We got our first break of the day because we were the first of the Red Air jets to get on the tanker. We were clean (no external tanks) so the tanker had the gas to top us off. Tanker drivers are the greatest. They will normally do anything for a dime and give you a nickel change. A tanker driver will fly his big jet upside down if he thinks it would help you. On this mission, the tanker guys were an Air Force Reserve unit from North Carolina flying KC-10s, and we were on and off the tanker in record time.
Unfortunately, record time still had us running four minutes late. I turned my four ship toward the east and went as fast as I could in military power. Our specific job as Red Air was to Combat Air Patrol (CAP) Tolicha Air Field. Tolicha Air Field is a target airfield out in the western section of the Nellis Ranges. It has a few aircraft hulks on the dirt taxiways and runways, and it is usually a Blue Air target. As my flight approached Tolicha, I came up on Red Air Primary frequency and asked Buzzsaw for the big picture. When AWACS has to provide information to large numbers of fighters, they normally use what we call bull’s-eye control. What this means is that they call a target’s position in relation to a geographical reference. Today we were using a mountain called Quartzite.
When I came up on Red Air Primary, there was a burst of noise as other Red Air flights were calling targets and starting to commit out of their CAPs. Some Red Air fighters got off the ground so late that they skipped the tanker and went straight to their CAP points. These guys were now committing on the “enemy” and executing the Red Air game plan. Our plan was to send about half our force toward the first large formation we detected and disrupt their flow before they could get going. The other half would be held in reserve in a goal-keeping role. Once the first merge occurred, the goalkeepers would commit as two ships to intercept the Blue Air players that got through the first merge.
In between all of the commotion, I heard a few bull’s-eye calls from Buzzsaw that told me that a gorilla had just pushed westbound from Student Gap. A gorilla is a fighter pilot term for a large formation, usually in a close trail formation. Typically a gorilla has a minimum of six jets, arranged in some sort of visual formation with about one to two mile spacing between flights. I couldn’t tell the formation from the bull’s-eye calls, but I knew that it was show time. Student Gap is a saddle in a north-south oriented mountain chain on the eastern border of the Nellis Range Complex. Student Gap is easy to find, so it is frequently used by pilots as a jump-off point when running from the east to the targets in the western part of the range.
Events quickly unfolded as my four ship reached Tolicha Air Field. We did not have time to set up the full counter rotating CAP that I had briefed, so I called an audible. I told my number 3 and 4 man to spin (make a full 360° turn) over Tolicha and listen to Buzzsaw for updates. There was a possibility that the group at Student Gap was just the escort fighters and the fighters carrying bombs had not committed east yet. The whole trick to defending an area on the ground is to find the guys with the bombs and attack them, avoiding the escort fighters altogether. This is not an easy task to accomplish because when AWACS calls targets, you don’t know what kind of fighters are pointing your way. If you don’t go after them, they may be carrying bombs — in fact, a corollary to Murphy’s Law says that if you don’t commit on them, then they will be carrying bombs. The key is to not commit your entire force to the first big enemy formation that is detected. Always keep a few in reserve just in case you rush in there expecting to club a baby seal and end up wrestling a polar bear.
My wingman and I proceeded east and soon had multiple targets on our radar. The radio now filled with kill calls as the first Red Air flights merged with the bandits. We listened for what types of aircraft were involved. We were teamed with F/A-18s as Red Air, and so everybody else was Blue Air. The British Tornado and F-llls flying out of Canon AFB were the guys with the bombs while F-15s flew Blue Air escort. The A-10s usually trailed the big strike packages and flew Close Air Support (CAS) along the Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA). All the tally calls were on F-15s. I didn’t hear a single tally or kill call on a Tornado or a Vark (F-l 11), but by now my two ship was 10 miles from what looked to be another two ship at about 120° of right aspect. We had driven this far so it was time to stick our nose in this one and see for ourselves. When I got to five miles, I picked up a tally on two F-l5s in a line abreast formation. I couldn’t get my Sidewinder to lock on so I pressed in and continued to swing their 3/9 line to get behind them. Just as I got to about 50° of right aspect at 1.5 miles, they picked up a tally and broke into me. With my wingman clearing my 6 o’clock, I rolled out of my turn momentarily to drive to the entry window.
Why did I roll out, you ask? Remember from our offensive BFM discussion that we need turning room to execute a turn of our own and solve the BFM problems created by the bandit. At the point the F-15 started his turn, I did not have enough room to complete my turn so I had to roll out momentarily to get lateral displacement from the bandit and drive to the entry window. If I kept my turn coming, I would just eat up my turning room and pass the F-15 close aboard. My original turn was based on him driving in a straight line. When he turned, I had to lay some offensive BFM on him.
Where was I, oh yeah — with the trailing Eagle at 30° in the HUD and my airspeed at 450 knots, I started a classic offensive BFM engagement. I pulled 8 Gs into the F-15, and he kept his turn coming with his lift vector right on me. His wingman was out in front of him by this time and had gone high. As I fought the low F-15, my wingman called, “Stripped” and engaged the high Eagle who never even saw him. Before I could work my way in for a gun shot, my wingman got an unobserved AIM-9 shot on the high Eagle and called him dead. Meanwhile I got to 3,000 feet on the low man, pulled to lead and got a guns kill before the Eagle driver started his jink. I was now down to 280 knots and felt as vulnerable as a naked man in a sausage factory. It was time to get away from there fast before something bad happened. We were both pointing southeast as the fight ended and needed to get going west. Before turning around to west, though, I put the nose down and accelerated quickly to 450 knots. We then turned west toward Tolicha to reset in the CAP.
Why not turn at 280 knots, you ask? Remember: always turn at corner airspeed whenever you can. You are the most vulnerable in turns. Unless you are engaged defensive, it is usually best to take a few seconds to get back to corner before turning.
This is the phase in the big 50-jet fights when anything can happen. Two big groups had merged together and now there could be jets strung out anywhere along the entire 100 mile by 50 mile air combat arena. If they were uniformly distributed, it would not be a problem. Unfortunately, that’s not what happens. The guys with the bombs go for their targets, and Red Air goes after them. The Blue Air escort tries to help and also ends up close to these same target areas.
In this fight, the group that pushed from Student Gap was a classic feint using all air-to-air F-15s. The Tornados and Varks pushed about two minutes later from a point farther south with a small escort of Eagles. My second element that stayed over Tolicha had picked them up on radar. The strikers were heading for a target array in an area called Gold Flats. My second element had carved up two Tornados before getting engaged by two Eagles. All this was happening as we were heading west. Since we had to pass near Gold Flats on the way to Tolicha, we detected a big fight in that area on our radar and so we committed on this fight. We came in high, and I immediately picked up a tally on two high speed Varks at very low altitude. The sky was actually filled with jets of every description, but all I saw or cared about at the time were the two F-111 is that were in my HUD. I lit the burner to close the gap and quickly accelerated to 750 knots. As I rolled out on the Varks, I noticed that I wasn’t closing very fast. I looked at their airspeed displayed on my radar, and it showed they were smoking along at 650 knots. Jeez Louise, I might not have enough gas to run these guys down.