| From: | Paul J. Adam Shadowtk@********.demon.co.uk |
|---|---|
| Subject: | In Flight Entertainment |
| Date: | Wed, 8 Sep 1999 18:46:59 +0100 |
>>>>>[Damn, did I ever miss this...
+++++begin video
The sea flashes past under the fighter's nose at what seems an incredible
velocity.
The symbology in the margins of Lynch's vision shows a ground speed of
five hundred and ninety knots, which definitely qualifies as fast, and an
altitude of seventy feet above sea level. As he maintains a restless visual
scan, the roostertail of spray his fast-and-low passage is kicking up behind
can be seen: the setting sun's last rays strike occasional rainbows through
it.
The MiG-57 'Firestorm' rocks slightly in the turbulent air, as the navigation
system indicates a waypoint - an Initial Point, even - approaching. Lynch
pulls the nose around through a sixty-degree turn, holding the dangerously
low altitude but bleeding off some airspeed: settling onto his new course
at fifty feet and 550 knots.
Range and Time-To-Go indicators are scrolling rapidly downwards, as the
Marine switches his MASTER ARM from 'safe' to 'ready' and selects stores
pylon #4, single release.
The fighter's powerful radar goes active for two seconds, rapidly mapping
the sea and land ahead: a small island, the rectangular shadows of
fencing, several bright returns that might be vehicles. A corner of the
fence provides a handy marker and Lynch enters an offset from it for his
actual target.
The ESM gear chirrups, warning of a skin paint by a E-band search radar.
Details of received power, PRF and sidelobe levels flicker by before TTG
reaches zero and Lynch pulls back hard on the stick.
The horizon vanishes, the pitch lines scrolling upwards as the MiG claws for
altitude: Lynch grunting as six times normal gravity press him down into
his seat, and his G-suit hisses as it crushes blood out of his legs and
abdomen, back up towards his head.
The display symbology is complex and - to non-pilots - obscure, but as
Lynch reaches fifty-five degrees of climb he unloads the aircraft and lets
the G-forces come off. The ESM chirps again, more persistently and with
a new note: now a Ka-band radar is illuminating the MiG-57 too, painting
it with a continuous beam of microwaves.
He pushes and holds the pickle button on his stick and the radar sweeps
the ground again to update its calculations, as the flight vector is shown
squarely at the apex of a shrinking pyramid and the airspeed stabilises at
four hundred and fifty knots.
As the triangular lines collapse onto the flight vector there is a solid
_thunk_ and the aircraft rocks slightly: bomb gone.
The Firestorm rolls hard through a hundred and thirty degrees or so and
the G-meter whirs up to show seven gravities of turning force, Lynch
combining a turn away from his target and a hard dive back to the deck.
He never got closer than three miles to the island, but now a thousand-
pound bomb is flying a ballistic arc towards its target there.
A classic loft delivery, done entirely blind (Lynch barely saw the island, let
alone his target, except by radar) and allowing reasonable accuracy with a
heavy load of cheap unguided bombs, and avoiding any need to overfly the
target and its close-in defences.
Rolling level and pulling out at a hundred feet above the sea, afterburners
blazing and speed climbing back past 550 knots, Lynch checks the 'enemy'
radars - both have lost lock - and settles onto his egress course, still
scanning the sky above and behind him.
"Psycho, this is Range Control, splash, shack, over." the radio informs
him. The concrete-filled thousand-pounder has struck home, and hit inside
the hundred-foot radius of the bulls-eye. "Little bit long and left, about
seventy feet from centre." Close is good enough with horseshoes, hand
grenades and half-ton bombs...
"How'd I look to the defences, over?"
"They never saw you coming. Lost you in the multipath and only spotted
you when you started your loft. The SAM could have got a missile off but
it wouldn't have guided before you were back down in the clag. Nice run,
Psycho, score one for the Good Guys."
"Thanks, Control. See you back at the Ranch."
Lynch's immediate destination, though, is some way off: clear of the
exercise box, he climbs to a saner altitude and throttles back to cruise
(the fuel totaliser slows its unwinding). The Pacific sunset is quite
beautiful, as the sky darkens to black and the stars begin to appear.
