And now our frustrated aerial warrior had to turn his fanny to the fire and successfully avoid on the way out all the hazards he had penetrated on the way in.
What the attack pilot desperately needed was a missile he could shoot at the ship, Jake concluded, the farther away the better. Alas, the U. S. Navy’s antiship missiles were still in the development stage, victims of Vietnam penny pinching, so the attack crews would have to make do with what they had. What they had were some short-range guided missiles like Bullpup, which unfortunately carried only a 250-pound warhead — enough to cripple a warship but not to sink it.
If the weather was good enough, the attacking planes could use laser-guided bombs, preferably two-thousand pounders. Although these weapons were unpowered, the laser seeker and guidance assembly on the nose of the weapon could steer it into the target if the attack pilot made a reasonably accurate delivery, and if the spot of laser light that the guidance system was seeking was indeed on the target. The weak point of the system was the beam of laser light, which was scattered by visible moisture in the air. Alas, over the ocean the sky was often cloudy.
With or without laser-guided bombs, the attackers were going to have to penetrate the enemy ship’s radar-directed defenses. Here was where the EA-6B came in. The electronic warfare (EW) plane could shield the attack force electronically if it were in the middle of it or placed at the proper angle to the attack axis.
What about overloading the enemy’s defenses with planes? Perhaps a coordinated attack with as many planes as we can launch, saturating the enemy’s defenses with targets, one prays too many targets. Some would inevitably get through.
And our coordinated attack should come in high and low at the same time. Say A-6s at a hundred feet and A-7s and F-4s diving in from thirty thousand.
Jake made notes. The EA-6 crews had a lot of ideas, most of which Jake thought excellent. When he said his good-bye two hours after he came, he shook hands all around.
Back in his stateroom staring at his notes, Jake wondered what a war with the Soviets would be like. An exchange of intercontinental ballistic missiles would make for a loud, almighty short war, but Jake didn’t think there would be much reason for the surviving warships to try to sink one another. Without countries to go back to, the sailors and the ships were all doomed anyway. Could there be a war without nuclear weapons, in 1973?
Really, when one is contemplating the end of civilization the whole problem becomes fantastic, something out of a sweaty nightmare. Could sane men push the button, thereby destroying themselves, their nations, most of the human race? He got bogged down at this point. The politicians would have to figure it out.
One thing he knew for sure — if there was a war without a nuclear Armageddon, the American admirals would go for the Soviet ships like bulldogs after raw meat.
It wouldn’t be easy. He knew well that a strike on a single ship would be a fluke, an ambush of a straggler. Like every other navy, the Soviets would arrange their ships in groups for mutual support. Any attack would have to be against a task force.
Staring at his notes on detection ranges, missile and flak envelopes, Jake could envision how it would be. The ships would be rippling off missiles — the sky would be full of Mach 3 telephone poles. If that weren’t enough, Soviet warships were covered with antiaircraft guns. American ships these days didn’t have many, but then the Soviet Navy had no aircraft carriers to launch strikes against them. The flak from the Soviet ships would be fierce, would literally be a steel curtain the attacking planes would have to fly through.
An Alpha strike — everything the ship could launch, coming in high and low and in the middle, shielded by EA-6B Prowlers and coordinated as well as possible by an E-2 Hawkeye orbiting safely out of range a hundred miles away — that was the answer he would give Colonel Haldane.
Wouldn’t ever happen, of course. America and Russia weren’t about to fight a war. Planning an attack on a Soviet task force was just another peacetime military what-if exercise. Yet if it did happen, few of those planes would survive. And of those crews who successfully penetrated the cordon of missiles and flak, only the most fiercely determined would successfully drive the thrust home. For Jake Grafton knew that it was neither ships nor airplanes that won battles, but men.
Were there men like that aboard this ship? By reputation Flap Le Beau was one, but were there any more?
Disgusted with the whole problem, he began to think of home. He had visited his parents on their farm in southwestern Virginia this spring. In May, with the leaves on the trees coming out, the grass in the meadows growing green and tender, the cows nursing new-born calves.
His parents had been so glad to see him. Dad, well, his pride in his son had been visible, tangible. And Mother, smiling through her tears at her man-son come home.
He had helped his father with the cattle, once again felt the morning chill and smelled the aroma of warm bovine bodies, manure, sweet hay…Just the memory of it made him shiver here in his small stateroom aboard this giant steel ship. The dew in the grass that recorded every step, the sun slanting up over the low ridges and shining into the barn, his father’s voice as he talked to the cattle, reassuring, steady…all of it came flooding back.
Why are you here, aboard this steel ship on this wilderness of ocean, worried about Russian flak and missiles, contemplating the ultimate obscenity? Why aren’t you there, where you grew up, feeling the warmth of the sun on your back and helping your father in the timeless rituals that ensure life will go on, and on…as God intended? Why aren’t you there to help your mother in her old age? Answer me that, Jake Grafton. You never hated the farm as your elder brother did — you loved it. Loved everything about it. Your parents — you love them. You are of them and they are of you. Why are you here?
Why?
Life aboard ship quickly assumed its natural rhythm, which was the rhythm dictated by two hundred years of naval tradition and regulations. Everyone worked, meals were served, the ship’s laundry ran full blast, and every afternoon at precisely 13:30 the PA system came to life and announced a general quarters drill. “This is a drill, this is a drill. General quarters, general quarters. All hands man your battle stations. Go up and forward on the starboard side and down and aft on the port side. General quarters.”
The aviators’ battle stations were their ready rooms. While the damage control parties fought mock fires and coped with flooding, nuclear, chemical and biological attack, the aviators took NATOPS exams, listened to lectures, and generally bored one another. It was during these drills that Jake gave his lectures on shipboard operations. In addition to the material in the CV NATOPS, he added every tip he could recall from his two previous combat cruises. The lectures went well, he thought. The Marines were attentive and asked good questions. To his amazement, he found he actually enjoyed standing in front of the room and talking about his passion, flying.
After secure from general quarters the officers scattered to squadron spaces throughout the ship to do paperwork, to which there was no end in this life. The evening of the second day at sea Jake found an opportunity to discuss his Soviet ship project with the skipper, Colonel Haldane, who knew as much about the subject as Jake did. After they had spent an hour going over the problem, the colonel took him to the air wing spaces to meet the air wing ops officer, a lieutenant commander. Here the subject was aired again. The upshot of it was that Jake was assigned to help Wing Ops put together realistic exercises for the ship’s air wing.