Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (66 page)

Operation Linebacker gave U.S. airpower a free hand to deal with virtually all targets in the North and they did so, using a new generation of precision guided munitions, Wild Weasels, and all-weather Navy attack aircraft. More than 265 tanks were destroyed and the enemy halted. Stunned by the reaction, with the ground offensive stalled and North Vietnam on fire, Hanoi sought to reopen peace talks. Under a decisive president, with clear military objectives and no operational interference, Linebacker achieved more in four months than Rolling Thunder managed in three years.

Hanoi claimed the rather ludicrous figure of 651 aircraft destroyed and 80 U.S. warships sunk; however, no ships sank, and of the 104 combat aircraft lost only 18 were from SAMs. The operation was paused in October, and peace talks began again in Paris. Intrigue, outright deception, and mistrust temporarily derailed the process, leading Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to conclude that Hanoi was stalling again. Unwilling to accept this, Nixon turned the military loose for Linebacker II, a final operation designed to end the war.

During what was also called the “11-Day War,” 15,237 tons of bombs were dropped on military and industrial targets, most near Hanoi. By the end of it, 80 percent of North Vietnam’s electrical grid was destroyed, as were over 3 million gallons of petroleum and some 300 pieces of rolling stock—not to mention roads, bridges, railroads, and SAM sites. Though the operation was condemned by some, it did what was intended, bringing Hanoi back to the table.
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Though with the benefit of hindsight, the North Vietnamese were well aware the Americans wanted to withdraw and decided to continue talking to preserve what was left of their infrastructure. Hanoi likely would’ve made any agreement to get the carriers, fighters, and bombers out, but they’d been fighting for twenty years and could continue if necessary. But it wasn’t. Presented with a way to pull back, both sides took a breath and signed a cease-fire on January 23, 1973.

The war in Vietnam—at least for the Americans—was over.

“
THREE’S UP!
”

Uri Bina’s voice was calm, and his wingmate Tulip Four, piloted by Lt. Col. Giora Rom, took a deep breath. Eyes fastened on his section leader, he watched the A-4N Skyhawk suddenly roll up on one wing and pull hard away from him, vapor streaming from the wingtips. Instantly the Israeli Air Force (IAF) pilot followed, grunting against the g’s and blinking rapidly to keep the other jet in sight. Bina popped upright, and Rom followed through the first pull, the unfamiliar jet wobbling slightly as the desert raced by.

He took a breath and counted.

Alef . . .

Rom glanced at the combining glass and saw the pipper for the continuously computed impact point jiggling slightly. It was on, set, and ready. His eyes darted around the cockpit. He was forgetting something . . . had to be forgetting something.

Bet . . .

His leader’s A-4 suddenly stopped moving forward and shot upward from the desert, dust clouds peeling away from the jet wash. It was Giora’s first flight in an Ayit—an “Eagle,” as the Israelis called the A-4—
and
it was a combat mission. But there’d been no choice. Ami Gadish, No. 115 Squadron’s commanding officer, had been killed accidentally three days earlier, and Rom had only made it to Tel Nof Air Base last night to take over. The IAF commander, Benny Peled, had told him point-blank: “The squadron is in a state of shock. Do whatever it takes tomorrow and on Friday—and next week you will take a A-4 conversion course.”

Gimel . . .

He tensed his stomach muscles. Second pull. Yanking the stick straight back to his lap, the fighter soared upward, the milky blue Mediterranean Sea filled his right eye and the vast, tan wasteland of Sinai was to the left. The Skyhawk was throbbing with power, and he held the stick lightly in his hand. Bunting forward to freeze a 60-degree climb angle, he watched the altimeter spin crazily.

Three thousand feet.

Straining forward against his shoulder straps to see over the canopy rail, he peered out at Port Said and the battle. As always, the contrast was striking; the perfect north-south cut of the Suez Canal separating dirty brown desert to the east from the startlingly green Nile Delta of Egypt to the west.

Four thousand feet.

Maybe only ninety minutes had passed since the Egyptian Second Army had attacked along the canal from Port Said south to the Great Bitter Lake. It was 3:30 p.m. on October 6, 1973. He could see dust everywhere, columns of black smoke and hundreds of vehicles darting about like angry beetles. Attacking the Bar Lev Line was considered suicidal—truly crazy. It was impregnable, but then again, the French had believed the same about the Maginot Line thirty-three years earlier.
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Five thousand feet.