It's full night before he reaches his destination: the USS _Harold
Hutchisson_, the carrier and its consorts cutting phosphorescent wakes
through the ocean.
"King Harold, this is Bravo Three One in a Firestorm, request marshall,
over."
"Psycho, marshall one and come right in." the LSO replies. "We have fifty-
five to sixty knots of wind over the deck."
"Roger that, King Harold." Lynch banks into a smooth descending turn,
lining up with the carrier five miles astern and at fifteen hundred feet:
already slowing and settling into his approach to fly the three-degree
descent all the way down onto the deck.
At that distance, the carrier is only a warm blur of heat and light and a
radar echo, but as the Firestorm closes in on it (the airspeed still slowly
dropping, now less than two hundred knots) details can be resolved, the
ramp and deck lights seperating into visibility, and then the yellow glow of
the 'meatball', sitting just above the green datum lights either side of it.
"Psycho, call the ball." the LSO instructs.
"Ball, four point one." Lynch replies. He has the approach guidance light in
sight and has 4,100 pounds of fuel still aboard: enough for a number of
attempts at landing, but the deck crew will have to adjust the arrestor
wires to allow for the extra ton of JP-10 in the tanks.
This, it seems, is to be a manual night approach and landing: no
automated systems allowed. The Marine is trying to fly twenty tons of
strikefighter to a controlled intersection with a tennis-court sized area of
deck that's itself heaving, pitching and moving at over twenty miles an
hour; he's doing it by hand and eye alone; and he's doing it in the dark.
No wonder that study after study show the most stressful part of a carrier
flight - even one involving mortal combat - is the landing.
Less than two miles out now, and Lynch is slowing further: the
speedbrakes out, the flaps coming down, then the landing gear locking
into position. He nudges the throttles forward to compensate for the
extra drag, letting his airspeed settle at 128 knots, for a descent rate of
600 feet per minute.
The carrier's deck is angled, to allow simultaneous launches and landings,
but that means Lynch has to keep crabbing to the right to stay lined up.
His eyes keep flicking from the deck (observing his alignment) to his VSI
(checking rate of descent) to the angle of attack indexer (for his flight
angle) to the meatball to the airspeed indicator in a rapid, efficient scan.
He seems to be deliberately jockeying the ball inside its frame of coloured
lights. Up a quarter-bar, down a quarter-bar... "fly the ball, don't let the
ball fly you" is an old naval aviation maxim, written in the blood of pilots
who fixated on a point of light at night, got vertigo as it danced in their
vision, and tried to fly their aircraft to match a visual illusion.
"Good approach, Psycho." the LSO says over the radio. "Just a little fast.
Hold her steady..."
In the last seconds of approach, breathing hard and intent on precision
flight, Lynch's visual scan is now down to three realities: the meatball, the
AoA indexer, and the _Hutchisson's_ deck. Like the ground to a
parachutist, the carrier had hung mockingly in the distance throughout his
approach: now, it suddenly seems to rush up and slap the Russian-built
fighter in the belly.
He doesn't flinch or flare, but holds the aircraft wings-level and steady in
he instant before impact. As the wheels slam into the deck, Lynch shoves
the throttles to the stops and sucks in the speedbrakes: if his arrestor
hook doesn't catch one of the four wires stretched across the deck, he'll
'bolter' off the end of the angled landing deck and he'll need all the power
he can get to recover.
Instead, there's a wrenching deceleration as the MiG's twenty tons is
slowed from 125 knots to a dead halt in less than forty feet, and Lynch
pulls the throttles back to idle. Tension in the wire pulls the fighter
backwards, and at a signal from a yellow-shirted crewman he raises the
arretor hook.
The deck crew - the 'airedales' - begin their rapid, efficient ballet,
manoeuvering the aircraft to the edge of the deck and chocking the
wheels: more hand signals and Lynch shuts down both engines and opens
his canopy.
Four yellow-shirted deck crew bustle with tiedown chains, securing the
fighter, while another bring the ladder. Two purple shirts wrestle a fuel
hose to the universal connector, as an ordnanceman in red safes the
Firestorm's cannon and checks for any other ordnance that might pose a
threat. They can hardly be used to the aircraft, yet their movements are
fast and precise.
