‘Cobra Two, Vipers, switch to tactical on stud four.’
Richter switched frequency and checked in. ‘Cobra Two.’
‘Viper One.’
‘Viper Two.’
‘Roger, Cobra Two, Vipers. Stand by for rate one right turn onto one four zero in thirty seconds.’
‘Roger.’
‘Cobras, Vipers, turn now, now, now.’
As the Senior Pilot finished the sentence, all four aircraft swung gently to the right – a rate one turn being comparatively slow – and steadied on their new heading.
‘Cobras, Vipers, this is November Alpha.’
‘November Alpha, Cobra One, you’re loud and clear.’
‘Roger, Cobra Lead. You’re identified, Picture Alpha.’
Just under six minutes later the four Harriers throttled back and began a cruise descent. Passing twelve thousand feet, their Radar Warning Receivers showed the last of the North Korean surveillance radars beginning to lose contact, and by the time they reached eight thousand, the RAWs were silent.
‘Cobras, Vipers, stand by for a hard port turn onto north. Turn now, now, now.’
The moment they steadied, and passed five thousand feet in descent, Long ordered them to accelerate. Their comparatively slow speed and turn away from North Korea might have fooled the DPRK radar controllers, but none of them felt like betting on it. Their best weapons now were speed and surprise.
USS Enterprise, North Pacific Ocean
In the CIC, the radar operator called out to the captain. ‘Sir, those four contacts have cleared the east coast of South Korea, but they turned south-east and they’ve just started to descend.’
‘Of course they’re heading away from North Korea. They’re not stupid. If they’d turned towards the north, every radar station above the DMZ would have been tracking them, and feeding their coordinates to their SAM sites. Just keep watching. When they’re low enough, they’ll head north.’
Pyongyang, North Korea
‘Sir,’ the voice of the radar supervisor at the coastal radar station sounded calm and controlled, ‘those four aircraft are now heading away from us, and they’ve started descending. I suggest they’re probably just on a regular patrol, and therefore no direct threat to us.’
‘You could be right,’ Kim Yong-Su replied, ‘but your orders are perfectly clear. We still believe they may be planning an attack, so continue watching the areas out to the south and east, and inform me the moment you see any sign of them returning.’
USS Enterprise, North Pacific Ocean
‘You’re right, sir. They’ve turned north and increased speed. They’re not squawking Mode Charlie, but the Hawkeye estimates they’re down below two thousand feet.’
‘Got that,’ Rodgers said, and opened the intercom link to PriFly. ‘CAG, this is the Captain. What’s the state of play with the Hornets?’
‘Ready to go, sir. I’ve eight interceptors fully prepped, plus four fitted with refuelling pods that I’ll send off about forty minutes afterwards to pick them up on the way back.’
‘And the Prowlers?’
‘Two waiting on the bow catapults, sir, as you ordered.’
‘Very good. Launch the Prowlers and get the Hornets ready to follow.’
The deck was a scene of frantic but organized activity. The deck of any aircraft carrier at launch or recovery is one of the busiest, and certainly one of the most dangerous, places in the world. The Enterprise has four steam catapults, two on the foredeck and the other two amidships, and each would be used twice in quick succession to get the eight Super Hornet interceptors airborne.
But first the flight deck crews were going to get the two Prowlers into the air. The EA-6B has been around since the early 1970s, and is still the American Navy’s primary electronic attack aircraft, scheduled to be replaced in about 2010 by the EA-18G Growler, the electronic warfare version of the Super Hornet.
The Enterprise began a gentle turn as flight deck crew members checked that the Prowlers and their pilots were ready for launch. The moment the massive ship steadied, PriFly issued clearance to launch both aircraft. The blast deflector lifted behind the EA-6B on the starboard bow catapult and the pilot ran up the two Pratt and Whitney turbojets to full power. The J52 engines are non-afterburning, but are still powerful enough to give the Prowler a maximum speed of nearly six hundred miles an hour. The aircraft was heavy: although it wasn’t carrying drop tanks, it had a maximum load of four AGM-88 HARM anti-radar missiles and a single ALQ-99 TJS external pod.
