The Warbirds (33 page)
Authors: Richard Herman
“Goddamn, it’s happening.” Cunningham sighed. Bill Carroll’s scenario was starting to unfold. “Shit’s going to hit the fan in the Persian Gulf, no question. The Iranians have over a hundred fighters now, mostly MiG-23s, and are moving a quarter-million men into position to attack
Basra.” His electronic pointer flashed on the map around the head of the Persian Gulf, outlining the Iraqi city on the border between Iran and Iraq. His mind was racing now…“The Russians have given them enough supplies to crack Basra wide open. If that happens the Iranians will have a clear path into the oil fields of Iraq, Kuwait and the Arabian Peninsula. We damn well can’t let Basra fall.
“Also, the Soviets are stockpiling supplies in Turkmen just north of the Iranian border. If those supplies reach the Iranians it’ll double or triple their capability and give them the strength they need to exploit a breakthrough at Basra.
Gentlemen, we cannot let those supplies reach them
.”
The general’s pointer moved down the map to the Strait of Hormuz at the southern end of the Persian Gulf. “At least there’s no buildup at the Strait opposite Muscat and Oman. But we can’t let the Iranians position troops and amphibious forces that can cross the Strait and attack Saudi Arabia through Muscat and Oman. We’ve
got
to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. Okay, here are our four major objectives if we’re to win this thing. First, we provide the Arab military alliance, the—”
For a moment Cunningham drew a blank, could not remember the name of the United Arab Command; he closed his eyes, forced himself to relax, and the name flashed out of his memory banks…You’re getting old, you old fart, forgetting stuff simple as that…“The UAC, the United Arab Command, we give them the supplies they need to hold the line at Basra. Second, we get the Rapid Deployment Force or the 45th into the Gulf to hit at the troop and supply buildup in front of Basra to take the pressure off the UAC, and they’ve got to keep at it until they get the job done. If any of those supplies in Turkmen move south into Iran, we hit them. Third, we strike at any military buildup at the Strait of Hormuz, prevent a flanking attack across the Strait into the Arabian Peninsula. Fourth, the Navy keeps the Strait of Hormuz open.”
Cunningham was rolling now…“We haven’t got a bunch of time. Get all this into an intelligence summary, send it to Navy, Army, and the 45th. Activate the War
Room, Nesbit. Joint Chiefs of Staff only. Order the 45th at Stonewood to go standby for deployment.”
As Cunningham stomped down the stairs, the watch commander turned to Williamson. “How did he see all that before we did?”
The analyst shrugged. “I would say it’s because he’s a general and we’re not. Truth to tell, the old son of a bitch has always acted sort of nuts to cover his smarts. I’m glad he’s on our side.”
26 June: 1408 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 1508 hours, Stonewood, England
The guards at Stonewood’s gate were carefully checking each car onto the base. Jack noticed the gate guards were doubled and armed with revolvers and M-16s. When he saw them turn two dependents away he knew that the recall was not a practice. One guard stopped him and methodically checked his ID. “The base is sealed, Lieutenant. You won’t be allowed off until everyone has reported for duty and the recall is terminated.”
The squadron was in a turmoil of organized activity. The big portable mobility bins were being packed and Bull Morgan was strangely subdued. He pulled Jack aside. “This looks like for real. The boss has been at the command post for over an hour and the base is sealed up tighter than an old maid’s snatch. Minimum communications went into effect an hour ago, no outside phone calls except through the command post. Be back here packed and ready to move at six tomorrow morning.”
Chief Pullman did not have to raise his voice as he called the auditorium to attention when Waters walked in. “Seats, please,” Waters said as he took the stage. He looked at the packed theater. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, wondering if this was the last time he’d address the 45th Tactical Fighter Wing before Cunningham relieved him, “we’re on hold, waiting for a launch order to deploy to the Middle East. We’re not the only unit on alert, and the President hasn’t yet decided who will be sent into the Persian Gulf…From here on, everything I say is classified
secret. If we launch, our destination will be Ras Assanya, an air base located on the Gulf. The transports will launch two hours before the fighters and one-hop it to our destination. Their job is to get the ground crews in place to receive the fighters. We will launch the fighters in flights of twelve, twenty-minute intervals between flights. Each flight will rendezvous with two tankers and go chicks-in-trail. I will lead the first flight from the 377th.
