The pilot saw his altimeter beginning to spin down faster and faster. He felt a weightless sensation, felt his body floating in his straps. They were going in! Oh shit! Oh shit!
No choice, no warning — the pilot put his hand on his ejection lever, closed his eyes, and pulled.
Without warning, the upper hatch over each crew member’s station popped free, followed by a roar of windblast and a cloud of debris and dust that enveloped the aft compartment a split second before the rocket motors blasted the pilot up the ejection seat rails. A crushing blow slammed against his right shoulder, and he felt his body tumbling hard through the sky as it was snatched into the slipstream.
The last thing he remembered was seeing the sleek, deadly looking B-1B slide underneath him, still in a moderate left bank but with the nose up in a gentle climb. The pain in his shoulder was excruciating. He saw a tremendous fireball, a massive cloud of fire as big as the mountains surrounding his home back in Reno…
… and he saw two ejection seats, with partially inflated parachutes, fly right into that hellish wall of flames.
Seconds later he felt a sharp blow to his back and head… and then everything went black.
In recent months Wonju Air Base had been placed on alert at least once a day, so when the Klaxon sounded that night, the ROK crews assumed it was more of the same. They ran to their planes and prepared to launch their fighters with surprising calm.
Because Wonju was South Korea’s northernmost air defense installation, less than thirty miles from the Demilitarized Zone and about one hundred miles from the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, it would always be one of the first to react to any incursion by North Korean attackers. Wonju had a mixed fleet of aircraft. The primary air defense weapon was the F-16K, a fighter license-built in South Korea by a conglomerate of Korean heavy equipment manufacturers. The fighters were designed to respond to a massive invasion force, so had only one centerline external fuel tank; but they carried two radar-guided AIM-120 AMRAAMs (advanced medium-range air- to-air missiles) and eight AIM-9M Sidewinder short-range heat-seeking missiles, plus 200 rounds for the 20- millimeter cannon. A minimum of twelve F-16Ks pulled round-the-clock alert at Wonju.
The base’s fleet also included a number of French-built Mirage F1 fighters, American-built F-5 fighters for daylight intercepts — the North Korean Air Force was ill equipped to fight at night — and American-built F-4E Phantom jets for both bombing and air defense work. The alert fleet of twelve F-4Es was loaded with high-explosive and incendiary “firestorm” bombs specifically targeted for low-level, high-speed bombing raids of key selected North Korean targets, should the expected — many said inevitable — invasion from the North take place.
At the sound of the Klaxon, all alert crews went to their fighters and bombers, started engines, and monitored the air defense network. Even though they were in a heightened state of alert, no planes launched. A “launch on alert” could set off an uncontrollable military escalation between North and South in minutes. With engines running, the entire alert force could be in the air in less than two minutes. With planes taking off every fifteen seconds from the main runway and the two taxiways, twenty-four warplanes could be in the sky from this base alone in less time than it took a highspeed attacker to fly ten miles.
The crews listened and waited. Was it the actual invasion this time? Was this the big showdown between the Communists and the South here at last?
“Unidentified aircraft heading south at three-four-zero degrees bearing from Wonju, fifteen miles, you are in danger of crossing the Demilitarized Zone at your present heading and airspeed,” the South Korean air defense controller warned. “This is your final warning. If you cross restricted airspace, you will be fired upon. Unidentified aircraft, turn north immediately or you will be fired upon.” At that same moment, two green lights flashed on the flight-line ready board. The first two South Korean F-16s had launch clearance.
As soon as they were airborne, the lead pilot switched his wingman to the air defense controller’s call-up frequency. “Sapphire Command, Tiger flight of two, passing three thousand, check.”
“Two,” his wingman replied.
“Tiger flight, Sapphire Command reads you loud and clear,” the controller responded. “Switch to blue seven.”