Once the Prowler pilot indicated he was at full power, the steam catapult was triggered and the EA-6B shot along the deck. Thirty seconds later the second Prowler launched from the port catapult. Both aircraft took up a south-westerly heading and began climbing to their pre-briefed altitude of thirty-two thousand feet.
‘Climax, Zapper formation is switching to discrete.’
‘Zapper, Climax. Roger.’
The Prowler crews switched frequencies simultaneously.
‘Zapper Two.’
‘Two from One, roger. Break, break. Alpha Three, this is Zapper formation in the climb to three two zero heading two three five and squawking mode three alpha code four three two one.’
‘Zapper, Alpha Three, you’re identified. Maintain heading and call level at three two zero. Squawk standby. No traffic at present.’
‘Roger, Alpha Three.’
On launch, they were over five hundred miles from the Korean Peninsula, and at that height they were still well below the radar horizon of any DPRK surveillance sites.
The range/height calculation as it relates to radar coverage is simple enough: because of the curvature of the Earth, an aircraft at an altitude of five thousand feet will paint on a surveillance radar at a range of about fifty miles. To ensure the Prowlers stayed undetected, the Hawkeye would instruct them to begin descent before they reached the theoretical radar horizon, and set them up in a holding pattern at least one hundred miles from the east coast of the peninsula. From that point, they would be able to hit the first of the North Korean radar sites, assuming their assistance was needed, in less than twelve minutes.
Cobra and Viper formation, Sea of Japan
Flying in formation at well over four hundred miles an hour and less than five hundred feet above the surface of the sea, a pilot’s concentration has to be absolute. A split-second’s inattention and the Harrier could plunge into the waves or plough into another aircraft, and the four GR9s had widened their formation slightly to provide an added margin of safety.
‘Vipers, Cobra One. Stand by for split in thirty seconds.’
Richter took his eyes off the view through the windscreen for the bare few seconds it took to visually check his cockpit, then looked back.
‘Split now, now, now. Good hunting, Vipers.’
But as the tracks of the two pairs of Harriers diverged, the AEW Sea King radar controller passed his first traffic information message, and it wasn’t good news.
‘Cobras, Vipers, November Alpha. Picture Charlie. Launches from the airfields at T’ae’tan, Nuchonri, Kuupri, Wonsan, Toksan and Ŏrang. Multiple bandits, all tracking towards the east coast of the peninsula. Stand by for numbers and locations.’
‘Shit,’ Richter muttered. ‘That’s all we needed.’
USS Enterprise, North Pacific Ocean
The first Hornet taxied to the starboard bow catapult, expertly directed by a marshaller, and stopped with its nosewheel in precisely the right spot. The holdback – a steel bar designed to stop the aircraft moving forwards when the engines were run up to full power prior to launch – was attached to the rear of the nosewheel landing gear, and the front hitched to the catapult itself. Steam swirled around the men carrying out these tasks, giving the scene a somewhat surreal appearance.
The blast deflector was raised behind the Hornet and the pilot ran up the two General Electric F414-GE-400 turbofans to full cold military power, then cut in the burners. The noise of the engines rose to a scream, and alm
ost immediately the aircraft lurched forward as the catapult accelerated it down the deck. At the far end, the Hornet dipped down briefly towards the sea, then rose quickly and climbed away, but nobody except the officers in PriFly were watching it. Instead, they were busy preparing for the next launch, and the Hornet on the port bow catapult was already in place and spooling up its engines.
Five seconds later, the second Super Hornet was airborne, and in under three minutes all eight aircraft were in the air and climbing away from the Enterprise. They formed into two groups of four, climbed to thirty-five thousand feet and took up a south-westerly heading.
Mayang, North Korea
The tab-ryong was scanning the surveillance radar screens when a shout from one of his controllers drew his attention to two very fast-moving contacts approaching from the south-east. They were travelling at around five hundred miles an hour, and were heading straight towards the missile base.
