by Joe Weber
Rules of Engagement (1991)
Weber, Joe
Published: 2010
Rules Of Engagement
Joe Weber
*
Marine First Lieutenant Brad Austin Exercised His Flight Controls To The Stops, Then Saluted The Catapult Officer And Braced His Head for the violent launch. . The F-4 Phantom's twin turbojets produced an earsplitting roar . . . The fighter-bomber, howling in afterburner, snapped the holdback bar and hurtled down the deck in a cloud of swirling steam . . . ."
It is the height of the Vietnam War. Bestselling author Joe Weber (DEFCON One, Shadow Flight) vividly portrays the lives of Naval Aviators as they fly off Seventh Fleet aircraft carriers on Yankee Station to strike Hanoi. These men are fighting not only the North Vietnamese but the rules of engagement which prevent the Americans from attacking so many important targets.
Brad Austin is a man of courage and strength, both physical and moral. He can handle most situations... When you're high, the SAMs and triple A will come after you. If you duck down in the weeds, the Cong and everyone else with a rifle or rock will use you for target practice..." But when a North Vietnamese MiG shoots down his wingman, Austin becomes frustrated with the "no-win" situation. The MiG bases are off-limits to the American pilots, providing a safe haven from which the enemy can strike without fear of reprisal. The avenging of his lost comrade becomes Austin's obsession. To do so however, will require him to break free from the restrictions from above.
From start to finish, Rules of Engagement is filled with high-speed action and excitement. You get inside the lives of the fighter pilots as they have to fly over and over "in harm's way" through the deadly skies of Hanoi.
Chapter 1.
YANKEE STATION, GULF OF TONKIN
Marine 1st Lt. Brad Austin exercised his flight controls to the stops, then saluted the catapult officer and braced his head for the violent launch. He inhaled a deep breath of pure, cool oxygen and held it in his lungs.
The F-4 Phantom's twin turbojets produced an earsplitting roar as the cat officer leaned forward and touched the flight deck, signaling to fire the catapult.
The deck-edge operator, standing in the starboard catwalk of the mammoth ship, pushed the launch button and quickly ducked below the surface of the flight deck to avoid the superheated jet blast.
The fighter-bomber, howling in afterburner, snapped the hold-back bar and hurtled down the deck in a cloud of swirling steam.
Austin's helmet was pinned to the ejection seat headrest as his eyeballs flattened under the 6-g cat shot. His normal body weight of 165 pounds had instantly increased to 990 pounds.
Austin's radar intercept officer, navy Lt. Russell Lunsford, gripped the sides of the rear cockpit and looked at the port catapult track. The ship and the ocean were vague blurs of gray and blue as the Phantom accelerated from zero to 170 miles per hour in two and a half seconds.
Clearing the starboard-bow catapult, Brad popped the landing gear lever up, accelerated straight ahead, then raised the flaps and scanned his engine instruments and master caution light. Everything looked normal. He left the Phantom in afterburner and started a rendezvous turn toward his flight leader, Cdr. Dan Bailey.
Rapidly closing on the squadron commanding officer, Austin inched the throttles out of burner and slid into the standard loose deuce tactical formation on Joker 204. Bailey gave his wingman a quick glance, then gently initiated a steeper climb.
Their mission was to fly target combat air patrol (TARCAP) for a strike group from the carrier USS Intrepid. The Intrepid, carrying a full complement of attack aircraft, had joined their carrier five days earlier.
The four A-4 Skyhawk jets and four single-engine, propeller-driven A-1 Skyraiders were going to attack a large industrial complex at Thai Binh, fifty miles southeast of Hanoi.
Brad Austin, an exchange pilot with the navy fighter squadron concentrated on his flight leader as the two Phantoms climbed in radio silence. Dan Bailey, respected as one of the best fighter pilots in the navy, believed in professionalism and discipline. He used head nods, augmented with hand signals, to communicate until it was absolutely necessary to talk over the radios.
Austin, who was beginning his fourth month with the navy squadron, had volunteered for the assignment to the carrier air wing. He would remain with the fighter squadron for the duration of the cruise.
Russ Lunsford glanced at the lead aircraft and keyed his intercom. "Ah . . . Brad, I've got a heads-up for you. Word is that the skipper is giving you a look this ride . . . for section leader. I didn't want to say anything until we were off the boat and settled down."
