Morgan would have agreed readily to go after party headquarters, Jake decided, but would Cole? If Cole were a competent bombardier and a fighter, as Jake suspected, perhaps he could be approached. The next few days would tell the tale.
Jake stubbed out the butt and undressed in the dark.
It would be so great to smash them!
FOURTEEN
Their torsos glistened with sweat in the early afternoon sun.
Stripped to the waist, wearing bell-bottom navy issue jeans, the ordnancemen worked in teams hoisting the bombs from dollies to the aircraft’s bomb rack almost six feet in the air. Every time they lifted, the muscles stood out. Two different crews worked on the Intruders today. On the “up” shout of the crewleader eight sailors grunted together and the thousand-pound bomb went up to the rack. They held it there with muscle power alone while the crewleader closed the mechanical latches that mated the weapon to the aircraft, then inserted red-flagged safety pins. Where three of the big green sausages hung from each rack one man went from bomb to bomb screwing in the mechanical nose fuses and installing arming wires. The ordnancemen reminded Jake Grafton of a high school football team, all youth and muscle, all wide shoulder and corrugated stomachs, all cheerful camaraderie.
Several of the men always seemed to find time to chalk a personal message to the North VietNamese on a bomb or two. Everyone had done that the first month of the cruise, but now the novelty had worn off for most. Their fathers had loaded bombs this way and had then written similar messages to the Japanese. One scrawl caught the pilot’s eye: “If you can read this you are one lucky gomer.”
Jake checked each weapon to see that it was properly installed, then examined the settings on the nose fuses. Each bomb was set to arm after 6.5 seconds of freefall. Today Jake’s Intruder carried a dozen 1000-pounders and a 2000-pound belly tank, over twice the payload of a B-17 on its way to Berlin.
“Go get ‘em, Mister Grafton,” the crewleader told him as he led his gang off to the next plane. Jake went on with his preflight inspection. The sun felt pleasantly warm on his shoulders, and perspiration moistened his T-shirt as he checked tires, brakes, and door latches. Pausing, he closed his eyes and faced the sun, which he could see through his eyelids. The breeze ruffled his hair. He opened his eyes and looked at the towering cumulus in the bright blue sky. Soon….
By the time Jake swung into the cockpit, Virgil Cole was already strapped in and checking his charts and information cards. Maggot, the plane captain, followed Jake up the ladder and leaned in to help him with the harness buckles. “How’s your Dad, Maggot?” Jake asked.
“Doing okay now, Mister Grafton. I called back to Texas like you said. I think he’s going to be all right. Hey, where’re you guys flying to today?”
The pilot reached into the ankle pocket of his G-suit and pulled out his map. Spreading it out, he stabbed with his finger. “Right there.”
The plane captain saw green and brown relief for delta and mountains, blue lines for rivers, and dots and circles for cities and hamlets with strange exotic names. “What’s there?”
“A power plant.” One that Jake knew had been bombed at least three times in the last six months.
The plane captain asked, “Where’s Hanoi?”
Jake opened the chart another fold. “Right here. And we’re down here on Yankee Station.” He moved his finger to the Gulf of Tonkin.
The enlisted man grinned. “Glad I ain’t going with you,” he said and disappeared down the ladder.
As usual, the pilot went through the prestart check list from memory, visually and physically checking the position of every switch and knob Within his reach. Jake wiggled into his seat. Aah! he thought. My favorite chair. He closed his eyes and checked the switches again, his fingers closing confidently on each one.
He compared his watch with the five-day clock on the panel. He had three minutes before the air boss would order the engines started. Down on the deck the plane captain and ordnancemen, Jake noticed, now all wore shirts and helmets and, in case the exhaust of a jet engine blew them into the sea below, inflatable life vests. The pilot leaned back and watched the sunlight and shadows weave through the puffs of clouds. “Sure is a great day to be going flying,” he told Virgil Cole who looked up from his computer.
“Yep.” The pilot put on his helmet and waited for the plane captain’s start signal. In less than ten minutes they were taxiing toward the number-three cat on the waist, middle, of the flight deck. Planes launched here went off the angled deck instead of the bow.
As they waited for their turn to launch, Jake watched Warrant Officer Muldowski, who was launching on the waist cats today. The bosun swaggered about the deck like a pirate captain, his belly out and his shoulders back, keeping one eye on Pried-Fly and the light sign mounted there. Once the launch began he was a very busy man, checking the wind speed and setting the steam pressure for each aircraft while monitoring the hook-up of the plane on the other waist cat.
He launched each plane individually, first signaling the pilot to wind the aircraft up to full power while he inspected it, then taking the salute and giving the launch signal, a fencer’s lunge into the face of the thirty-knot wind. He held the pose, arm outstretched, as the wing of the accelerating machine swept over his head. The wind and hot exhaust blast swirled around him like a gale against a great rock.
The warplanes queued up behind each cat with their wings still folded. A large hinged flap known as the jet blast deflector, or JBD, located behind each cat directed the exhaust gases of the launching bird up and away from the flight deck. These deflectors were lowered after each launch to allow the next bird in line to taxi onto the cat.
A group of maintenancemen swarmed over the plane waiting behind the JBD, performing the final safety inspections. A team of ordnancemen removed the safety pins from the weapons racks. Each man was intent on his job, yet vigilant to avoid being run over by a wheel, sucked up an intake, or rolled down the deck like a bowling ball by the blast furnace exhausts. The deck was so crowded that men transiting the taxiway crawled under a moving machine behind the main mounts and in front of the exhaust pipes.
Jake felt the engines spooling up and saw the catapult officer twirling his fingers in the ‘full power’ signal, the crewmen scurrying from under his machine, and the bow of the ship slowly rising and falling to the rhythm of the sea. He anticipated the tremendous thrill when the cat would accelerate his plane to flying speed in two and a half seconds.
Jake howled in exultation as the Intruder swept down the catapult into the clean salt air, a banshee wail on the ICS that caused Virgil Cole to examine him with a critical eye when they were airborne. Jake made a slight turn to the left to clear the bow, then nursed the laden bomber up to 500 feet where it wallowed slightly as the flaps and slats retracted.
He kept the Intruder at 500 feet-as specified by the visual flight rules (VFR) departure procedure-until the TACAN indicated seven miles from the ship; he soared left and threaded his way upward.
When they topped the clouds at 10,000 feet, Jake saw two K A-6D tankers and their retinue of Phantoms about five miles away to his rear.
The tankers were in constant angle-of-bank turn with the fighters lined alongside as they waited their turn at the refueling hoses.
Leveling off at 13,000 feet, Jake searched the horizon for A-6s. His eye caught two of them, at least twelve miles away. The pilot steepened his turn and, holding the plane level, crossed above the ship toward the others. After he had rendezvoused on the skipper’s right wing Jake glanced back across the holding circle. The last plane of the Intruder foursome was only a mile away and closing.
That was New Guy, who would be his wingman on this mission.
Jake settled into the mechanics of formation flying. From now until they pushed over for the dive at the power plant, he would stay glued to the skipper’s wing and New Guy would stay glued to him. If the formation broke apart, Little Augie, now on Camparelli’s left wing, would stay with the leader while Grafton and his wingman would form a pair. That way, if someone bagged it there would at least be witnesses. The skipper led his A-6 division up a thousand feet and slid beside the division, consisting of five A-7s, that would lead the strike. As briefed, the Intruders took a position about two hundred feet aft and two hundred feet to the right of the lead division. Another
