Authors: Mack Maloney
“Some got out …” Jones said after a pause. “Some didn’t …”
The explanation hit Hunter and the others like a ton of bricks. Certainly there had been millions of civilian deaths, many, many Americans among them.
“When do we launch our own chemical strike?” Christman asked.
Toomey and Wa were still looking down at the floor. They’d heard the answer before, and they weren’t going to like it any better this time around.
“We don’t …” Jones said. “Under direct orders of the President: We are not to counter-attack with chemical weapons. Period.”
“But why?” Rico asked.
Jones cleared his throat. “Because the President does not want any more innocent civilians killed,” he said.
“What about nuclear weapons?” Crider asked.
“Same order,” Jones said. “The US will not be the first side to introduce nuclear weapons.”
“Even low-yield neutron bombs?”
“Especially low-yields,” Jones responded. “The feeling is that first nuclear use will just have a domino effect. As serious as this situation is, it is obviously a major concern that it not get completely out of hand, and end up incinerating the whole damn planet, which, at this point, I might add, is still a good possibility …”
“So in other words,” JT said, “we’re fighting another ‘limited war?’”
Everyone in the room blanched at the comment. The words “limited war” made up the hated military buzz-phrase for the failure in Vietnam as well as the less-than-glorious results in Korea.
The comment turned Jones’s face a slight red. JT had a bad habit of speaking his mind a little too abruptly.
Still, the senior officer maintained his cool. “We are soldiers, Captain Toomey,” he said. “We are hired by the people of the United States to do a job. And right now that job is to carry out orders, no matter what we think of them.”
The pilots were sobered by the general’s words. They all felt as if they were one step away from either Armageddon or capitulation—Hunter included. A combination of hunger, sleeplessness, and high anxiety turned the briefing into a surrealistic episode for him. In less than twenty-four hours, the whole world had turned upside down, and now he felt as if he were caught in the eye of a hurricane.
After an uneasy pause, Jones continued with the briefing.
“Right now, the vast area of West Germany hit by the SCUDs is a no-man’s-land,” the senior officer explained. “But, as I said, if the satellite photos are right, we expect the Soviets to start driving as soon as the gas dissipates.
“And, believe it or not, we’re going to let them do just that.”
Now a wave of disbelief washed through the room.
“
Unopposed
?” Toomey asked, expressing the surprise all of them felt.
“For the most part, yes,” Jones replied. “Some of our special rear guard troops will try to delay their progress by blowing up bridges, roads, rail stations and communications links—soft targets. But it’s going to be token opposition, at least over the next eighteen to twenty-four hours …”
“We’re just going to
give it
all to them?” Rico asked, still not catching Jones’s drift.
The general nodded, then revealed another map, this one marked “Projected Situation.”
“There are several reasons for this strategy,” he explained. “First of all, it allows our troops to withdraw to more defensible positions.
“But secondly, if this strategy leads the Soviets
deeper
into Germany, or even right to the edge of France, it will serve to stretch out their supply lines. Conversely, it makes
our
supply lines shorter. The key is this: If we can gradually inflict casualties on the enemy’s rear areas by way of ambushes and air-strikes, and hitting him at strategic chokepoints as he moves across this no-man’s-land, we’ll not only be buying the precious time that NATO needs to regroup, we’ll also be whittling down the enemy’s numerical advantage in armor, aircraft, and men. In theory, the farther west they go, the more their supply lines will be stretched and vulnerable.”
Ben Wa raised his hand. “But General, if they build up a head of steam, they may be unstoppable,” he said. “How long do we let them march?”
Jones let out a long breath. “As long as it takes for the armies of NATO to make a stand and stop the advance.”
“
If
they can stop the advance …” JT added almost sarcastically.
Jones started to reply, but didn’t. He knew his wise-ass pilot was right—there were a lot of
ifs
in the risky strategy.
If
the air bridge held for the short term.
If
the surface ship convoys could get through for the long term.
If they
were successful in delaying some Red Army units from reaching the front.
But there was one crucial question remaining. For the strategy to work, NATO had to at least neutralize the Soviet tactical air advantage over the next forty-eight hours.
