The Fly Boys (41 page)

“Hard to remember where home is,” DeAngelo remarked as he took up his position a little above and behind Steve.

“I know what you mean.”

The 19th Squadron had been one traveling medicine show these past few months. The Air Force had only been able to keep its
F-80 groups at Taegu Airfield for a short while before the pierced steel strip that had been laid over the rice paddies broke
down under constant use. When Eight Fighter-Bomber Wing went looking for a new home, it found the no-vacancy signs up everywhere.
With Seoul’s Kimpo field cratered by enemy bombs, and Suwon and Kawon fields both bogs due to a combination of poor drainage
and the summer rains, there was no room, so back the Eighth had to go to the Japanese mainland. That sucked eggs, because
nobody liked flying over water, and the great distance from Japan to North Korea meant that the F-80s could spend no more
than five minutes over a target.

Meanwhile, Air Force and Army engineer units were working overtime to get Kimpo’s strip patched up. In June, the Eighth moved
there. It didn’t take more than a couple of months to realize that Kimpo’s roughly paved, short runways just weren’t suitable
for use by F-80s carrying heavy bomb loads. Tire failures became commonplace, and the F-80s’ engines were suffering wear and
tear due to the water and alcohol injection procedures being used to give the heavily loaded jets the extra boost they needed
to get airborne so rapidly.

In August, when construction of the long concrete runways at Kawon had been completed, somebody had the bright idea that the
BroadSwords based there could make do with shorter runways because the F-90s were lighter and carried no external ordnance.
By summer’s end, the F-80 Shooting Star and F-90 BroadSword groups had exchanged places, and Steve and the rest of the 19th
Squadron was settled in at Kawon, twenty-five miles south of Seoul.

“I didn’t notice any defensive fire back there at all, did you?” DeAngelo asked.

“Nope, that was nice and easy,” Steve replied. “Just the way you like it, huh, Mikey?”

“Affirmative,” DeAngelo replied. “A good ending to a mission that started out like shit.”

“I’ll say,” Steve chuckled.

Four Shooting Stars had started out from Kawon, but malfunctions had forced one airplane to return immediately to base and
another to make an emergency landing at nearby Suwon. Steve had been upset, but he hadn’t been surprised. These days a fifty
percent down rate wasn’t unusual within the Shooting Star squadrons. With all the moving around, Maintenance and Supply never
had the chance to set up decent workshop facilities. Meanwhile, dust, rust, and just plain old age were catching up with the
hardworking F-80s. What compounded the problem was that no more Shooting Stars were being built. The Air Force was switching
over to Broad-Swords for fighter duty, and to the F-84 Thunderjets built by Republic Aircraft for the fighter-bomber work
which was currently being handled by the Shooting Stars.

With half of his flight down, Steve had briefly considered scrubbing the mission, but he’d radioed DeAngelo to talk it over
and Mike had been game to push on. Like Steve, Mike had realized that it was important to deliver today’s second punch in
the one-two combination FEAF had initiated against Kumch’ong and the other enemy airfields. Stomping the enemy had become
a matter of psychological, as well as strategic importance.

The peace talks that had been halfheartedly stuttering along might just as well have been about some other war for all the
good they were doing the armies slugging it out in Korea. The newspaper editorials had begun calling it “The Seasaw War” because
the commies and the UN-American forces seemed doomed to keep trading the same stretches of ground back and forth.

New Year’s Eve, 1950, had seen the commies launch a successful push toward Seoul that was barely stopped at Wonju. A counteroffensive
against the Reds had been launched in February, and by April Seoul had been retaken, and the UN was once again north of the
38th parallel. April also saw a new Supreme Commander of UN Forces as Truman sacked MacArthur for publicly suggesting that
Asia had replaced Europe as the likely arena where all future contests between the East and West would be fought. The new
commander, General Ridgeway, had barely eased into his post when the communists launched another ferocious offensive, taking
back the 38th parallel in an onward-rolling series of “banzai” attacks. It didn’t seem to matter how many commies were killed;
more just kept on coming. Finally, the enemy’s human wave began to falter and the UN forces managed to once again cross the
38th.

Meanwhile, back home the editorial writers who had grown sick of writing about seasaws, began lamenting Korea as the “Battle
of the Hills.”