There.
He could see the army outpost quite clearly right beside the north-south-running infantry road; Lexicon, the track was called. His eyes flickered back and forth between the altimeter and the terrain. Up from the outpost . . . white flashes of weapon fire . . . 5,500 feet . . . more smoke . . .
there!
A line of dark armored vehicles inching along the tan sand toward the road. If the Arabs could get around the northern edge of the line . . . It couldn’t happen.

Six thousand feet.

The third pull was a roll inverted, leaving him hanging in the straps. Giora stared down through the clear canopy at the appalling panorama below. Tens of thousands of Egyptian troops were massed as far south as he could see. Tracer fire arced over the turquoise-colored canal and white puffy explosions from anti-aircraft fire dotted the sky around him.

Snapping upright, he rolled out with the nose about 50 degrees low.
Too much . . .
he struggled to assess the unfamiliar bombing symbology, but it seemed straightforward enough unlike the French Mirage III he had flown. Bumping the stick up to hold 45 degrees nose low, Giora was trying to line up the pipper on the Egyptian vehicles when he caught a flash from the corner of his right eye.

SAM! From Port Said.

His breathing quickened but he ignored it. The missile was at least twenty seconds away, and he had to get his eight bombs off. Israelis were dying down there. Feeling the jet accelerate at such a steep angle, Giora pulled the power back. The ground fire worsened, and the fighter buffeted from something exploding nearby.

Almost there . . .

The SAM had curved up and over, leaving a thick white trail against the blue sky, but the pilot ignored it all. Nudging the trim button forward, Giora twitched the stick back and forth slightly to keep the pipper below the target. He held his thumb poised over the pickle button on the left side of the stick.

Almost . . .

Egyptian anti-aircraft fire was streaming up in all directions, and the SAM was gone. That meant the sustainer had burned out and it was only seconds away from impact. Mouth dry, chest heaving, he felt time slow as the pipper touched the lead armored vehicle in the Egyptian column.

Now!

Mashing down hard, he paused, then pulled straight up, g’s pressing him back into the seat and sweat pouring from under his helmet. As the Skyhawk’s nose came level with the horizon, he had a split second to decide which way to egress.

It didn’t matter—there were Arabs everywhere. Shoving the throttle forward, Giora rolled right toward the water, then flipped the jet over and dove for the beach. No Triple-A over the ocean, he thought. Turning back east, he remembered the SAM and whipped his head around, then chuckled. It was way too late; he would’ve been dead if the SAM had guided. A dark shape flashed by overhead, and his heart thudded against his chest. There could be MiGs anywhere . . . but then he saw the lizard-colored paint around the bright blue Star of David and smiled. It was one of his jets.
His jets
. . . that sounded good.

“Four . . . your bombs didn’t release.” Uri Bina’s voice broke in through the radio chatter.

What?

Giora’s eyes swiveled down to the weapons panel, then out to the wings. The eight big, green Mk-82 1,000-pounders were still hanging there. Then he saw it. The master arm switch was still in the centered safe position.

As the two fighters raced east, he took a deep breath and keyed the mike. “Four copies . . . I’ll go back to reattack.” Releasing the switch, Giora Rom pounded his knee. He shouldn’t be here; it was madness to fly a combat mission in an unknown aircraft. The pilot flipped the master arm toggle switch to arm. But he didn’t have a choice. Giora Rom was a professional, a fighter pilot. He’d do what he had to do. Pushing his visor up, he looked west toward the canal, then sliced back, picked up speed, and headed to the initial point for his attack.

He could do it . . . he
had
to do it.

And he did.

Giora Rom got his bombs off the second time and went on to command No. 115 Squadron for the duration of the short war. But the Bar-Lev Line did not hold. Constructed after the 1969–1970 War of Attrition, the fortification was essentially an Israeli version of the Hindenburg or Maginot Line. At a cost of $300 million in 1973, its first defense was a 60- to 80-foot wall of sand, inclined at least 45 degrees, sitting atop a massive concrete retaining wall. Interspersed down the line, twenty-two forts and thirty-five strong points dominated likely canal crossing areas. Protected by minefields and barbed wire, these were air-conditioned and reinforced to withstand a 1,000-pound bomb.