The engines tinkle musically as they spin down, the compressor blades
shifting in their expansion joints, as the Marine climbs down to the deck:
an airedale escorts him to the island, keeping him safely clear of the
bustle of activity. His ears flash a discreet message that the noise level of
the deck is dangerously high and that dampers are automatically
engaging.
Inside, down a ladder, through a maze of corridors - Lynch seems to know
his way, but the carrier is a labyrinth to the uninitiated - to a ready room
where three other pilots wait for the LSO.
Two of the pilots are Navy, the third is Air Force, and that long braid of
dark red hair can only be Lilith's. She gives her husband a feline smile as
he sits beside her.
"Hi there, Gandalf." Lynch greets one of the naval aviators. "Where you at
these days?"
"VFA-86." the pilot replies, grinning. "Got a Pacific Fleet posting. Should
see more action out here. How about you? Still flying that Russian junk?
Still dead?"
"Just keeping quiet." Lynch admits. "Still freelancing. OPFOR and
evaluations and special ops. Beats working. And don't diss the MiG, you
show me better value for money."
"Yeah, yeah, you get to show the Guard how good or bad it is in a few
hours. This is Lyric, from VMR-12, she's a Lurker-driver." Gandalf
introduces his companion. "Lyric, meet Psycho."
"How'd you get _that_ nick?" Lynch asks her.
"We were partying at Tailhook '58, and I knew _all_ the words to the
'Drinking Beer And Falling Down' song." Lyric admits sheepishly. "It was
better than 'Hooters', at least."
"And Hooters because...?" Lilith probes, with a wicked smirk.
"I spilled beer all over my T-shirt. And, uh, took it off to wring it out."
Lyric grins. "Got everyone's attention, at least, and-"
"Ten-hut, officer on deck, like any of you apes would give a damn..." the
Landing Systems Officer calls as he comes in. holding a videodisk. "Okay,
people, are we ready to review?" He slots the disk into the projection
trideo player, starts it.
The main image is the LSO's view of the approaching aircraft: this one, a
sleek Boeing fighter, one of the Navy's own. Surrounding it are
supplemental displays showing the aircraft's position in the glide slope,
descent rate, and all the other data that the autoland system - even
disengaged - was generating.
The LSO talks through the approach. "Okay, Gandalf, you're doing okay at
first, but round about here I see you starting to saturate. You weren't
correcting for drift fast enough and started rocking, then you looked like
you were getting vertigo."
"Yeah." Gandalf admits. "Fixated on the ramp lights, I think, and it all
started getting away from me. I was about to call waveoff myself when
you hit the switch."
"Yeah, A cut pass, if you'd tried to ride it in, but you pulled clear, went
round again, and this time..." The LSO plays the tape of Gandalf's second
attempt. "Much better, except you were too high on the glideslope all the
way in."
"Nerves, I guess. I was getting jumpy, wanted room in case I screwed up
again."
"Yeah, well, you had to dive for the deck at the last minute, put down
hard, and you only just snagged the four wire." The LSO shrugs.
"Comments?"
"Much better lineup, second time around." Lilith says. "He was holding it
smoothly, not kicking in corrections. And he didn't get into PIO when he
hit the burble."
"Yeah, that was well done." The LSO concedes. "Gandalf, that's worth a
two, but next time I want you _on_ the ball, not above it. Okay, Lyric..."
The tape this time is of a bulky, twin-engined Lurker, lumbering in for its
landing over the LSO's commentary.
"Good work through the Marshall, good approach and lineup, excellent
speed control." The officer watches the approach. "Here, you started
yawing some. Problems?"
"Compressor hiccups in the port engine, coming through the burble." Lyric
nods. "Just have to ride it out, you don't fight it or it gets worse."
"Yep. You were rolling a little on final, but you were smack on the slope
and the only thing I'll fault you for is you were a couple of knots too slow
at touchdown. Sank faster than you expected and caught the one wire."
"Yeah, I know." The Lurker pilot confesses. "She needed more power, but
with the compressors so unhappy I figured it was better to come in too
slow, than risk the port engine not spooling up fast enough and getting
asymettric loadings."
