“Colonel,” the DM protested, “that’s against regulations—”
“I’m waiving that reg, Colonel. Second, paint my name on a hangar queen, the worst bird you’ve got. Tell the crew chief that I’m flying it tomorrow and that it had better be on the schedule. I’ll be out to check on my bird soonest. Sam,” he allowed a grin at his DO — “team me with the worst wizzo in the wing. Put his name on the bird with mine and get him on the flying schedule with me tomorrow.”
“Just how bad of a basketcase do you want?” Hawkins said happily, thinking that he was retiring too early. “I’ve got a few.”
“The absolute pits of pitters, the guy who has trouble even recognizing an F-4.” Waters looked at the group. “Also, I understand we haven’t found all the practice bombs that fell out of the SUU-21. Get some volunteers to start searching for those puppies tomorrow.”
The young crew chief was poring over the maintenance forms with Waters, trying to explain why his plane was the wing’s hangar queen. Nothing Maintenance did seemed to cure the Phantom’s ills, and aircraft number 744 spent more time grounded and in the hangar than on the flight line. A roly-poly first lieutenant scurried up to them, out of breath. “S-s-sir,” he stammered. “Lieutenant Ambler Furry reporting as ordered.” He made an awkward salute.
Waters took a deep breath; Lieutenant Furry looked like a walking disaster area — unkempt, out of shape, in need of fixing — like 744. “You don’t need to salute in a work area,” Waters told him. “It’s considered inefficient.”
“S-s-sorry, sir. No one ever told me that before,” Furry said, following Waters and the crew chief as they walked around the plane.
The lieutenant’s slight stammer and fumbling gestures tugged at Waters’ memory… My God, he thought, it’s an overweight version of C. J. Conlan when he was young. Conlan was the air-defense suppression expert he had asked Cunningham for. Waters took a few steps away from the Phantom and pointed at the black letters and numbers painted on the tail. “What’s the SW stand for?”
“Stonewood, sir,” Furry answered, his stammer disappearing now that he was involved in prosaics.
“And the number 80-744?”
“It’s the aircraft serial number,” the crew chief said.
“And the eighty stands for the year it was built,” Waters said. “This is the last Phantom built by McDonnell Douglas. Five thousand F-4s and we’ve got the tail end. Well, we’re going to fly this baby tomorrow. You two get it ready.”
“But, sir, what if it’s not fixed—?”
“Then Ambler had better be damn good pulling the ejection handle,” Waters said, and walked out of the hangar.
The birdwatcher leveled his long telephoto lens on the tripod and sighted it down the runway. By zooming in on the Phantom he planned on taking a series of shots as the plane made its takeoff roll directly toward him. Then as the F-4 lifted off he would switch to the camera slung around his neck. He watched as the warbird hunkered down on its nose, caging the thrust of its engines as the pilot ran them up. Now the plane started to move and he could hear the crack of the afterburners kicking in. He shot three pictures before the big bird lifted off. He was pleased as the nose came steeply up, giving him a good shot of the underside of the craft. But something was wrong, the pilot ruddered the F-4 to the left, which brought the nose down and put the plane into a hard left turn, its wings perpendicular to the ground.
The plane was turning away from him when he saw the canopies fly off and the backseater eject parallel to the ground. Then the frontseater came out, but his vector was pointed slightly down and the birdwatcher was sure that he would hit the ground before his chute had time to open. Once the crew had separated from the Phantom, the warbird pitched back up and danced on its tail before flopping onto its back and crashing into the woods less than a thousand feet from the end of the runway. He watched the first parachute deploy and swing once before the strong east wind blew it back onto the runway. The second chute snapped open as the man hit the ground. The birdwatcher did not know if it had opened in time. The seat bounced less than twenty yards away from the pilot.
The birdwatcher had managed to capture the entire sequence on film. Should be worth a fair price to the media, he thought…
The controller in the tower reached for the crash phone the instant he saw the Phantom pitch up. He had seen films of F-100s doing their “Sabre Dance” from over-rotating on takeoff and prayed the Martin-Baker ejection seat was good enough to get the crew out. Instead of keying the crash net he kept shouting, “Left, left, goddamn it… ” To the right of the runway he could see the village where his family lived. When he saw the F-4’s nose come down and the canopies fly off he gave the warning, “Attention on the net, attention on the net. Crash Alert, Crash Alert! F-4 crash off departure end of runway zero-nine. Repeat, F-4 crash off departure end of runway zero-nine. This is not a drill. All units standby for coordinates. Two parachutes sighted. Parachutes at departure end of runway zero-nine. Crash at Juliet-Ten. Repeat. Juliet-Ten.”
He could hear the sirens start to wail, and glanced at the flying schedule, checking the name of the pilot that had directed his disabled jet away from the village. “I owe you big time, Bull Morgan.”
Normal activity on the base suddenly halted as the wing reacted to the crash alert. The emergency actions controller in the command post notified Colonels Bradley and Hawkins, then started an accountability check of all the wing’s aircraft that were airborne. By the time Bradley entered the command post the controller had identified the aircraft, pilot, and weapons systems officer. “It wasn’t Waters. He’s dumping fuel and will land in about fifteen minutes,” he told the colonel, then sent out a flash message to the three levels of higher headquarters above the wing. Now they had to wait.
“Ambler, now’s when we’ve got to be cool,” Waters told his backseater after the command post had called him for an accountability check and given him an RTB, return to base. “We’ve lost another bird and my ass is in a crack. But we are going to recover by the numbers. What’s the first thing I’ve got to do to get our baby on the ground?”
“Dump fuel to get our landing weight down,” the wizzo said quickly.
“Rog, dumping fuel now.” Waters’ hand poised over the fuel-dump switch and waited.
“Not over land,” Ambler shouted, “over water.”
“Right. Now you’re doing your job. You know how, so do it.”
The ejection out of the F-4 provided Doc Landis with the wildest ride he’d ever experienced. When Bull had shouted, “Eject, eject,” he had reached for the ejection handle between his legs, only to find it blocked by the stick that was full-back against the seat and the handle. He had reached above his head and pulled on the face-curtain handles, which also started the ejection sequence for both men. The ejection gun fired, propelling the seat up the guide rails, igniting the rocket pack under the seat and sending Landis out of the airplane with a twelve-G kick. In quick sequence he felt a series of jerks as first the controller drogue chute, then the stabilizer drogue chute and the main parachute deployed. In less than three-and-a-half seconds after he pulled the handle, Landis had separated from the seat, taken one swing in his parachute and landed on the runway. As he did, everything that Thunder had taught him came back in a rush. He hit the quick release clips on his chest, releasing the big chute before it could drag him over the ground, then ran toward the other parachute that was still inflated and dragging Bull through the grass. He jumped into the canopy’s fabric, grabbing and pulling until the chute collapsed, quickly rolled the big pilot over, releasing the parachute risers from his harness should the parachute canopy reinflate in the wind. “Hell of a day, Doc,” Bull Morgan said, looking up at Landis. “You wouldn’t happen to have a beer on you?”