And that’s where Jones and his pilots, and the rest of the NATO air forces, came in.
“The success of all this is based on our quickly achieving air supremacy, or at least, parity,” Jones said soberly. “And that is
our
challenge. And believe me, a lot of people are depending on us.”
He then revealed yet another map.
“To that end, gentlemen,” Jones said, through a puff of cigar smoke, “let’s discuss our first mission …”
First combat in Europe
H
UNTER WAS OUT ON
the flight line early.
In the pre-dawn shadows, the silent row of F-16s stood watch over the long stretch of runway. Unlike the Thunderbird Falcons that balanced lightly on their tricycle landing gear, the fully-armed F-16 were slung with Sidewinder missiles, wing tanks, and huge belly tanks that barely cleared the ground under the plane’s fuselage. To fly from their base in Rota, perched on the southern tip of Spain, to the target areas over Germany, they would need every drop of precious fuel those tanks could hold, and then some.
That’s where the tankers would come in.
The KC-10A Extenders, flying out of the support base at nearby Moron, would rendezvous with the speedy fighters over southern France to top off the tanks so the ’16s would have as full a load as possible. The tankers would also be on standby if the F-16s were returning with low fuel.
Yet the tanker rendezvous was only one tiny part of the complex plan that Jones had devised. It had been spinning around in Hunter’s mind ever since the briefing. He had even dreamed about it—what could go right, what could go wrong.
The mission was appropriately code-named “Operation Punchout,” and it was designed to do nothing less than neutralize the Soviets’ major forward air bases in Eastern Europe.
The reason behind this rather grand objective was simple: The Soviets had at least a five-to-one advantage in tactical aircraft over NATO. But depriving the Soviets of their forward airfields and support bases would somewhat even the odds in the air, at least for the next crucial 24-to-48 hours. If the operation was successful, then Soviet airplanes would have to fly farther away, from their rear bases, just like the NATO aircraft were doing now. And once the Soviets’ armies advanced westward, they would be further removed from the coordinated air support needed to sustain the advance of their overwhelming ground forces in the Central European Theater.
But for the plan to succeed, it was crucial that the split-second schedule be followed with the highest degree of precision. In order to avoid Soviet concentration of defenses, Jones had called for coordinated and
simultaneous
attacks all along the East/West border. This in itself would be difficult, considering the hundreds of NATO aircraft that were to be involved.
But beyond the attacks themselves, the plan also involved some complicated deception maneuvers—deaks and feints that the Soviets would have to fall for.
With all this in mind, Hunter climbed into his cockpit and completed his preflight checklist.
The last instrument test he performed was to touch a single heat-sensitive button on the F-16’s console that activated a special radar pod the tireless ground crews had slung underneath the fighter’s right wing the night before.
A small radar-emitting transponder came on, triggering a yellow LED on his ECM display.
Satisfied, Hunter clicked it off and watched the yellow dot fade out. Now, at last, they were ready. The mission could begin.
For Hunter and the other F-16 pilots, their role was just beginning. But even as they were preparing for takeoff, the first major phase of “Operation Punchout” was already underway in the dawn skies over East Germany.
As the cold fingers of first light were prying the lid of darkness off a new day, Captain Michael Francis “Crunch” O’Malley was rechecking his position for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last ten minutes.
His squadron of F-4 Phantom IIs were at that moment screaming across the West German border just north of Kassel, flying barely a hundred feet off the frozen ground. O’Malley did a quick calculation and then took a deep breath.
They were now over East Germany.
So far, everything since take-off from their base near Eindhoven, Holland to this point at the border had gone according to plan.
O’Malley relayed the time check and coordinates to his backseat weapons officer, a young lieutenant from Tennessee with the unlikely name of Elvis Aaron Pettybone.
Elvis just barely grunted “Roger,” in response, his eyes riveted to the radar threat-receiver on his console. At the moment, the device was silent but alert, its electronic probes searching the skies and ground in front of the speeding fighter, looking for the tell-tale radar beams from hostile missiles and aircraft.