Throughout the months of fighting American air power had continued to fly ground support and strategic bombing missions, but
things had changed. FEAF no longer owned the skies, now that the commies were pouring in MiGs. Latest intelligence counts
had it that over five hundred MiGs had been thrown into the battle. The brass felt that there was only one fighter that had
any hope of wresting away the sky from all of those MiGs, but there were less than one hundred BroadSwords in all of Korea.

Outnumbered so badly, there was no way the Broad-Sword patrols could be everywhere at once, so the MiGs found it easy to evade
the BroadSwords in order to attack the B-29 formations and Shooting Star fighter-bombers. By late summer the MiG situation
had gotten so bad that the area along the Chinese–North Korean border—dubbed “MiG Alley”—had been put off limits to all airplanes
lacking BroadSword escort.

A lot of the F-80 jockeys had grumbled about the restriction. For Steve, the turn of events was doubly humiliating. Not only
had he been proven wrong about his father’s BroadSwords, but now he had no chance at all of becoming an ace in this war, since
Shooting Stars had been relegated to flying strategically important, but nevertheless pussy missions like today’s wienie roast
at Kumch’ong.

It boggled Steve’s mind that he’d been warned off engaging the enemy. He was a fighter pilot, dammit. A jet jockey in the
cockpit of an F-80, not a little boy in a soapbox racer who needed to be told by his mama that he couldn’t cross the big,
bad, busy street unless he had his older brother, Mr. BroadSword, looking out for him.

Sure he’d heard all the stories about what a super airplane the MiG was, but what those stories left out was that, the few
times when an F-80 was being piloted by somebody who knew what he was doing, the Shooting Star had managed to draw blood against
its adversary.

It was the first lesson of fighter piloting, and Steve had learned it when he’d been a Flying Tiger, up against the Japs over
Rangoon:
It’s not the machine, but the man who makes the difference in a dogfight
.

So what if the MiG was a state-of-the-art machine? Everyone knew that the commies were putting poorly trained Koreans into
the cockpits. Through the grapevine he’d heard all about the pussy NKAF pilots. When they bounced from behind, they would
huddle in their MiGs’ armored cockpits, unwilling to break either way because that would expose their canopies to gunfire.
He’d heard about the North Koreans who’d bailed out of their airplanes at the first hint of trouble, who’d demonstrated inept
gunnery, inability to manuever their airplanes, and a total lack of cooperation between the pilots in a flight.

Steve was ready to turn in his wings if he couldn’t knock such pilots out of the sky, no matter what the capabilities of their
respective machines.

If only he got the chance. He’d been brooding about it since November, when the first MiGs had appeared. For ten months he’d
been listening enviously to the stories of F-80 pilots who’d happened to run into stray MiGs.

If only it could happen to him….

They were at twenty thousand feet, flying over the Ye-song River and approaching the 39th Parallel, when Steve spotted the
twin contrails high above, like thin white scars against the blue hide of the sky. “Mike!” he called excitedly. “We’ve got
company!”

“I see them,” DeAngelo said as the sun glinted off the two silver specks drawing the parallel contrails. “What do you think?
We’re awful far south,” he added nervously. “They must be BroadSwords, right?”

“Dunno. Could be MiGs,” Steve said slowly. “We’re not too far from Sariwon or Simak.”

“Come on,” DeAngelo laughed derisively. “We pulverized them a long time ago.”

“Maybe the Reds got one or both back into operation.”

“Bullshit!”

“They might have,” Steve protested.

“Christ, you sound positively wistful,” DeAngelo said.

Steve just laughed. “They can’t have seen us yet. We’re in their blind spot.” He paused. “Let’s
take
them!”

“No way! They might be MiGs.”

“You just said they couldn’t be,” Steve pointed out.

“I’ve been wrong before.”

“Mikey, listen to me. If they are MiGs—and I hope like hell they are—there’s a pair of them. One each. We could each nab a
kill.”

“If they’re drawing contrails, they must be at 45,000 or better,” DeAngelo said. “We don’t belong up there, Steve.”

“That’s bullshit, Mikey. I say we
can
take them.”

“It’s against current Far East Command regs to engage them.”