Brad smiled. "Thanks, Russ. I figured something was up when the boss had me conduct the brief."
The flight leveled at 20,000 feet and contacted the KA-3B tanker. Four minutes later, Joker Flight eased into the stabilized position behind the large twin-engine Skywarrior. Both pilots filled their fuel tanks to capacity, then dropped away from the Whale and headed northwest to Thai Binh.
Austin and Lunsford, feeling the tension mount as they approached the coast-in coordinates, rechecked their armament switches. The two men purposely cinched their restraining straps to the point of being uncomfortable. If the pilot and his RIO had to eject, they could not afford to have any slack in their ejection-seat harnesses.
"You tucked in, Russ?"
Lunsford snugged his shoulder straps one last time. "Any tighter, I'd have gangrene."
Squinting through the early morning haze, the two fighter pilots saw the coast at the same time. They would be over land--feet dry--in three minutes. The crews went through their combat checklist as the shoreline passed under the Phantoms.
"Joker Two," Bailey radioed as the flight crossed the beach, "you've got the lead. You are now Joker One."
Brad had anticipated the command. "Joker One, copy. I have the lead."
The CO drifted off to the right side and slid behind the new flight leader. Bailey had a keen respect for the young marine aviator and often referred to Austin as his brother in green.
"Combat spread," Brad ordered, tweaking the F-4 's nose down five degrees below the horizon.
Bailey, intently scanning the sky for MiGs and surface-to-air missiles, answered with two clicks from his microphone. The response was standard for a pilot who was busy or desired to keep radio chatter to a minimum. The veteran fighter pilot, who had a well-deserved reputation for rowdy behavior on the ground, was deadly serious in the arena of aerial combat.
The Phantoms leveled at 15,000 feet and Austin entered a left-hand pattern two miles southwest of the target. After three orbits around the area, the F-4 crews heard the rescue combat air patrol (RESCAP) flight call the strike leader. The four additional A-1 Skyraiders, referred to as Spads by their pilots, were circling low off the coast. Their job was straightforward. They had responsibility for protecting downed aircrews until a helicopter or an amphibious aircraft could rescue the men.
Austin and Lunsford continued the lazy circle as the lead Skyhawk pilot rolled into his bombing run. The morning sky suddenly filled with a barrage of 37mm and 57mm artillery fire, interspersed with hundreds of small-arms rounds tracking the diving aircraft.
Brad looked down to see three surface-to-air missiles rise from an emplacement next to the road leading into the target area. Two more SAMs lifted off from another position before a Skyhawk pilot scored a direct hit on the missile battery. The SAMs exploded, spraying flaming fuel and skittering across the ground in erratic maneuvers. Two of the missiles impacted a fuel storage tank, causing a blinding explosion.
The prop-driven A-1 s strafed and bombed gun emplacements surrounding the industrial complex. The A-4 pilots varied their run-ins, dropping all their ordnance in
one pass. The small attack jets disappeared in the rising smoke, emerging from the other side in steep, climbing turns.
Austin caught a glimpse of two buildings disintegrating in a series of bright explosions. The violent blasts sent visible shock waves across the ground.
"Russ, it looks like they hit an ammo dump, from the type of explosions down there."
"Yeah," Lunsford replied, snapping photographs as quickly as he could work his camera. "Probably why they have so much artillery around the complex."
The Skyhawks pulled off the target and raced for the shoreline, followed by the slower Spads. Antiaircraft fire arced through the air in dense streams of multicolored tracers. Six more SAMs lifted off and shot skyward. One missile detonated under a Skyhawk, but the aircraft continued toward the coastline.
"MiGs, eleven o'clock low!" Lunsford yelled over the radio as four sets of eyes focused on the position. The Communist fighters were below and slightly to the left of the Phantoms.
"Tally, tally," Brad replied, feeling his pulse pound in his neck. "Jokers, arm 'em up."
"Two," Bailey acknowledged, flipping his missile-arming switches to ON.
The five MiG-17s had launched from Phuc Yen airfield, situated twelve miles north of Hanoi, and had made a low-level, high-speed pass to the northeast of the sprawling city.