‘Excellent,’ the colonel murmured, then picked up a microphone to make a broadcast.
‘Air raid warning! Air raid warning! Two aircraft approaching from the south-east. All anti-aircraft crews stand by. Fire at will, but wait until you are certain of your targets.’
Outside the bunker, every surface-to-air missile battery and antiaircraft gun position was fully manned, and the tab-ryong had also stationed an additional fifty soldiers armed with shoulder-launched missiles around the perimeter of the base. His orders had been most specific: the attacking aircraft were under no circumstances to be allowed to escape.
Next the colonel dialled a telephone number from memory, which connected him with the senior controller at Toksan, the closest interceptor base.
‘This is Mayang,’ he said. ‘We have two fast-moving contacts approaching on bearing one five zero, range twenty miles.’
‘Very good. We’ll vector four of our interceptors towards you. Ensure your crews hold fire when our fighters approach. I’ll advise you once they reach five miles from your boundary.’
‘Understood,’ the tab-ryong replied, then used his microphone to warn his gun and missile crews.
Cobra formation, Sea of Japan
Richter followed the Senior Pilot in a turn to port. When he’d steadied, he glanced briefly out to starboard to see the Vipers heading away to the north. He checked his weapon controls, making sure he knew exactly where the switches were, and almost immediately his Radar Warning Receiver sounded.
He studied the Zeus ‘frying pan’ display that surrounded the GR9’s HUD. A single line was showing in the ten o’clock position, meaning his aircraft was being intermittently irradiated by the lowest lobes of a North Korean surveillance radar somewhere on the coast to the southwest. That wasn’t a problem, but it was a definite attention-getter.
He checked the INGPS. They were seventeen miles from Mayang, their first target, and the coast of the Korean Peninsula was now clearly visible in front of them.
‘Two from One. Master arm on.’
Richter clicked his press-to-transmit button in acknowledgement, and made the switch, arming his weapon systems. Fifteen miles to go. The RAW, part of the Marconi Zeus ECM system, was now detecting numerous radar transmissions, but only from surveillance radars. No SAM fire-control radars or fighter sets yet but, if the Sea King bagman was right, that was going to change very soon.
And then Richter suddenly realized what had been bugging him ever since he’d seen those first satellite pictures of the North Korean missile sites. And he now deduced the probable reason for the sudden flurry of aircraft take-offs from the North Korean airfields.
‘All callsigns, Cobra Two. Abort! Abort! Abort! Vipers and Cobras abort. Haul off and reverse course. Cobras turn port, Vipers starboard. Opening heading south-east. Get the hell out of here, buster. Vipers acknowledge.’
And as he said the words Richter hauled his GR9 round in a tight turn to port.
‘Vipers, all copied. Reversing course.’
‘Cobra Two, Leader. What the fuck’s going on?’
Richter didn’t reply immediately, concentrating on getting his aircraft heading away from the hostile shore.
‘We’ve been sold a pup. It’s a trap. I suddenly realized what didn’t make sense. The North Korean military does almost everything underground. They’ve got the facilities to prepare their missiles in hardened shelters, so why are there four missile launch pads with No-dongs sitting on them, right out in the open and close to the coast, so they’re a really attractive target?’
‘To persuade us or the Americans to attack them?’
‘Exactly. And once we’d carried out the raid, and probably got our arses blown out of the sky in the process, Pyongyang would launch an attack across the DMZ and be able to claim they were acting in self-defence.’
Dick Long pulled alongside Richter’s Harrier as the two aircraft headed south-east at better than five hundred miles an hour. Before Long could reply, the AEW Sea King bagman broke in.
‘Cobra Two, November Alpha, all copied. Understand the hunt is off. Break, break. Vipers, Cobras right one o’clock range eight, similar heading. Call visual.’
‘Vipers visual with Cobras.’
‘So what now?’ Dick Long asked.