“We can say that
they
bounced
us
,” Steve replied. “There’s no reg against defending yourself. And who knows, maybe after we get these two FEC will rescind
that bullshit rule about how us Shooting Star squadrons are supposed to run away and leave all the fun to the BroadSword jockeys.”

“I just don’t like the idea of going looking for trouble,” DeAngelo muttered.

“Come
on
, Mike! We’ve got all the advantages in this setup. We’ve got the drop on them, and we’re experienced pilots while they’re
probably just a couple of NKAF trainees.”

“I’d like to get home to my wife and kids in one piece.”

Steve paused. “You’ve been laying eggs too long. You’ve forgotten that you’re a fighter ace!”

“I haven’t forgotten, Steve. It’s just not that important to me anymore. I’ve got my family to think about.”

“Look,” Steve began crisply, “I’m going after them. If they’re BroadSwords, no harm done. I’ll just wax their tails to show
them who’s boss, but if they’re MiGs…”

“Fuck you, Major!” DeAngelo exploded savagely. “I’m your wingman, and that means I go where you go.”

“Well, okay!” Steve said, gratified. “Friends stick together.”

“Right, friend. And when we get home, I’m going to punch your fucking face in for making me do this!”

“That’s a deal,” Steve laughed. “But for now, you’d better punch tanks.”

“Tanks jettisoned,” DeAngelo announced.

Steve watched his own wing tanks fall away, and increased his throttle. As he pulled up, heading for those two silvery specks
in the bright blue sky, he felt an anticipatory tingling in his groin.

He had to laugh.
This is better than sex
.

His prey—either MiGs or BroadSwords; the two swept-wing jets looked so much alike that Steve wouldn’t know until the last
moment—were traveling above and directly ahead of him. That set them up perfectly for a yo-yo attack. Steve would climb as
rapidly as he could and then go into a shallow dive to gain extra speed. When the distance between himself and his target
had closed, he would pull up into his attack, and if everything went smoothly, the enemy’s belly would be in his gun sights.

As Steve leveled off and then began to angle down into his dive, he noticed that DeAngelo had come right along with him. The
consummate wingman, DeAngelo hadn’t needed to be told what tactic Steve was using. Mikey had merely watched and then played
follow the leader.

As Steve came out of his dive and began to pull up toward his adversary, he saw on its wings the red five-pointed star outlined
in white that told him that this fight was for real. He armed his guns as he stared up at the MiG, his gloved fingers itching
in anticipation of firing that first burst. The Soviet-built fighter was a burnished gray aluminum color, except for its nose
and tail, which were painted blue.

He was two thousand feet below the MiG; still too far away. On his port side, DeAngelo had moved off a bit in order to execute
his own attack. Steve noticed that DeAngelo’s MiG had the same blue nose and tail, but in addition, had a jagged blue lightning
bolt stretching the length of its fuselage.

Steve had closed to one thousand feet.
The NKAF pilots are afraid to break
, he thought, grinning wolfishly.
They’re just crouching and taking it
. This was going to be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Pop
, he thought,
get ready to eat your words about F-80s versus MiGs
—

Six hundred feet. His sights were planted on the MiG’s gut.

Now
. The F-80 shuddered as he loosed a burst of armor-piercing incendiary from his six nose-mounted .50s.

Above him his MiG abruptly raised its nose and rolled to starboard down Steve’s vector fighter in a steep descending turn
that put the MiG below and behind Steve.

Out of sight—

Cursing, Steve broke to port as DeAngelo’s panicked voice filled his helmet:

“Steve, I lost mine! Do you see him?”

Before Steve could reply he felt his F-80 taking a jarring hit from his MiG’s cannons. The fucking commie had used his superior
speed and climbing ability to come around and lock on to
his
tail.

“Steve. He’s on my six!” DeAngelo cried out. “Get him off me!”

“I’ve got my own troubles, Mikey,” Steve muttered as he abruptly attempted a high-speed variation on the yo-yo, pulling up
sharply to reduce his speed. The sickeningly abrupt move pushed his stomach up into his rib cage, but the maneuver worked.
The streaking MiG overshot beneath him. Steve immediately mashed down the F-80s nose and cobbed his throttle, centering his
guns on the MiG’s tailpipe and holding down the firing button. His guns raised sparks off the MiG’s tail and wings.