"It was that bad?" The LSO asks. "Write it up as a gripe. Shouldn't be
_that_ lumpy... anyway, that's a three. I'd make it three and a half
except for the sink rate. Comments?"
"Yeah, just one. Were you weathercocking as you found the ball?" Gandalf
enquires.
"She usually does that." Lyric nods. "You need a _lot_ of rudder on final
in
the Lurker."
"Fair enough. Okay, next victim... Leopard Lady, your turn in the barrel."
The LSO runs the tape: the MiG-57's silhouette is handsome, but brutally
purposeful as it follows the glideslope.
"This is good. I thought you had autoland engaged, it's so good. Right in
the groove, just half a knot fast on your airspeed, all the way down to the
deck. Snag the three wire and home." He spreads his hands. "What can I
say? A four. Comments?" There are none. "Damn, I can't remember the
last time I gave a Chair Farce crosssdecker a four, let alone one riding
some Russkie POS..."
"Psycho, last up. You came in slow at first, I guess because you knew
there was nobody behind you, but you really want to be faster out of
Marshall. Nice approach, although you were a little dramatic about staying
lined up. A knot or two too fast most of the way down, although you were
right on the ball you hit a little hard and a little short, but it's a good
landing. Three... no, three and a half."
"No fair, he got more than me." Lyric mock-pouts, grins. "No, that was
nice, Psycho, but you seemed to be bobbing a little on final?"
"Fly the ball, don't let the ball fly you." Lynch replies. "Helps to beat
vertigo if you keep the meatball moving slightly, instead of just reacting
to it."
"Never heard that." Lyric shrugs. "Mind you, it slithers around so much in
a
Lurker anyway..."
"Exactly." Gandalf nods. "You try doing that in a Slug and you'll wreck the
approach. We done, Paddles?" The LSO nods, turning to write the grades
up on one of the wallboards. "Good, 'cause I'm bushed and I'm gonna R-T-
Rack. See ya, guys."
Lyric also rises. "Me aussi, amigos. Not staying?"
"Nope. Last hop of the day in an hour." Lynch picks up his helmet bag.
"Just need to tick night BFM and we are _requalified_."
"Hallelujah." his wife says with a feline smile. "Then, let the Naval
aviators
know _fear_."
"Yeah, yeah." Gandalf laughs. "We'll kick your Air Force butt any time you
want. Only, how come you guys have so much time? I mean, when you're
not flying, you're training with the groundpounders, how do you fit it all
in?"
"Easy." Lilith replies. "We're active-duty Reserve, who get tagged onto
Regular units. We come with a budget so the admin weenies like us. We
bring Rebels aircraft, so we're not costing anyone airframe hours. We're
useful training material so the ops pukes don't mind. We're not around
long enough to get any additional duties, so _all_ we do in any unit is fly
or fight. No admin, no secondary duties, no paperwork."
"Paradise." Gandalf sighs enviously. "Unless there's a downside I don't
know
about?"
"Not much stability and not much breathing space." Lynch suggests. "Take
the last month. Basic refresher training at Dover AFB with an Air Force
class, because those were the only spare slots. Then a week's fieldwork
with the Rangers because they needed OPFOR, but that was up by Albany.
Then, hustle over to Everett because Tweezer broke his leg and dropped
out of PacFlt's fleet quals, so they can squeeze us in there... except
between flying hops, we've got the Marines asking us nicely if we could
play terrorists for them to train against, and I have to requal land combat
right after I get done here. We don't get to sit still for long."
"But then, rest is for wimps and we'll sleep when we're dead." Lilith
stretches and yawns, _very_ feline for a moment, before rising. "Come
on, Jason, time to go fly the pretty planes some more."
The briefing for the next mission takes a little over half an hour, and is -
as you'd expect - heavy on safety procedures. Flying fast jets is inherently
unsafe, doing so at night worse. Engaging in air combat - even simulated
- under such conditions raises the risks enough to turn an actuary's hair
white.
Neither Major Lynch seems alarmed or concerned, though, as they suit up
and head back to the flight deck where their aircraft wait; make quick
but thorough walkrounds; climb the ladders to the cockpits.
