Almost before I'd gotten the words out of my mouth, I saw Skeeter's Tomcat peel off my wing. I followed, cutting hard to the right and underneath him, losing him, losing altitude as I did so.
The MiGs reacted instantly. The Hawkeye was howling warnings now, too. He broke off mid-sentence as he evidently saw on his radar scope what we were doing. He fell back into the mode for which the aircraft was designed, giving us long-range warnings. Had there been other fighters airborne, he would have been watching who was Winchester, vectoring other aircraft in to engage additional targets as necessary.
As it was, with only two of us, he wasn't much use.
I kicked the Tomcat over, tightening the turn until it felt like we were pivoting on the right wingtip. Both wings were fully swept back now, the automatic mechanism compensating for our angle of attack and speed.
Behind me, my RIO called out distances and bearings, keeping me mentally in the picture as I fought for position.
"I'm on him ― fox two, fox two." It was Skeeter now, calling out in savage glee as he toggled off a Sidewinder at the tail MiG. I grunted, clicked my mike twice in response, straining against the G forces that were pulling the blood away from my brain and trying to pool it in my extremities. I tightened my muscles again, forcing it upward, fighting off the gray that was creeping in around the edges of my vision. I could hear my RIO behind me performing the same maneuver.
"Break left, break left," Gator called out. "Too much debris to-"
I didn't wait for the rest of the sentence, and instead reversed my turn immediately. Getting too close to an exploding MiG was the last thing I needed right now.
Shards of fuselage and aircraft peppered my Tomcat. Directly overhead, the canopy cracked and starred into a fragmentation pattern. The safety fibers embedded in it kept it intact, but its ability to withstand the strain of high G maneuvers was now seriously in doubt.
"Any other damage?" my RIO called out.
"Negative. Give me a vector to the unengaged MiG."
As it stood, we had five MiGs still in the air ― four, I amended, as I heard Skeeter cry out again the deadly fox two warning. "Two on one, by God," Skeeter cried. "Hell, those aren't even fair odds, not for them."
Still, taking on two MiGs with an aircraft in less than optimal condition was not something I thought of as good odds. The MiGs were faster, more maneuverable, but the Tomcat made up for that in sheer power and endurance.
"Give me a vector to the pair," I repeated, then I found it myself.
They were off my starboard quarter, closing fast, automatically falling into combat spread. It was the most effective fighting position for two aircraft ever invented, and one that we had perfected and taught them ourselves.
My pair of MiGs had evidently misjudged exactly how fast I could come out of the turn. That, or they hadn't anticipated my sudden cut back to the left. Either way, they were out of position, too high and off angle for an infrared missile, and in each other's field of fire for a radar lock. I took advantage of that, jammed the throttles full forward, and grabbed for altitude like a bat out of hell. I split up right between the two of them, their rate of closure dangerously high, and my rate of climb too slow.
The MiGs peeled back out of my flight path like a banana. There was a moment of confusion, as they tried to sort out who was following me up and who would linger down below.
The Tomcat was picking up airspeed now, her heavy engines pounding against the air behind us. The full-throated scream of the afterburners roared through the Tomcat's interior, and I glanced upward to check my shattered canopy. It appeared to be holding, but I suspected we were dangerously close to the envelope of what it would withstand.
In the moments when we passed between the two MiGs, I didn't think we would make it. The Tomcat was bringing every inch of power to bear in those massive engines, hurtling us straight up with virtually zero speed over ground as every bit of energy was diverted to increasing our altitude.
Finally, I felt the response, saw indeed that we were going to clear the MiGs, and I knew that I'd just tipped the balance in my Tomcat's favor.
One MiG spiraled up after me, his rate of climb considerably slower than mine. The other cut tight circles down below, waiting for the moment when I would inevitably be forced to trade altitude for airspeed. The Tomcat has an effective combat threshold considerably above that of a MiG, and I was counting on those few extra thousand feet to give me the break I needed.
The distance between us and the trailing MiG grew wider. I heard the brief beep of a radar trying to lock on.
I glanced at the altimeter. Good, just where I wanted it to be. I cut the Tomcat hard, wrenching her into a violent turn, then darted east back toward Skeeter. There was not much I could do to help him at this point, not if he were in trouble, but it was a good idea to stay within fighting range of each other.
The MiG below me took the easy, angular vector away from his direct climb and followed. By moving into the vertical, I had just decreased the amount of energy he would have to expend to catch up with us, while simultaneously complicating my own problems. Below me, the lower MiG paced us, waiting for his chance.
As the MiG reached a range of ten thousand yards, I turned back into him. The G stress was worse this time, cutting almost half my field of vision despite a hard push on the M-1 maneuver. I felt the first lazy, soft drifting of my thoughts, redoubled my efforts to stay conscious, and finally eased my rate of turn.
We descended on the MiG, now in head-to-head closure rate in excess of twelve hundred knots. I was still in full afterburner, the Tomcat gulping down fuel at a tremendous rate. It was risky, but not as dangerous as having two fully capable MiG-31s after my ass.
The trick to fighting a MiG, I've always found, was to keep the battle in the vertical. There is no way they can match a Tomcat for sheer climbing power and endurance, and you have to take advantage of that. If you let a MiG force you into a horizontal knife fight, you're going to lose. No matter how good a pilot you are, how good shape your Tomcat is in, the damn things are just so light and maneuverable that it's like swatting at flies. You have to keep a MiG climbing, keep him fighting for altitude and airspeed until you have a chance to take your shot.
This MiG must have been paying attention. I was descending on him, and he had broken out into level flight now, twisting and turning to prevent a radar lock. He couldn't know just how good our avionics were, and how little a chance he had of avoiding that, but I gave him points for trying. Finally, he made a fatal error of descending slightly, exposing for a few moments that warm, rich source of energy that a Sidewinder loves so well ― his tailpipe. "Fox one," I called, as I toggled off a Sidewinder.
I followed up with a Sparrow, after checking to make sure that we were still well clear of Skeeter and Sheila. Then the MiG made the last mistake he'd ever make. He panicked.
He headed for his wingman, descending rapidly now and racing for the surface of the ocean. There was at least a chance that the Sparrow would get confused by the sea-clutter radar return off the surface of the water, but that played right into the strongest capabilities of the Sidewinder.
Hot jet engine, fiery exhaust, warm metal silhouetted against the cold, black ocean ― add to that a starlit night, with no sun to generate a dangerously attractive alternative source of heat.
As luck had it, neither the Sidewinder nor the Sparrow minded descending at all. Eight seconds after I'd toggled them off, they found their prey.
I could hear my backseater swearing, and easily deduced the cause.
Gator had made the mistake of glancing out the canopy just at the moment of missile impact, and the explosion had robbed him of his night vision.