was something he’d wanted since his first combat tour in southeast Asia with the 8th Tac Wing. Taking men into combat and bringing them home was the ultimate challenge. Well, he had his chance to do that. But first he had to teach them how to fight without killing any of them. But if necessary — he cut off the unwelcome thought.
The Phantom rolled in on the gunnery range at twenty-two hundred feet and nosed over into a twelve-degree dive. The sight picture was perfect as the pilot, called Sooner, acquired the strafe panel in the lighted target-ring of his heads-up display. Gently he squeezed and released the trigger for a short burst of cannon fire as he passed through three hundred feet, then instinctively pulled the nose up and fire-walled the throttles. But the burring noise of the M61 gatling gun did not stop, warning him the gun had jammed on full-fire. Sooner jerked the nose to the right, pointing the gun out to sea, only to spot a small fishing boat in the range’s restricted zone. Automatically he pushed the nose over to direct the stream of bullets toward the water. By the time he had reacted the gun was empty and he was dangerously close to the water in a dive angle that was much too steep. For a split second Sooner thought he had bought it. Then, however, his quick reactions got the nose up and the Phantom bounced off the water, ripping off the wing-tanks but still flying.
The two men in the fishing boat were nearly mesmerized by the sight of the F-4 barely touching the water. They could hardly be aware of the tremendous forces at play when a sixteen-ton aircraft loaded with four tons of fuel ricocheted off water… accelerometers in both cockpits pegged at over ten Gs, not able to measure the full impact of the Gs breaking the plane apart, four engine-mounts on the right engine and two on the left snapping under the load, wing spars cracking. Like hitting concrete…
“Mike,” the pilot yelled at his wizzo, “you still with me?”
“Yeah, no place to go. We okay?”
“Beats the hell out of me,” Sooner told him. For a few moments the two men just breathed deeply, trying to steady nerves as Sooner climbed to a safer altitude over the Wash. The English range controller kept requesting them to check in. Sooner answered him with a call declaring an emergency. And now Sooner’s wingman joined up on his left and checked him over while he ran his emergency checklist.
“You’re in one piece,” his wingman radioed. “It looks like the SUU-21 is hanging by its trailing lug and will probably fall off. Why don’t you jettison it before we coast in?” Sooner selected the right inboard station where the practice bomb dispenser was hung, had his wingman check if the ocean’s surface was clear, and hit the jettison button. But the bomb dispenser did not separate from the pylon. Sooner’s panic was building. Rather than try anything else he called for a straight-in approach to runway 09, landing to the east. He would have to stay airborne seven minutes longer to get to that side of the base but at least he would avoid the village and other built-up areas. He hoped they had the seven minutes.
Two minutes later the Phantom started to fall apart as they crossed the coast. The F-4, an honest airplane, didn’t do things without giving its crew warning, sending signals to both cockpits. First the pilot’s warning lights flashed on and then off, then he got a momentary fire light on the right engine. “I’ve got smoke and fumes back here,” his wizzo announced.
“Hang in, I’m pulling the emergency vent knob — Jesus, both generators fell off the line.”
By recycling the generators he managed to bring the left generator back on-line, but smoke kept filling the cockpit.
“Jettison your canopy,” Sooner ordered.
The wizzo pulled the emergency jettison handle and the rear canopy separated cleanly from the aircraft, venting the cockpit but increasing the noise level, making it difficult to hear. Sooner realized he had to get his bird on the ground or start thinking about ejecting. His wizzo was thinking the same thing as he told him that a straight-in approach to runway 27, the west runway, was the quickest way to get on the ground, much faster than returning to the North Sea for an ejection. Sooner called the tower, told them he had to land immediately or eject. The tower had already been notified by ATC he had a serious emergency and had scrambled the crash trucks.
Sooner brought the Phantom down final, electing to take the approach-end barrier, he lowered the hook to snag the cable that was stretched across the end of the runway. When the hook came down the SUU-21 separated from the underside of the right wing. The wingman was flying a loose formation as Sooner brought the disabled plane in and noted the location where the bomb-dispenser came off. Smoke started to trail from the right side of the bird as they crossed the approach lights and then engulfed the Phantom as the cable snatched the big fighter to a halt. The crash crews were still moving toward the plane when they saw two figures emerge from the smoke on the left side of the aircraft.
Anthony Waters looked at the map that pinpointed the locations where the canopy and SUU-21 had been found. Slowly he shuffled the map with photos of the burned-out hulk of the Phantom that had been given to the accident board investigating the crash. He flipped to the inspection record of the Phantom before turning to the men in front of him. “Sam, Sooner and Mike did well and I want to commend them for the way they recovered the bird.” The DO stared impassively at his commander. “Please tell your crews to think about what happened and tell them I’ve got lots of Phantoms but only one of them. There are times when an ejection is the preferred approach and landing. I can’t make that decision for them, but I’ll back them up when they get their bodies in a jam like this one.”
The anger he felt was not in his voice as he turned to his deputy for Maintenance. “Colonel Leason, the gun on that bird hadn’t been inspected since the wing arrived in Egypt. The accident board will probably find that to be a contributing if not primary cause of this accident. Just what the hell is going on?”
“Colonel Morris, sir, waived that inspection since he would not allow the crews to practice strafing… ”
“Well, I do allow strafing. In fact I require it. Never mind Morris. Didn’t it ever occur to you to have the guns inspected after Ops asked for loads of TP ammo? TP does stand for ‘target piercing’ what do you think it’s used for?” No answer. “Get your inspections caught up, even if it means you have to work weekends and take birds off the flying schedule.”
The maintenance officer understood the long holiday they had been enjoying under Morris was over.
Another thought occurred to Waters. “Do you have a bird that’s totally current on all inspections?”
“Only 512,” the DM told him. “The crew chief punched out a gun-plumber for not inspecting the cannon. We gave the chief an Article Fifteen for fighting and took a stripe.”
“Okay, at least we’ve got one warbird on this air patch. Give the chief back his stripe and assign a pilot and wizzo to 512. Make it Locke and Bryant since they got a MiG with it. Paint their names under the canopies. That’s their bird from now on.”