Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing

by Tom Clancy

  “Okay. How long to target?” the general asked.

  “Two minutes, sir. Your steering cue is up!” came the curt reply. It was all business now.

  THE Defense Minister shared a Camel with the young sergeant and sucked in the smoke and night air. Any other time, it would have been a beautiful night. Now his country was at war again, fighting for its pride . . . its self-respect . . . its identity . . . though he himself was beginning to question all of that. He looked over at the young soldier sharing a smoke with him and wondered what kind of nation he and the rest of the Party Leadership Council were going to hand over to this brave man.

  “TARGET in sight, sir. Ten seconds to drop,” Ahab called to General Perry, the green glow from the FLIR image on the Multi-Function Display lighting his face as he worked the two hand controllers to set up the LGB delivery.

  “Roger, Master Arm on. Your pickle is hot. Stand by!” called General Perry over the intercom. As he did, the AAQ-14 LANTIRN targeting pod fired a short laser burst at the top of the karst to establish the range to target. This done, the time-to-drop clock counted down to zero. Then the four GBU-24/Bs dropped in rapid succession. They fell quickly, speeding up to over 900 fps./274.3 mps. When they were fifteen seconds from impact, Captain Ontra fired the laser again at the top of the limestone mountain, painting it with laser light. Again, a countdown clock in his FLIR MFD counted down to zero.

  IT was the memory of a younger man that saved him at that moment. There was only time for General Truong Le to yell, “Get down!” to the sergeant, before the four bombs impacted the top of the karst. For a moment, the old man thought that the weapons has been duds, though that illusion was rapidly dispelled when the delayed-action fuzes fired the charges in the BLU- 109/B warheads. There was no way the weapons could fully penetrate the limestone strata to reach the caves below. They did not have to. The tail-mounted fuzes had been set to detonate at the same moment, setting up the equivalent of a small earthquake within the soft rock. At once, a vertical shear wave was formed, heading down into the karst. It collapsed the cave tunnels below, like eggs under an elephant. Everyone inside was killed instantly. Meanwhile, the sudden collapse of the caves caused a huge overpressure of air in the tunnel entrance, blowing the blast door off its hinges with a “bang” and a “whoosh.” The rogue door was flung out of the twisting cave tunnel like a sheet of paper. It missed the Defense Minister and his young comrade by inches as it careened off into the jungle. As the silence returned to the night, the old general heard other dull explosions, as twelve more targets were hit in exactly the same way. Instinctively knowing what was happening, he stood transfixed as the distant flashes announced the end of the Vietnamese Communist Party.

  He was still standing when the young sergeant asked, “Shouldn’t we report this to someone, Comrade General?”

  The old man thanked the darkness for not showing his embarrassment to the young soldier. Then he replied as the last of the rolling thunder of the bombs died away, “Yes. And Sergeant, thank you for reminding me of my duty. Would you care to accompany me, please?” With that, they headed down the trail, back to the road, and hopefully, to Yen Bai Airfield some 20 km./12 miles away.

  Yen Bai Airfield, Northwest of Hanoi, May 10, 2000, 1412 Hours

  The Party Military Committee’s study of the 1991 Gulf War had derived one important lesson about air power: Use it or lose it. The VNPAF would not cower in shelters waiting to be destroyed. It would go down fighting from dispersed airstrips like this one. So it was that Colonel Nguyen Tri Loc, formerly the chief political officer of the VNPAF, found himself commanding the remains of the 931st Fighter Regiment, following the death of its commander from a Yankee AMRAAM missile three days previously. The 931st now consisted of just nine flyable MiG-29Cs and a rugged antique AN-2 biplane. These had narrowly escaped from the burning and exploding rubble of the air defense command center at Gia Lam Airport northwest of Hanoi only hours ago. The colonel had realized that the Americans were not making his planes a target unless they were actually flying. The unit’s first attempt to break the aerial blockade had resulted in the loss of five of his precious MiG-29s to long-range AMRAAM shots. Since that time, they had been whittled down to the survivors that resided in the earth and concrete shelters surrounding the airfield’s perimeter.