‘Right now,’ Richter said, ‘I don’t know. Let’s get south of the DMZ, just in case some of those aircraft November Alpha detected were Foxbats, out looking for an easy kill.’
Chapter Twenty
Monday
USS Enterprise, North Pacific Ocean
‘Sir, the Hawkeye reports multiple aircraft contacts launching from the southerly airfields in North Korea, principally Kuupri, Nuchonri, Ŏrang, T’ae’tan, Toksan and Wonsan. Judging by their speed and rate of climb, they look like interceptors. And I’m – stand by. Sir, the four British fighters have turned back.’
Rodgers acknowledged the call and concentrated on the display in front of him, where the JTIDS was showing exactly that. Numerous new contacts were being displayed over the North Korean landmass, but Rodgers wasn’t interested in those – at least, not for the present. Instead, he focused on the Harriers. The southerly pair had turned hard to port, and the other two to starboard, and all were now heading away from the east coast of North Korea at a speed the computer calculated at around five hundred miles an hour, clearly aiming to link up into a formation of four in a matter of minutes.
‘What the hell happened?’ the captain murmured. Then, louder. ‘Did you detect any stand-off weapon release? Any sign that they’ve used long-range air-to-surface missiles?’
‘Nothing showing on JTIDS, sir. Stand by, just checking with Alpha Three.’ There was a short pause. ‘Negative from the Hawkeye, sir. No weapon release seen. It looks like they just changed their minds and decided to go back home.’
Mayang, North Korea
The tab-ryong was staring in disbelief at the radar screen beside his desk. The aircraft he’d been told would be trying to attack his site had suddenly turned around, and were already over twenty miles away, all without a shot being fired or a single surface-to-air missile launched. What could have gone wrong?
The colonel had prepared the missile site exactly as Pyongyang had ordered, with an old and battered No-dong, previously used for engine tests and other development work, mounted in the firing gantry, and with the fake warhead inside the nose-cone. He’d been instructed to take as long as he could to mount the warhead, to make sure the American spy satellites got at least one good picture of it.
He’d done all that, and he guessed that officers in charge of other missile bases on the east coast of North Korea had probably received similar orders. The American aircraft – he assumed they were American – had clearly been flying on an attack vector, but had broken off at almost exactly twelve miles range.
He suddenly remembered that twelve miles was the international limit of territorial waters. Had the Americans been trying to provoke a response, probing close to the coast and then breaking off just before infringing North Korean territory? He shook his hea
d. No, he didn’t believe that. It was as if the pilots had suddenly been recalled, after being ordered to abort the raid.
Whatever the reason, he had to report this. And, he expected, the men in Pyongyang would not be happy with the news.
Cobra and Viper formation, Sea of Japan
‘Cobra Leader, November Alpha. No hostiles in pursuit. Most of them appear to be recovering to their bases.’
‘Roger that. Break. Cobra Two, Vipers, commence climb to thirty-five thousand feet.’
At low level the Harrier, like all high-performance jet aircraft, burned far more fuel than at altitude, where the engine worked much more efficiently. They’d dropped their external tanks less than ten minutes earlier, so conserving fuel wasn’t a priority but, as they seemed safe from pursuit, gaining height was a prudent move.
Pyongyang, North Korea
‘They must have noticed something,’ Pak Je-San insisted. ‘Something must have made those pilots realize it was a trap.’
‘Very probably,’ Kim Yong-Su agreed, ‘but exactly what happened is irrelevant. The fact remains that the fighters – and they were British, not American – turned away and didn’t continue their attack, which has put us in a very difficult position. We no longer have the justification we need to begin our operation against South Korea, and now we must decide what to do next.’
‘I would proceed as planned,’ Pak suggested. ‘Everything is in place.’
‘Fortunately, that is not your decision,’ Kim hissed. ‘I’m perfectly aware, as is the “Dear Leader”, that this was your plan, but we’ve both reminded you before that your involvement is now purely practical. We will decide all matters of strategy.’
Foxbat Page 30
