Major Tabor appeared with a compact tool kit. There was a serious look on his face as he began his way down a steel ladder bolted into the rear part of the rack. This allowed him access to the forward portion of the bomb positioned at the rear of the rack’s left side. He carefully used a tapered screwdriver to remove the protective plate that covered the fourth bomb’s trigger mechanism. Faced now with a number of wafer-thin circuit boards, the bombardier pulled out a probe and began gingerly searching for the malfunctioning chip.
Breathlessly watching this delicate process, Lawrence Stockton commented, “Take your time, Major. And don’t forget that if those boards show clean, we can always temporarily cock the trigger to overload the circuit and then read it again.”
Not bothering to respond to this except with a curt nod, the bombardier tried to keep his hand from shaking as he continued inserting the surgical probe deep into the juncture of each individual connection.
It was a call from the tanker’s navigator that sent Master Sergeant Lou Moretti into the extreme rear portion of the KC-135’s tail. His hefty frame seemed to fill the entire enclosure as he stretched out on his stomach on an elongated red plastic-covered mattress. Before removing the tail’s outer plexiglass shield, he strapped himself firmly in place so as not to be sucked out if the inner window collapsed. Only when his bonds were taut did he remove the shield and peer out the viewing port that was cut into the very tip of the tanker’s tail.
Less than a mile away he could make out the nose of the B-52 Stratofortress, illuminated by a pair of powerful spotlights. The bomber seemed to be perfectly aligned, and Lou spoke into his chin-mounted radio transmitter.
“Red Dog two-niner, this is your friendly attendant, Master Sergeant Lou Moretti on Troubador Six. I have you on visual. You are cleared to close.”
For the next ten to fifteen minutes, Lou would in cf feet be commanding both planes during the actual refueling process. But first he had to guide the B-52 to the proper transfer distance. He did so by operating a set of red and green guidance lights that were mounted on the tanker’s tail.
When the distance between the two planes was less than a half a mile, he activated the tanker’s 42-foot-long boom. This telescoping metallic tube had two stubby wings built onto it that Lou “flew” to a position straight behind their tail. On the end of this boom was a nozzle that would be fitted into an opening just at the upper rear of the bomber’s cockpit.
Looking down from his cramped vantage point, the Master Sergeant could almost see the individual faces of the B-52’s flight crew as the bomber closed within 200 feet.
“Come closer and elevate your nose slightly,” he commanded calmly.
The two planes sped along one beneath the other at a speed of 275 miles per hour. All so gradually, the lower of the two aircraft began closing in.
“Okay,” said Lou.
“Now just a little bit closer and we’ve got it.”
The nozzle of the boom was just about over the B52’s cockpit when the veteran operator noted a slight inconsistency in the bomber’s closure rate. Startled by this sighting, he called out excitedly, “Hey, heads up down there! You’re coming in too damn fast!”
What followed next took place with the ponderous pace of a nightmare. For the bomber’s flight crew failed to heed his warning, and Lou looked on with disbelief as the boom pierced the B-52’s longeron. As this taut metal spine fractured, the bomber began breaking up in mid-air, and a fiery spark shot up the tanker’s refueling boom. Master Sergeant Lou Moretti had no time to cry out in horror as this spark ignited the 30,000 gallons of fuel stored in the KC-135’s tanks.
A blindingly bright flash lit the night sky, and in a blink of an eye, the Boeing Stratotanker was blown apart by a tremendous explosion. Lou Moretti and his crewmates never felt any pain, for their bodies were instantly vaporized, while the molten remains of their aircraft’s fuselage and wings spiraled downward to be buried in the cool depths of the sea below.
The first hint that something was amiss was when the high-pitched wail of the bail-out alarm filled the bomb bay enclosure with its chilling sound. Captain Lawrence Stockton had little time to react as the plane around him violently shook and canted hard on its right side.
Thrown off balance by the force of this unexpected roll, the pilot sensed that something was seriously wrong with his command. Seconds later, the plane rolled wildly in the opposite direction, and Lawrence Stockton found himself pinned to the roof of the compartment, the victim of the forces of gravity as the Stratofortress tumbled wildly from the skies.
It was sheer instinct and the will to survive that kept him from surrendering to his rising panic. Forcing himself to take deep even breaths, he scanned the now darkened compartment and failed to locate his crew mate
The last he had seen of the bombardier was as the Major completed his testing of the circuit boards, and still finding nothing wrong with them, was in the process of activating the device’s trigger. This was only to be a temporary process, for he wanted to send a brief electrical charge through the circuit mechanism, and this was the easiest way to do so.
The pilot vainly reached out to stabilize himself when the cabin once more rotated and he fell sprawling to the deck below. He landed painfully on his side, next to the console. As he struggled to right himself, there was a loud popping noise followed by the deafening roar of rushing air. The temperature immediately dropped a good forty degrees and Stockton realized that the bomb bay doors had just been wrenched open. His pulse quickened, for now he had a way out of the crippled aircraft.
As always, he was wearing his parachute. Since there were no ejection seats in this portion of the plane, his only path to safety would be through the bomb bay doors. Yet the cabin was still spinning so wildly that it was a supreme effort for him just to get to his knees.
A momentary vision of his family flashed in his mind, and he began desperately crawling toward the twenty foot-long opening. Inch by painful inch he moved his bruised body forward until he was able to peer into the enclosure. Looking down toward the four bombs, he could just see the open air beyond, through the struts of the rack mount. He was prepared to try crawling into the space that lay between the rack and bomb number one when the cabin spun upside down and he was once again sucked upward and pinned to the ceiling. Before he could cry out in frustration, another quick pitch of the cabin sent him spiraling back to the deck. He did his best to ignore the excruciating pain that coursed up his right arm as he crawled back to the bomb bay enclosure.
Yet this time when he peered downward, he saw that the entire rack, including its lethal load of bombs, was no longer there. Only the spinning night sky greeted him as he wasted no time dropping into this welcome void.
Liam Lafferty had been in the process of pulling in his fishing lines when the night sky seemed momentarily to catch on fire. The blindingly bright flash originated high in the pitch black heavens, and for a few startling seconds it was as if the sun had miraculously dawned.
Yet the intense, mysterious light was all too soon snuffed out as abruptly as it had arrived.
A muffled, explosive boom echoed in the distance, and the wizened fisherman scanned the sky in a vain effort to locate the source of this sound. His night vision temporarily lost by the unexpected flare-up, Liam felt his pupils take a full minute to readjust to the blackness. When they eventually did, he viewed a sky full of familiar twinkling stars and exhaled a long breath of relief.
His first concern had been that a sudden storm was on its way. Lightning could play curious tricks on the eyes, and he was certainly no stranger to the resonant blast that only thunder could produce. But a variety of phenomena were present that indicated that this was not the case. First of all, the heavens were still clear from horizon to horizon, meaning that there were no clouds belonging to an advancing storm front present in the area. And since the wind remained negligible and the seas calm, the veteran fisherman seriously doubted that a storm was responsible for the strange sighting.