The CAP launched first, as planned.
Mary Hauser’s GCI radar detected them when they climbed above fifteen hundred feet. She warned the 45th of the inbound bandits and lowered the elevation angle of her search antenna, hunting for bandits on the deck. Her low-altitude coverage was very poor at that long range but improved closer to the radar head. A momentary flicker at one hundred ten miles caught her eye. She hit the sequence of switches that allowed her IFF to query Soviet transponders, and the screen lit up with five responses. “I can’t believe it,” she said aloud. “They won’t turn off their IFF. Just like last time.” Again she sent a warning to the 45th.
Jack sat next to Steve Farrell watching the board plotters post the MiG warnings. “I’m betting there’s more than five on the deck,” Jack said. “GCI’s radar will get skin paints when they’re inside eighty miles. Don’t be suckered into going after the CAP.”
Waters nodded and scrambled sixteen of his air-defense craft onto the runway, holding six in their bunkers. The first eight taxied onto the Active and held, waiting for a release from the Command Post, while the second group of eight held on the taxiway.
Mary’s radar started picking up skin paints at ninety-two miles on the MiGs ingressing at low level. They’re not that low, she told herself, and again warned the 45th.
The command post’s frequency came alive, launching the waiting Phantoms, committing them against the bandits that were on the deck. Jack sat in the command post listening to the radio traffic and wondering if he could follow the directions he had given the crews: make them jettison their bombs and run like hell, don’t hang around trying for a kill.
It was against everything they’d been trained for. The only thing he was grateful for was that he couldn’t hear what they were calling him…
The MiG pilot leading the attackers on the deck saw his radar-warning receiver come to life and scanned the sky at twelve o’clock high, expecting to see the distinctive smoke trails of Phantoms high above them. The warning tone in his headset became louder, indicating the threat was closing in. He momentarily froze when he saw two Phantoms swinging in on him from his left eight-o’clock position and another two doing the same at his right two o’clock position. And they were all below him… it was a classic low-altitude intercept that had been turned into a pincers maneuver…
The lead Phantom pilot keyed his radio, “Tallyho, the fox,” he called out, telling his flight the MiGs were carrying bombs, the ones they were after. The Flogger pilots, not expecting American low-level engagement, weren’t able to counterturn or evade a fighter below two thousand feet. So they did the only thing they knew: jettison their bombs and make level turns back to base as the Phantoms shot through.
Five of the Phantoms managed to launch Sidewinders as they made one turn onto the MiGs, and three of the missiles traced their characteristic sideways guidance pattern, like a Sidewinder rattlesnake, through the sky to a target. One F-4 squeezed off a snap gunshot when he turned onto a Flogger, raking the fuselage and sending the MiG tumbling into the sea. For most of the Phantoms it was a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn through the Floggers’ formation before they disengaged and ran for home. And because the Floggers had jettisoned their loads, it was all “one pass, haul ass” for the F-4s.
The Phantoms reformed into elements of two as they disengaged, the backseaters twisting in their seats, looking for the Floggers they knew were still out there. Mary monitored them as they ran from the bandits and assigned hard recovery altitudes: once inside a five-nautical-mile ring around the base the Phantoms would not leave their assigned altitude until cleared to land by the tower. The Rapier crews also copied the hard altitudes Mary was assigning to the Phantoms and dialed their IFF interrogators to the codes the F-4s would be squawking on recovery.
They were turning the base into the “flak trap” Jack had planned…
The MiGs flying CAP were not aware of the Phantoms until their comrades started yelling over the radio. Then they pushed over and headed for the engagement that was eight miles away and thirty thousand feet below them, not happy about engaging in a dogfight on the deck. When the MiG pilots saw the Americans “running away,” four of them, sensing an easy kill, chased after the Phantoms. With the F-4s at known altitudes and their IFF transponders squawking the right codes, it was easy for the Rapier crews to break out the Floggers as they were lured into range. The Firefly radar operator of the Rapier battery at the north end of the runway used the track-while-scan mode to lock onto the leading MiG while placing his secondary-target symbol on the following Flogger. The operator hit the fire-control button and sent two missiles off the round turret toward the MiG, then immediately transitioned to the second target and rapid-fired two more missiles.
Both MiGs died within eight seconds of each other.
The other two Floggers lost their enthusiasm, lit their afterburners, dropped down onto the deck and ran for home. The tail-end MiG hugged the water at fifty feet and accelerated to 550 knots, the lowest and fastest the pilot had ever flown, but the Rapier battery at the south end of the runway tracked him down onto the deck and fired. The missiles found their target.
Nineteen minutes after launching, the first Phantom touched down and taxied rapidly back into its bunker to be refueled and rearmed for its next mission.
The squares on the board that tracked aircraft launch and recovery rapidly filled up, and there were no open spaces to indicate a plane missing. Waters sank back into his chair, closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He turned to Farrell and Jack. “Judging by the radio chatter, it was a turkey shoot.” There was no elation or pride in his voice, it was a simple statement of fact. The PSI’s best pilots had led the first attack and attrition had reduced their ranks.
Nesbit caught Waters’ attention and pointed to the transient aircraft board. He had just grease-penciled in the ETA for another C-130 that was five hours out. “We might get out of this one yet,” Waters said as he scanned the situation plot board, noting the position of the ships that were heading directly at the base, trying to estimate when they would be offshore. Such stuff wasn’t his game.
“I’d like to know what happened to C.J.,” he now said, more to himself than to the waiting Sergeant Nesbit.
“There’s a chance the PSI might have picked him up… ”
The sergeant deftly typed a series of code words into the classified command communications set in his charge, waited a few moments, then typed in a series of instructions. A voice came over the transmitter, raspy and broken but understandable. “Hey, Reno, this is Nes, how do you copy?” The answering voice from the Watch Center came through much better. “Do me a favor, check with the analysts on the floor and see if they’ve got anything on a Major Charles Justin Conlan. We lost him today and think he might have been picked up by the PSI.” The sergeant broke the transmission and turned in his seat, “Colonel, what you saw was a test of the voice circuits of the command net, only this one didn’t get monitored or recorded.”
Nesbit had to wait thirty minutes before the printer came to life and spit out that a message from the trawler off Ras Assanya had been intercepted. When Nesbit read it he wished he’d never asked. He ripped off the sheet of paper and handed it to Waters.