Luger, lounging in his ejection seat, watched his partner switch the bomb-nay radar scope from off-center present position mode to station-keeping, bringing the radar antenna up to level with the aircraft's longitudinal axis. The display was now configured from attack mode to scanning mode, with a maximum of five miles range with range marks displayed every half mile. He was trying to save their lives.
'Anything I can do for you, Pat?' Luger asked nonchalantly.
'Watch for the damn fighters,' McLanahan said.
'Can't do that, buddy,' Luger asked. 'I've got serious injuries over here, remember?'
As if to emphasize his point, he lolled lifelessly across the aisle, his parachute harness barely keeping him in his ejection seat. He stared up at the overhead circuit breaker panel of the B-52 Ejection and Egress Trainer, his arms flung out awkwardly. McLanahan muttered something about how stupid he looked.
'When did they add that into the scenario?' McLanahan asked.
'I don't know,' Luger asked. 'I like it, though.'
'You're havin' too much of a fucking good time, — McLanahan said.
'I like watchin' you work your butt off, partner.'1@ 'Too bad your injuries haven't affected your mouth. 'McLanahan flipped switches on the instrument panel in front of A him and looked over at his partner.
'Get strapped in like You're supposed to. Can you still reach your ejection trigger ring, or are your hands blown off too?'
Luger went through the charade of inspecting his hands.
'Nope, they look fine. 'As he reached for his parachute harness straps, he noticed a faint ripple of light in the upper left-hand corner of the radar navigator's ten-inch radar scope.
'Ten o'clock,' Luger said, pointing at the scope. 'Interference patterns. Could be 'No cheating now, Luger,' the instructor, Paul White, interrupted from the control console outside the trainer.
'You're blind, remember?Are you ready for the finale?'
'They've got this place bugged,' Luger said, hurriedly pulling on the parachute.
'You'd be dead meat right now if those fighters launched a missile, Dave,' White asked. 'Don't tell me you're going to unstrap yourself like that during the real thing?'
'Only if there aren't any instructors around,' Luger said.
White did not share in the joke, and Luger quieted up and finished strapping himself into his seat.
'Pilot,' McLanahan said, acting as if he was talking to the Pilot, 'I'm picking up a bogey at ten O'clock, five miles.
Moving rapidly to eleven o'clock.'
'Roger,' White said, acting now as the pilot. Then, switching roles to the crew electronic warfare officer, he shouted, 'Pilot, break left now. 'Simultaneously, he turned a large black knob on the console in front of him, putting the trainer into a sharp left turn. The compartment in which McLanahan and Luger were sitting was mounted on four ten-foot hydraulic legs, enabling it to move in any direction at the instructor's command.
'Bogey at one O'clock, three and a half miles,' McLanahan reported.
The interference pattern on his radar scope, the telltale sign of the enemy fighter's radar transmissions intermingling with the B-52s radar, disappeared and then hardened into a solid white dot on the upper-right corner of the ten-inch scope. By the time the radar sweep picked up the dot again, it had moved considerably. 'Beginning to go off my scope rapidly at three o'clock, three miles. Guns, you should be able to pick him up.'
'Pilot,' White said, now as the crew gunner, 'my firecontrol system is broken. All gun barrels are jammed. No radar contact. 'White switched back to the E. W. 'Pilot, the fighter's radar has gone down.
Last contact was five o'clock, two miles.
Expecting a cannon attack or infrared missile attack. Continue evasive maneuvers. 'White swung the control knob to the right, and the real-motion simulator responded by slamming both crewmembers into their seats. 'Dispensing chaff and flares. Continue evasive maneuvers.'
A long pause. The gyro compass and altimeter were both spinning madly as White, striving for maximum realism in his trainer, jerked the 'plane' around as quickly as he could without locking up the hydraulically operated moving trainer.
Then he leveled the trainer out and said, 'Crew, this is the co-pilot.
We've taken a missile hit on number four nacelle.
Generators seven and eight are off-line. Pilot, seven and eight engine fire T-handles, pulled.'
White studied a hidden closed-circuit TV picture of the inside of the egress trainer-another modification he hadn't told the trainees about.
Both McLanahan and Luger were sitting bolt-upright in their seats, heads shoved back, work tables stowed, their hands gripping the ejection trigger rings between their legs. They were fighting to remain upright in the oscillating box. White twisted the controls, and the wildlybucking box on its hydraulic legs slowly came back to normal.
Both navigators were still tense, waiting for the order to eject.
Not yet, boys, White said to himself. He turned and signaled the technicians assisting him to get ready, then clicked on his interphone.
'Okay, gents,' White asked. 'Fun's over. I was just checking out my new full-motion range. What do you think?'
'I'll tell you,' McLanahan said, 'after I puke on your shirt.
'Thanks,' White asked. 'Okay. You're level at ten thousand feet.
Plenty of time to get ready for ejection, right, Luger?'
'No sir,' Luger answered. 'Last I remember before you blew my radar scope up-and that was a nifty addition to your little chamber of horrors here, by the way-the terrain was mountainous. Some peaks went up to six or seven thousand feet. Maybe more.'
'Very good,' White asked. 'Pressure altitude is secondaryit's feet above ground you need to worry about. You're still flying over mountains. What else do you have to worry about, McLanahan?'
'The only damn thing I'm going to worry about,' McLanahan said, 'is how far upwind I can get of that one- point-one megaton bomb I just dropped.
'You guys are sharp, real sharp,' White said, beaming. 'I guess that's why you picked up eight trophies at Bomb Comp.
All right, now, you only dropped your bomb ten minutes ago.
We were balls-to-the-wall after bomb release, so we escaped the blast effects, but the fallout is still spreading. So if you were the pilot, Luger, what would you do?'
'Well, we only lost two engines,' Luger said after thinking for a few moments. 'I'd try to keep this Strato-Pig flying as long as I could toward the coast until she wouldn't stay up any more, then start punchin' people out.'
'Even with a squadron of MiGs on your tail?'
White prompted.
'Well, shit, ' McLanahan asked. 'Our day has already gone to hell.
Maybe they'll blow us up, or maybe they'll miss, or maybe they'll go home when they see our right wing on fire.
Who knows?I'm bettin' that, even if they hit us again, we'll still have a couple of seconds to get out before the damn plane falls out of the sky. Our goose is cooked either way.'
'Okay, Patrick,' White asked. 'Don't get all worked up.
This trainer is here primarily to give you practice in using your downward ejection seat, true, but I want you guys to get more out of it. Some guys will punch out as soon as they hear the word 'fire.'
Others will wait for an order. Some guys will freeze. Some guys will never punch out-they think they're safer in the plane, or that they can ditch it or crash land it. I want you guys to think about what to do. That's all. Ejecting is a traumatic and dangerous thing to do-and I should know, because I've done it three times. I've seen too many guys die unnecessarily because they don't think first. Okay?'
'Okay,' McLanahan said.
'Well, then,' White said, 'I, uh… listen, I have to use the little boy's room. I'll be back in a few minutes, and we'll just talk about the ejection sequence and finish early. Okay?'
'Sure,' McLanahan replied.
'Good. Don't go away' The interphone clicked dead. Luger turned a puzzled glance toward McLanahan.