It wouldn’t be this quiet for long, Elvis thought grimly, especially since they were just about to enter one of the densest concentrations of SAMs in the world. At least Crunch had been there before, Elvis thought. He knew what it was like to have to fly through the gauntlet of SAMs, each one a radar-guided explosive javelin hurled from below.
Elvis had only been through the simulations they’d practiced endlessly, and he wondered how he’d react when the console warbled out a real warning—a real SAM, controlled by real radar, fired by a real enemy crew, trying to kill them for real.
Crunch was thinking about the SAM belt, too; and about the Soviet fighters he knew were up ahead somewhere, waiting to pounce. He kept the Phantom’s airspeed at just under 700 mph, the maximum possible without the fuel-greedy afterburners. They still had almost a hundred miles to go to reach the target, and he had to save the speed and fuel for when he needed it.
They streaked across the snow-covered land into the rising sun, having left the comparative safety of West Germany for the decidedly unfriendly skies of Soviet-controlled East Germany. Eleven other Phantoms followed him across, all rising on toward the same target.
Crunch looked out across his wings at the planes to his left and right. Despite its age, the Phantom II was a mean-looking fighter.
In its heyday, the F-4 was in use as a fighter and attack plane by the Air Force, Navy, and Marines as well as a dozen other countries’ air forces. But now the aging fighter-bombers were used for special purpose strikes, rigged as a jammer in the “Wild Weasel” configuration for detecting and nullifying enemy radars, or as a RF-4 reconnaissance plane for aerial surveillance.
Crunch checked his position again. Forty miles inside the border and still no enemy radar acquisition.
Either the Soviets were sleeping or …
“SAM! SAM! SAM! Two o’clock!” Elvis hollered into the intercom, his voice loud enough to override the suddenly pulsing shrill tone of the missile warning indicator. “Break left!”
“Damn!
” Crunch swore as he realized how close the SAM was—they’d been flying low, and the Soviet crews had shot on visual sighting only, without lighting up their radars.
He rolled the plane in a tight circle and pulled the stick up sharply, pumping his chaff dispenser to confuse the missile by scattering half a pound of aluminum shavings into the cold air.
He prayed the missile’s radar guidance would take the bait. What seemed like an eternity later, he saw the SA-2 missile pass the Phantom well behind and to the left. The pulsing tone of the radar warning was fading now, as the missile sped away.
Another F-4 wasn’t so lucky. The Soviet SAM crews had bracketed him with a pair of missiles, and he’d turned directly into one’s path while trying to avoid the other.
The Phantom was shredded when the SAM’s proximity fuse detonated the missile a mere thirty feet from the airplane. Crunch and Elvis both swung their heads around, looking for parachutes.
There were none …
Now the radar warning began a new, insistent blaring. More SAMs had been launched behind them, and their powerful missile-control radar signals had been picked up by the F-4’s threat indicator.
“One launched—check that,
two
—at our six o’clock!” Elvis began excitedly. “No guidance signals yet …”
The young weapons officer knew that the first stage of the SA-2 was unguided, directed only by pinpointing it in the general direction of the attacking aircraft. When the first stage fell away, its second stage received signals from its ground crew.
So now they would have to wait—wait until the enemy ground crews had committed themselves.
The steady, high-pitched whine told Elvis the missiles were screaming toward their tail at 2,000 mph, and every instinct told him to run—to bellow at Crunch to floor it and try to escape. But his training told him differently—he had to rely on that training to overcome his instincts and to give Crunch the signal for the right time to break away.
The seconds were agonizingly slow …
Crunch, too, felt the tension building, his hands sweating on the stick as he listened to the screeching warning signal. He had to watch the altimeter, the airspeed, and the sky in front of him; and he had to rely on the young lieutenant behind him to tell him when to start evading the two explosive arrows that were slicing mercilessly through the air toward him.
“Steady …” Elvis called ahead, his eyes glued to the small radar screen in his rear cockpit that showed the position of the two SAMs as tiny, fast-moving blips glowing directly behind them. “Steady, sir …”