Stephen Coonts
Flight of the Intruder
To the memory of Eugene Ely, the first person
to land an airplane aboard a ship, and all the
men and women of U.S. Naval Aviation who
died in the service of their country.
All the wide sky
Was there to tempt him as he steered toward heaven,
Meanwhile the heat of sun struck at his back
And where his wings were joined, sweet-smelling, fluid
Ran hot that once was wax.
ONE
The starboard bow catapult fired, and the A-6A Intruder accelerated down the flight deck with a roar that engulfed the aircraft carrier and reverberated over the night sea. The plane’s wings bit into the air, and the machine began to climb into the blackness. Fifteen seconds later the bomber was swallowed by the low flying clouds.
In a few minutes the climbing Intruder broke free of the clouds.
The pilot, Lieutenant Jake Grafton abandoned the instrument panel and contemplated the vaulted stars. A pale slice of moon illuminated the cloud layer below. “Look at the stars tonight, Morg.
Lieutenant (junior grade) Morgan McPherson, the bombardier-navigator, sat on the pilot’s right, his face pressed against the black hood that shielded the radar screen from extraneous light. He straightened an glanced up at the sky.
“Yeah,” he said, then readjusted the scope hood and resumed the never-ending chore optimizing the radar presentation. He examined the North VietNamese coastline a hundred miles away. “I’ve got an update. I’m cycling to the coast-in point. He pushed a button on the computer, and the steering bug on the pilot’s visual display indicator (vdi) slipped a quarter-inch sideways, giving the pilot steering information to the point on the coast where the Intruder would cross into North Vietnam.
Grafton turned the aircraft a few degrees to follow the steering command.
“Did you ever stop to think maybe you’re getting too wrapped up in your work?” he said. “That you’re in a rut?”
Morgan McPherson pushed himself back from the radar hood and looked at the stars overhead. “They’re still there, and we’re down here. Let’s check the ecm again.”
“The problem is that you’re just too romantic,” Grafton told him and reached for the electronic counter- measures panel. Together they ran the equipment through the built-in tests that verified the ecm was working. Two pairs of eyes observed each indicator light, and two pairs of ears heard each beep.
The ecm gear detected enemy radar emissions and identified them for the crew. When the ecm picked up radar signals it had been programmed to recognize as threatening, it would broadcast false images to the enemy operator.
Satisfied all was working properly, the airmen adjusted the volume of the ecm audio so that it could be heard in their earphones yet would not drown out the intercom system (ICS), over which they talked to each other, or the radio.
The two men flew on without speaking, each listening to the periodic bass tones of the communist search radars sweeping the night.
Each type of radar had its own sound: a low beep was a search radar probing the sky; higher pitched tones were fire-control radars seeking to acquire a target; and a nightmare falsetto was a locked-on missile-control radar guiding its weapon.
Fifty miles from the North VietNamese coast, Jake Grafton lowered the nose of the Intruder four degrees, and the A-6 began its long descent. When he had the aircraft trimmed, Jake tugged all the slack from the harness straps securing him to his ejection seat, then exhaled and, like a cowboy tightening a saddle girth pulled the straps as snugly as he could. That done, he asked for the combat checklist.
Leaving nothing to chance or memory, McPherson read each item off his kneeboard card and both men checked the appropriate switch or knob.
When they reached the last detail on the checklist, Jake shut off the aircraft’s exterior lights and turned the IFF to standby The IFF, or “parrot,” radiated electronic energy that enabled an American radar operator to see the aircraft as a coded blip he could readily identify as friend or foe. Grafton had no desire to appear as a blip, coded or uncoded, on a North VietNamese radar screen. In fact he hoped to escape detection by flying so near the ground that the radar return reflected from his plane would merge with the radar energy reflecting off the earth-the “ground return.”
The pilot keyed his radio mike. The voice scrambler beeped, then Jake spoke: “Devil Five Oh Five strangling parrot. Coast-in in three minutes.”
Devil was the A-6 squadron’s radio call sign.
“Roger, Five Oh Five,” responded the airborne controller circling over the Gulf of Tonkin in an E HawkEye, a twin engine turboprop with a radar dish mounted on top of the fuselage. The HawkEye also had launched from the carrier.
The Intruder was going on the hunt. Camouflaged by darkness and hidden by the earth itself from the electronic eyes of the enemy, Jake Grafton would fly as low as his skill and nerves allowed, which was very low indeed.
The pilot cast a last quick look at the distant stars. Flying now at 450 knots, the bird plunged into the clouds. Jake felt the adrenaline begin to pump.
He watched the pressure altimeter unwind and shot curious glances at the radar altimeter, which derived its information from a small radar in the belly of the plane that looked straight down and measured the distance to the ground or sea. He briefly wished that he could turn it off because he knew its emissions could be detected, but he needed this device.
The pressure altimeter told him his height above sea level, but tonight he would have to know just how high he was above the earth. As he passed 5000 feet, the radar altimeter began to function and matched the readings of the pressure altimeter perfectly, just as it should over the sea. The pilot breathed deeply and forced himself to relax.
Dropping below 2000 feet, he eased the stick back and slowed the rate of descent. With his left hand he advanced the throttles to a high-cruise power setting. The airspeed stabilized at 420 knots, Grafton’s preferred speed for treetop flying. The A-6 handled very well at this speed, even with the drag and weight of a load of bombs. The machine would fly over enemy gunners too fast for them to track it even if they should be so lucky as to make out the dark spot fleeting across the night sky.
Jake Grafton’s pulse pounded as he brought the plane down to 400 feet above the water. They were below the clouds now, flying in absolute darkness, not a glimmer of light visible in the emptiness between sea and sky. Only the dimmed lights of the gauges, which were red so as not to impair the night vision of the crew, confirmed that there was a world beyond the cockpit. Jake peered into the blackness, trying to find the telltale ribbon of white sand that marked the VietNamese coast on even the darkest nights. Not yet, he told himself.
He could feel the rivulets of sweat trickle down his face and neck, some running into his eyes. He shook his head violently, not daring to take his stinging eyes from the red gauges on the black panel in front of him for more than a second. The sea was just below, invisible, waiting to swallow the pilot who fail for a few seconds to notice a
