It took four complete turns and almost a thousand meters’ altitude before Stoica could regain control. The threat scope still showed three enemy fighters out there — he had tagged only one. The spin recovery routine had sapped almost all his airspeed, so he had no choice but to stay straight and level until airspeed built back up.
The enemy fighters didn’t waste time — they started in after him again, rolling in behind him in the blink of an eye. Stoica immediately turned left, staying level until his airspeed built up enough, then raised his nose and aimed for the first fighter, waiting until it presented itself. He knew he couldn’t stay like this long, so he fired one missile, acquired a second fighter, fired another missile nose-to-nose, then veered right and dove before he stalled out again.
Stoica knew he had used all of his pylon-mounted missiles, so it was time to jettison the empty pylons. Just in time — once they were gone, they’d regain their stealth profile, and it sure would help his chances of survival if the enemy couldn’t see him. He leveled off. The three enemy fighters were still up there, but they had dodged away and were defensive. “Okay, Gennadi,” he said to his backseater as he leveled off. “Jettison the pylons and let’s take those zas’er’as on a trip to the bottom of the Black Sea.” No response. “Gennadi? What in hell are you doing back there?” He adjusted his mirror to inside the rear cockpit — and saw Yegorov’s head lolling down from side to side. One of the sharp turns must’ve caught him unawares and knocked him unconscious against the canopy.
There were only a few things the pilot of the Mt-179 could not do from the front seat — unfortunately, jettisoning pylons was one of them. Stoica was stuck with them until Yegorov woke up. “Gennadi!” he shouted. “Gennadi! Wake up!” Yegorov did not appear to be fully unconscious, just stunned, but he was definitely not responding.
Definitely time to get the hell away from here. Stoica turned westbound and started a rapid descent, trying to get to a lower altitude quickly while the F- 16 fighters were regrouping. The Tyenee wasn’t totally stealthy anymore with the pylons on, even though they were empty, but the farther he could fly away from the F-16s, the harder he would be to detect — and if there were any seas below, he might be able to hide in the radar reflections from the—
DEEDLE DEEDLE DEEDLE! Not so fast, Stoica thought — one of the F-16s had locked on to him already, about forty kilometers behind him. He increased his descent rate to six thousand meters per minute and reached one hundred meters above the Black Sea in less than a minute. Now it was a foot race. The Romanian coastline was four hundred kilometers ahead. It was very flat until about one hundred and fifty kilometers in, but then the Transylvanian Alps rose quickly across the interior, and he could hide. It would be a long flight, almost twenty minutes at this speed, but maybe the Turkish F- 16s were already low on fuel and wouldn’t be able to give chase.
The threat warning receiver was blaring constantly. The F-16s were still behind him about thirty kilometers away. Any second now, if they still had any radar-guided missiles, they would—
DEEDLEDEEDLEDEEDLE! came the missile launch warning. Stoica pulled his throttles to idle, popped chaff, and started a tight right break. He could hear Yegorov’s head slam against the left side of the cockpit, and he wondered how much brain damage the guy had suffered….
“Where am IT’ Yegorov moaned.
“Gennadi! Wake up!” Stoica shouted. “Don’t touch any controls! Do you hear me? Don’t touch anything!” Stoica knew that a crew member awakening suddenly while sleeping in a cockpit or after passing out from lack of oxygen or g forces will sometimes grab something, responding to a dream or a sensation — they’ll punch themselves out, drop weapons, or even shut down engines.
“I … I can’t breathe.
“We’re defensive, Gennadi, trying to get away from a gaggle of Turkish fighters,” Stoica said, grunting through the g forces. “I need you to jettison the pylons—”
“Fighters!” Yegorov suddenly shouted. He’d obviously just got a look at the threat receiver, which depicted three enemy fighters and at least one enemy missile bearing down on him. “Break! Break! I’m ejecting chaff—!”
“I’m rolled out,” Stoica said. “No chaff.” The jammers had taken care of the uplink signal, and clouds of radar-reflecting chaff strewn behind them had drawn the Turkish missile away. “Are you all right, Gennadi?”
“I think so.”
“Slowly, carefully, jettison the pylons,” Stoica said. “They’re empty. Don’t jettison any other weapons, just the pylons.” Stoica rolled straight and level. “I’m wings-level, Gennadi. Punch ‘em off.”
“What …?”
“I said, punch the goddamned pylons …!” But Stoica heard yet another DEEDLE DEEDLE DEEDLE! radar lock-on warning. He had no choice. He banked steeply right and climbed into the enemy fighter. Seconds later, he got another lock-on tone, and he fired one R-60 missile at him from an internal wing launcher. Stoica immediately faked left, dropped chaff and flares, and then rolled right and descended back to less than a hundred meters above the sea. He saw a bright flash off his left side-he hoped that was another Turkish fighter on his way to taking a swim. “Gennadi, punch the pylons off, now!”
“Ack … acknowledged,” Yegorov said weakly. Stoica rolled wings-level just as he felt a rumble through the aircraft as the weapon pylons popped off.
“Fault indication,” Yegorov said weakly. Stoica glanced at the MASTER CAUTION light, then at the caution panel. No problem — a fault in an empty launcher — and he punched the caution light off and ignored it. There were only two F-16s behind him now — he’d got another one! — and the last two had their radars on but could not lock on to him. He was stealthy again!
Stoica jammed in full military power and started a gentle climb back toward the east. Now he had the advantage. He lined up on the nearest F-16, using his radar threat receiver until the infrared search-and-track system locked on, then fired another missile from an internal launcher from less than six kilometers away. That missile tracked dead-on and hit seconds later. Another kill!
Stoica considered going back after the remaining bombers. Now that he was stealthy again, the bombers were his to plink apart as he chose, and killing F-16 fighters was not much of a challenge right now for him. But as he scanned the warning and caution panel again, he knew he was done for the day — and maybe for a long time. Sure enough, the internal missile launchers had a fault — no, not just a fault this time, a major failure, a LAUNCHER HOT message, meaning there was an electrical fire in the wing. “Gennadi, launcher hot, cut off weapons power now!” Fortunately, Yegorov was alert enough to do it, and the LAUNCHER HOT warning light went off a few seconds after he isolated power. There were still a few yellow advisory lights on, including the launcher shutter door jam, the same problem that had been dogging them for months now, but there were no red warning lights, and for now they were okay.
It didn’t mean they were out of danger, only that they probably weren’t going to fly apart in the next few minutes. Good time to get out of here. The remaining bombers were indeed tempting, and he still had his internal cannon to use instead of the internal R-60 missiles, but that would be pushing his luck. He had already scored kills against two Ukrainian Backfire bombers and two Turkish F-16 Falcon fighters. That was a pretty good night’s work. Plus, his head was still ready to split open, and Yegorov was certainly in no shape to fly the plane. Stoica turned the plane westbound again toward Codlea, again thanking the stars he was alive and victorious.