The MiG-17, code-named Fresco by NATO, was an aerial hot rod that had tremendous maneuverability. The MiG was smaller than the Phantom and two-thirds less gross weight. Although the MiG-17 was not a supersonic fighter, it could outturn the more powerful F-4. Armed with three 23mm cannons, along with rockets or heat-seeking Atoll missiles, the compact fighter was a formidable aircraft. The MiG-17 was hard to spot in the air, giving it the advantage of surprise. Conversely, the big Phantom emitted dark jet exhaust, which made it easy to see from fifteen to twenty miles away. Selecting afterburner was the only way to eliminate the F-4's telltale smoke.
The MiGs had remained close to the ground as they approached Thai Binh. The North Vietnamese pilots were attempting to foil the U. S. early-warning radar, call sign Red Crown, stationed aboard a navy cruiser in the Gulf of Tonkin. The lower the MiGs flew, the less likely they would be discovered in the usual radar ground clutter.
Brad Austin could see that the MiG pilots, flying almost 430 knots, were rapidly overtaking the strike group. It was his responsibility to protect the attack pilots.
"Let's take it down," Brad radioed as he pushed the throttles forward. "Goin' burner."
"Two."
The F-4s rocketed toward the MiG-17s as Austin radioed the strike leader. "Seahorse Lead, you have bandits at your seven o'clock, closing rapidly."
"Roger that!" the A-4 pilot replied, looking over his left shoulder. "How close . . . how much time do we have?"
"Jokers out of burner," Brad ordered before he answered the frantic Skyhawk pilot. "They're about four miles. Suggest your flight do a hard in-place port turn; put 'em nose on and hose 'em down."
"Copy," Seahorse Lead radioed as he looked back to his three charges. "Seahorses, port one-eighty, NOW!"
Austin and Bailey continued to close on the MiGs while the A-4 pilots completed a knife-edge reversal to face the bogies. Russ Lunsford stowed his camera and hunched down in his seat when a line of reddish white tracers shot past his canopy. The bright rounds, seemingly close enough to touch, tracked over the top of the canopy and disappeared in the gray haze.
"Got a lock, Russ?" Brad asked while he watched the Skyhawks, going in the opposite direction, flash over the top of the withdrawing Spads. He could see that the attack pilots were firing their 20mm cannons in a head-on pass at the MiGs.
"I've got one," Lunsford answered, concentrating on their quarry, "but the A-4s are going right through the middle of my sco--"
"Missiles!" Brad interrupted, seeing two surface-to-air missiles rise in a plume of gray-white smoke. He thumbed the radio button. "Joker SAMs ! Three o'clock low, comin' right up the pike."
"Joker Two!"
Brad shoved the nose over, trying to outmaneuver the weapons, but the missiles continued straight toward the Phantoms. Sensing an imminent collision, Brad squinted and prepared for the explosion. The first SAM flashed under the fuselage; the second missile screeched over the canopy without exploding. Shaken by the narrow escape, Brad felt the sweat on his brow.
"Holy shit!" Lunsford swore, breathing in gasps.
The radio frequency was chaotic with calls to break, jink, and dive. The antiaircraft fire seemed to intensify as two more SAMs accelerated toward the Phantoms, missing them by less than fifty yards.
Brad bottomed out near the ground at 630 knots and quickly selected HEAT. He cursed the lack of cannons on the navy and Marine Corps F-4s. Their Phantoms had been equipped to carry four radar-guided Sparrow missiles and four heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles.
Dan Bailey, flying 100 feet above the trees a quarter mile to the right of Austin, had also selected HEAT. He knew that the marine pilot was going to attempt to scatter the MiG formation.
The Communist pilots fired several missiles at point-blank range, narrowly missing the Skyhawks as the A-4s pulled into the vertical. Two MiGs broke away to pursue the A-1 Spads while the other three pilots snapped straight up to engage the A-4s. Heavy antiaircraft fire continued to rain across the sky, spewing flaming death through friend and foe alike.
Brad raised the nose of his Phantom and tracked the lead MiG chasing the Skyhawks. "Come on, lock on. Where's the tone? Gotta have a tone."
Lunsford, turning his head from side to side as he watched for other MiGs, saw the second pair of SAMs fly out of sight toward the Gulf of Tonkin. "Clear of SAMs!"
Recognizing that his closure rate to the first MiG was excessive, Brad pulled his throttles to idle. He heard the missile annunciator tone at the same instant.
"Got it!" Austin exclaimed over the intercom as he fired two Sidewinders. "Go . . . nail his ass."