“When we recover at Ras Assanya, expect confusion, because we’re going in there fast. But I want the birds immediately turned for combat sorties. Load out the first four birds for air-to-air and place them on air-defense alert, even if that means the crews have to sit under the wings. Load the rest out for air-to-ground. Get your squadrons organized and be ready for whatever. I’m told there are quarters and messing facilities available but have no idea as to their quality or condition. Be flexible, stay loose.”
RAF Stonewood was normally an immoderately noisy place, resounding with activity. Now an unusual calm and quiet descended on the base as the last of the transports were loaded and the last F-4 towed into the launch lineup on the ramp, a freshly painted star still moist from its latest coat of paint. Muddy Waters stood with Jack in front of the squadron after the pilot returned from pre-flighting his aircraft, tail number 512, and like the rest of the wing, he waited…
THE WAR
28 June: 1340 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 1640 hours. Ras Assanya, Saudi Arabia
The last of Waters’ flight came off the tankers while they were still over the Gulf of Suez in route to their base at Ras Assanya. Tanker lead had wished them luck, checked out and turned his flight of two KC-135s toward their recovery base in Italy, leaving them on their own. After calling for a fuel check, Waters broke his flight of twelve Phantoms into three flights of four, ordering them to take four-minute spacing between each flight. “Make it an overhead recovery, circling to land,” he radioed to his flight leads.
He anticipated a message to be waiting when he landed, relieving him of his command. I probably just made my last decision, he thought. The colonel turned his flight eastward, heading across the Arabian Peninsula. How easy it all seemed, he thought. So simple. Twelve months ago he had been the module commander of a reccy RC-135 orbiting over the Mediterranean and contemplating retirement. Now he was married, about to become a lather and leading the last attack wing of F-4s into what looked like a real shooting match. Things happened fast, he thought. Well, at least he’d had the six months Cunningham had promised him to get his wing combat ready. And the wing
was
ready, damn it, regardless of what the general believed and what the ORI said…
Bill Carroll was waiting in a pickup truck when Waters shut down his engines. The wing commander had never seen the Intel officer so agitated in the two years he had known the young man. Bill’s got the job of giving me the bad news or taking it to me, he told himself. He clambered down the side of the fuselage, determined at least to show his wing how to meet serious personal adversity, which.
he calculated, would be his last lesson for them. Carroll held the door open for him and rushed around to the driver’s side. Before starting the engine, he blurted his news.
“We’ve got our first frag order.”
Waters stared at him in disbelief, feeling like a condemned man getting a stay of execution. A
frag
order—the operational message sending fighter aircraft into combat, detailing the missions the aircraft would fly, identifying specific targets, time over target, call signs and ordnance. Now here it was…
The Intel officer told him that the 45th was ordered to attack a supply dump at Bandar seventy-five miles east of Basra and a troop concentration at Ramshir twenty-five miles northeast of the supply dump. “Sir, we don’t have reccy photos, no threat estimates, nothing. They want us to hit ASAP but no later than tomorrow morning.”
“Bill, it fits with the Intelligence Summary we got from the Watch Center. Those troops are probably headed to the dump for resupply. From there they’ll move up and attack Basra.” He fought down a feeling of exultation and concentrated on how to use his one chance to lead his wing into combat…
The COIC, Combined Operations Intelligence Center, was in disarray when Waters and Carroll came in. Waters was ready with his first orders: “I need three runners.” Carroll pointed out three sergeants. “Find Maintenance, the 377th and the 378th. Tell them to send a liaison officer or NCO here with a radio to relay orders. Go.” The three sergeants ran out of the room. “Bill, have your troops find the charts, plotters, markers, whatever the crews are going to need to plan the attacks. Get a weatherman up here, show me the targets on a map—and the frag order.”
Chief Master Sergeant George Gonzaga from Maintenance hurried into the room three steps ahead of C.J. and the two squadron commanders. “George,” Waters said, “turn the first two squadrons for an air-to-ground mission. Load the 377th’s birds with Mark-82s, the 378th’s with CBUs, the Weasels with Shrikes.”
While Maintenance downloaded the centerline fuel tanks, refueled the birds and uploaded the ordnance Waters had ordered, the men clustered around the map and
studied their targets. Bull Morgan lumbered into the room with the weatherman in his wake. Rapidly Waters explained the situation: “I want to hit these two targets ASAP, but we are dealing with a lot of unknowns. Brief your crews to attack the targets like we did Woensdrecht. Here’s where our practice runs can pay off. The 377th will go against the supply dump at Bandar with Mark-82s, the 378th will attack the troop concentration at Ramshir with CBUs.”
