coastline near Tanafjorden, less than one hundred miles to the southeast.
'Echo-Tango, this is Gold Eagle One,' sounded in the air controller's headset… a woman's voice. Gold Eagle One must have a female RIO.
'Gold Eagle, Echo-Tango Seven-six-one. Copy.'
'Echo-Tango, we're picking up attack radar from the bogies. I've got steady J-band transmissions. Sounds like Shorthorn.'
Shorthorn was the NATO code for a particular type of Soviet weapons/navigation radar. It was carried by naval aircraft armed with AS-5 and -6 antiship missiles.
The Hawkeye's radar operator flicked a dial, narrowly watching several of his dials. 'That's confirmed, sir. J- band, weapon control radar. I think we're tracking Badger-Gs.'
'Send it,' the CIC officer said. Holding his headset mike to his lips, he said, 'Gold Eagle, Echo-Tango Seven- six-one, we confirm Shorthorn. BARCAP is clear to go to Tango-Whiskey-Sierra. Let 'em know you're there.'
TWS ? shorthand for track-while-search ? was the AWG-9 radar mode that allowed the F-14 to track enemy targets. When switched on, it would light up Russian threat warnings up to ninety nautical miles away.
On the radar display, meanwhile, the blips marking approaching Russian aircraft began to spread out, to resolve into clusters of three and four separate targets in tightly grouped formations. Suddenly, the radar operator leaned forward, eyes narrowing. 'Sir! I have a launch!'
The CICO had already seen the same thing, smaller blips detaching themselves from the larger ones.
If the firing aircraft were Badger-Gs, the missiles slung under their wings were AS-5 or AS-6 air-to-surface missiles, ship-killers with one-ton HE warheads.
'Hotspur! Hotspur! Echo-Tango!' he called. 'Launch, we have cruise-missile launch!'
'Ninety-nine aircraft' came the call back from the Aegis cruiser Shiloh, using a code phrase meaning all aircraft. 'Ninety-nine aircraft, Hotspur.
Weapons free. I say again, weapons are free!'
The message was instantly relayed via data link through the E-2C to every American plane already in the air. The Battle of North Cape had begun.
CHAPTER 10
'Let's go with a Phoenix launch first,' Coyote told Cat. 'We've for damned sure got targets enough to choose from.'
'Definitely what they call a 'target-rich environment,' Boss,' Cat replied. 'We're tracking on four.'
In all the arsenals of all the world's powers, even in the arsenals of other U.S. military services, there was nothing like the AIM-54C Phoenix. A 985-pound missile with a range of over 120 miles and a speed of better than Mach 5, the weapon could be fired only by the F-14 Tomcat with its advanced AWG-9 radar guidance system, and was therefore available only to the U.S.
Navy. The Tomcat's radar, set to track-while-scan, could lock onto six separate targets while simultaneously guiding six missiles at once.
Coyote was carrying only four AIM-54s, so Cat had selected four targets, tagging them on her radar screen in the back seat.
'Let 'er rip, Cat,' he told her.
'That's fox three,' she replied, using the aviator's code for a Phoenix launch.
Cat hit the launch button and the Tomcat lurched higher as it was freed of nearly a half-ton weight slung beneath its belly. Igniting beneath the F-14, the missile speared forward into a crystal-blue sky, a cotton-white contrail streaming astern.
'And firing two,' Cat said. 'Fox three!'
'Gold Eagle One, Eagle Two.' That was Mustang Davis, Coyote's wingman.
'We've got track-and-lock. Fox three!'
One of Mustang's white Phoenix darts dropped clear, ignited, and swooshed into the distance.
'Hey, Coyote!' Mustang called. 'What about those cruise missiles?'
'We'd have to backtrack to get a lock,' he told him. 'We'll leave them for the follow-up crew. Or Jeff's CIWS.'
'Okay, copy. Here's another fox three.'
The sky was rapidly becoming filled with the twisting white streamers of missile contrails arcing toward the southeast.
The basic tactics of modern aircraft carrier warfare had been laid down in World War II, when Admiral Chester Nimitz took on a far larger Japanese force with three aircraft carriers, their air groups providing both offensive strike capability and defensive CAP over the fleet, plus eight cruisers and seventeen destroyers dedicated to providing close-in antiaircraft defense for the carriers. His tactics ? and the luck that blesses or curses every plan of battle ? won the Battle of Midway, and the concept of hard-hitting, well-protected carrier groups quickly became the guiding combat doctrine for the U.S. Navy's Pacific War.
During the next fifty years, the aircraft became larger, faster, and farther-ranging; the weapons became smarter, more destructive, and capable of superb accuracy across ranges unthinkable in 1942. The Nimitz doctrine, however, remained essentially the same.
The modern aircraft carrier battle group, variously called CBG or CVBG, was built around the supercarrier. Some, like Jefferson or Eisenhower, were nuclear-powered. Others, like the Kennedy and the America, had originally been designed for nuclear power but, thanks to Congressional budget cuts, were driven instead by conventional, fuel-oil-fired boilers. Depending on their class, their flight decks stretched from 990 to 1,040 feet long, just six feet less than the height of New York City's Chrysler Building. Their full-load displacement ranged anywhere from 80,000 to 96,000 tons ? compared to the 19,900 tons of the U.S.S. Enterprise at Midway.
The rest of the battle group was devoted to protecting the carrier and consisted of one or two guided-missile cruisers, a mixed force of four to seven frigates and destroyers, and one or two Los Angeles-class attack submarines. As it approached its patrol area off North Cape, Jefferson's battle group included the Aegis cruiser Shiloh; three guided-missile destroyers, John A. Winslow, William B. Truesdale, and Alan Kirk; four Perry-class guided-missile frigates, Dickinson, Esek Hopkins, Stephen Decatur, and Leslie; and the attack subs Morgantown and Galveston.
It was a powerful force. CBG-14, already understrength by the time it reached Romsdalfjord nine months before, had been badly hurt during the Battles of the Fjords, and the decision had been made to reinforce it big- time. The Truesdale, Kirk, Dickinson, Leslie, and Morgantown all were new additions to the battle group.
In modern warfare, a carrier battle group is deployed across an incredibly vast stretch of open ocean. If CBG-14 could have been magically transported to the eastern seaboard of the United States, with the Jefferson herself planted on the Mall in downtown Washington, D.C., her escort ships would have been ranging as far afield as central Pennsylvania, southern Virginia, and West Virginia; her defensive air units would have been patrolling the skies over Maine and South Carolina, Kentucky and Michigan; and her attack subs and S-3 Vikings would have been searching out enemy submarines somewhere in Ohio. Her attack planes, meanwhile, could have struck targets as far off as Chicago.
As the first wave of Russian bombers entered Jefferson's outer defensive ring, Tomcat-launched Phoenix missiles drew the first blood. Russian longand medium-range bombers ? Bears, Badgers, and Backfires ? began exploding in flames as far off as the Russia-Norway border.
As Tomcat after Tomcat locked on and fired, the losses within the approaching Russian horde mounted. In the first five minutes of the battle, eighteen Tomcats launched ninety-six AIM-54Cs. The Phoenix had a reliability