The yellow-shirted plane captain helps Lynch strap into the ejection seat,
double-checking the Koch fittings and then removing the red-flagged pins
that arm the seat. Lynch runs through his preflight checks, then the
startup sequence.
A shrieking stream of high-pressure air from a yellow-painted starter cart
spins his starboard engine up to idle speed, and the autoigniters chatter
for a few seconds before the engine lights off with a bang and a puff of
black smoke. The gauges stabilise and he advances the throttle to 75%
RPM, opening the bleed air valve to spin the other engine too. That also
lights off, less dramatically, and Lynch taxies across the deck under the
expert guidance of a green-shirted airedale.
A bustle under the Firestorm's graceful, downswept nose and a change in
two indicators from yellow to green, as Lynch looks back (seeing a water-
cooled blast deflector rise into place behind him) and to the sides (clear
left, Lilith's aircraft easing onto #2 catapult to his right). His canopy
whirrs close, the acrylic bubble descending and sealing him in.
The green-shirted airedale appears to his left, gives him a double thumbs-
up: Lynch returns it with one hand, and as the crewman crouches behind
his shelter and picks up a trigger, the Marine pushes both throttles to the
stops and then into afterburner.
At full power the twin turbofans make an incredible noise anyway: then,
raw fuel is being sprayed into the fiercely hot exhaust gases, boosting
thrust at the expense of fuel economy. Lilith's aircraft, too, is straining at
its restraints as thirty tons of thrust push at it.
One last check of the status indicators, then Lynch flips the green-shirt a
salute and braces both hands off the controls.
Superheated steam, bled from the carrier's secondary reactor coolant
loop, blasts into a cylinder and blows the piston in it along like a bullet
down a gun barrel. The piston accelerates from rest to over a hundred
miles an hour in a hundred feet or less, despite the twenty-five ton weight
of fighter aircraft attached to it.
Lynch is forced back hard in his seat by the catapult launch, as the end of
the deck rushes at him. Suddenly, the MiG-57 is airborne , and he reaches
out to take the controls: cleaning up the aircraft, then throttling back
into a wide, climbing turn.
To his right, half a mile away, Lilith's aircraft is a sleek smear of warmth
trailing bright plumes of heat in his thermally-enhanced vision, its shape
picked out by faintly luminescent strips to make night formation flying
easier.
They settle onto their course: at 23,500 feet they level out as well, above
the moonlit peaks and valleys of broken cloud and beneath an amazingly
bright sweep of stars.
Flying in EMCON, radars off and avoiding radio chatter, the two sleek,
dark fighters cut through the night's beauty.
Lilith is leading, Lynch left and level: a speck in the sky ahead slowly grows
into a n Atlas transport aircraft, flying slow, lazy figure-eights in the sky.
Still without a word on the radio, they take up station alongside the Atlas:
it turns on more formation lights and levels out, and both fighters drop
back and below the transport: now, one either side of it, in a neat 'V'
formation.
>From pods under each wing, hoses unreel with shuttlecock-like drogues at
the ends: the drogues are lit with soft green lights, making glowing,
bobbing 'O' shapes in the darkness.
Lynch thumbs a switch on his stick and a probe extends from its fairing,
jutting out from the side of his fighter like a prize bull's horn.
Now, his flying is as careful and precise as when he'd landed on the
_Hutchisson_ only hours before: his eyes flicking from the tanker aircraft,
to the drogue, to the horizon, all the time with flight data superimposed.
The probe advances towards the drogue, slides smoothly into it, and with
a hissing click fuel begins to flow into Lynch's tanks. He continues to fly
with precise care, avoiding any strain on the locked connections.
The totaliser scrolls up five thousand pounds, filling the main fuselage
tanks and the inboard wing cells too, before the drogue's green lights flick
to red and the flow stops. Lynch disengages his probe and withdraws as
smoothly as he entered, a puff of misted JP-10 visible in the moonlight.
Lilith has already completed refuelling and stowed her probe: both fighters
blink their anticollision lights in thanks, before turning away to another
rendezvous: the distant glow of Seattle can be seen on the horizon dead
ahead now.