  The colonel had almost lost his own life two nights before, while trying to intercept one of the big B-1B bombers on a mining mission. He had flown alone that night, trying to hide in the clutter with his IFF transponder off, just in case they were trying to use that against him also. He had just sighted the black monster in the mouth of the Red River near Nam Dien when he saw the flash of a Sidewinder missile coming at him from an escorting F-16. Only a quick snapshot with one of his own R-73/AA-11 Archer missiles and a rapid run behind a nearby karst saved his life.

  At the time, the incident severely shook him, though now he was just furious, angered by his regiment’s impotence against the aerial invaders. He and the surviving planes and pilots lived at the discretion of a hostile opponent, only as long as they did not threaten them. That was the reason why the Yankees wiped out the surface-to-air rocket batteries that protected his base here in the Vietnamese highlands valley from which it drew its name. When the survivors of the four rocket batteries returned, they were cursing the HARM missiles that destroyed their engagement radars like thunderbolts from the blue. Despite this loss, the People’s Army was still providing base defense, in the form of a few well-hidden S-60 57mm AAA guns, and some shoulder-fired missile teams equipped with the Chinese version of the SA-16, dug in on hilltops to the south and west.

  Just finding the American intruders was almost impossible. Every intercept radar site in North Vietnam had been taken out in the first few days of the American intervention. So for early warning the colonel had only an Inmarsat-P satellite phone that connected him to agents on the ground in Thailand. He knew when a strike or patrol left Takhli or U-Tapao, but he could only guess where it was headed; and more than once he had scrambled his handful of fighters, wasting precious fuel and alerting the ever-vigilant AWACS planes, only to discover that aircraft had doglegged somewhere too far for him to have a chance at interception.

  But today would be different. Several flights of F-15Es had just struck one of the last of the leadership cavern complexes, and an urgent coded message on the satellite phone told him that their return route would pass almost directly over his position. The odds for once were more than two to one in his favor. He would have the advantage of surprise, and this might be the last chance for the 931st Regiment to strike a blow before it was targeted and wiped out for good. He headed to his MiG, strapped in, and gave the order for the rest of the regiment to start engines. As the last of the howling Klimov RD-33 engines came to life, Colonel Nguyen Tri Loc taxied his MiG out for what would be the last air battle of the Vietnam People’s Air Force.

  GENERAL Perry brought the Wing King away from its target run and pulled into the standard Strike Eagle trailing formation. This had two pairs of F-15Es, with the trailing pair up to four miles behind the first two. Because he and his wingman had hit a large leadership cave complex that was close to the old PRC/Vietnamese northwest rail line, they had wound up as the trailing pair in the formation for the return leg of the mission, which would take them within five miles/8.2 km. of the Yen Bai Airbase. The Gunfighters’ commander was elated. The last of the leadership caves had been destroyed by a total of eight GBU-24/Bs. Amazingly, the last of the Leadership Council had insisted on staying in their own private grave complex, even when warned about the imminent danger posed by the 366th’s penetration bombs. It was as if they’d realized their time was up . . . like old elephants going off to die. General Perry smiled. For once, those responsible for making war on innocent people had themselves paid with their lives. Justice. His eyes were scanning the cockpit, looking for signs of mechanical and systems problems, when they fixed on the moving map display, and froze.

  “Ahab,” the ge
neral snapped, “get me an SAR picture of the runway at Yen Bai. Do it now!”

  The young captain immediately slewed the big dish of the APG-70 radar around to the left and painted the airfield, just coming into sight now about 20 miles/32.8 km. distant. The Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mode gave them photographic-quality images of ground targets from many miles away; targets as small as 8 feet/2.4 meters in size could be imaged. Both men stared tensely at the image in their MFDs. What they saw chilled them both, for on the screen were eight or nine small targets, clearly identifiable as aircraft. General Perry saw that most of them were clustered at what he remembered from satellite photos of the base as an arming and fueling pit. Two others were clearly getting ready for a takeoff roll. Immediately, he yelled over the intercom for Captain Ontra to take another sweep with the APG-70 in SAR mode, and saw that two more of the aircraft were missing from the arming pit. From the back seat, he heard his WSO mumble, “Oh, Allah!” They were in trouble.

