“It’s nice to know our Arab allies are flying a Combat Air Patrol today,” Jack said.
“They’re up,” Waters said. “The UAC tells me we have a dedicated CAP for this mission. I’ll believe it, though, when it happens. The crews have been briefed to jettison their loads and abort the mission if they see or hear MiGs in the area and no friendly CAP is around. It’s one hell of a target, Jack. A major convoy strung out for over twenty miles along a narrow road and headed for the Strait of Hormuz.” Jack nodded and wished he was going.
The Long Track radars that fed early-warning information to the SA-6’s fire control first detected the inbound Phantoms. The missile operators slewed the target-tracking antennas of the Straight Flush fire-control radar toward the attackers and raised the triple-mounted missiles into a launch position. The first Wild Weasel detected the H-band frequency of the tracking radar and sent a Shrike down its beam, destroying the tracking radar and control van. Neighboring sites immediately placed their radars on standby and went to a visual launch mode. The string of Phantoms behind the lead Weasel dropped to two hundred feet above the ground, below the minimum altitude of an SA-6. The Weasel and his wingman were blasting open a corridor onto the convoy.
Two soldiers on the ground fired shoulder-held SA-7 Strelas at the F-4s as they flew past. But the fast-moving F-4s were doing jinks back and forth and hoped the 1.5-Mach missiles could not match their turns and catch them before running out of fuel.
Radio communications warned close-in defenders the attack was underway and three batteries of ZSU-23-2 Triple A came active. The gunners of the rapid firing, two-barrel twenty-three-millimeter guns spewed the sky the moment they saw the aircraft, not waiting to establish a tracking solution. Before a Weasel’s wingman could pepper the area with CBU, driving the open-gun pit crews to cover, one ZSU laced a Phantom with a short burst. The big fighter cartwheeled into the ground and the next bird in the stream of attackers had to fly through its fireball. The wingman rolled in and pickled two canisters of CBU onto the ZSU-23-2, creating seventeen Shiite martyrs.
Twelve self-propelled ZSU-23-4s manuevered into position with the convoy. The four-barreled guns, mounted on a tank chassis, had kept pace with the trucks, providing them with running protection. The tracking radar on the ZSU’s fed tracking data to SA-9 SAMs, a small missile with an infrared seeker-head similar to the SA-7 Strelas. But the SA-9 was mounted on a scout vehicle, had a larger motor and warhead and was a far more lethal weapon…
The 45th started to work the convoy, hitting the lead truck first, bringing it to a grinding halt. The SA-6s behind them kept the Phantoms from popping too high for a bombing run, and the twenty-foot missiles streaked overhead whenever the operators thought they could launch. The second flight’s lead Phantom started his pop and was raked by a ZSU-23-4. But only two bullets struck the left wing. The pilot jettisoned his load on the way up and ballooned as he checked for battle damage. His wizzo detected a new threat on his RHAW gear, an SA-8. He called for the pilot to turn twenty-degrees off the threat so as to visually acquire the missile. The pilot shouted “Tallyho” as he turned into the missile and pulled up, generating an overshoot when the ten-foot-long SA-8 could not turn with him — the missile’s command guidance tried to make the turn, but the missile broached sideways and tumbled out of control.
The pilot searched for the second missile he knew was coming — SAMs were always launched in pairs or triplets — and found it. Again he turned into the missile, causing it to overshoot as he slammed the Phantom back down onto the deck. But he had bled off his airspeed to 300 knots in avoiding the two missiles. The wizzo jabbed at the chaff-and-flare button, shooting flares and small canisters of chaff from the dispensers on the wing pylons, leaving a trail behind the plane in an effort to deceive the missiles. But a ZSU-23-4 gunner now had the relatively slow-moving Phantom visually and mashed his fire-control trigger, sending over five hundred rounds at the F-4 just as an SA-6 exploded three feet under the fighter’s belly. The one-hundred-seventy-five-pound warhead broke the Phantom in two and the warbird vanished in a burst of smoke and flames. The second SA-6 that had been launched at the Phantom could not find a target and went ballistic.
“Bandits two o’clock high on me!”
“Abort!”
“Jettison!”
These calls wracked the radio frequencies as the first MiGs were sighted rolling in onto the lead F-4 coming off the head of the convoy. A Phantom pilot turned hard into an oncoming Flogger and selected guns while his wingman tried to maneuver into a sixty-degree cone behind his lead to provide him protection. The wingman never saw the Flogger that popped up at his own six o’clock and launched an Aphid air-to-air missile at its minimum range of sixteen hundred feet. The missile leaped off its pylon under the glove of the variable swept-wing and was still accelerating when its infrared heat-seeking head found the Phantom’s right tailpipe, exploding, destroying the aft section. A classic air-to-air kilclass="underline" the victim never saw his killer.
Bull Morgan was leading the last flight of four and twisted in his seat, looking for the bandits and his CAP. When he couldn’t find the promised friendly CAP, he ordered his flight to jettison their loads hot, hoping for luck to destroy a chance target. They cross-turned one hundred-eighty-degrees and headed for the Gulf. As they did, Bull ordered his flight into a “fluid four”… The second lead pilot moved into a line-abreast position roughly six thousand feet away from Bull; each wingman flew two thousand feet away from his lead on the extreme outside of the formation, slightly back, porpoising to a high-and-low position.
“Fox Three.” Bull ordered his flight to select the only air-to-air weapon they were carrying. His flight was at least in a good defensive formation for maintaining a visual lookout for bandits as they ran for feet-wet. And Bull kept cursing the missing CAP under his breath as he searched the sky. He finally found the sons of bitches orbiting over the Gulf, well clear of any threat.
The first Mayday call reaching the Command Post jerked Waters, Farrell and Jack to their feet and out the door, piling into the wing commander’s pickup. Jack rolled into the truck’s bed as Waters gunned the engine and sped for the approach end of the runway. They skidded to a halt beside a crash truck, the UHF radios inside the trucks tuned to the control tower’s frequency. An ambulance with Doc Landis soon joined the three waiting men, worry written on the doctor’s face. Slowly, they counted the returning Phantoms.
Bull’s flight came down final, the first to land. “We launched thirty-six,” Waters said, and each man started an internal count. The colonel visibly flinched when the third recovering flight checked in with three. The stranglehold of tension eased some when the straggler appeared, declaring a Mayday. They scanned the sky as eight more birds entered the pattern. “That’s twenty,” Waters counted. The lone ship called the tower, declaring he was going to eject. “Nothing wrong with a nylon approach and landing,” Waters said. They watched the aircraft turn inland before pointing out to sea, crossing the runway at four thousand feet.
Jack offered Waters binoculars he had found in the pickup, but the wing commander only shook his head. The lieutenant then focused them on the Phantom, examining it for battle damage. Half of the vertical stabilizer had been shot away and both tail pipes had major damage. Heavy smoke was streaming from the right engine. Immediately after crossing the runway both canopies flew off, and in quick succession the back and then the front seat rocketed above the dying F-4. The Phantom continued its glide out to sea, curling to the left while chutes streamed behind the men, snapping open as the seats fell away. The parachutes drifted back to the runway while crash crews ran toward them and the plane crashed into the Gulf. “The Martin-Baker wins again,” Waters said, referring to the ejection seat and grateful for the results.