Tomcat would be returning any moment, the Indian pilot pulled the Sea Harrier into a harsh turn to the left and struggled for more altitude fast.
Seconds after launch, the Magic air-to-air missile hit Mach 3.
“Launch! Launch!” Dixie cried. “On our six, Army! Comin’ fast!”
“Flares!” He heard no tone from a radar lock-on and assumed the missile must be IR-guided. He rolled hard to port, hearing the thump-thump-thump from astern as Dixie deployed flares in an attempt to confuse the missile. Trading altitude for speed, he let the Tomcat plummet toward the sea from sixteen thousand feet.
The nitrogen-cooled PBS seeker head was not fooled. At Mach 3, the Magic AAM slid past the Tomcat’s tail pipes. With less than a meter’s separation, the twenty-seven-pound warhead was detonated by an IR proximity fuze.
There was a flash, and chunks of nut-and bolt-sized metal sprayed across the F14’s engine housings. One piece slashed through the starboard engine compressor assembly, smashing the fan mechanism and sending pieces of turbine blade whirling through the engine’s guts like shrapnel. A fuel line from the wing tank was severed. JP5 sprayed across hot engine surfaces.
The explosion was a searing flash that scattered chunks of burning debris across the sky. Trailing flame, what was left of Tomcat 201’s fuselage tumbled end for end in a long and spectacular funeral pyre toward the blue-gray sea.
“Missile incoming!” Barnes yelled, rising in his seat. “Goddamn it, where’s point defense …!”
The Sea Eagle launched minutes before had entered Jefferson’s innermost defensive zone. Computers, radars, and high-tech electronics were supposed to bring the carrier’s Phalanx guns to bear automatically … but they did not.
It took an agonizing twenty seconds for the Sea Eagle to cross that final two-mile stretch to the Jefferson.
Someone had switched Jefferson’s point defense system off so that the carrier could launch aircraft without shooting down its own planes as they cleared the flight deck. By mistake, both the Sea Sparrow and Phalanx systems had been shut down rather than being put into hold. It took long, wasted seconds to realize what the problem was and correct it.
By that time the Sea Eagle was half a mile from the carrier’s starboard bow, five seconds away.
Switches were thrown, the system brought back on line. On the starboard side of the island, the Phalanx gun dubbed Huey came to life, its J-band radar reaching out and acquiring a target within its range. Two seconds to acquire and track … The target was almost too close to reach by the time Huey’s silo slewed around and the Vulcan cannon fired its first short, sharp burst. The stream of ultra-dense slugs reached past the speeding missile, missing.
Huey’s computer, following radar returns from both missile and rounds, corrected, shifted aim … Too late! The Sea Eagle struck Jefferson in the hull on her starboard side forward, halfway between her waterline and the flight deck, well forward of her Number One elevator.
The five-hundred-pound warhead punched through the outer hull and several bulkheads before exploding.
The ship lurched hard, knocking men on the flight deck to their knees, sending several men on the catwalk just above where the missile struck hurtling out and down into the sea. The clanging of an alarm bell cut above the yells and confusion. “Now hear this, now hear this! Damage control parties lay forward to the chain locker.”
There was a gaping hole in the ship’s side, and smoke was beginning to boil from the carrier and across the surface of the sea.
on the 04 deck, Tombstone had felt the deck shudder through his feet, but the impact was no more than a gentle rumble, like a far-off boom of thunder more felt than heard.
But he knew at once that something was wrong. It takes a fairly powerful kick to make something the size of an aircraft carrier shudder.
The call over the 1-MC a moment later for damage control parties to lay forward confirmed it.
“We’ve lost one,” CAG said.
That brought his attention back to CATCC’s domain. He could hear a chief at a nearby console calling a rescue helo.
“Aircraft down, aircraft down,” the chief was saying, “Angel One, this is CATCC. We have an aircraft down at bearing one-zero-four, range three miles from the boat.”
“Angel One copies,” a voice responded over the speaker. The heavy thup-thup-thup of helicopter rotors could be heard in the background.
“On our way. Do you have reports of chutes?”
“Negative chutes, Angel One. No witnesses.”
“Roger, Jefferson. We’ll let you know.”
Tombstone looked at the PLAT camera. Several sailors were still lying on the forward deck where they’d been knocked down by the impact. Black smoke was wafting across the deck between the camera and Jefferson’s bows. A pair of VF97 Tomcats still sat on the catapult slots, steam boiling around them from the deck.
With a fascinated horror, Tombstone watched as the F14 on Cat Two began to move, to slide forward toward the bow.
He couldn’t tell if a cat shooter had accidentally pressed the button, or whether a malfunction had triggered the catapult without a signal from the deck. Whatever the cause, the F14 was moving forward, but slow … slow … far too slowly to get airborne.
“Negative launch! Negative launch!” the Air Boss’s voice sounded over the speaker. Another voice in the background was screaming, “Eject!
Eject! Eject!”
The Tomcat reached the forward edge of the deck like a canoe reaching the precipice of a waterfall. There was a flash and a swirl of smoke.
Two figures could be seen jetting into the sky on rocket trails as the Tomcat balanced precariously for a moment, then swung tail-high and vanished over the bow.
Two parachutes broke in the sky above the flight deck, drifting back toward the ship. One man dropped safely onto the deck a few feet from where he’d launched seconds before. The other drifted aft, landing among the A6 strike aircraft being readied for Operation Mongoose along the carrier’s port side. Deck crewmen rushed up to him as he struggled with his harness, collapsing his chute before it could drag him over the side.
Tombstone turned away from the PLAT monitor in time to see a sailor marking new information onto the transparent acrylic flight status board. He’d not caught the number of the F14 that had been shot down.
Tomcat 201, Army and Dixie. The sailor was writing “MIA: 0801” in bold letters across the row reserved for them. His Tomcat … and his place.
I should have been there … He dismissed the thought immediately. The fates that determined each twist of life and death in combat were too capricious to be analyzed in so simplistic a fashion.
But it would have been him in that aircraft, should have been … had Admiral Vaughn not pulled him off the flight line.
Suppressing a shudder, he walked toward CAG, who was leaning against a console, studying the radar returns of approaching aircraft.
“Tombstone!” Hitman said. “Where ya goin’?”
“To get me an airplane!”
“Well, hey! Wait for me!”
