He would need better data than this to plan a raid. He would need access to the charts and photos of Hanoi that Steiger had not brought forth last night. He had no doubt that Steiger had access to better stuff, and he would have to have the air intelligence officer’s cooperation, as well as Cole’s.
But would Cole agree to help? He gathered up the library materials and returned them.
The pilot met Cole in the ready room to brief a night tanker hop. There the duty officer told them that the only available A-6B-qualified crew had been scrubbed from the night schedule because they had not had a day trip.
Like most of the rules governing the aircrews’ lives, the requirement that a pilot make a day landing before landing on the carrier at night after each in-port period was written in the blood of experience. “So,” the duty officer said, “you two jaybirds get to fly the B.”
“Hey,” Jake protested, “I’m not B-qualified. I’ve never even sat in one of the damn things.”
“Well, Cole has, and you two are all we have, so you fly. Cowboy says.”
Cole reassured him with a slight movement at the corners of his mouth. “I used to be an instructor on the B. I’ll tell you what to do.”
The A-6B was an Intruder that had been converted to a launch platform for antiradiation missiles, or ARMS. In place of the navigation/attack computer, the A-6B had sensitive electronic equipment that identified an enemy radar so that the guidance system in the ARM could be slaved to the radar’s frequency before the missile was launched. The squadron had two of these specialized machines.
The A-6B was capable of carrying two kinds of missiles, the Shrike and the Standard ARM, or STARM. The Shrike horned in on the target radar an could be defeated by the radar operator simply turning off the target radar while the missile was in flight. The North VietNamese had quickly realized that. But the Shrike was useful anyway because it caused the Enemy to shut down its radars.
The STARM contained the computer and inertial navigation system that enable the missile to memorize the location of the target radar antennae and to fly to that place even if the radar stopped operating. The Standard ARM was deadly effective and very expensive.
While Jake and Cole were knocking around in the A-6B, Sammy Lundeen and Harvey Wilson would be roaming the Red River Delta on bombing missions. Virgil Cole drew Jake over to the corner of the room and briefed him on the specialized equipment in the missile-shooter. As for tactics, the bombardier advised “We’ll just cruise along at altitude where everyone can see us and let it happen. Might be interesting.”
Indeed it might, Jake thought. As he left the ready room, Sammy joined him for the short jaunt to the flight- gear lockers. “Notice ol’ Rabbit Wilson has a night trip scheduled?”
“Yep. Must be a scorcher of a moon out there.”
“Or a Silver Star.”
They crossed the North VietNamese coast at 18,000 feet with search radars beeping in their ears. The prevailing wind had pushed the low rain clouds of the afternoon westward against the mountains, and only the high cirrus layer was left to block off all starlight. The two bombers were not due to cross the coast for five more minutes. “Let’s mosey in and get the gomers’ attention before the other guys sneak in,” Cole said, and Jake acquiesced because he knew so little of A-6B tactics.
Both the bombers were targeted against suspected truck parks on the eastern edges of Hanoi. Cole suggested an orbit about twenty miles to the east of the North VietNamese capital so they could lob their missiles at the heavy concentration of enemy missile sites that guarded the approaches to the city.
They carried two Standard missiles on the inboard wing stations and two Shrikes on the outboard. On the flight deck Grafton had examined the white missiles carefully. The Standard missiles were huge, fourteen inches in diameter and about fifteen feet long, packed with solid propellant and carrying a warhead designed to destroy with shrapnel rather than by blast. The Shrikes were smaller, about eight inches in diameter and nine feet long, and were steered by canards-tiny wings-mounted in the middle of the tubular fuselage.
“You’ve fired rockets before?” Cole asked.
“Not at night.”
“When these missiles light off at night, they’ll blind you if you look outside. All the gomers will see the ignition, too, if the air is clear. Spectacular.”
They were now set up to launch the Shrike on station five, which was outboard on the right wing. The pilot glanced back at the left wing stations, but the missiles were invisible in the gloom. They were there, though and ready.
All the crew had to do was find a target. The final nibble came from a gun-control radar behind them, the type that NATO code-named “Firecan.” It acquire them and stayed locked up. Jake began weaving random to make it harder for the large-caliber artillery which the Firecan usually directed, to find the “Swing around and take a look,” said Cole. Jake held the left turn and searched the darkness where the enemy radar had to be. He picked up flashes from the muzzles of the big guns. He also saw small-caliber weapons immediately beneath the plane shooting tracers in streams.
“All the backyard stuff just shoots at noise,” said Cole. “Only the big stuff-the eighty-five and one hundred millimeter-is hooked into the radar net and can reach us up here.” Varying the altitude by up to 500 feet, Jake swung back toward the planned orbit. Off to his left he saw white flashes. Those would be shells from the big guns exploding at preset altitudes.
They heard the bombers give their coast-in calls, Jake checked the clock and saw that Sammy and Rabbit were running a few minutes late.
Ahead a glimmer caught his eye. “I think a SAM just lifted off,” he told Cole and turned on the master armament switch. He knew the Soviet-built surface-to-air missile that the North VietNamese usually used was a two-stage missile that had to be guided from the ground because it lacked an active seeker-head.
For its first seven seconds of flight, the missile was unguided as the first stage burned. When the second stage ignited, the first stage fell away and exposed a receiver on the rear of the second stage that could pick out the guidance commands embedded in the emissions from the Fansong missile-control radar. When the A-6’s E C 2S equipment heard the Fansong radar, as NATO called this type of missile-control radar, it presented a steady missile-warning light and a continuous tone in Jake’s ears. When the equipment detected guidance signals, the missile-warning light would flash and the tone in his ears would warble.
Jake turned right to increase the crossing angle as he watched the continuous light far below in the darkness, small but brilliant. The missile was flying but the Fansong was not yet guiding it. Then the missile light on his glare shield began to flash, and he heard the warble warning. The signal-detection indicator now told him there was a Fansong at eleven o’clock, which he already knew. He looked back at the SAM and saw a second missile ignite and lift off.
“Want to shoot?” he asked Cole.
“Naw, let them shoot up some of their expensive stuff before we show our cards.”
Jake popped some chaff to confuse the Fansong. He watched the telltale fire from the missile exhausts and knew the missile was traveling at about two thousand miles per hour. He would have to let the missiles get close, but not too close, then maneuver to avoid them.
The missiles were traveling too fast to turn with the Intruder. The wait was anything but easy.
When he could stand it no longer, he pumped the chaff button three times, then rolled the plane almost upside down.
“Not yet,” Cole told him.
Jake pushed the stick forward and held the nose up. The fireballs were bigger and obviously closing. “Now!” Cole told him.
The pilot pulled until four Gees registered on the G meter. The nose came down and they were turning into and under the oncoming missiles. The missiles were now turning down toward them, but the lead missile would overshoot and fail to intercept the plane. Jake watched the missiles, The first streaked overhead at least a half mile away and exploded, probably detonated by the ground crew when they realized it would miss. The second one was correcting to intercept, so the pilot changed direction and dropped the nose further to increase the change in course required of the missile The missile was just beginning to turn when it swept overhead. The missile light went out. Jake rolled the aircraft upright and used the excess airspeed to zoom back up to 18,000. The Firecan still had them.
“Hokey dokey,” Cole said.