Chief Gonzaga stuck his head in the door. “The first four birds are loaded out for air-to-air like you said at Stonewood, the crews are standing by. We can launch them using the radio in Maintenance Control’s van or reload them with Mark-82s.” Waters could have kissed the man for not forgetting and becoming confused. He needed the four jets for a Base CAP, a Combat Air Patrol flying a protective umbrella over the base.
“Good. Have Maintenance Control launch the first two into a Base CAP. Tell them to set up a radar search pattern. I don’t want any uninvited guests to overfly the base right now.” Gonzaga took off to relay the message on his brick. Within minutes they heard the two aircraft take off while two airmen from Communications hooked up three UHF radios in the COIC.
“There are two major differences on this attack,” Waters said. “First, we don’t need tanker support. The supply dump at Bandar is one hundred and thirty nautical miles away; the troop concentration at Ramshir is one hundred and fifty-five. Both are within low-level range. Brief to ingress at low level and to recover at high level after coasting out, threats permitting. Second, we don’t know what the threats are around those targets. So expect a normal Soviet defense array of SAMs and Triple A.”
Waters turned to the weatherman, a major. “What’s the weather doing?” The major was ready. The weather was clear and would remain so, and the moon was almost full and would be up at 2010 that evening. “Okay, gentlemen,” Waters said, looking at the group, “you know what your men can hack better than me and you know the three times we can attack—now, during the night or in the morning. Ideas?”
The group was unanimous they should try for a launch in one hour while surprise was still on their side, and hit the targets just before evening twilight obscured the ground. The men hurried out to make it happen.
Outside, Chief Gonzaga reported to Waters that eighteen birds were loaded, four more would be in five minutes. “Major Conlan has checked in on status, ready to launch,” the Chief added. Waters was impressed by the fast response of his wing.
“Okay, Chief, level with me. How are you getting the birds turned so fast? You’re taking a short cut. What is it?”
A smile split Gonzaga’s brown face. “We’re downloading the centerline tanks, then uploading the munitions while we refuel. About half the bunkers have refueling points in them so we don’t need to use refueling trucks.” Waters said something about uploading munitions and refueling at the same time being dangerous. “Colonel, we’re using Israeli wartime procedures. We figured if they can make it work so can we. Of course, the Air Force wouldn’t approve since it wasn’t their idea.”
Bill Carroll joined them as they listened to the first of the Phantoms crank their engines. “Colonel”—Carroll had to yell to be heard above the crescendoing noise—“we’ve got sixty-seven birds in from Stonewood. There are five stragglers that Lieutenant Locke will bring in tomorrow.”
C.J. was the first to take off and never lifted above two hundred feet as he led his wingmen north over the Gulf toward their target, the troop concentration at Ramshir. The 378th was launching first since they had to penetrate the deepest to reach their target. C.J. kept scanning the sky, looking for hostile aircraft that might try to intercept them. Since they were flying without a CAP, they would have to jettison their loads and fight their way home. Stan’s constant flow of “no activity, weak search radar, no sector searches, no activity, nothing” was nice to hear…Fifteen minutes after takeoff he coasted in over the point of land they had selected as the split-point for the two arms of their attack on to Ramshir. They were feet dry and in bad-guy land—Iran.
He lifted his bird to eight hundred feet to insure that the string of aircraft stretching behind him to Ras Assanya would hear his transmission. “It’s a go on Hot Dog,” he transmitted, committing the 45th to battle. Unless they were jumped by MiGs, the attack would continue. He dropped his bird back on the deck.
“They got us with a search-radar and tried to interrogate our IFF,” Stan now reported. “Lost us now, but someone is very good on that end.”
C.J. thought, We’re seven minutes out. He pushed the throttles up, touching 540 knots and descended to one hundred feet. Sweat poured down his face. “Thirteen miles south of Ramshir,” he told Stan as he lifted his bird to eight hundred feet and started to circle the target, challenging the SAMs and Triple A to come active, to turn their radars on. Nothing. He continued his arc, visually acquiring the target. “Goddamn, look at that!” He was circling a mass of people running for trucks and buildings. He did not see a single slit-trench or bunker.
Stan twisted his head away from the bank of scopes and radar warning gear in front of him, surveyed the target, grunted and went back to work. “Arm ’em up,” he said, reminding C.J. to make sure the AGM-45 anti-radiation Shrike missiles were ready for employment. “I’ve got a load on an SA-6,” he yelled, happy at last. One of the fifty-two antennas the Wild Weasel sported had detected an operator turning on the radar in the control van of a surface-to-air missile battery in preparation for a launch. “Follow the bug,” he told C.J.
