| 20 Dec 1984 The First Day20 December 1984
Sam's hands flexed within his flight gloves. He rotated his neck nervously and fidgeted to get as comfortable as possible for the flight ahead. He checked his radios for the millionth time, checked the INS alignment again too. It wouldn't do to talk to the wrong person, or go flying off in the wrong direction on his first combat mission. The target today was a rail bridge. Someone, somewhere thought it'd be a great idea to send in 4 A-7s in broad daylight about 100 miles inland to bomb a railroad bridge that probably the Vietnamese didn't even use anymore.
Things hadn't exactly gone the way the Vietnamese had envisioned since the end of the first Vietnam War back in 1974. Like the President said, they won that time, but the score was far from final. It had been a major election point of his that all POWs and MIAs would be accounted for; with or without Vietnamese cooperation. Now, almost 2 years after he had been inaugerated, Sam and about 300,000 troops were poised to bring the full fury of American military might to bear once again on one tiny country in southeast Asia.
Sam's reverie was broken by the frantic waving of the flight director who was trying to signal Sam to release his brakes and taxi to the number one catapult on the USS Midway. Sam hurried to do the bidding of the "deck boss" and was soon being hooked to the steam catapult that would fling him out into the air. The ride, while fun, had lost a lot of its excitement for Sam. He'd riden down the track about 300 times by now, at least. He was a rated flight leader and one of the senior lieutenants in the squadron. Too young to see action in the first Vietnam war, he was the only flight leader to have no previous combat experience. This mission, although one of the first of the campaign, was supposed to be "easy", so the squadron commander sent his new flight leader on it.
"Mr. President you can't be serious!" The exclamation came from one of the many members of the press corps who were still trying to get used to the new President's brand of diplomacy.
"I absolutely am, why shouldn't we honor our commitment to democracy and stopping the spread of Communism?? Furthermore, why should we abandon those who have committed their all to our ideals?" The President had been all but obsessive in his attempts to recover POWs left behind after the first war, and to confirm the status of MIAs not heard from in years. The President had started only a few days after being in office by sending a personal letter to the leader of the Vietnamese communist party asking, no demanding, to know the whereabouts of 68 POWs who were never returned in 1972. This was just a start, in the successive 2 years, he had attempted to use the UN, Amnesty International, the International Red Cross, even mediation through the USSR and China (although these lasted all of about 90 seconds. The president would later call the meeting "the greatest waste of my life") Now, the second Vietnam war was about to begin.
BAM! Sam's A-7E Corsair II accelerated at a numbing speed down the catapult track, dragged by her nose gear from a standstill to 130 knots. The acceleration ended as quickly as it began as the plane was slung into the air. Sam moved the landing gear handle up with one hand and gently turned right to depart the carrier flight pattern. Once the gear was up, he pulled the flaps up and accelerated through 240 knots. At 300 knots, he eased the throttle back to allow his flight to rendezvous with him without using up too much gas. He looked around his cockpit once again to make sure all the switches were in the right position, and all the dials were reading correctly. He looked back at his wings, and the 4 Mark-83 1000 pound bombs hanging from the racks. He studied them to make sure none of the vanes on the M904E4 nose fuzes were spinning. This would arm them up right on his wing, and that could make for a rather bad day. However, today the load crews had done their job perfectly, and all the vanes were tightly secured. He cross-checked his compass reading with his INS reading, they matched. He cross-checked his heading with his flight plan, they matched as well. Satisfied that all was in order, he once again looked out past his wings to see his wingman coming up into position and the second section coming up on the other side as well. "We're going to war," Sam thought idly to himself. It felt strange that he didn't feel more. He wasn't really sure whether he was supposed to feel fear, or remorse, or what. So he just sat back and enjoyed the view.
Presently, the coastline came into view, and Sam led his flight into a gentle descent that would take them down to a land hugging 400 feet above ground level. He flipped the switch to activate his radar for a moment to reconfirm his "cross point". The ingress and egress points would be critical because in order to guarantee total radio silence, they had to shut down the IFF transponders which told the controllers outside the airspace that they were friendly. He shut-down his radar again after a minute or so to preserve the EMCON, or emission control, of the flight. From here on in, and out, it would be by pilotage, not too hard here b/c of the abundance of unique features on the ground.
"Red Crown, Asp 1-1 is feet dry, EMCON 1" Sam steadily intoned into his radio before turning off the transmitter. He would still be able to recieve transmissions, just not talk. He gave a quick hand signal to the other pilots in the flight to secure their IFF transponders, external lights, and radio transmitters. Then he steadied up on a course to the IP, or initial point, the point where the actual attack run would commence. Sam always loved to look out on these low level runs, doing 500 knots at 300 feet above the ground made the ground rush by like in a cartoon or something. There was a reason for this too though. The altitude was low enough so that the deadly surface to air missiles couldn't work (too little time to arm), and the speed was so that most anti-aircraft guns coudn't track them fast enough to get an adequate lead solution to hit his plane.
