for shooting down an American F-117 stealth fighter over Kosovo. To date, that is the only recorded loss of this aircraft type as a result of ground fire.
The reason the North Koreans had located the radars at the top of the highest ground in the vicinity was obvious – the terrain was so hilly that an aircraft even half a mile away might remain invisible in some valley. To have any chance of engaging a low-flying target, the radar heads simply had to be mounted as high as possible.
The commanding officer’s broadcast was actually redundant. The SA-3 crews were fully alert, scanning their radars constantly, but no contacts were yet being displayed. This was in part because radar coverage of the valley directly to the south of the firing complex was slightly obscured by a hill whose peak was at about sixteen hundred feet, but mainly because the Harriers were still some three miles – or thirty seconds – away and below the radar horizon.
Eighteen seconds later that all changed.
‘Cobras, Alpha Three. Flash message. Seven of the hostiles that have been holding north of the DMZ have detached from the formation and are now heading south. They’ve increased speed to Mach two and we estimate they’re about four minutes away.’
‘Roger.’ There wasn’t much else Richter could say. But four minutes was a long time in a Harrier, and, with any luck, they’d have completed their attack on the missile base and be on their way back towards the DMZ before the approaching aircraft caught up with them. The fact that the enemy fighters were travelling at Mach 2 meant they were probably Foxbats, and he knew they weren’t easy to fly at low level. If the GR9s stayed low and fast, they might be able to outmanoeuvre them, even if they could never outrun them.
The two Harriers were now flying in line astern, Richter about a quarter of a mile behind Long’s aircraft. The sides of the valley seemed perilously close, and the floor closer still, but both men knew they had to stay as low as possible to avoid being detected by the fire-control radars they knew would be waiting for them at the target.
At that point, they were a mere three hundred feet above the valley’s rocky floor, which was now sloping upwards. Dick Long eased his Harrier left, following the curve of the valley, and started to climb. Richter could see a rocky ridge directly in front of them, the course of the valley veering sharply to the left, and followed Long as he jinked around it, turning west, then almost immediately north.
Behind it was another ridge, the highest point – about sixteen hundred feet – lying to the east, the top of it sloping gently westwards. They couldn’t go round it, so they’d have to fly over it, which would probably bring them within the coverage envelope of the Chiha-ri radars, but there wasn’t any alternative.
Dick Long aimed for the lowest point, pulled his aircraft up and over the ridge with a bare hundred feet clearance, then dropped down into the valley beyond. Richter was right behind him, and according to his INGPS at the crest of the ridge they were one and a third miles from the waypoint the Hawkeye crew had given them, and a little under three miles from their target.
‘I’m picking up C-band radar, probably Flat Face. That means SA-3 Goa SAMs.’ Even over the radio, the tension in Long’s voice was palpable. ‘Watch out for the I/D-band Low Blow fire-control radar, but Zeus should handle it.’
‘I admire your confidence,’ Richter said, increasing speed to close up on the other Harrier as the valley widened below them.
In the concrete bunker that served as the control position for the SA-3 anti-aircraft missile system, one of the radar operators suddenly called out.
‘Two contacts bearing one eight seven degrees range four point six kilometres. Low level, high speed, heading north. Contact now lost.’
‘Report all further contacts. Weapons free.’
The two SA-3 turrets on the south side of the Chiha-ri base hummed to life, the launcher swinging the needle-nosed missiles to point south. Once the current location and height of the intruders had been established, and the Low Blow fire-control radar had computed their track, the missiles could be fired.
The Harriers were less than two hundred feet apart as they roared over the waypoint and swept into the next valley. Richter glanced down at the neat rows of buildings laid out in a grid pattern, almost like the suburbs of a small American town, then he focused ahead again.
‘Zeus is jamming I/D-band frequencies,’ Dick Long reported. ‘I see the missile site. I’ll go left; you go right.’
‘Roger.’ Richter eased the control column slightly to the right to increase the separation between the aircraft, and glanced ahead at the launch pads. From just over two miles away he could clearly see at least three Scud missiles standing erect on their TELs. The other thing he could see was that the pads were too far apart for an explosion on one missile to have any effect on another.
‘We’ll have to use the CRVs as well,’ he said.
‘Affirmative, but fire the Mavericks first. They’re more certain kills.’
Richter clicked an acknowledgement and checked the Multi-Purpose Crystal Display. He aimed the screen boresight – a large cross – at the centre of the closest Scud missile and selected his starboard-wing Maverick. Immediately the missile boresight – a smaller cross – appeared on the MPCD and within seconds the two crosses aligned, showing that the electro-optical guidance system was detecting sufficient contrast at the point of aim for weapon release. The Harrier twitched slightly as the Maverick accelerated away, its solid-fuel motor propelling it in seconds to a speed of over seven hundred miles an hour.
The Maverick is a ‘fire-and-forget’ missile, so immediately Richter aligned the screen boresight with the second Scud.
The Zeus was doing its job well. Every radar screen in the SA-3 control bunker was flooded with spikes, effectively blinding the operators. Without radar guidance, the SAM system was powerless to intercept the attacking aircraft.
But the North Korean troops manning two anti-aircraft gun emplacements on the south side of the missile base didn’t need radar for their weapons to function. They could see their targets and immediately began pumping high-explosive shells across the valley towards the incoming Harriers.
As Richter aligned the boresights, the first anti-aircraft shells detonated about a hundred yards in front of, and slightly above, his Harrier. The sudden puffs of black seemed alarmingly close, and he inadvertently twitched at the very instant he released the second Maverick.
‘Keep low,’ Long radioed. ‘They probably can’t depress the barrels below the horizontal.’
Richter was already uncomfortably close to the valley floor, but obediently pushed the control column further forward. As he did so, his first Maverick exploded on contact with the Scud he’d targeted, and at almost the same moment Long’s missile impacted with a Scud on the left-hand side of the site.
Two down, four to go.
Fifteen miles north of Chiha-ri, Gennadi Malakov slowed his Foxbat down to subsonic speed. If he stayed at Mach 2, the aircraft would overshoot the base and he’d probably never even see the British fighters, far less be able to engage them.
‘Radiate, and arm weapons,’ Malakov ordered, switched on his Saphir radar and prepared his four R-40T infrared-guided missiles.
