The second ticked by. then, in the distance he saw two explosions. What the ? Eight fighters had fired sixteen missiles and got two hits? His remaining AlM-7 was locked onto one of the four survivors. He fired again, again there was a brief wait before a single explosion, much closer flared in the darkness. This was bad.
“All Eagle aircraft, missiles are now five miles in front of us estimated speed 900 knots. Swing behind them and use the infra-red track and AlM-9s.
USS “Charles F Adams”, nine minutes after launch. Missiles 45 miles from target.
The destroyer had two missile guidance channels, each designating a single inbound missile as its target. Thus, the two destroyers had designated four of the six inbounds and directed one Terrier from each wave of missiles at that target. All four Terriers in the first wave missed completely.
They were having the same problem the Sparrows from the Super-Crusaders were suffering. The inbound missiles were much smaller than the aircraft Terrier was designed to take down. The simple computer that worked the proximity fuse interpreted small size as being too far away and, although the missiles actually passed within their lethal radius, they didn’t explode, it was the square law at work, to get a signal return adequate to fire their fuses, they had to be four times closer to their targets than the designers had allowed. Deprived of their targets, the Terriers went ballistic and exploded at the end of their runs. That was the bad news. The good news was that Terrier was a very good missile. One from the third wave and one from the fifth got close enough to blow an inbound vampire out of the sky. That left four.
F9U-2 “Rosie”, ten minutes after launch. Missiles 30 miles from target.
The infrared tracker had a limited scan and a small screen but the radar got it pointed the right way. The brilliant flare of the Vampire’s exhaust appeared suddenly, Flower caught it and maneuvered to place it in the center of the screen. The annunciator on the AIM-9 growled then went to a monotone as the seeker locked on. Whatever had gone wrong with the Sparrows didn’t affect the ‘Winders. Flower watched his missile fly straight up the exhaust plume and into the engine of the Vampire in front of him. It flew apart with the explosion. Around him, the two remaining anti-ship missiles exploded as the Sidewinders took them down. The southern missile group had been defeated.
USS “Charles F Adams “, eleven minutes after launch. Missiles 15 miles from target.
They were going down slowly. One by one, the Terriers were picking them off. One more had gone with the seventh wave and two had been nailed by the ninth. The two destroyers had fired a total of 40 Terriers and scored five hits. That left just one and it was heading for the USS Austin. And it was now inside minimum range.
USS Austin LFD-4. Twelve minutes after launch. Missiles 0 miles from target.
The Vampire used an active radar homing system. It emitted pulses that saw the USS Austin as a mass of corner reflectors, a complex return that formed a crude, elementary picture of the ship. The guidance system digested that picture and calculated the geometric center of the reflector mass. Then, it adjusted the nose of the missile so that it was pointing directly at that geometric center.
On board the Austin the electronic warfare system spotted the slight turn and calculated the new course of the missile. With electronic dispassion it noted that the projected end of the course coincided with its own position. This, it decided, was not good. It picked up the missile guidance pulse and adjusted it a little, then returned it a touch stronger than the original. The guidance system aboard the inbound missile accepted the modified pulse and changed the missile course accordingly.
There were now two lines on the display. The original projected course that terminated in the center of Austin and another that represented the actual course of the missile. Slowly, the two were diverging, the real course of the inbound deviating away so the missile would pass aft of the target. Then, there was the critical point where the guidance system of the inbound wouldn’t be pointing at the ship at all.
There was an answer to that; aft of the bridge there was a series of thumps as a launcher coughed five inch rockets loaded with chaff into the air. They created a new target, one that looked to a radar set like an extension of the ship itself. The vampire flew through the chaff cloud, emerged the other side and saw - nothing. Without a target, it went ballistic and crashed about two hundred yards aft of the USS Austin. As the plume subsided, a dozen dark blue shapes flashed over the ships, followed a few seconds later by the crash of their supersonic passage.
A3J-4 Vigilante “Tom Horn”
It was a bomber pilot’s dream. Stretched out in front of them were targets, helpless, unable to shoot back. They’d spotted the Vigilantes on radar and started to take evasive action. To be fair about it, it was quite impressive evasive action. It was also futile of course. There were three formations, of six boats each. The twelve Vigilantes had split, one section of four taking each group.
Why the evasive efforts were so futile was a strange piece of history. The Vigilante had originally been designed as a nuclear attack bomber. The designers had a bright idea; instead of a conventional bomb-bay, they’d given the aircraft a long, thin one that exited aft between the two engines. A great idea, only the problem was that the bomb dropped into a stagnation area and followed the aircraft along. Not a good idea. It had taken the Navy years to give up on the idea, the A3J-1 to J-3 had all been different efforts to make it work. In the end, they’d given up and the A3J-4 version had been redesigned to have a conventional bay with snap-action doors. The aircraft worked at long last. However, since the aircraft was being redesigned, the opportunity had been taken to give the new version the latest bomb-navigation system. Now, all the pilot had to do was hold a line and a square projected in a screen in front of him on the target and the aircraft’s computer would do the rest. That was one reason.
The other was the bomb load itself. Tom Horn was carrying six two thousand pound cluster bombs, CBUs in ordnance-talk. When the square at the end of the stick was over the target, the pilot pressed the button, the doors snapped open and the bombs dropped clear. By the time the doors had snapped shut, the CBIJ was on its way down and the Vigilante was blasting clear of the area. 500 feet above the FACs, the CBU broke open, dispersing 670 armor-piercing / fragmentation bomblets over a 30,000 square foot oval. With six bombs dropped per aircraft and four aircraft per group, the area occupied by the FAC formations was drenched with more than 16,000 bomblets.
The rolling sea of explosions covered the fast attack craft. Their maneuvers had indeed been futile; no matter how tightly they twisted and turned, the basic laws of physics meant they had to be within a specific area, and that area was far less than the lethal footprint of a CBU.
The detonations of the bomblets covered the sea with a twinkling mass, a harmless, even a cheerful, festive sight. And, when they cleared, it looked as if they had been both festive and harmless. The FAC-Ms had come to a halt, that was true. But they seemed untouched and undamaged. Only a close inspection would have showed that they were riddled with thousands of tiny holes, the biggest no larger than a thumbnail, the smallest, pin-sized. A close inspection might have shown that the craft were filling and sinking.