The run from the ingress point to the IP was only about 5 minutes long. However, things were starting to heat up in Sam's 'pit. He quickly configured his weapons settings to release all 4 bombs in one pass, and put about 100 miliseconds delay between each bomb release. 100 miliseconds equaled about 150 or 200 feet of separation when they impacted the ground, to spread the damage as effectively as possible along the span of the bridge. Sam brought up the weapon symbology on his heads up display (or HUD) and then tightened his shoulder and lap harnesses. He was ready. The IP flashed by and he yanked his plane into a steep climb while throwing the throttles foreward to get max thrust. He zoomed up to 7000 feet in a matter of seconds, rolled inverted and pulled his nose back down through the horizon. Rolling around level again, he acquired the bridge in his sights and steadied up the sights for a moment before mashing the release button down. THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP. The plane rocked back and forth as 1000 pounds of dead weight were released one by one off each side. As soon as the fourth bomb released, Sam snatched the control stick back into his lap to pull out of the dive. At the same time, he began to turn to the egress point, and screamed toward it at 650 knots. Looking behind his plane, he saw that his bombs had impacted slightly off-line, but smoke obscured his view of whether he'd damaged the bridge or not. He was watching when 4 more plumes of smoke and water spray mushroomed up from Asp 1-2's bombs. Another close hit.
Suddenly Sam was jolted by the radio. "Asp 1-1, Red Crown, Bandits your 11 o'clock 5 miles Angels 0 headed south. Stay alert" Bandits was the call that hostile aircraft had been detected. The A-7 was decidedly not a fighter. It was far too slow, but it did have it's good points. Becuase it was slow, and had a low wing loading factor, it could turn on a dime, even at super low speeds. This was something that not even the newer F-14 Tomcats could do well.
"Asp 1-1, 1-3. Tally-ho! Bandits Mig-19s at 10 o'clock!" Jerrry "Jerky" Tollson knew the rules, if you'd been spotted you could talk all you wanted. Sam snapped back, "Asps engage defensive." He didn't want an all-out fight, but he couldn't just ignore the problem and hoped it'd go away. The two sections of the Asp flight, 1-1 and 1-2 in one section, and 1-3 and 1-4 in the other, turned toward their antagonizers. Sam called out to the off-shore controllers, "Red Crown Asp 1-1 engaged defensive. Request fighter support NOW!" While Sam was fiercely proud of being an attack pilot, he was no dummy when it came to knowing the capability of his craft against others. "Fox two!" the call came from Jerky who was trying out the new AIM-9L Sidewinder missile. The heatseaking head on the L models was supposidly so good you could be head-on with another plane and still shoot it down. This time though, it was not to be, the missile took one look at the sun and tried to blow it to smithereens... it did not succeed. Jerky merged and then split with one of the MiG-19s, they both instantly snap turned toward each other and tried to get a good solution for a gunshot. However, both Asp sections had the advangage of an extra plane in each engagement. After the merge Asp 1-4 climbed up above the fight before turning and diving back into the engagement. This altitude advantage allowed him enough time to line up his own Sidewinder shot and he squeezed off his first shot of the engagement. The missile ran true and exploded right underneath the wing of the MiG shearing it off and sending the stricken plane tumbling toward the ground trailing smoke and flames.
While all the excitement had been going on surrounding Jerky, Sam had enough on his plate to satiate his fighter-jock itch for months to come. After he merged with the other MiG-19, he had elected to separate, and turn back for another attempt at a head-on pass. He blew past the MiG, and his wingman, 1-2, separated to the left in order to pincer the over-matched MiG. The MiG snapped into a tight turn bleeding precious energy as he came back about. However, he was confused, in the time it took him to turn around, he had lost sight of Sam and Sam's wingman. The old fighter pilot's saying "loose sight, loose the fight" came into play. Sam loosed a single Sidewinder and watched as it seemed to fly straight for the tailpipe of the MiG. It exploded, and at first Sam thought he hadn't done enough damage. He was about to fire off a second Sidewinder, when his adversaries plane came apart in mid-air.
Sam called out over the radio for the flight to rejoin up, and then to Red Crown to confirm no other hostile aircraft were in the area. As the flight crossed the breakers back over the Gulf of Tonkin, Sam relaxed slightly. He suddenly realized that he had never loosened his harnesses up after the attack run, and he felt like his arms and legs were falling asleep from lack of blood. He quickly loostened them up and tried to massage his arms and legs as best he could in preparation for the stress of landing his plane on a proverbial postage stamp. About 30 minutes after calling "Feet wet" (back over water) to Red Crown, the carrier came into view. Asp flight was cleared for immediate entry into the pattern, theirs was the first returning sortie as it was the closest to the shoreline and thus the ship.
The 4 A-7s came over the ship at precisely 300 knots and entered the "break", a tecnique called the "overhead recovery" which minimizes the time a plane is most vulnerable (low and slow, like during landings). Sam was the first one around, he stood his plane on its wing just after he flashed passed the bow of the boat. Extending his speed brake and his flaps as he bled off speed coming around the 180 degree initial turn. As he came out of the first turn, he dropped his landing gear and checked to see that his hook to catch the thick arresting cables was down as well. Waiting a few moments after he crossed the fantail of the ship (now going in the opposite direction) he started a left turn to align himself with the landing area on the ship. Once he was on the final approach course, it was only about 20 seconds until his plane slammed into deck. Instinctively, he shoved the throttle forward to the stops just in case he missed the wires, or something went wrong with the system and he had to immediately begin flying again. This time however, he had flown a near flawless approach and caught the third wire. He quickly chopped the power to the engine, and raised the landing hook. Inching the throttle forward again, he taxied clear of the landing area, just in time for 1-2 to come slamming in for his landing attempt.
Sam taxied to his shut-down spot, guided the whole way by the flight directors. He shut his engine down and raised the canopy of his plane. He unhooked his harness from the ejection seat, and slowly climbed down the ladder on the side of his plane. He walked to the entrance into the bowels of the ship, and paused only for one last whiff of sea air, if only to remind himself that he was still alive after his first combat mission. |