  COLONEL Nguyen and his wingman stayed low in the valley, not turning on their radars or any other electronic gear which might reveal their positions or intentions. As they rocketed on full afterburner through the saddle at the western end of the valley, they pulled up and sighted a pair of the Yankee Eagle strike aircraft directly in front of them. Nguyen exulted as he set this up, and called to his wingman, “Captain Tran, you attack the right-hand target, I’ll take the left one.” With that, he checked his sensors. His Infrared Search And Track (IRST) system, contained in a small transparent ball in the nose, was giving him a good lock for his two R-73/AA-11 Archer short-range IR missiles. But the range was still too long, so he activated the RLPK-29/Slot Back radar, and set up a shot with his two R-27/AA-10 Alamo long-range radar-homing missiles. When the HUD showed the lead Eagle locked up, he depressed the trigger twice, and the two missiles were on their way. At the same time, he saw Tran’s missiles leap off their launch rails and head for the second American fighter.

  “OH, Christ!” thought General Perry as he saw the smoke trails from the missiles angle up towards the leading pair of Strike Eagle Flight. He jammed a finger on the guard frequency transmit button and yelled, “Harry! Tony! Alamos coming up. Get the hell out of there now!” Both Strike Eagle crews reacted with trained precision, doing everything right. In the backseats, the WSOs immediately activated their defensive electronic countermeasures (ECM) systems, then began to hit the buttons for the ALE-47 chaff/decoy launchers to dispense metalized plastic strips and flares to try and decoy the incoming missiles. In the front cockpits, each of the pilots jammed the throttles of their twin F-100-PW-229 engines to Zone 5, afterburner, and racked their fighters in a sweeping left-hand turn towards the oncoming danger. They almost got away with it.

  One of Captain Tran’s missiles failed in mid-flight, and the other was decoyed by the Strike Eagle’s internal ECM system, flying off into the western sky. The lead Eagle had no such luck. While the first missile went after a chaff decoy, the second was dead on target. It struck the F-15E at the base of the port wing, detonating there and taking it off completely. As the big fighter began to cartwheel into a spin, both crewmen activated their ACES II ejection seats and headed for a “nylon letdown” and God-knows-what on the ground. General Perry shook off the shock from the suddenness of the strike and realized that three or four more flights of MiG-29s just like this one were about to do the same thing to the remaining three planes of his strike force. He had to act fast, and time was burning.

  But then things slowed down, as the adrenaline rush compressed time and events into a dizzying swirl. He slammed the twin throttles of the -229 engines to afterburner and punched the button for the radio channel again, thinking of the two men in their chutes as he spoke. “Tony, extend and get back into the fight when you can. Get us some CSAR”—combat search and rescue—“support up here to look for the guys.” He then turned his attention to his wingman, a young First Lieutenant named Billy “Jack” Bowles, a full-blooded Cherokee from Oklahoma. He called over, “Billy, get the flight taking off now with Slammers. Now! Then try and extend and reassemble to the west.”

  Next he called to Captain Ontra in the backseat and ordered, “Lock up the second airborne pair with Slammers. Get the ECM going. And get me a raid count with the FLIR.”

  He needn’t have said anything. Already, Ahab had the APG-70 in TWS mode, searching for and finding the second pair of Fulcrums. He quickly set up an AIM-120 Slammer for each of the approaching MiGs and fired them in Fire-and-Update mode. The two missiles quickly ate up the 5 miles/ 8.2 km. to the two Vietnamese fighters, obliterating them in a pair of dirty orange explosions. There were no survivors.

  He heard Ontra in the backseat yell, “Splash two,” over the guard channel, and heard a similar call from Lieutenant Bowles.

  In his headset he heard the duty AWACS calling, “This is Disco-1 on guard. Bandits . . . I repeat . . . multiple bandits at Bullseye”—Hanoi—“295 degrees for 85” (85 miles/139.3 km). “King flight is engaged. King-3 is down. CSAR support is on the way. Oilcan flight, engage. Your code is BUSTER” (full afterburner). “I repeat. Your code is Buster!” The young female captain at the controller console of the AWACS was excited, but doing her duty. Now all General Perry had to do was stay alive for five minutes, and four F-15Cs from the 390th would be here to save their collective asses.