“Tiger flight going to blue seven now.” After receiving a curt “Two” from his wingman — any good wing-man will answer all calls with little more than his position in the formation — the two pilots changed over to a secure HAVE QUICK radio frequency. The channel “hopped” to different frequencies at irregular intervals, making it difficult for outsiders to eavesdrop. “Sapphire, Tiger flight with you passing four thousand, check.”
“Two.”
“Tiger flight, this is Sapphire Control, read you loud and clear,” the air defense controller responded, his voice now slightly garbled by the computer-controlled frequency-hopping algorithm. “Say position from Solar.”
The lead pilot flipped his navigation system to the Solar way point, an imaginary point from which they could give position reports without revealing their position to outsiders. “Tiger flight is zero-six-three degrees bearing and oneniner miles from Solar.”
“Roger, Tiger flight. Fly heading two-niner-five and take base plus one-four.” Base altitude today was ten thousand feet, so the F-16s started a climb to twenty-four thousand feet. A few minutes later, when they were less than twenty miles from the DMZ, the controller called, “Linear.”
The lead F-16 pilot activated his APG-66 attack radar, and seconds later the radar locked onto a target directly off the nose. “Tiger flight is tied on, bogey bearing two-niner-seven, range thirty-two, low, speed three- zero-zero.”
“Tiger flight, that’s your bogey,” the controller replied.
The F-16’s APG-66 pulse-Doppler radar could track several targets simultaneously, but just for good measure the lead ROK pilot broke lock on the target and let the radar scan the sky again. No more targets. A lone invader from the North? The North rarely flew single-ship. A tight formation of many invaders? The Communist fliers were not known for their formation flying skills in daytime, and they rarely flew at all at night, much less in formation.
But the ROK pilot had learned never to rely on such assumptions. It was always better to assume there were numerous attackers out there. “Tiger flight, tactical spread, now.”
“Two.” The second F-16 left his leader’s right wing-tip and spread out several hundred feet laterally and two hundred feet above, close enough to keep his leader in sight in the darkness but still be able to move and react quickly if the tactical situation changed. The Communist pilot might be able to see two targets on his radar screen — if he bothered to turn his radar on. So far, there was not one squeak from the threat-warning receiver, meaning he was not using his attack radar. Some of the North’s advanced J-7 and MiG-29 fighters purchased from China had infrared tracking devices and infrared-homing missiles, so radar wasn’t necessary close-in, but it was still very strange for an attacker to charge blindly into enemy territory without using radar.
The target continued across the DMZ without the slightest change in airspeed, altitude, or heading. The Communists had just committed an overt act of war, breaking the fragile truce between North and South.
The second Korean War was under way.
To the ROK pilot, this was not just an act of war — this was an act of barbarism. The two nations had been struggling for years to make peace and eventually reunite their two countries. Covert probes by North Korean special forces and provocative but nonaggressive border “incidents,” meant to trip the South into reacting with force for propaganda purposes, were bad enough. But this was a deliberate air-attack profile.
There was plenty of mutual distrust to go around. The South was accused of building up an invasion force by buying or license-building American fighters, warships, antiaircraft systems, radars, and high-tech precision-guided weapons. The North was accused of continuous spy missions and of deploying improved surface-to-surface missile systems capable of bombarding Seoul with chemical, biological, or even nuclear warheads. Everyone knew the arms race between the two countries had to stop, but neither side wanted to make the first substantive move.
Both nations tried “baby steps” toward peace. The North agreed to dismantle its breeder nuclear reactors in favor of light-water reactors, less capable of producing weapons-grade nuclear material. The West promised huge grants of cooking and heating oil so the North would not be tempted to trade weapons for oil from unfriendly Middle East nations such as Iran. The South canceled joint U.S. and Japanese military maneuvers, removed Patriot and Rapier air defense systems from the DMZ, and reduced U.S. military presence to less than ten thousand troops. But the distrust continued.
The ROK pilot wanted nothing more than to see the entire Korean peninsula reunited once again — under a
