Sky Masters

unhurt, flat on his stomach, his rifle thrown several meters away. He lowcrawled to his rifle, picked it up, then rose cautiously to his knees. “Marines! Forward! APCs! Move out!” Thankfully, the first APC began to lumber off the air- cushion landing craft; the second showed no signs of moving. “Get those APCs off the landing craft! Move it! Move it!” Slowly, his men got to their feet, stumbling toward the APCs to take cover behind them as they got their senses back. As Yang urged his men to get off the landing craft, he was able to scan out toward the straits toward his amphibious landing ship-and what he saw horrified him. The entire interior of the ship seemed to be on fire. Pieces of the pontoon bridges were hanging off the sides, all afire, and in the glare of the fires he could see men flinging themselves overboard into the burning-oil-covered gulf. A spectacular explosion sent a column of flames a hundred meters into the night sky as the fires finally found the twenty-five million decaliters of diesel fuel still in the LST’s storage tanks. A few of his men stopped to look at the dying ship, and Yang grabbed them and shoved them forward. “Move it! Secure that treeline! Search that house! Move it The gunners aboard Dagu began firing into the sky again, and Yang could hear the sounds of fast and heavy jets getting closer. “Get off the landing craft!” he yelled. “Run toward the trees! Run!” But it was too late. Two minutes after the F-I I Is delivered their canisters of fire, the next strike package began its ingress from the northeast: four B-52s that had survived the battle with the destroyer Dalian continued their attacks with Harpoon missiles and CAPTOR mines; their escort EB-52C Megafortress had been shot down by a JS-7 fighter over Mindanao as it tried to turn away from the target area. The four B-52s claimed kills on two amphibious assault ships and seeded the straits with over a dozen CAPTOR mines that began to seek out and destroy the surviving vessels that tried to escape across the straits to Samal Island. Then, sixty seconds after the last B-52 came off the target, the last and the heaviest-armed warplanes in the entire battle began their assault; six B- I B bombers swooped in from the north at treetop level. They were never detected until it was far, far too late. Colonel Yang could see the bright globes of red and orange walk down the beach toward him, stitching a path of destruction fifty meters wide and hundreds of meters long. There was no place to run-the bomblets from the aerial-mine canisters covered the entire beach. He could only raise his rifle and fire at the hissing sound as the sleek American bomber, highlighted for a brief moment against the glare of the burning tank-landing ship, streaked overhead. Yang turned his back to the approaching chemical meat-grinder of bomblets and continued to fire at the bomber until he was cut down by the devastating explosions and clouds of shrapnel. Never had Major Pete Fletcher, the B-IB’s 050 (Offensive Systems Officer), taken such an incredible array of weapons into battle before-in fact, never had he even heard of so many different kinds of weapons carried into battle. His B-IB Excalibur bomber, Blade Two-Five, had carried eight SLAM missiles on the external hardpoints-those had already been expended on the larger Chinese vessels in the Philippine Sea that survived the B-52s’ initial onslaught; eight Mk 65 QUICKSTRIKE mines in the aft bomb bay, which were shallow-water high-explosive antiship mines that were to be dropped in Dadaotan Straits and Bangoy Harbor itself, twenty-four GATOR mines in the middle bomb bay, which were to be released on the beach-each bomb would disperse hundreds of small softball- sized mines along a wide area that could destroy small vehicles or kill large numbers of troops who tried to move through the area after the raid; and finally they carried eight BLU-96 HADES FAE canisters in the forward bomb bay, which were designated against the landing craft and Marines ashore north of Samar International Airport. All of the remaining weapons were to be dropped within a distance of only twenty miles, on three separate two-mile-long tracks-and while flying at treetop level at nearly six miles per minute, it left almost no time to think about procedures. He had taken a fix in between fighter attacks while going coast-in, and the navigation system was tight and ready to go. If he had time, Fletcher would try to take another radar fix going into the target area, but he doubted that would happen. The bombing computer would have to take care of everything. “Coming up on initial point… ready, ready, now, ” Fletcher called out. “Heading is good. Thirty seconds to release. Multiple GATOR release on heading one-eight-one, then right turn to heading two-one-six for a multiple QUICKSTRIKE mine release, then right turn to heading two-six-eight for a multiple HADES release. Stand by… fifteen seconds.” The fires that were already burning in Dadaotan Straits and Bangoy Harbor were spectacular-there had to be at least a dozen large troopships burning, with spots of fires dotting the entire bay. “My God, it looks like the end of the fucking world, ” the copilot muttered on interphone. “Five seconds… stand by to turn…” But the huge fires that made it so easy for the B- I crew to see the target area also made it easy for the Chinese troops to see the incoming bomber. A row of tracers from a few of the surviving amphibious assault ships arced into the sky, the un dulating lines of shells sweeping the sky in