The navigator checked his indicators. “A half mile off jack, pilot. Make five-degree S turn to right.”
“Roger, navigator,” Thompson acknowledged. “Taking five degrees S turn right.” They felt the plane suddenly buffeted, momentarily rising in a gust, and thought they’d been hit, but it was the shock wave of the explosion of Ebony Three, hit by an Aphid, the flares it had dropped for decoy degenerating in the cold, fleeting cloud. Either that or the flares had malfunctioned. That left six planes out of the original nine.
“FCI… is… centered,” Thompson advised, his voice vibrating along with the rest of Ebony One, the aircraft having been hit somewhere on the starboard tail plane near the actuators.
“Stand by for initial point call,” the navigator announced. There was a burst of orange light — a Harrier gone. Ebony One’s navigator had the infrared scope on the area just south of Turpan where the missiles were supposed to be. For a moment he thought they weren’t there, but the next second saw them coming within range, spread out over a wider area than the Israeli satellite photos had indicated but still in the “target grid” that was two miles long by a quarter. The navigator waited, waited, then centered for the initial point call. “IP — now, crew.”
Ebony One’s navigator grabbed the stopwatch, index finger resting on the stop button as he heard the air commander “Stand by, timing crew. Ready… ready… ready… hack!”
The radar navigator pressed the button on the stopwatch, the navigator, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible, reporting, “Watches running.” A computer could suddenly go on the fritz in the melee of electronic war — a stopwatch was preferred.
It was 0754. “Time till release, three minutes twenty seconds. Captain to Nav. Understand. Three minutes twenty seconds.”
“Cross hairs going out to target area,” the radar navigator advised, watching the cross hairs of his sight flicking in and out, then in, in, in, closing over the target area like a rapid slide show, each slide showing more detail as Ebony One, still shaking, closed distance south of Turpan, the desert around the Turpan depression being held at bay here and there by orderly oases of irrigated reforestation.
They heard a muffled explosion nearby, their cockpit momentarily lit up as brilliantly as if a flashbulb had gone off. The captain made a mental note to check out why the flares and chaff hadn’t worked as well the second time around— though he suspected that it was due to the four MiG-29s, probably the only four Fulcrums in all western China, coming in behind the B-52s’ engines’ exhaust, risking the 12.67mm fire from the barbettes in hopes of getting a lock-on with heat-seekers.
There were five B-52s remaining, and no matter what the MiGs did, Thompson had irrevocably committed all remaining B-52s to the bomb run. The only good thing, he thought, was that there’d be no SAMs coming his way as long as he had the fighters mixing it up, trying to bring the five bombers down. Then again—
“Sixty seconds gone!” he announced.
“Target area,” the radar navigator reported, “at zero one niner degrees, twenty-eight point one miles.” A scream all but jolted Thompson out of his seat, but by the time he’d intuitively grabbed for his volume control the scream had gone and in its wake he could hear the crackling of fire aboard the stricken B-52 off to his right, and through the headphones a dull, persistent hammering of 30mm raking it before the fighter was over them, already a mile off to the port side, Murphy trying without success to nail him.
“Looks good direct,” the captain’s voice came to the radar navigator.
It was 0754 plus forty-eight seconds, ninety-three seconds still remaining until the air commander could give the TG— to go — signal, at 0756 plus twenty-one.
Suddenly they had lost the fighters.
“You bastards!” Murphy yelled excitedly. “Too good for ya!” But nobody paid him any attention, and three seconds later they saw the first white trails of the “telephone poles” becoming silvery in the moonlight, the first of the SAMs climbing toward them now the fighters had gone. Earlier the Wild Weasels, F-4G Phantoms, had taken out their share of SAM radar sites, but there were too many clustered about Turpan for the Phantoms’ Shrike air-to-ground missiles to get all of them. Besides which, the Phantoms were now mixing it with the ChiCom MiG-29s, getting the worst of it, so much so that soon all four Phantoms were gone, either blown up in midair or crashed — no chutes visible.
The two wingmen of the four remaining B-52s started to rail away, one to starboard, one to port, amid a static-broken stream of orders, the other two B-52s above going into sharp banks, one to the right, the other to the left, below Ebony One. They didn’t bank too quickly, otherwise the SAMs would have time to change course, and not too slowly or the SAMs would hit, but in any case both of them acting as bait for the ChiComs’ surface-to-air 12A missiles — four of which, “pairing,” were streaking up for the lowest aircraft.
Ebony One’s radar navigator reported, “I’m in-bomb now, pilot. Center the FCI.” He meant the aircraft-to-bomb site director system.
“Roger. FCI centered.” In a sudden gust Ebony One yawed then slipped to port before Thompson got it back on track. The radar navigator was now speaking to the navigator. “Disconnect release circuits.”
Suddenly Thompson saw the “tents,” the missile silos, bright as day, lit up by one of the two flaming B-52s as it exploded, without sound, over fifteen thousand feet below. “Release circuits disconnected,” the radar navigator confirmed. “Connected light on… ‘on.’ Light on…” Now they heard the noise of the exploded B-52 reaching them.
“Bomb door control valve lights?” the navigator asked.
“Off,” the radar navigator said, the electronics warfare officer ready to drop more flares should the bandits return.
“To go,” Thompson called. “Driving one two oh seconds.”
The navigator was checking me Doppler as the plane rose slightly then settled down, the radar navigator waiting anxiously till zero minus fifteen when he would take up the final count. He heard Thompson counting: “One one five to go… one hundred TG… seventy-five TG… sixty TG… fifty TG.. thirty TG… FCI centered.”
“Bomb doors coming open,” the navigator called, me radar navigator now hunched over the visible sight, oblivious to me buffeting of increasing AA fire and taking up the count. “Fifteen seconds… thirteen… twelve… eleven…”
The plane rose sharply again, this time the result of a wind gust in the bomb bay.
“Nine… seven…”
Thompson flicked up the safety cover on the bomb button, hearing the navigator: “Four… two…”
Thompson pressed the button. “Pickle! Pickle! Pickle!”
There was another explosion as a SAM, its electronics successfully interfered with by Ebony’s EWO, detonated somewhere off to their left even as Thompson heard his counterpart in the remaining B-52 releasing his load.
The bombs released, Ebony One rose like a thing suddenly freed from bondage, the bay door closing. It was only several minutes later that they could see the roiling fires and enormous shock waves moving through the explosions that made the land look as if it were boiling. Along with destroying a line of missiles, the bombs had more importantly for Freeman’s Second Army also wiped out the Turpan missile control center. But as the two huge bombers turned, the three remaining Harriers above them, they knew that the ChiComs might yet come after them — or would it be that because fuel was so precious to the ChiComs they wouldn’t waste it on a pursuit? The two EWOs scanned their scopes. All they could see was the three Harriers and each other. They thought they might escape any further enemy interdiction.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE