“WHAT ARE YOU ALL DOINGGGG?” Chen asked, leaning on the counter in the office. “What is going on… you are in here instead of working. Whatt… are YOU doing?” Chen wiped his mouth on his uniform sleeve.
The room full of people stared at him, and no one uttered a word. The silence in the room was deafening, and they were both embarrassed for him, in addition to scared to tell him what they all knew. The Devil Dragon was overdue.
“CHIEF! COME HERE!” Chen yelled, wiping his brow with a white handkerchief.
“Yes, sir,” the Chief of Maintenance said quietly.
“Why are you not working on the DEVIL DRAGON?” Chen roared.
The Chief maintained his silence for a brief few moments, hiding, then spoke up. “General. Devil Dragon is not here,” the Chief replied.
“She is IN THE HANGAR!”
“No, sir. Devil Dragon had not arrived.”
“What do you MEAN Devil Dragon is not here? Why NOT?” Chen slurred loudly.
“They have not landed yet, sir. Not checked in. No calls. Nothing. She has missed her landing time.”
Chen took a deep breath and stormed off to his left, past the counter of binders and papers. He angrily put his arm up on the counter and rapidly slid them off to the floor. They slammed down hard with a loud boom, and when the binders hit the metal filing cabinet, it vibrated, sounding like rolling thunder. Lieutenant General He Chen was boiling mad, and he was just getting started.
Chen stormed out of the office and kicked open the door to the hangar with his foot, nearly losing his balance. The metal door swung out all the way through its hinges, and lodged in the open permanently. He wanted to see the empty aircraft hangar for himself. He barged through the doorway, and was nearly blinded from the bright white lights and shiny white glossy hangar floor. Chen put his hand up to protect his eyes, but only for a moment. The hangar doors were slightly open, enough for people to walk through, in addition to fresh air blowing into the empty hangar. Chen stumbled in, and saw for himself, there was no jet. He took some slow steps into the massive empty room and stopped. There were no maintenance crews. No flurry of activity. No mechanics working….no avionics technicians deep inside the engine compartment. No one was working on the most modern jet in Chinese history because she wasn’t there. No Devil Dragon.
Sitting alone in the center of the hangar were four, black Husky 16-drawer Tool Chest and Cabinet sets, the heavy-duty welded steel construction ones that had wheels for free maneuverability around work sites. Many of the tools were specially made for the titanium aircraft skin, and were intricate in detail and use. Each Husky Chest was five feet in height, could hold 1,200 pounds of aircraft parts and tools, and could be rolled on and off the Y-3 easily for the Devil Dragon mission. Chen slowly stumbled over to the tool chest closest to the hangar doors, and leaned on the small tool chest counter. He looked down in one of the open drawers, then slammed it shut in fury. The tools sliding around in the drawer, in addition to the drawer hitting the cabinet, echoed loudly in the empty hanger.
He stumbled away from that toolbox, and went to next closest another one with a single drawer open. “What the hell is going on around here?” Chen slowly walked over, grabbed a heavy duty ratchet, and turned around to walk towards the open doors, stopping short of the opening leading out to the ramp.
Staring out into the early morning sunrise and pink sky, then down at the floor, he put his arms in the air, putting his head back towards the heavens. It was as quiet as an airport could ever be, with not a single aircraft flying that moment. Just about the entire ground crew was watching him from behind, lined up quietly watching the agony, not daring to make a sound. Chen smashed the ratchet tool down on the tarmac as hard as he could, breaking it instantly, with the silver metal pieces sliding quickly across the hard, flat surface in all directions. The sound was piercing.
“Lee. Lee. LEE. LEEEEE! LEEEEEEEEEEEE! LEEEEEeeeeee!” Chen yelled as loud as possible, his chubby red face filling up in disturbing rage. His deep pitched scream was so penetrating and intense that it disturbed the birds living in the hangar ceiling, and they flew out of their nests in force. “LLEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
The bald eagle, living in her nest on top of the light pole in front of the hangar, ate her newly captured rabbit and stared down below at the activity. Her chicks, oblivious to the activity below, began eating from their mother’s pale yellow beak. Chen, fully engulfed with complete indignation and wrath, fell onto both his knees, and put his face in his hands.
“Wu, let’s get your descent checklists going and get ready to land. Only about 40 minutes until landing, or less, and we need to get lower,” Ford said.
Wu was breathing heavier now, in great pain between his lower back and stomach, chest and ribs from his lungs, and desperately wanted some pain meds. “Ford,” he said slowly, “checklists on the right in book. You… you do it. You can land her, Ford.”
“Okay, Wu. I’ll get it. Take a look outside. Gorgeous sunrise, warm, orange sky, and another beautiful day. Look outside, Wu, it’s…”
FUEL LOW. FUEL LOW. FUEL LOW. WHOOP. WHOOP. WHOOP. PING. PING. PING.
Ford muted the warnings and looked in the checklists. He recognized that most of what he saw was the same, no matter what language or aircraft. More Chinese, he said. Luckily, Ford could read and speak Mandarin from growing up in China, and could translate the checklists again. He also had with him on his phone all the identification and frequencies required to land on the Lincoln, so he tuned and ID’d the tactical air navigation (TACAN) on Channel 72Y. It provided him the exact distance to the ship, along with a bearing.
“Wu, Lincoln is 171 degrees magnetic at 176 miles.” Hope we make this, Ford thought as he looked at the fuel state. “I’m going to tune in the Instrument Carrier Landing System, the ICLS. It’ll help us land on the ship, okay, buddy?” Ford explained.
Wu was laughing. “Ford, you’re… talking… Greek. Explain what….what you’re talking about,” Wu said. His breathing was awful.
“It’s just like the ILS, the instrument landing system, at the runway, but it’s for the ship. When I flew F-18 Hornets, we had it and it was a huge help to get on board. Gives us heading and descent guidance.”
The ICLS is just like the civilian instrument landing system, or ILS, and gives flight crews an all-weather instrument approach guidance from the carrier to the aircraft. The ICLS uses the AN/SPN-41A, which has separate transmitters for azimuth and elevation. The azimuth transmitter is at the front of the ship, slightly below the centerline of the landing area. The elevation transmitter is above the flight deck, behind the island. The aircraft receiver displays the angular information on a crosshair indicator, which the Devil Dragon has for runway landings. The vertical needle of the display corresponds to azimuth while the horizontal needle corresponds to elevation, or glideslope.
“Wu, can you calculate a landing weight and airspeed for us? Can you do that?” Ford asked.
“Jojo… rising.”
Ford had his head down, looking at his Notes section in his smart phone. He tuned the radios as he was going to use them, punching in Approach and Tower, and wanted to monitor them to see who was in the area. He knew VFA-34, an F-18C squadron known as the "Blue Blasters”, using the callsign JOKER was embedded on the ship, but didn’t hear anyone chatting on the frequency. Ford didn’t transmit anything either, but kept it open for monitoring.