'Thor Hammersmith. You remember him,' Lab Rat answered.
Indeed I did. Thor was a Marine's Marine, an infantryman on temporary assigned duty in the cockpit, as they called it. Every Marine underwent basic indoctrination in ground combat and infantry tactics, a fact that made Marine Close Air Support ? CAS ? a deadly potent capability. Marines wouldn't leave Marines, they were fond of reminding us.
The other two cameras were mounted on Tomcats configured for bombing runs ? bombcats, we called them. Once Thor got within killing range of the MiGs, however, I barely even glanced at the other two monitors.
I was raised on Tomcats, the biggest, meanest fighter in the fleet. Sure, I knew the Hornets were more maneuverable, had even seen them in action myself. But watching it from another aircraft or from the flight deck, or even on a radar scope, is nothing compared to the picture you get when you're slung onto the undercarriage of one.
The Hornet darted and whirled, playing an intricate game of cat and mouse with its MiG opponent. It was a different fight from the kind I was used to, given that they were both angles fighters. They were equally matched in thrust to wing area, giving them similar performance characteristics. The battle was not the harrowing series of power climbs and scrabbles for altitude that I was used to, but rather a close-in, parry-and-dart knife fight. Thor was closer to a MiG than I'd ever been in my life ? and closer than I ever want to be. But the movement of his aircraft was swift and sure. There was no hesitation or sudden changes of angle on the MiG that would lead me to believe he'd miscalculated or changed his mind. The Marine was a deadly fighter in his aircraft, a lethal capability that took on a whole new meaning as I watched the battle progress.
Thor's Hornet was loaded with Sidewinders and Sparrows, along with a full charge of rounds in his nose cannon. He used the Sparrow first against the incoming MiG, forcing it into a defensive position. The MiG pilot was good, but not that good. Thor had harried him into a mistake with the Sparrow, then slipped neatly into a perfect firing position behind him. Fox three, and then the MiG was a smoking fiery hole in the dark night.
Now what? Thor was down to one Sparrow and two Sidewinders.
Listening to the air battle over tactical as well as watching it through the three-camera displays was more comfortable now, the second time through. I heard the cry for help, saw Thor's Hornet bank hard to the right, the stars wheeling crazily across the camera screen through the broken cloud cover. The MiG appeared center-line, and I waited for Thor to launch one of his remaining missiles.
What the- Thor wasn't launching. I had a sinking, foreboding feeling that I knew just exactly what he was planning.
His Sparrow-Sidewinder tactic was clearly a favorite. He was planning on saving all the remaining missiles for a second shot of his own, but still needed to shake this MiG off his buddy's butt. I groaned out loud. 'No, Thor, don't do it ? don't do it.'
But he did. With the MiG preoccupied with jockeying into firing position on another Hornet, Thor swooped in from above like an avenging angel. There was no sound, but I saw the staccato stream of tracer fire arc out ahead of me and stitch a line across the MiG's fuselage. The Hornet it was following broke hard left, on Thor's command, and Thor pulled up and hard to the right. The J-TARPS camera caught the first microseconds of the fireball that had once been a MiG.
I slammed my hand down on the table. 'Damn it, that glory-hogging-' I stopped abruptly, and reconsidered my analysis.
Sure, I was an admiral and in command of this entire battle group. I'd even flown Hornets, had qualified on them, as it was necessary to do before assuming command of this battle group. It was part of the long, tortuous process of taking this job, one that included far too long at the nuclear-propulsion training command in Idaho, command of an aircraft carrier, then requalifying on every aircraft that landed on the deck of a carrier. Hell, I even had my time in helos.
But despite my experience and the genuine qualifications I had for wrestling a Hornet down onto the deck, I wasn't a Hornet pilot. Nor was I a Marine. Thor knew far better than I the capabilities and tactics that worked with his aircraft one-on-one against a MiG. If I wanted to go along for the ride, I damned well better shut up and just watch.
