“Rog, Otter, check your gear for interference.”
“You’re OK. We’re going to climb a little higher here.” As busy as you may be, it is impossible to keep the mind’s artist from painting a picture of the game of hide-and-seek you know so well is going on in some other quadrant.
Our hunters were doing the same thing, and while they were not SAM-saturated, it was apparent that they had plenty of action. “Laredo, you got any guns>at twelve o’clock?”
“Rog, ah, four’s got guns. Four o’clock along the Ridge.”
“Three same.”
“Laredo’s got guns at nine, Phu Tho area.” That pretty well sealed the area from both sides and dispelled any doubt that they were looking at us from both sides of our ingress route.
Anybody’s problem becomes everybody’s problem about this time and the announcement “Three, it’s siphoning again” alerted us to the fact that a balky tank or a set of fuel control valves was giving one of our troops a problem. No sweat on that for right now. It was not the kind of problem that would break up a flight and leave us out of balance. Even one set of eyes or one unprotected flank of a flight would have been bad news at this point, to say nothing of the problems to be faced by the stragglers who might have to drop from the mutual protection of the force in the event of mechanical abort.
“OK, let me know when it stops.” Good comment. Worrying won’t fix it anyway.
“Wonder—this is Stewart. Clear down and behind.” Amazing how it all fits into the puzzle and how the calls tell you of actions you don’t see. The escorts and the support guys were together and were clearing each other from Migs and SAMs as they patrolled on the fringes of the action.
The. mind was brought quickly from the fringe to the center with “And—Laredo has a contact—well be staying low. SAMs up.”
“Pintail two has a three-ringer at about two o’clock,” brought it about as close to home as it could get. They were looking right down our horn, but Don wasn’t sure he had heard correctly.
“Say again.”
“Pintail two has a three-ringer at two o’clock.” He heard right the first time.
“Roger. Pintail—Laredo. You under the stuff or on top?”
“Roger, we’re on top.”
The SAM activity caused all the leaders to recheck their charges and their position and the support boss called to his escort, “Stewart—this is Nash. How many chickens you got?” He couldn’t afford to get those sweptwing escorts mixed up with any Soviet-built types who might have wandered into the sky he was covering.
“I got four.”
“OK, we’re going to try and stay nice and close today.”
What a beautiful way to say, Get up here where you belong and sharpen up that formation, without being nasty to the escort you must depend upon.
“Pintail, lead steer eight degrees left.” I had to keep Don on course. “Steady on, the readout is three zero.” He was headed for the spot we wanted, and now had only 30 miles to go. You could already tell that the target weather was stinking.
“OK, Elmo one has negative Doppler.”
At least Don’s gear had quit far enough out so that I had plenty of time to recheck all the indications and establish a smooth entry, but Elmo, coming up behind us, found himself without the proper steering gear and had to switch responsibility in a hurry. It would be sheer ecstasy to have a navigational support manager who resists progress riding along in a two-seater at a time like that so he could bite holes in the seat and see how important the little things that make a fighter go can become.
“Rog, Elmo three here, thirty right.” Good thing he had recognized the failure and called when he did as the size of the correction indicated that he had already passed his turn point.
As we thundered down the Ridge, we accelerated even with that big ugly bombload under us, moving and looking, and the support guy announced, “Stewart is at thirty-six thousand.” I thought that must be a comfortable place to be, especially with another flight covering your rear end.
Then Laredo updated the SAM picture with “Laredo’s got a high indication,” and I changed my mind and decided I would not care to be sitting up there waiting to see if SAM could accelerate all the way out to the point that I could not see him as he reached for me. Those guys earned their money.
“Four o’clock” pointed to the SAM’s location and then the friendly supporters got the talking disease and began to garbage up the air just when we needed it clear.
“Rog, I’m at thirty-three.”
“Laredo’s got another high one at eleven o’clock.” This was vital information that needed to get through.
“Six two, are we bothering you, Bill?” I didn’t know who in hell Bill was, but they were sure bothering me, and we were at the point where the steering had to be perfect.
“Pintail, steer four degrees right.” Don responded with a precise 4-degree correction which at 600 knots is no small feat, and I knew he was receiving my calls.
“High threat indication—and he’s going down—four five .say again.”
Shut up, you idiot, is all I could think, but the old mouth worked better than the brain for a change, and I confirmed Don’s turn with “Steady on.”
We were quite close in and there was nothing resembling a break in the clouds. I would rather face the guns I can see than cruise along in anticipation of what I can’t see underneath me. The clouds up there are sort of a dirty gray color at best. They looked downright ominous that day, and each SAM call made each of us sit a bit lighter in the seat.
“And Laredo’s proceeding south of the Red down towards the Black. It’s still solid.”
“Roger.” We didn’t have much further to go now.
“Stewart, you on?”
I guess he was; I hadn’t heard much other than support chatter. “Stewart going north, twenty degrees.”
“Stewart, got a two and a half ringer at two o’clock.”
“Laredo, keep it down. SAM activity at eleven o’clock. OK, Laredo, let’s go right here. Keep him on the nose.”
“Four five, you call a turn?”
“Ah, Rog, zero one, two. You make the calls and Til turn with you.”
“Contact is back up, Laredo.” Those two had a running battle for the air and I so wanted Laredo to win that I would have gladly throttled our supporters if I could have reached them.
“Pintail, one zero to the right.” That was the final correction, and if we had been able to do so, that was the time we would have gone to work in earnest and would have been rolling over the top to face the guns and put the bombs on target.
“Rog, Pintail’s following your Doppler. I’m over the edge of the area and it’s definitely not open.” Don had filled the square necessary to announce his decision.
I helped him with “Yeah, I agree, it looks like a loser to me. I concur and would say negative on the whole works for Pintail and all the rest of the flights.”
Don executed the abort with “Pintail here, we’re coming out, coming out. Left one eighty.” Back down the line of flight leaders the call was echoed and each of the four-shippers swung to a preplanned divergent course to establish the necessary separation between the low-flying, fast-moving flight as everyone moved without delay to get someplace other than on top of that gray blanket covering the active defenses.
Laredo did his best to keep us advised, but continued to have trouble getting through. “Contact is back up, eleven o’clock, high indication.”
“Ahh, Pintail, ah—this is Nash four five. What are your intentions?”
A proper reply would have been to tell him that I was going to talk to him about radio discipline when we got back on the ground, but Don confined himself to “Roger, withdrawing.”