The whole thing was just too nutty. What the hell was out there?
USS MIDWAY
On the moonlit deck, Les and the plane captain checked the F-18 Hornet over. No leaks, no wrenches left in the intakes, none of the little things that could kill a pilot. No cracks on the tires or wings. The two satisfied, Les confidently climbed the ladder and slid into the cockpit.
He ran through the checklist, a handwritten set of notes on a piece of cardboard that he kept on his knees. He pressed the correct buttons for the navigation system, the radio, and on down the line… Then the deck crew gave him the all-clear. He fired up the engines, left to right. With the engines at idle, he waited for the crew to clear the parking chains and chocks. A young sailor in yellow — A Yellow Shirt — directed him by flashlight to the launch spot on Number One catapult. The Blue Shirts, complete with blue wands, scanned the F-18s control surfaces.
On the catapult, the hook-up man attached the launching bar on the nose gear into the shuttle. Then a Green Shirt took over and checked the holdback bar and its attached bolt, which would let loose only once the F-18 left the deck.
The on-deck speakers aboard USS Midway blared to life. “LAUNCH ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE AND ZULU TWO-FOUR-FOUR! LAUNCH ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE AND ZULU TWO-FOUR-FOUR!”
Green flashlight in right hand and red flashlight in left hand, the catapult officer directed Les. The officer zig-zagged the green light side to side. Les advanced the throttles to full. The Hornet’s power wrenched against the holdback. While he pressed on the rudder pedals, the Blue Shirts checked to see that the rudders operated properly left to right.
Les watched for the catapult officer to move the green flashlight down, the signal for the pilot to push the throttles beyond the military range and onto afterburner. The light went down. Les lit the afterburners. The Hornet wrenched even more against the holdback. The hook-up man performed a final check on the launching bar and bolt. It was his job to do the final crawl under the aircraft before launching. He had a very dangerous assignment. If the bar wasn’t attached properly, he could be run over by the aircraft. If he so much as moved the wrong way after crawling out, he could be sucked into the engine intake.
The scream of the full-throttled engines in his ears, Les saluted the catapult officer, then prepared himself. He glanced to his left at Runsted in his own F-18 on the other catapult. The mighty sound of four powerful engines could be heard for miles on the open sea. The two unarmed Hornets had been modified on Guam, each carrying an AAS-38 forward-looking infra-red pod on the port side, and a Martin-Marietta Laser Spot Tracker/Strike Camera on the starboard side, on the two positions otherwise occupied by Sparrow missiles.
Les looked up to his right, at the high, dimly lit superstructure. Inside was the Air Boss with his Flyco staff at the Flying Control Position. Below the superstructure, in the Goofer’s Gallery walkway, where one could watch the deck proceedings in safety, were several deck crewmen dressed in their appropriate colored jackets. Only minutes before the yellow- and green-coated crewmen had been busy preparing Runsted and Les for the launch, once the Hornets had been brought up from below the elevators and spotted on the catapults. Now, these crewmen were squatting in the safety area between the two catapults. At the thumbs-up signal of the hook-up man, Les switched on his red and green navigation lights, which disclosed to all that he was ready.
The deck island lights turned green. Below deck, high-pressure steam built up in the steam receiver. The catapult fire button was pressed. The launch valves that regulated the thrust of the catapult with the exact amount of steam for Les’s F-18 were opened.
The launch pushed Les’s head back into his seat. The G-forces left him dizzy for a split second, until he was clear of the deck. He had just been propelled from zero to one hundred and thirty-five miles per hour in under two seconds. He remembered to keep his chin slightly down so that he could read the instruments and react in an emergency. Over the water, his wings grabbed the night air. He brought the nose up a few degrees, then the wheels and flaps up. RPM, fuel, oil pressure, hydraulics, registered normal. No surprise emergency lights on the right and left warning panels.
“BULLDOG, ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE AIRBORNE.”
“ROGER ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE. SWITCH TO CHANNEL TEN.”
“WILCO,” Les replied.
The aircraft climbed rapidly. He leveled off at 2,000 feet.
“BULLDOG TO ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE. TARGET ON HEADING THREE-FOUR-NINE. ANGELS THREE. ONE-NINETY KNOTS. RANGE — TWELVE MILES.”
“ROGER BULLDOG. ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE OVER.”
Launched a few seconds after Les, Runsted came up off Les’s starboard wing, some 100 feet away.
“ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE, ZULU TWO-FOUR-FOUR READY FOR THE HUNT. ARE WE LOOKING FOR A UFO, HULK?”
“QUIET,” Les barked. “SPREAD OUT TO 300 YARDS. CLIMB TO ANGELS THREE. WE’RE ALMOST ON THE TARGET.”
“ROGER, ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE.”
Through scattered cloud, Les was soon closing in on four red-hot exhausts. He lightly punched the radio transmitter. “ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE TO BULLDOG. COMING UP ON BOGIE’S SIX.”
With the aid of a camera connected to the radar, the Hornet’s FLIR recorded for Les a positive identification six miles from the bogie, even before a visual was made. By selecting a 12x12 degree field of view on the throttle, a clear picture at night burned onto the radar display, the unmistakable outline of a four-engine aircraft. He closed down the field of view to 3x3 degree, an image magnification of four times. He recognized the aircraft immediately. He had seen pictures of the same type in his father’s World War II album. A Boeing B-29 Superfortress. It had to be Fifi.
But why out here, this far from Guam? This — the B-29 — was the source of all the trouble?
“ZULU TWO-FOUR-FOUR TO ZULU TWO-FOUR-THREE. SEE WHAT I SEE? WHAT GOES ON HERE? THIS SOME KIND OF JOKE? OVER.”
“I DON’T KNOW. LET’S GET CLOSER. EASE UP AT 500 YARDS.”
“ROGER.”
At 500 yards away, the pilots brought back the throttles to a slow 195 knots, Les off the B-29s tail at eight o’clock level, Runsted at four o’clock low.
But before they could make radio contact with the target, they saw tracers in the night.
“GEEZ, HULK, THE CRAZY GUYS ARE SHOOTING AT ME! LOOK AT THE TRACERS. DAMN, THEY GOT GUNS ABOARD!”
“BREAK! BREAK!” Les replied. “I’LL GO IN.”
Runsted shoved the throttles forward and quickly broke down and away, his afterburners blazing red-orange in the night. In seconds, he was far out of range, only a speck. Les pushed on his throttles and shot the fighter past the bomber’s port wing, missing by 100 feet, all the time keeping a heavy thumb on the column’s photo button.
INSIDE THE B-29
“COMMANDER TO TAIL GUNNER. ANY MORE ACTION OUT THERE?” the pilot asked over the intercom.
“NO, SIR.”
“DON’T BE SO TRIGGER-HAPPY.”
“I DIDN’T GET A REAL GOOD LOOK AT THEM, COMMANDER. WHEN THEY CAME PAST I THOUGHT THEY WERE BAKA BOMBS AT FIRST. THEN THEY BURST AWAY AT ONE HELL OF A SPEED, LIKE THEIR ENGINES WERE ON FIRE.”
The commander hit the intercom again. “COMMANDER TO CREW. GET A HOLD OF YOURSELVES. WE CAN’T FOUL UP ON THIS. STOP AND THINK. THERE’S NOTHING BUT OCEAN OUT HERE.”
“BUT I KNOW WHAT I SAW, SIR,” the tail gunner pleaded.
The co-pilot looked over. “I saw something, too,” he said.
The commander frowned. “NAVIGATOR?”