“Launch!” screamed Rat, seeing a fire flash from under the MiG’s wing. “Launch at our six! It’s a heater.”
“Hang on, Rat.” Morrow held his grip and rolled his Tomcat inverted then pulled back on the stick, jerking both the pilot and RIO violently. Angling down toward the ocean, the F-14 released a steady stream of hot flares. The missile’s heat-seeking warhead tracked, then locked on to the burning magnesium and exploded well behind the Tomcat.
“It missed!”
“Where’d he go? Where is he?” she hollered, rolling her head from side to side. “Damn!”
“He’s in front! Switching to heat. Fox Two! Fox Two!” Morrow yelled. The AIM-9M Sidewinder ripped off his port wing mount and raced after the Fulcrum. The MiG had overshot and was now drifting out in front of his F-14. Morrow quickly released a second then watched as the two missiles exploded into the Iraqi MiG.
“MiG! MiG!” Johnnie yelled as tracers ricocheted off the Tomcat’s right wing then danced across the aircraft’s canopy. “Break left!” Glass shattered and Morrow felt his aircraft shudder as his Tomcat rolled left then rolled inverted out of control. Applying opposite rudder, he leveled his plane and fought with all his strength to keep it in the air.
“We’re hit!”
“Fastball!” she shouted. “I’ve got a warning light on our…” There was a loud bang and Morrow felt his Tomcat shudder again as more rounds from the MiG’s laser-guided 30mm gun tore into his fuselage. Thud… thud… thud they rang out as they walked along his starboard side. Morrow pulled his F-14D into a tight turn, causing the MiG to temporarily lose the Tomcat in his sites. Then the young pilot heard a groan from his backseat.
“Johnnie!” he shouted.
There was no response. “Talk to me, Rat!”
Looking around his Tomcat’s interior, he saw his engine pressure gauge read low. A red warning light flashed on his starboard engine. Morrow opened the tactical frequency and called to his lead. “Lobo, get this guy off me. I’ve lost an engine.”
“We’re on him, Fastball. He’s locked. Hold on!”
At that instant, he heard his radar warning device signal a lock. Now he was in trouble. The next sound would be a launch warning. If Lobo would just—
“Fox One on the MiG, break right. Two. Now!” he heard over his headset. Morrow complied and dove toward the ocean, now only a few thousand feet below. He prayed his damaged Tomcat would hold together. Looking back over his shoulder, he caught a glimpse of the Iranian MiG seconds before Lobo’s Sparrow slammed into the Fulcrum’s left fuselage and exploded. The MiG wobbled, then veered off toward the coast trailing black smoke.
“Eagle, Dixie Flight committing on the eastern group.” Music confirmed the intercept called from the E-2C. Yankee Flight consisting of the remaining four F/A-18s, were tackling the westernmost group. The E-2 Controller guessed that group was made up of Su-22 Fitters and probably carried a shorter-ranged weapon than the Floggers.
“Floggers at forty and closing. Targeting western group. Two, target eastern group.”
“Copy.”
Music completed his switchology then hooked and designated the last MiG-23 in his formation before passing the dot to his pilot. The two Tomcats carried just enough AIM-54C between them to stop the entire raid. That is, if all worked properly. If not, the Hornets would clean up with their AIM-120s.
“Fox Three on lead MiG, angels seven, eastern group,” Bird Dog called the first shot, then “Fox Three on—”
“Bandits! Tally, four o’clock low. They’re climbing to us.”
“Can you make them?”
“Damn small. Look like F-5s.”
“Dixie Flight, One, Tally four F-5s at four o’clock,” Music called. “Range seven miles. Three and Four, stay after the strikers.”
“Three, copy.” The two Hornets banked northeast and slid into burners, speeding toward the approaching MiG- 23s.
Deedle deedle deedle rang the RWR. “I’ve got a spike!” The F-5’s APQ-159 radar was sorting the American formation. Bird Dog was wide to the right and his wingman was low off his port.
“Missile inbound.” Bird Dog saw its plum of smoke.
Tomcat 104
Rat leaned forward in her seat fighting the pain in her arm and chest. It was a tremendous pain unlike anything she had ever experienced. She looked down at her right arm, which was covered with blood and twitching. Shrapnel from the MiG had slammed into her right elbow and a bone protruded through her flight suit. She felt dizzy and sick. For a moment, she looked up at the shattered glass in her cockpit. Cold air was rushing everywhere around her. Most of her controls were smashed.
“Brad,” she spoke in a faint voice. “It hurts… hurts real bad.”
“Hold on, Johnnie. We’re heading back to the boat. Hang on!”
He heard a few faint murmurs followed by a throaty cough.
“I’m not going home, Brad,” she forced her words. “I’m so cold….”
Her head bobbed again and her vision blurred. This is it. It’s over. In the last seconds before blackness closed in. In a split second, she thought of her husband and her daughter.
Two of the Iranian F-5s detected the Hornets breaking for the Floggers and disengaged the Tomcats, leaving a classic 2v2 engagement. But two still bore down on Bird Dog and his wing. The Iranian Sparrows fired by the F-5s had just missed both Tomcats, resulting in the two aircraft having become separated. Bird Dog was to the north and his wing was heading due south, swinging out to meet one of the F-5s that appeared to be setting up a “hook.”
“He’s closing fast, Music. Coming down our port side low.”
“I’ve got him locked. Let’s keep him guessing.” Music knew that the closure was too extreme for a Sparrow shot, but also knew that the tone over the F-5 driver’s headset would make him nervous and might cause him to make a fatal mistake.
ZOOM! Bird Dog’s head snapped back to his left as the jet whizzed by and started a turn into him.
“Got ’em!” Music hollered. “Coming around right. He’s climbing some.”
Bird Dog started a hard high-G left turn, then nosed up about ten degrees before dropping his nose down below the horizon. “Keep your eye on him!” If this worked, the two fighters would end up head-to-head. It was a classic two-circle fight where both fighters executed hard lead turns into one another at the merge. The trick was who could bring his nose around faster to place a heat-seeker on the other. Bird Dog was gambling that he would emerge first. But if he didn’t, his second bet was that the F-5s pilot, like many American pilots in the early days of Vietnam War, didn’t fully understand his missile’s envelope. In either case, Bird Dog would gun him with his superior all-aspect AIM-9M Sidewinder.
“Tally” called Bird Dog. “Switching to heat.” The F-5 was still pulling out of its turn when Bird Dog’s Tomcat nosed around. The warble of the Sidewinder’s seeker screamed in his headset, meaning a good lock. “Fox Two on the northern F-5.”
The missile loosed from the rail seconds before one sprang from the bottom of the F-5. Both raced after each other’s host, snaking across the sky. Bird Dog was first to react, jinking his Tomcat left, than right, while his RIO popped streams of phosphorous flares.