“Shortly may be just a little too late,” was the acid reply.
The tanker broke out of the clouds at 280 feet. Instantly Jake made the transition from instrument flight to visual flight, scanning the angle-of-attack, the ball, and the lineup while Razor made the ball reports.
Razor had the breed air blasting the rain from the windscreen. As Jake approached the ship he began to see the light-the ball cycle up and down between the green reference lights. He went from high to low to high again without any movement of the stick or throttles. He tried to ensure the high cycles were not farther away from the correct, centered ball, than the low cycles. Each cycle took about eight seconds as the plane closed on the ship.
Then they were there. The drop lights swept under the nose and the ball began to rise, indicating the plan had flattened its approach angle or the deck was descending. Jake pulled off a handful of power, move the stick forward a smidgen, then pulled it aft as he shoved the power back on. This maneuver violate every rule in the book- it was called “diving for the deck” but it was a sure way to get aboard when you had to. The main wheels struck the deck with a tremendous thud and the nose wheel fell the three feet to the rigid steel as the main gear oleos compressed and the engines were winding toward full power when the deceleration threw both men forward against their unyielding shoulder harnesses.
“Shit hot,” Razor said. “God, I hate this fucking business.” The taxi director led the plane to the front of the island. When it was parked, one of the squadron maintenance chiefs lowered the pilot’s ladder, opened the canopy, and clambered up. Jake tilted the left side of his helmet away from his ear so he could hear the chief. “We’re going to fill your internal tanks and shoot you again,” the chief shouted over the whine of the idling engines. “The spare tanker went down. This is our last good machine.”
“Down” meant that the aircraft had mechanical problems that had to be corrected before it could fly again. Even as the chief spoke the purple-shirted men in the Fuels Division dragged a hose to the tanker and attached it. Jake depressurized the tanks and gave the men a thumbs up.
“We’re going again,” the pilot told Razor on the ICS “The spare crapped out.”
“Lucky us. How come we gotta go again? How come they don’t have another crew out here? Get the chief over here. Tell him to get the spare tanker crew to come hotseat this thing. Cowboy’s got it in for me because I gassed him in the locker room.”
“He just landed, Razor. Can it, willya?”
“When the weather gets cruddy I get stuck going up and down like a goddamn yo-yo. It happens every time. Doesn’t anyone else want a little of this fun?” Jake ignored the bombardier, who continued to fume on the ICS.
The refueling took five minutes. During that time the sour tanker trapped, but Stagecoach 203 boltered again in a shower of sparks as the hook point scraped the steel of the deck.
Perhaps the air boss would order the barricade rigged. That giant net of nylon webbing, raised on stanchions just forward of the last arresting gear wire could stop an aircraft on deck with only minor damage to the plane. But the pilot had to get his machine down on deck before he went into the barricade or there would be a catastrophe. Perhaps the air boss was weighing the pros and cons with the air operations officer. Jake glanced up at the air boss’s throne in the glassed-in compartment high on the island known as Pried-Fly. He was glad he didn’t have to make that decision.
“Too bad the barricade stanchions are out of whack,” Razor commented.
Jake felt embarrassed. That information must have been in the brief, and he had missed it. Damn! He wasn’t functioning as he should tonight. And he had given Sammy that gas without telling the ship. Razor had been right- he shouldn’t have flown tonight.
When the fueling was complete and the canopy once more closed, the tanker was directed forward to the foul line at the right edge of the landing area.
They would have to be launched from one of the waist catapults as both bow catapults were stacked with parked aircraft. Stagecoach 203 came out of the rain and mist one more time, but this time the fighter pilot knew his approach was hopeless and rotated to climb away before the wheels even touched the deck. The taxi directors motioned Grafton forward to the number-three catapult on the waist as the cat crew pile up from the catwalks, removed the protector plate from the shuttle, and retracted it for the shot. The pilot spread the plane’s wings, dropped the flaps, cycled the controls, and slipped into the shuttle.
Twenty seconds later the tanker was airborne and climbing.
Jake got on the radio. “Two Oh Three, what is your state?”
“Fifteen hundred pounds,” was the answer.
“Okay, listen up. You don’t have the gas to get on top, so I’ll rendezvous with you if you bolter on this next pass. Stay at about 250 feet, underneath the clouds, pull up your gear and flaps and I’ll join on you. Where are you now?”
The F-4 pilot gave him his position–downwind at 1200 feet seven miles out. Jake leveled the tanker at 1500 feet and turned to the downwind heading, which was the exact opposite of the ship’s course.
The air ops officer got on the air. “Two Oh Three, if you bolter this next pass and you can’t hook up with the tanker, I want you to climb to five thousand feet straight ahead and jettison the airplane. The Angel will pull you two guys out of the drink. Understand?”
“Two Oh Three, wilco.” As if they had a choice.
“And don’t either one of you fly into the water.”
Jake didn’t even bother clicking his mike. Neither man wanted to commit suicide. Of course, if they weren’t real goddamn careful, they’d be just as dead. More to the point, if the two men in the Phantom had to eject into this sea, they ran a good risk of getting tangled in their chutes and drowning before the helicopter moved in, Jake planned his approach. He had already screwed up twice tonight, not counting his dive for the deck, Please God, don’t let me get zapped passing sips! He concentrated on the problem before him.
The Phantom would slow when it dropped its gear and flaps, and the tanker would close the distance. They would have to be beneath the clouds then, about 250 feet over the water Jake would not have time to constantly check the altimeter. “When we get below three hundred feet I want you to call the altitude every five seconds,” he told Razor. The bombardier would have to watch the altimeter very carefully. Any unnoticed sink rate would lead to watery oblivion in a matter of seconds.
“If you kill me. Grafton,” Razor told him. “I’ll kick your ass in hell for the next ten thousand years.” When the pilot did not respond, Razor added, “Why in the fuck didn’t I have the good sense to join the goddam army?”
Jake Grafton extended his pattern downwind as the Phantom turned crosswind to intercept the final bearing inbound. When he was sure he had enough separation Jake also turned crosswind and let the plane begin a gentle descent toward the water. He was at 500 fee when he turned to the final bearing and began to close on the ship. Two Oh Three was at two miles on the glide path.
Come on, you son of a bitch, get aboard this time!
But Jake knew it was a forlorn hope. The fighter pilot had lost confidence, much like a football team that is twenty points behind. He needed something to restore his faith in himself. Maybe a full bag of gas would calm him down. Jake descended through 300 feet, still in the clouds. At 250 feet he was in and out of clouds but he leveled there, afraid to go lower.
The airspeed read 275 knots, the distance on the TACAN five miles.
The F-4 was at a mile now, calling the ball. This should work out.
He was listening to the LSO between Razor’s altitude calls when a cluster of lights loomed ahead in the darkness.
Holy-!
“Pull up!” Razor screamed.
Jake jerked the stick aft and slammed the throttle forward as confusion and adrenaline flooded him. His eyes darted to the distance indicator on the TACAN as the Gees slammed him down into the seat and the nose came up. It couldn’t be the carrier!
Oh, God! It was the plane guard destroyer.
He pulled the throttles back and shoved the stick forward. The two men floated in their seats as the plane nosed over. They were at 1000 feet and two miles from the ship. They had to get down under fast. Jake let the nose go to ten degrees down, then put two Gees on to pull out at 250 feet.
“Bolter, bolter, bolter!”
After a last check to ensure he was level, Jake looked ahead through the rain. The adrenaline kept pumping.