The first missile shot out in front of the Phantom, completed a barrel-roll maneuver, and flew out of sight toward the horizon. Shoving his throttles into afterburner, Austin swore as the second Sidewinder left the rail. The heat-seeking missile guided straight for the MiG leader, exploding ten feet behind his tail pipe.
The black-orange explosion blew debris from the aft fuselage of the MiG-17, but the aircraft continued to fly as the pilot dove for the deck.
"Got him!" Brad shouted over the radio. He experienced a sudden surge of adrenaline. "Jokers go vertical!"
Bailey squeezed off a Sidewinder, selected afterburner, then pulled hard to bring the F-4's nose straight up. He saw the AIM-9 missile go ballistic, missing the third MiG by a wide margin.
Brad viciously rolled his Phantom, looking for their adversaries. He saw the telltale mist of leaking fuel from the MiG flight leader.
Russ Lunsford also spotted the lead MiG. "Brad, you got him! He's trailing smoke or fluid, but he's still flying that bucket."
Austin quickly glanced at the damaged Communist fighter. The MiG was nose low, accelerating to maximum speed.
"Yeah," Brad replied disgustedly, "running to Phuc Yen, their goddamn sanctuary."
"Joker lead," Dan Bailey calmly radioed, "you got a good hit. They've disengaged--all down in the weeds goin' for broke."
"I have 'em," Brad replied as his F-4 accelerated through 470 knots. He scanned the sky toward the coastline. "Let's get the others . . . the two on the Spads."
"Joker Two."
Listening over the open (hot mike) intercom system, Lunsford could hear his pilot breathing rapidly.
Brad swiveled his head, checking for SAMs and MiGs, then searched for the A-ls and their predators. He saw the MiGs fire missiles at the Skyraiders seconds before the A-4 Skyhawks cleared the beach.
"Seahorse is feet wet. We're winchester." The Skyhawk flight leader had radioed Red Crown, the radar surveillance ship, that his four-plane division was over water and out of ordnance.
Brad, watching the A-1 s jinking all over the sky, saw
black smoke belch from the trailing Skyraider. The staggering Spad had narrowly escaped an air-to-air missile before flying through a concentrated burst of 23mm cannon fire from the first MiG.
Nine heavy projectiles had ripped through the Spad's engine cowling, shredding fuel and oil lines.
"Buckshot Four is hit!" the attack pilot radioed. "I'm hitgoin' down! I can't make the beach!"
Brad pulled hard to track the high MiG, released pressure on the stick to unload the g forces, heard the annunciator growl, then fired his third Sidewinder.
"Shit!" Austin swore as the missile left the rail and tumbled underneath the airplane. He instantly punched off his fourth heat seeker.
"Lifeguard One, Lifeguard One, Joker Lead," Brad radioed as the missile made a tentative wiggle, then guided directly to the MiG and exploded off the fighter's right wing. "We need RESCAP--repeat, we need RESCAP! Buckshot Four is down!"
Surprised that his target was still flying, Austin watched both MiGs turn hard into the F-4s. He executed a high yo-yo and flinched when Dan Bailey, in afterburner, flashed by a scant forty feet away.
"Wilco, Joker," the rescue combat air patrol leader replied. "Lifeguard up. We're buster with a Sea King in trail--have you in sight."
"Go with a Sparrow!" Brad said to Lunsford as he whipped the Phantom over and pulled 7 g's. The snug-fitting anti-g suit felt as though it was going to crush his legs and squeeze his abdomen in half. He had to work fast to set up a shot on the second MiG.
"We've got . . . ," the RIO began, then hesitated when his throat tightened with fear. "I've got to have some separation to get a lock."
Brad yanked the Phantom into a vertical roll, floating inverted over the top of the climb. "Okay, these gomers aren't amateurs."
Austin saw Bailey, nose up and inverted, a split second before the CO fired a Sidewinder. The missile tracked straight to the MiG's tail pipe, exploding in a pulsing, red-orange fireball that blew the aircraft apart in a shower of pieces.
Bailey snapped the big fighter into a gut-wrenching displacement roll. His RIO, Lt. Cdr. Ernie Sheridan, witnessed the front half of the MiG-17 tumble out of the blast. He was amazed to see the nose landing gear extended. The canopy had separated, but the pilot remained in the cockpit. Sheridan watched, fascinated, as the MiG spun counterclockwise to the ground.