  COLONEL Nguyen, elated with his ambush of the first Strike Eagle, led Captain Tran towards the ground to avoid being ambushed himself. But as the two MiGs popped up over a ridge, his elation died. In addition to the two white American parachutes, there were four dirty balls of smoke, with trails heading down.

  His men had paid the price for his victory. Now he had to avenge them. He again activated his radar and began to search for targets. He noticed he had lost Captain Tran from his wing and decided to keep going on his own.

  The Trail to Yen Bai Airfield, May 10, 2000, 1422 Hours

  General Truong Le stared in wonder at the air battle going on above his head, cheering like a boy at a soccer match when he saw the Strike Eagle go down. But then he watched in horror as four of the Fulcrums died in a matter of seconds with their pilots. “Four more young Vietnamese lost. For what?” he thought. Then he noticed the two Americans in their parachutes descending towards the ground. He and the sergeant rushed to the landing site and caught both men while they were struggling out of their parachute harnesses. The sergeant suggested that he should shoot them as retribution for the deaths of the MiG pilots, but the general decided that he had seen enough men die for one day, and motioned the two men down the trail to Yen Bai Airfield.

  The “Furball” West of Yen Bai Airfield, May 10, 2000, 1423 Hours

  Colonel Nguyen saw a lone Strike Eagle chasing a MiG-29 in the distance, crossing his nose from left to right. He was racking his fighter in a tight turn to the right in an effort to save his comrade in the MiG when he saw an AIM- 9 Sidewinder missile leap out and shred the Eagle’s quarry into a streaming fireball. Luckily, the pilot ejected, a rare Vietnamese survivor of this battle. Meanwhile, Nguyen was trying to catch up to the enemy strike fighter to get a shot when he saw a flash in his rearview mirror.

  GENERAL Perry saw a lone MiG chasing Lieutenant Bowles in King-2 and made a conversion turn to the enemy fighter’s rear. He had to kill this guy fast. Selecting SIDE mode from the HOTAS controls, he waited for the tone in his headset to settle down to a continuous scream. At a range of 2,500 feet/762 meters, he triggered the missile, which rapidly ate up the distance to the Fulcrum’s port engine. It impacted the engine’s afterburner can, contact detonating and blowing the back of the engine to pieces, taking with it the port rudder and horizontal stabilizer. Amazingly, the MiG continued to fly, the star-board engine, rudder, and stabilizer continuing to function. Cursing the tiny warhead of the AIM-9M, he switched the armament controls to GUN.

  COLONEL Nguyen heard and felt a huge bang in the rear of his MiG; then all the port engine annunciators flashed red in warning. He chopped the por
t throttle and popped the port side fire bottle to contain the fire that had broken out in the shattered engine. The bird was still flying, and perhaps he might get it home to Yen Bai. But seconds later, he felt a thumping in the control stick and throttle console, and the cockpit exploded with a flash and a sudden darkness. It was the last sight he would see.

  GENERAL Perry placed the MiG in the firing cone of the gunsight, let the range close to under 1,000 feet/304.8 meters, and fired a three-second burst from the M61 Vulcan cannon in the Eagle’s starboard wing root. The stream of PGU-28 armor-piercing/incendiary shells walked up the spine of the aircraft and eventually filled the enemy fighter’s cockpit with explosions and smoke. The Fulcrum fell off and began to spin down to the ground. Eventually it impacted in a fireball, a funeral pyre to Colonel Nguyen and the Vietnamese People’s Air Force. A quick check of the radar and radio showed only the two surviving Strike Eagles of King flight and the incoming flight of F-15Cs. He turned the nose of the big fighter to the southwest and began to think about fueling from the duty tanker and heading home. It had been a long ten minutes.

  CAPTAIN Tran landed his MiG-29, the only surviving aircraft of the 931st Regiment’s last air battle. As he taxied into a shelter, he cut the engines and allowed his head to fall forward against the control panel as he mumbled an old saying from an American Western film he had once seen, “From every massacre there is always one survivor . . . .” He did not notice the old general and the sergeant when they walked by with their prisoners. His only thought was that he was very tired and never wanted to fly again.