Their mission is to simulate a pair of hostile fighters entering UCAS
airspace and being intercepted by the Air Metroplex Guard from McChord
AFB. They have an ingress course, and they're on it: the Guardsmen have
been scrambled in response: now, it's up to the AMG pilots to find and
attack the two fighters. That the MiGs really are "foreign types" is icing on
the cake, as far as training value goes.
The chirp of a radar sweeping over the Firestorm, and Lynch's electronic
warfare gear classifies it at once: an APG-132 set, in low-PRF long-range
search mode, with a surprisingly high signal strength. Within seconds the
signal shifts to track-while-scan.
"We're busted." Lynch informs his wife, who clicks her mike twice in
return and turns towards the signal. "Go active?"
"No, stay quiet and spook them." Lynch sounded tensely happy: Lilith's
sardonic drawl is even more relaxed than usual.
The MiG's infrared sensors pick up the warmth of jet exhausts in the
distance, offering a guesstimate of nineteen miles' range. Two points of
warmth, so far, beginning to slowly slither apart: one matches the bearing
of the radar spike.
"They're splitting. Lead-around?"
"My guess." Lynch confirms. "They probably need to VID us. Can't just blow
away every unidentified contact..."
The Metroplex Guard pilots have to see who they're shooting at before
they can engage, preventing a long-range missile exchange (which couldn't
be well simulated in flight anyway...). So, they're seperating: one will try
to hook around the MiGs and close in to identify them, the other will track
with radar, standing by to attack if the enemy is shown hostile. Or at
least, that's their plan...
"Switch check." Lilith commands: Lynch runs through a fast routine,
making physically sure his weapon systems are disabled and set to training
mode, that the camera systems and the ACMI pod are the only ones
selected, that they're relaying their telemetry data.
"I'll take the eyeball, you nail the shooter." Lilith says calmly, as the
estimated range falls below eight miles and Lynch's thermal vision picks up
the speck of heat at the centre of the tracking box.
"On your mark." Lynch confirms: releasing the stick, flexing his fingers,
then gripping it again: holding a combat spread of about a mile.
"Go!" Lilith's afterburners suddenly flame with two bluish spears, dazzling
in thermal and low-light. Lynch, likewise, shoves his throttles through the
gate and stands the MiG on its wingtip, pulling a three-G turn into the
radar-quiet enemy who'd been trying to sneak around and behind them.
The AMG pilots seem slightly wrong-footed by this sudden aggressive
move, but then they have a surprise of their own to play: the warm speck
Lynch is engaging splits. From a two-on-two engagement, this has
suddenly turned into at least a three-versus-two.
"Lady, we got two Gomers here." Lynch grunts through the G-forces as he
turns in on the threats: two Mustangs in echelon, breaking apart in a
bracket manoeuvre. Lynch unloads his turn, though still on a wingtip, now
almost on a collision course with the closer Mustang.
His chosen enemy is still showing his belly as he turns to open the bracket:
the Guardsmen are seperating to gain offensive advantage, and Lynch has
attacked hard into that slight weakness. Now, for a few seconds, it's a
one-on-one firing pass.
The Mustang - only now turning back into the threat - slides smoothly into
the HUD, under the bobbing pipper of the gunsight, as if of its own
volition: Lynch squeezes the trigger, calls "Psycho, guns, western
Mustang." A long-range shot, but the MiG's 30mm cannon has a long
reach. The Metroplex Guardsman's evasive jinking begins a second too
late: a good shot, though its effects will need analysis.
Win, lose or draw, Lynch reverses his turn, pulling around to face the
eastern threat: airspeed bleeding off as the G-meter passes seven,
position more important for the moment.
The second Mustang has reacted late to Lynch's startlingly aggressive
manouevre, only now turning towards him. Rather than risk a head-on
guns shot (entertaining in simulation, risky as hell in war) Lynch holds the
turn an extra two seconds and then reverses again.
"Zinger Four Two, guns on the MiG." the Mustang calls (a feminine voice),
but Lynch doesn't seem worried: he was exposed for a brief, high-
deflection snapshot at best, and now he's behind the Guardsman,
accelerating through a gentle, slightly climbing turn to extend away from
her. Range Control doesn't come in to tell Lynch he's dead, so he remains
engaged for now: closing in on the other duel.
