gas.
Crew chief Baines was already in shelter G waiting for him. Sergeant Baines was assigned to tail number 492 full-time. The same pilot did not fly this plane all the time, but Baines was always its crew chief. As far as he was concerned, it really belonged to him, and the pilots just “rented” it for occasional hops.
The shelter was big enough to hold a twin-engine F-15 or a larger aircraft, so the single-engine F-16 “Electric Jet” looked small, almost lost. It was surrounded by the paraphernalia needed to get a Falcon in the air: a ladder, starting cart, and fire extinguisher.
Tony started his preflight. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the crew chief, but Baines was human. You were only allowed one error in a jet aircraft, and Tony hadn’t made it yet. There were pilots who made such a great show of trusting the crew chief that the only thing they checked was the side number, to make sure they were getting in the right aircraft. Tony remembered the time that Crew Chief Baines and his cohorts had pulled a fast one and parked a plane without an engine in the arch. The hapless aviator assigned to fly it hadn’t caught on until he hit the starter for the third time.
Okay, then. The load: first a cigar-shaped centerline drop tank, carrying an extra three hundred gallons of fuel. The Sidewinders on the wingtips were mandatory. This was an air-to-ground mission, but you always had to be ready for air-to-air. Besides, the rails wouldn’t carry anything but the missiles. The plane’s port inboard rack held a flare dispenser and the starboard held a cluster of practice bombs. Each bomb weighed about twenty-five pounds and had a small gunpowder charge. Just large enough to make a satisfying bang and a mark large enough to judge exactly where it had landed. Pretty harmless stuff compared to the one-ton monsters filled with Minol that the F-16 would carry on a real ground-attack mission. Finally, the cannon was “hot.” The drum held 20-millimeter ammo for the strafing runs they would practice later.
Next he checked to make sure all the arming tags were removed from the ordnance and the racks. If the pins weren’t taken out, the practice bombs and flares wouldn’t drop when he pressed the release. Tony walked all the way around the plane, looking at the skin, the fueling points, the exhaust, following a mental routine he had performed almost a thousand times. He ended up by the ladder and signed the form Baines offered. It was now “his” airplane, at least until it was wheels down again.
He climbed in and strapped himself to the seat. If he had to eject, the straps would ensure that he stayed with the ejection seat as it pulled him from the plane. Connect oxygen, g-suit umbilical, microphone lead. Tony looked at his watch: 1955. Not bad, five minutes to engine start and all he had to do was light off the INS.
He turned on the Falcon’s master power and started the inertial navigation system. It took the gyros three minutes to spin up, more time than it took to start the engine. While it did, he performed the rest of his cockpit checks. When he finished, he called his wingman on the ground frequency. “Hooter, you ready?”
“Rog, Saint, on your call.”
From this point on they would use their nickname call signs exclusively. They were easier to remember than “Echo Zulu three,” and less confusing than “John” or “Tony.” There might be more than one pilot named John on a frequency, but the Wing’s call sign committee made sure there was only one Hooter and one Saint.
Tony looked at his watch again. It was exactly 2000 hours. He said, “Go.”
He signaled Baines, who hit the button to open the shelter’s blast doors. Tony simultaneously hit the starter and listened as the F-16’s engine spooled up. First a whine, a sound like a vacuum cleaner, then the teeth-rattling roar as he throttled to sixty-five percent power. Enough to start the ship moving.
Tony called on the ground frequency, “Bluejay flight on the North Loop ready to taxi.”
A disembodied voice answered in his helmet, “Bluejays, you are clear.”
Time to release the wheel brakes. He started rolling and came out into the night.
He looked to the left and saw Hooter leaving his arch. Tony switched to the tower frequency. “Bluejay flight rolling.”
“Roger, Bluejay, you are number three for takeoff. Wind is one five zero at ten.”
Rolling side by side, they reached the North Loop taxiway and turned right. The 35th had its shelters dispersed around a circular asphalt taxiway as wide as a two-lane road called the North Loop. The 80th had a similar “South Loop.”
