Dale Brown
Flight Of The Old Dog
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to extend my gratitude to George Wieser and Donald I. Fine, who took a chance on me; to Rick Horgan, senior editor at Donald I. Fine, Inc with whom I spent many long hours hammering this story into shape; and to my wife Jean, who gave me the support to get the job done. Thanks.
This book is dedicated to the thousands of men and women of the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command who assure the quality of our nation's strategic deterrent force. I was proud to serve in SAC for seven years, and I know it is a thankless, lonely, sometimes frustrating job. They work in old alert shelters, underground launch centers, dark command posts, and cold hangars-and they are the nation's best. More Sol than any high-tech machine, it is the dedication and professionalism of these men and women that insure the peace and security of the United States.
To all the bomber pukes, tanker toads, missile weenies, sky cops, knuckle-busters, and BB stackers of the Strategic Air Command-this one's for you.
PROLOGUE
ABOARD A B-52 BOMBER
The Strategic Air Command B-52 was ready to begin its final assault. Though half its bomb load had already been expended. one gravity bomb and four Short-Range Attack Missiles (SRAMs) still stood in the bomb bays. So far, the.crew of six had successfully guided their aged bomber through a crucial air refueling; a high-altitude bomb run from thirty-seven thousand feet, with a surprise SA-2 surface-to-air missile attack shortly afterward; and three subsequent bomb runs through a maze of hills and valleys.
Up ahead, closing in on them at a speed of six miles per minute, was the target areaÄdefended by surface-to-air mis- sile sites, radar-guided antiaircraft artillery, and prowling patrols of the most advanced interceptors in the world.
"IP inbound in three minutes. crew." First Lieutenant David Luger announced over the interphone. He was following the B-52's course on a narrow cardboard chart, mentally measur- ing the distance and computing the time to the IP. or "initial point," the start of a low-altitude nuclear bomb run. Time to start reviewing checklists, Luger thought. The action was going to start soon.
He glanced down at the plastic-covered checklist pages, anticipating each step of the "Before Initial Point" and "Bomb Run (Nuclear)" checklists before he came to it. Long years of training had enabled him to fix in his mind the exact details of what he was about to do.
"SRAM missile pre-simulated launch check, completed." he said. "Computer launch programming completed." No one acknowledged him, but he had not expected a reply.
The checklist had been reviewed hours earlier. As Luger reread the checklist items over the interphone to key everyone else that the busiest portion of the ten-hour sortie was about to begin, he found himself squirming in his seat, trying to get comfortable.
"Radios set to RBS frequency." Luger said. He glanced at his chart annotations. "Two seventy-five point three."
"Set," Mark Martin, the copilot replied. "RBS bomb scoring plot is set in both radios. I'll call IP inbound when cleared by the radar."
"Camera on, one-to-four," Luger announced, flicking a small black knob near his right shoulder. A special camera would now record the bomb run and missile launches on thirty- five millimeter film for later study. "E.W. start-counter- measures point in sixty seconds."
"Defense copies." First Lieutenant Hawthorne replied, double-checking his jammer and trackbreaker switch positions. The same age as Luger, Hawthorne was the E.W., or electronic-warfare officer. His job was to defend the B-52 against attack by jamming or decoying enemy surface-to-air missile or artillery-tracking radars, and to warn the crew of missile or aircraft attacks.
"Rog," Luger said. "Checklist complete." He checked the TG meter, an antique gear-and-pulley dial that showed the time in seconds to the next turnpoint. Luger flipped the plastic- covered page over to the "Bomb Run (Synchronous)" check- list, then glanced over at the radar navigator's station beside him. "About one-fifty TO to theIP, radar," Luger said. "Got it together, buddy?"
"Uh huh," Patrick McLanahan said. He was bent over a pile of bomb run charts and radar scope predictions, intently studying his bombing "game plan" as if this was the first time he had seen it. His work area was littered with snippets of paper, drawings and notes. A thermos, which lay underneath several books and papers atop his attack radar set, was leaking coffee over the cathode-ray tube display and the radar controls.
Luger impatiently waited for his partner to begin. The two navigators, representing their SAC bombardment wing in this important competition sortie, were a study in contrasts. Luger was a tall, lanky Texan, with immaculately spit-shined boots, closely cropped black hair, and a penchant for textbook perfection. He was fresh out of B-52 Combat Crew Training after graduating top of his class from both the Air Force Academy and Undergraduate Navigator Training, and was easily the Wing's most conscientious and professional navi- gator. He studied hard, performed his duties to perfection, and constantly drove himself to higher levels of achievement.
McLanahan… was McLanahan. He was of medium height and husky build, a blond and tanned Californian who looked as if he was fresh off the boardwalk at Venice Beach. Despite McLanahan's casual appearance and disdain for authority, he was acknowledged as the best navigator in the Wing, and quite possibly the best in SAC. Together he and Luger combined to make the most effective bomber crew in the United States Air Force. And they were about to go to work.
"Well, let's get this over with," McLanahan said finally.
"Good idea," Luger said. He proceeded to run down the remaining items on the checklist, pausing at intervals to check switch positions with the pilot, Captain Gary Houser. Two minutes later, all switches had been configured and it only remained to activate the bombing system and tie all of the individual components together with the bombing computers.
"Master bomb control switch."
"Good," McLanahan said. "I mean, on, light on."
"Bombing system switch."
"Auto." The bombing computers now had control of everything Ä the steering, when to release the bomb, even when to open and close the bomb doors. McLanahan had only to position a set of electronic crosshairs precisely on a preselected aiming point on the radar scope, and the bombing computers would do the rest.
The computers would translate the crosshair positioning into range and azimuth data and display the target direction on the Flight Command Indicator (FCI) at the pilot's station. The computers fed altitude, heading, airspeed, groundspeed, and drift through a set of precomputed ballistics data, and derived an exact release point based on that information. Even if the airspeed changed slightly, or if the winds shifted, the computers would recompute the exact point for bomb release.
"Coming up on sixty seconds to the IP, crew," Houser announced. "FCI centered. Sixty TO, ready, ready. now!"
"Got it," Luger said, starting a stopwatch as a backup. "Bomb run review."
"Roger," McLanahan replied. "Rocket, rocket, bomb… uh, concrete blivet… rocket, rocket. This is the live drop over the range. Let's not fuck this one up, ladies. Some joker is going to run out there with a tape measure to see how we score. Nay?" McLanahan said, turning to Luger.
"SRAM fixes will be on the Airport, fix number thirty; target Bravo, fix number thirty-one; and the pumping station, fix number thirty-two. We are running fully synchronous, all computers fully operational, with a drift rate less than."
"What he means," McLanahan said, "is that the SRAM is tighter than that virgin lieutenant Gary's been seeing."
A conspiratorial snicker could be heard over the interphone.