Lexicon Road was immediately behind the line and permitted rapid reinforcement of any position. Six miles past this, the Artillery road connected armor staging areas and various air defense positions. About 20 miles farther back the Lateral road allowed Israeli reserves to move and assemble without the threat of artillery attack. Other arteries ran east-west at various points to expedite movement and the concentration of forces. The Israelis also built a system of pipes that would pump crude oil into the canal and ignite if necessary. This entire system was predicated on holding the Egyptians at bay for forty-eight hours while the Israeli Air Force (IAF) gained air superiority, activated its reserves, and brought them forward where needed. In many ways, the plan made sense, but in other ways it was a copy of the French disaster of 1940.

Assuming that your enemy will do as you expect is always dangerous, and the Egyptians did not cooperate. They’d been conducting large-scale military exercises along the canal zone for months to desensitize Aman, Israeli military intelligence. Cairo had also ordered all officer cadets back to class by October 9 and made a very public point of releasing reservists prior to October 6. Late on the evening of October 5, Egyptian divers plugged up the crude oil vents along the canal. A bright young engineer named Baki Yousef also came up with the idea of using water cannons to breach the sand walls. After all, the canal was full of water and when the sand poured off under a high-pressure water deluge, then pontoon or Bailey bridges could be quickly erected.
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That was what happened. At 2 p.m. on October 6, 1973, several thousand guns opened up from the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal. During the first minute 10,500 shells fell on the startled Israeli Defense Force (IDF) positions. More than two hundred MiG-21s, MiG-19s, and MiG-17s then attacked key Israeli bases, followed by commando raids behind the lines. Behind this carefully planned wave the Egyptian Second and Third Armies charged the Bar-Lev Line. On Israel’s northern border, the Syrians also attacked, moving south to seize the Golan Heights. This two-pronged, coordinated assault wasn’t part of the Israeli defensive plan, but it should’ve been. Egypt, Jordan, and Syria had all attacked Israel in 1967 during the Six-Day War.
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Fortunately, in the early morning hours of October 6, the Israelis had finally chosen to believe that an assault was imminent. They began full mobilization, calling up reservists and moving men and equipment. Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, had begun. The Egyptians correctly reasoned that Israelis on active duty would be spread paper-thin and the rest of the military would be at home. This actually helped, to some degree, because the fighting men were easy to round up and the normally congested roads were empty.

Egypt and Syria could put up 750 combat aircraft against Israel’s 340 fighters. Additionally, and very nearly decisively, both Arab armies possessed new SAMs like the SA-3 and SA-6 systems (the latter called a “Kub” by the Soviets, “Gainful” by NATO). Fielded in 1966, it was smaller, lighter, and infinitely more lethal than anything that had come before. Three of the 20-foot-long, 1,300-pound missiles were carried on a transporter erector launcher (TEL). The basic SA-6 used a separate but also mobile Straight Flush radar system, and the whole battery could be on the road in fifteen minutes.

Like radar-guided air-to-air missiles, the SA-6 used semi-active homing. This permitted very fast reactions so the system was deadly against fighter aircraft. It could see out to 40 miles and began tracking at 20 miles, depending on the target’s parameters. Once locked by the Straight Flush, the TEL would fire a salvo, usually of three missiles, beginning at 10 miles. Radar tracking was possible down to 300 feet and under 200 feet using TV optics. The missile topped out at 2.8 Mach (nearly three times the speed of sound) with a 130-pound warhead that used contact or proximity fusing. During the nineteen-day Yom Kippur War, Egyptian and Syrian SA-6s would bring down sixty-four Israeli aircraft from ninety-five missiles fired. This is partly because it was a deadly system, but also because countertactics and equipment hadn’t evolved yet to fight it.

A key component of any defense of Israel was, and is, air force. From 1948 onward, realizing that they would be continually attacked by their Arab neighbors, Tel Aviv knew that control of the air meant survival for the nation. Flying P-51s and Spitfires immediately after independence in 1948, the IAF quickly upgraded to Gloster Meteors and F-86s during the 1950s. These gave way exclusively to French Mystères and Mirage IIIs in the next decade, but during this time the IAF switched back to American combat aircraft.