Joe Weber
Rules of Engagement
Chapter 1
Marine 1st Lt. Brad Austin exercised his flight controls to the stops, then saluted the catapult officer and braced his head for the violent launch. He inhaled a deep breath of pure, cool oxygen and held it in his lungs.
The F-4 Phantom's twin turbojets produced an earsplitting roar as the cat officer leaned forward and touched the flight deck, signaling to fire the catapult.
The deck-edge operator, standing in the starboard catwalk of the mammoth ship, pushed the launch button and quickly ducked below the surface of the flight deck to avoid the superheated jet blast.
The fighter-bomber, howling in afterburner, snapped the hold-back bar and hurtled down the deck in a cloud of swirling steam.
Austin's helmet was pinned to the ejection seat headrest as his eyeballs flattened under the 6-g cat shot. His normal body weight of 165 pounds had instantly increased to 990 pounds.
Austin's radar intercept officer, navy Lt. Russell Lunsford, gripped the sides of the rear cockpit and looked at the port catapult track. The ship and the ocean were vague blurs of gray and blue as the Phantom accelerated from zero to 170 miles per hour in two and a half seconds.
Clearing the starboard-bow catapult, Brad popped the landing gear lever up, accelerated straight ahead, then raised the flaps and scanned his engine instruments and master caution light. Everything looked normal. He left the Phantom in afterburner and started a rendezvous turn toward his flight leader, Cdr. Dan Bailey.
Rapidly closing on the squadron commanding officer, Austin inched the throttles out of burner and slid into the standard loose deuce tactical formation on Joker 204. Bailey gave his wingman a quick glance, then gently initiated a steeper climb.
Their mission was to fly target combat air patrol (TARCAP) for a strike group from the carrier USS Intrepid. The Intrepid, carrying a full complement of attack aircraft, had joined their carrier five days earlier.
The four A-4 Skyhawk jets and four single-engine, propeller-driven A-1 Skyraiders were going to attack a large industrial complex at Thai Binh, fifty miles southeast of Hanoi.
Brad Austin, an exchange pilot with the navy fighter squadron concentrated on his flight leader as the two Phantoms climbed in radio silence. Dan Bailey, respected as one of the best fighter pilots in the navy, believed in professionalism and discipline. He used head nods, augmented with hand signals, to communicate until it was absolutely necessary to talk over the radios.
Austin, who was beginning his fourth month with the navy squadron, had volunteered for the assignment to the carrier air wing. He would remain with the fighter squadron for the duration of the cruise.
Russ Lunsford glanced at the lead aircraft and keyed his intercom. "Ah… Brad, I've got a heads-up for you. Word is that the skipper is giving you a look this ride… for section leader. I didn't want to say anything until we were off the boat and settled down."
Brad smiled. "Thanks, Russ. I figured something was up when the boss had me conduct the brief."
The flight leveled at 20,000 feet and contacted the KA-3B tanker. Four minutes later, Joker Flight eased into the stabilized position behind the large twin-engine Skywarrior. Both pilots filled their fuel tanks to capacity, then dropped away from the Whale and headed northwest to Thai Binh.
Austin and Lunsford, feeling the tension mount as they approached the coast-in coordinates, rechecked their armament switches. The two men purposely cinched their restraining straps to the point of being uncomfortable. If the pilot and his RIO had to eject, they could not afford to have any slack in their ejection-seat harnesses.
"You tucked in, Russ?"
Lunsford snugged his shoulder straps one last time. "Any tighter, I'd have gangrene."
Squinting through the early morning haze, the two fighter pilots saw the coast at the same time. They would be over land — feet dry — in three minutes. The crews went through their combat checklist as the shoreline passed under the Phantoms.
"Joker Two," Bailey radioed as the flight crossed the beach, "you've got the lead. You are now Joker One."
Brad had anticipated the command. "Joker One, copy. I have the lead."
The CO drifted off to the right side and slid behind the new flight leader. Bailey had a keen respect for the young marine aviator and often referred to Austin as his brother in green.
"Combat spread," Brad ordered, tweaking the F-4 's nose down five degrees below the horizon.
Bailey, intently scanning the sky for MiGs and surface-to-air missiles, answered with two clicks from his microphone. The response was standard for a pilot who was busy or desired to keep radio chatter to a minimum. The veteran fighter pilot, who had a well-deserved reputation for rowdy behavior on the ground, was deadly serious in the arena of aerial combat.
The Phantoms leveled at 15,000 feet and Austin entered a left-hand pattern two miles southwest of the target. After three orbits around the area, the F-4 crews heard the rescue combat air patrol (RESCAP) flight call the strike leader. The four additional A-1 Skyraiders, referred to as Spads by their pilots, were circling low off the coast. Their job was straightforward. They had responsibility for protecting downed aircrews until a helicopter or an amphibious aircraft could rescue the men.
Austin and Lunsford continued the lazy circle as the lead Skyhawk pilot rolled into his bombing run. The morning sky suddenly filled with a barrage of 37mm and 57mm artillery fire, interspersed with hundreds of small-arms rounds tracking the diving aircraft.
Brad looked down to see three surface-to-air missiles rise from an emplacement next to the road leading into the target area. Two more SAMs lifted off from another position before a Skyhawk pilot scored a direct hit on the missile battery. The SAMs exploded, spraying flaming fuel and skittering across the ground in erratic maneuvers. Two of the missiles impacted a fuel storage tank, causing a blinding explosion.
The prop-driven A-1s strafed and bombed gun emplacements surrounding the industrial complex. The A-4 pilots varied their run-ins, dropping all their ordnance in one pass. The small attack jets disappeared in the rising smoke, emerging from the other side in steep, climbing turns.
Austin caught a glimpse of two buildings disintegrating in a series of bright explosions. The violent blasts sent visible shock waves across the ground.
"Russ, it looks like they hit an ammo dump, from the type of explosions down there."
"Yeah," Lunsford replied, snapping photographs as quickly as he could work his camera. "Probably why they have so much artillery around the complex."
The Skyhawks pulled off the target and raced for the shoreline, followed by the slower Spads. Antiaircraft fire arced through the air in dense streams of multicolored tracers. Six more SAMs lifted off and shot skyward. One missile detonated under a Skyhawk, but the aircraft continued toward the coastline.
"MiGs, eleven o'clock low!" Lunsford yelled over the radio as four sets of eyes focused on the position. The Communist fighters were below and slightly to the left of the Phantoms.
"Tally, tally," Brad replied, feeling his pulse pound in his neck. "Jokers, arm 'em up."
"Two," Bailey acknowledged, flipping his missile-arming switches to ON.
The five MiG-17s had launched from Phuc Yen airfield, situated twelve miles north of Hanoi, and had made a low-level, high-speed pass to the northeast of the sprawling city.
The MiG-17, code-named Fresco by NATO, was an aerial hot rod that had tremendous maneuverability. The MiG was smaller than the Phantom and two-thirds less gross weight. Although the MiG-17 was not a supersonic fighter, it could outturn the more powerful F-4. Armed with three 23mm cannons, along with rockets or heat-seeking Atoll missiles, the compact fighter was a formidable aircraft. The MiG-17 was hard to spot in the air, giving it the advantage of surprise. Conversely, the big Phantom emitted dark jet exhaust, which made it easy to see from fifteen to twenty miles away. Selecting afterburner was the only way to eliminate the F-4's telltale smoke.