The pilot turned the nose of the Phantom toward the threat and centered the target symbol of his head-up display. When the plan position indicator showed he was in range, he mashed the trigger on his stick. The missile leaped off the missile rail on the left pylon and homed on the signal it was receiving from the SAM site. The radar van of the SAM disappeared in a puff of smoke and flame. “How do you say piss off in Farsi?” Stan muttered.
C.J. zoomed up to eight thousand feet, still looking for MiGs. Stan reassured him the RHAW gear was quiet. The pilot watched as the first cell of twelve aircraft approached the troop-staging area from the west on a laydown run
with the CBUs. They came off the target as sporadic tracers in the fading light indicated someone was pulling in the welcome mat. The second wave of attacking Phantoms from the east started to pop onto the target, homing onto the tracers.
The attackers could not see the carnage the CBUs spread over the area. The canisters holding the CBUs would drop off the wing pylons when the pilots hit the pickle button. As they fell, the canisters would open up like a clam shell, spewing hundreds of baseball-sized bomblets over a wide area. Each bomblet would spin, arming as it fell. Some would explode immediately on impact; others would bounce high into the air before exploding and raining their lethal charge over a wide area. Others would bounce and then lie dormant, waiting for a time-delayed fuse to activate or someone to jiggle it, setting it off. In some three minutes the 378th had worked over the troop concentration area, effectively disabling its personnel. C.J. and his wingman took one last sweep of the area, still looking for MiGs and radar activity, and exited to the south, finally closing the door behind the retreating Phantoms.
The first Phantoms started to recover fifty-two minutes after C.J. had led the launch. The birds flew down final at twelve hundred feet in flights of two or four and circled to land. Waters stood beside a pickup with Tom Gomez and Mike Fairly at the roll-out end of the runway, counting the birds and checking them for battle damage. One after another, the planes rolled past, the pilot or wizzo giving them a thumbs-up. Gomez and Fairly had recovered too late in the stream of traffic from Stonewood to take part in the attack and could not believe they had missed the first mission. When the last of the F-4s had cleared the active, Waters turned to them. “In less than twelve hours we flew three thousand miles, turned, and launched fifty-four birds against two targets. And all recovered with little or no battle damage. Your men did good.” To put it mildly, he silently added.
29 June: 0800 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 0900 hours, Stonewood, England
But unlike that from Ras Assanya, the launch out of Stonewood had not been perfect and five jets had aborted, not able to join the string of Phantoms headed for Ras Assanya. Locke was not surprised when his centerline fuel tank would not feed. He had taxied back in to face the worried crew chiefs. The two young sergeants vowed to get a new centerline tank that would feed if they had to cycle through every tank on base. Finally Colonel Bradley had driven up in his truck and told Jack that he was to lead four other Phantoms in a straggler flight and to go with only two tanks if they could not get a centerline to feed. After three fruitless hours of trying to get all the birds ready, Bradley had sent them all into crew rest, deciding they would launch the next morning. Jack had tried to contact Gillian, but the base was still sealed tight.
At 9:00
A.M.
on Wednesday morning Jack taxied out with the last of the wing’s fighters following him. “Hell of a way to go to war, one tank short and a day late,” he said to Thunder.
“At least we’re going,” Thunder said. “I’d hate to be left here.” Since he had a different load then than the other four fighters, Jack told the other four pilots that he would make a single ship takeoff; they would follow with formation takeoffs with twenty-second spacing between pairs. The five ships took the Active with Jack in the lead as the tower cleared them for takeoff.
Thunder had now broken Ras Assanya out on the radar scope. “It looks like a boot,” he said, and indeed, the peninsula the base was located on did look like a boot that had the top of its leg stuck onto the mainland and the flat of the sole and heel pointing out to sea. They landed first and were not prepared for the intense heat when they popped their canopies.
“Son of a bitch,” Thunder muttered, “just like Egypt.” On the ramp that was a hubbub of activity, a Follow-Me truck appeared on their right and escorted them to a newly constructed concrete bunker where a ground crew was waiting to park them. They were still in the cockpit when
Bull Morgan drove up in a jeep, tossed them two cold beers, bundled them into the jeep and headed for the new COIC. “What the hell’s wrong with overhead recoveries these days?” he demanded.