"Leopard Lady, fox-two the trailing Mustang." Lilith's amused drawl over
the radio. With a worse initial situation than Lynch, it's taken longer for
her to get her first shot: yet she's turned a serious initial disadvantage
into an attack.
Lynch bears in, seeing the three specks in the night sky: resolving them as
he approaches, throttling back to avoid an overshoot. Behind him, an
APG-132 begins to sweep and this time Lynch kicks in his jamming gear,
swamping the radar with false targets and noise.
One advantage the MiGs have now, with their big, high-bypass turbofans,
is high unaugmented thrust and low IR signature. The Mustangs' engines
are more fuel-efficient, much more powerful in afterburner, smaller - but
at night, the bright glow of 'burner is a fine and hot visual reference,
whereas both MiGs are dark and cool and still have good performance. And
visibility, in a fight like this, is life or death...
One of the Mustangs is turning, slow and wide, to the west with its
anticollision lights on: ruled as 'killed', it's leaving the exercise box. For
now.
The other is cutting in hard, skidding in behind Lilith even as she pulls up
into a hard climbing turn, still leaving her engines out of 'burner. The
second Mustang follows, superior in both turn rate and climb rate, cutting
inside Lilith's turn and eating away the angles between them to get into
missile parameters. Lilith's afterburners light, delaying the inevitable by a
few seconds at most -
"Psycho, fox-two the north Mustang." Lynch releases the pickle button. As
he lines up for a guns pass, the Mustang rolls wings-level and its red
strobes come on.
Lilith's burners wink out as Lynch lights his and pulls up and over in an
Immelmann: now they're in a two-versus-one, with plenty of seperation,
and while the lone Mustang is probably radar-blind she's also got a clear
visual and IR target to chase.
Will she remember the dark, quiet fighter stalking around the fight?
Lynch further ups the ante by lighting up his own radar in short-pulse
dogfight mode: though Zinger 42 jams it, generating swirling trails of
ghost images, it must all focus the Metroplex Guardsman's attention on
the immediate, obvious threat.
"Psycho, Fox-two-"
"Zinger Four Two, fox-two-"
Both fighters "fire" and break in unison, turning savagely to generate
angles, evading the supposed incoming missiles: both losing sight of the
other for a few seconds. Lynch shuts down his radar and jammers, and as
he unloads the turn he throttles back too: rolling to reverse, still hearing
no call from the AWACS that he's 'dead', he searches for his opponent -
Like him, reversing to find the foe and reattack. Lynch tightens his turn
again, relighting afterburners and nudging the rudder to get some climb.
The Mustang pulls around after him: it turns tighter and faster, can use
its superior performance to cut inside and get a shot. Lynch tightens his
own turn in response, only bleeding off airspeed faster, soon to be a
helpless easy target -
"Leopard Lady, guns on Zinger Four-Two." Lilith's sardonic voice. Seconds
later, the Mustang's red strobe comes on.
"Box Charlie Five, this is Range Control. ENDEX, I say ENDEX. Zinger
Flight, vector zero three zero and reform. Leopard Flight, vector one
eight zero and await directions, out." The wargame is over: Lynch flicks
on his formation lights, levels out carefully, settles onto a southbound
course. A careful check of his fuel, too - just because the totaliser hasn't
yelled a warning doesn't guarantee safety...
If anything, this is the most dangerous part: the short, savage fight was
draining and now pilots are tired, perhaps careless, and thinking of
showers, food, warm beds. Lynch keeps his visual scan going, until he has
Lilith comfortably on his right wing and four Mustangs heading northeast.
They still have the flight home to make, the debrief, and probably a last
short hop to get the MiGs back to Yeager Field... but it's been a good
day's flying.
+++++end video]<<<<<
Zinger Flight were rookies, I must add, which is a lot of why we won a
4-v-2 against them.
They'd done well against some Navy fliers from Everett, and this was sort
of a mix of their CO thinking they needed taking down a peg and PACFLT
wanting payback <g>. The debrief was interesting: they hadn't really run
into just what the IR gear on the MiGs could do. Next time's gonna be a
_lot_ harder.
Damn, I love this job...]<<<<<
-- Major J R W Lynch <18:43:23/09-08-60>
TDY PACFLT Training Command