seemingly random patterns-and suddenly several of those lines swept across the nose of the B-I bomber. The impact of the 57-millimeter shells from one of the tanklanding ships felt like hammer blows from Thor himself. The cabin pressure immediately dumped, replaced a millisecond later with a thunderous roar of the windblast hammering in through the cockpit windows. Airspeed seemed to drop to zero, and the crew experienced a feeling of weightlessness as the B- I started to drift and fall across the sky. Fletcher reacted instantly. While struggling to keep himself upright in his seat as much as possible, he selected all remaining stores stations, opened the bomb doors, and hit the “Emergency Armed Release” button once again. “All weapons away! Weapons away!” he shouted. “Right turn to escape, Doug!” He called to the pilot, Captain Doug Wendt. “Right turn! Head west!” All of the mines and BLU-96 canisters made a normal release-except one. One of the racks in the forward bomb bay was hit by gunfire, the rack jammed, then released, and the canister was flung against the aft bomb-bay bulkhead and detonated. Fire and debris from the bomb and the damaged bomb bay flew into the right engine intakes, shelling the starboard engines and causing another terrific explosion. There was a sound like a raging waterfall filling the entire crew compartment, and smoke began to fill the cabin. The B- I seemed to be hanging upside down, twisting left and right and fishtailing around the sky. “Doug? Answer up!” No reply. “George?” Again no reply. Without thinking of what he was doing, Fletcher pulled the parachute release mechanism on his ejection seat, which unclipped him from his seat but kept his parachute on his back. He dropped to the deck and began crawling on his hands and feet toward the clipboard. “Pete!” Lieutenant Colonel Terry Rowenki, the DSO (Defensive Systems Operator), yelled behind him. “What the hell are you doing? Get back here!” Fletcher ignored him. Flat on his stomach, he made his way through the howling windblast to the cockpit. Through the glare of flares outside, he could see that all of the windshields were blown in, and both Wendt and Lleck were slumped over in their seats, unconscious. The autopilot was not on, but the B- I was light and trimmed enough to maintain wings- level even without hands on the control stick. “Terry! Get out! Eject!” Fletcher screamed, but he could not be heard over the windblast. Crawling forward another few feet, he pulled himself up onto the center console, keeping as far below the murderous wind coming through the shattered windows as he could, reached across, and lifted the right-side ejection handle on Doug Wendt’s seat. The large red “Eject” light snapped on in every section of the cabin-it came on automatically whenever the pilot’s ejection handles were raised. Fighting the force of the wind hammering on his entire body, he reached up and hit the ejection trigger with his left hand. The inertial reel thankfully yanked Doug Wendt’s body upright in his seat a fraction of a second before the overhead escape hatch blew off and the seat roared off into space. But the ejection seat’s rocket motor flared right in Fletcher’s face, and he screamed again as his vision was replaced by angry stars of pure pain. He was on the verge of unconsciousness, and only another explosion from somewhere inside the bomber brought him back to his senses. Struggling through the pain to regain his vision, he finally gave up trying to open his eyes, groped around for Lleck’s ejection handle, found it, and pulled. This time the white-hot fire from the motor seared his chest and stomach, and he slumped to the deck. “Pete! Pete, dammit, wake up!” Someone was calling his name . . . someone . . . Fletcher raised his head. “Pete! This way! Crawl this way! Hurry!” It was Terry Rowenki-the idiot hadn’t ejected yet. Fletcher’s head hit the deck with a dull thud. That was his problem, he thought blissfully as he drifted off toward unconsciousness-the man had a perfectly good ejection seat, now was the time to use it. But sleep wouldn’t come. He soon felt someone pulling his legs. “Pete, dammit, crawl this way . . . you motherfucker, wake up, dammit, wake up…” To humor him, Fletcher pushed against the center cockpit console toward the systems compartment. The odd pitch angles of the deck seemed to help him-the Excalibur’s nose was high in the air, as if they were in a steep climb-and Rowenki’s grasp was extraordinarily strong. He heard another loud sound, more windblast sounds the farther back he moveduntil he realized that it was the big entry hatch. Rowenki had jettisoned the hatch and the entry ladder and was trying to pull Fletcher out! Somehow Rowenki managed to get Fletcher pulled to the hatch and over onto his stomach, head toward the open hatch. “What the fuck did you think you were doing up there?” Rowenki yelled as he continued to wrestle with Fletcher’s ragdoll-like body. “Being a damned hero? You get me killed up here, Fletcher, and I’ll fucking haunt you for a hundred years.” Attaching the emergency rescue rope to the D-ring on Fletcher’s parachute harness, Rowenki used his feet and shoved Fletcher headfirst out the entry hatch. The escape rope yanked taut, spinning Fletcher’s body around but pulling the ripcord D-ring and opening the parachute. One of Fletcher’s legs got tangled in the parachute risers, but it whipped free and the chute safely opened. Rowenki was right behind him, leaping out of the hatch as if he were going to do a cannonball from a high-diving board. He broke