I wondered how many admirals after me would experience this same temptation that technology now provided us, this yearning to try to coach the pilots through each air-to-air engagement. I'd almost made a fatal mistake, giving orders to Thor while he was in the air. I hoped the guy ? or woman, eventually ? that followed me would do better than I had.
Thor broke off with a dizzying series of barrel rolls that swapped open sky every other second. Then the camera steadied down, surveying the clear sky dotted with aircraft. It swung back and forth slowly as Thor assessed the current state of the battle and selected his next target. Then it steadied down again, rock hard, on a single MiG diving into the engagement from on high.
The shape grew larger quickly now as Thor kicked in the afterburner. Soon the MiG filled the camera screen, the sleek, deadly aircraft jetting gouts of its own afterburner fire out the tailpipes. The camera bobbled unsteadily as Thor hit the jet wash. He was too far away for guns and too close for Sidewinders. I could tell what he was thinking now ? trying to decide whether he should pull back and let loose the Sparrow, or simply press on in with the guns. In the end, he made the same decision I would have, pitched up in a hard, gray-out-inducing climb, then pivoted back down into position.
Not that the MiG was waiting for him. He'd cut, rolled, and gone into a long climbing loop intended to place him in position on Thor. The two craft passed each other belly-to-belly on opposite ends of the altitude-airspeed curve. Thor rolled out of the turn, converting his downward movement into a sharp, breaking curve to the right. The MiG rolled out of his climb and dove to meet him.
I groaned out loud watching it, seeing the inevitable fighter geometry take shape. The MiG was behind Thor now, closing rapidly and maneuvering so that the bright heat of Thor's tailpipes would serve as a perfect missile synch.
Thor sensed the same thing, because he broke hard in a roll, cutting inside the MiG's arc of turn and jockeying back into position himself.
That was the essential difference between a Hornet-on-MiG engagement and a Tomcat-on-MiG engagement. In the first, the battle tended to take place in a vertical plane since the aircraft were evenly matching power and agility. With the Tomcat, you use your greater power to gain a height advantage, keeping the MiG from cutting inside your turns as Thor had just done.
The MiG pitched nose-down and headed for the deck. It was a last-ditch maneuver, one designed to shake the hard lock of a Sidewinder on its tailpipes.
Thor was too quick for it. I saw first one Sidewinder, then the other leap off his wings and streak unerringly for the MiG.
The camera caught just the upper edge of the explosion, black and oily as it billowed burning fuel, shards of metal, and a few traces of the pilot into the serene sky.
So Thor was Winchestered now ? no, wait. He still had one Sparrow left. Would he go for it, without the potent Sidewinders as a close-in backup? He probably had some rounds left in his cannon too. I recalled the delicate way the rounds had traced their path across the hull of the MiG, and knew he hadn't shot his load on that.
Of course he'd find another one. No pilot comes back with weapons ? that's an unspoken rule.
The camera was back in that general to-and-fro hunting motion, a good retriever sniffing the air looking for prey. It took a little longer this time, but Thor picked out another one, one widely separated from the rest of the gaggle. A nasty, black cloud and the frantic cries over tactical told me why. The MiG had just nailed a Hornet and was rejoining the fray itself.
They were nose-to-nose now, each accelerating to well over Mach one. The closure rate was well over twelve hundred nautical miles per minute, increasing every second as the two aircraft accelerated. A game of chicken, one fought at seventeen thousand feet instead of on some dusty country road, but no less deadly.
Thor had the Sparrow selected, and I imagined he was hearing the high, wavering growl of the missile as it tried to obtain a lock. He was just inside the weapon's envelope, it appeared, judging from the appearance of the MiG. My mind automatically convened what I was seeing on the camera into distance.
A bright flash of light, then another missile off the wing, Thor's last.
'Break off,' I said out loud. 'C'mon, Thor ? you shot your load, get your ass back to the ship.'
Lab Rat looked at me curiously, but said nothing. We both knew what the score was. A Hornet without