As they approached the runway, they heard a two-ship formation of fighters like them take off. They rounded the last corner and saw a C-141 cargo plane lining up for its run. He heard the tower give it clearance and it started rolling. Tony called the controllers again: “Tower, Bluejay flight ‘number one’ for the active.”
“Roger, Bluejays. Stand by, you’re next.”
The Starlifter cleared the runway, lumbering into the night sky. His earphones crackled with another transmission fromthetower: “Bluejay cleared for takeoff.”
Tony called, “Request permission for combat departure.”
A short silence. “Granted.”
Hooter had been monitoring the circuit, and as soon as they had permission, they rolled the planes onto the end of the runway and lined up.
Tony glanced over at his wingman and called, “Go.”
They both hit the throttle, first going to one hundred percent normal power and then to afterburner, which pushed them into their seats and threw the planes down the runway.
Both F-16s quickly reached flying speed, about 100 knots. Tony held it on the runway for a few more seconds and it built up to 150. Okay. “Rotate.”
He pulled up into the sky and looked over to see Hooter’s nose coming up at the same time. They raised their landing gear and flaps, and by this time they were at five hundred feet and clearing the end of the runway.
Tony said, “Now,” and chopped the throttle back to military power, killing the afterburner. The noise level dropped and he banked the aircraft hard left. He also thumbed a button on the stick, sending a string of small flares trailing out behind him. Hooter followed his movements.
Turning, killing the afterburner, and dropping flares would confuse any heat-seeking missiles launched by an enemy. Combat departure takeoffs were supposed to be practiced frequently because the “simulated” enemy could turn out to be very real: North Korean commandos landed by sea with shoulder-fired SA-7 missiles.
Having successfully gotten away from the airfield without being shot at, they climbed to five thousand feet and turned to the southeast. The range was about fifteen minutes away — not worth climbing to a higher, more fuel-efficient altitude. The sun had set, allowing the ground to cool and reducing the turbulence.
Tony started to relax. Unlike the States or Europe, there were few restrictions on where or how to fly. Few complaints were received about supersonic flight at treetop level. The bad guys were too close.
As they approached the bombing range, Tony rocked his wings to signal Hooter and changed his Heads-Up Display — the HUD — to air-to-ground mode. He armed his practice ordnance, then descended to five hundred feet. This was the minimum peacetime altitude allowed for nighttime flight. In wartime they would fly as low as the light and terrain allowed, one hundred feet or even less. From here on, they would use wartime procedures.
The target range was in a small plain, with several north-south valleys leading down to it. The two F-16s dropped into one of them, relying on the valley walls to mask their approach from enemy radars that weren’t there now, but that would be if this were the real thing.
They had arranged for Hooter to make the first attack. Tony rocked his wings again and they accelerated, changing formation. Hooter held back, allowing Tony to take the lead. He selected “Flare” on his weapons panel.
The two jets screamed out onto the plain at four hundred knots. As they cleared the valley, Tony pulled up and hit the weapons release. Behind him a million-candlepower flare lit up the plain with white magnesium light. Tony imagined all the attention he would be getting right now and practiced evasive maneuvering, popping chaff and flares to decoy any missiles that might have been fired at him. The wild maneuvering alternately pushed him into his seat, then pulled him out of it. If he hadn’t been strapped in, his head would have been thrown against the canopy.
Hooter pulled up behind Tony, too, but only until he could see the target — a ten-meter-wide paint mark on the ground. Then he nosed over into a shallow dive. He steadied up and pressed his stick’s “pickle switch,” locking the F-16’s weapons computer onto the target’s location. The HUD changed, showing lines leading to the target and the range. As soon as he was happy with the lock, he increased throttle to full military power and closed on the aim point at over five hundred knots.
The light from the flare was starting to fade, and shadows flickered on and off the target. The landscape
