Supersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (44 page)

NORTH VIETNAMESE RADAR had long since picked up the fourteen F-4Ds, their place in the sky clearly visible from the long oily-black columns of smoke issuing from their GE J79 engines. The Phantoms were loaded for bear, carrying among them nine three-thousand-pound laser-guided bombs, fifteen two-thousand-pound laser-guided bombs, and forty-eight conventional five-hundred-pound bombs.

For ten square miles around the bridge, anti-aircraft crews slipped on their helmets and assumed their positions, while the missile crews prepared for a sudden launch. When the enemy came in range they would release their customary torrent of fire.

The Phantoms rolled in on the target in a waterfall of lethal metal, each one sending its laser-guided bombs to the target, each pilot seeing the roaring wall of flak reaching up to them, and every one pulling off the target at top speed to avoid the murderous anti-aircraft fire. The first crews could not see any damage, but the last three crews saw bombs striking the bridge, exploding in a roar of fire and smoke. All fourteen aircraft emerged undamaged, with the bridge down behind them.

Later RF-4Cs crossed the target, and their photos showed that the western span of the bridge was blown completely off its forty-footthick concrete foundation. Twenty-four laser-guided bombs had accomplished what the full ordnance loads of 869 previous attackers could not do: destroy the bridge at Thanh Hoa.

Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base erupted in a celebration of the victory. Colonel Miller invited Rodriquez to the party that night, but he stayed in his quarters, analyzing the combat reports of the crews and scanning the photos the RF-4Cs had brought back. He wrote a long report back to his project officer at Eglin, concluding with a passionate paragraph that he begged be forwarded up the chain of command, all the way to the President, if possible:

In conclusion, the Paveway bombs offer a path to the future that could provide a very clinical victory in Vietnam. It could be applied against North Vietnamese cities with surgical skill, taking out their vital industries and still not causing much collateral damage or killing many civilians. The risk of provoking Red China or the Soviet Union would not only be minimal, it might even be salutary, for I suspect that they would be reluctant to engage the United States after it had demonstrated such technical prowess. Let me repeat this: the Paveway, and the other precision-guided munitions that will soon be available to us, can win the war by the application of airpower alone. This path to conquest can begin at once with the weapons on hand, and it can be followed up by the deployment of those under development, all at a cost far less than that of maintaining a huge ground army.

In simplest terms, with Paveway and its developments, Vietnamization can work, and South Vietnam can defend itself. Without precision-guided munitions and American airpower, South Vietnam will never be able to resist North Vietnam in open combat.

Bob reread what he had written and then copied the report, sanitizing it so that he could send a copy of it back to Vance, who would be heartened by it.

Rodriquez signed his report, then walked it over to the command section for transmission back to Eglin. “This is going to make a lot of people happy—and a lot more unhappy. I wonder if anybody will read it except at Eglin?”

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

September 23, 1972

Moscow, USSR

T
he main party celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Tupolev bureau had been held in the new assembly hall, scrubbed operating-room clean for the occasion. It was filled with tables laden with vodka, caviar, and delicacies from all over the Soviet Union, provided by the many suppliers who had contributed to creating the latest Tupolev triumph, the Tu-144. Both Andrei and Alexei had made speeches, and there was a long film specially created for the occasion that showed Tupolev aircraft over the years, from the very first one, the little all-metal ANT-1 monoplane, down to the first takeoff of the Tu-144 SST on December 31, 1968.

The entire party had been created and paid for by the employees, and it included two gleaming examples of Andrei’s creation, a beautifully restored Tu-2 from the Great Patriotic War and an operational Tu-22, the supersonic bomber that had startled the world with its debut at Tushino. The company’s own model makers had created a lineup of every Tupolev aircraft ever built, from the ANT-1 to the Tu-144. It made an impressive lineup.

Alexei, conscious of his father’s fragile health, had made their excuses early, and they were now sitting in his old office on the third floor of the KOSOS building, engaged in one of their customary clinical analysis sessions, not going over the party with its host of old colleagues but instead thoughtfully analyzing the Tu-144 and its magnificent flight three days before.

Andrei caressed the single sheet of paper in his withered old hands, raising it to his lips and kissing it as if it were a love letter. The letter was official notice that the Tu-144 had just flown from Moscow to Tashkent, almost three thousand kilometers, in just 110 minutes. The flight had been made at 18,000 meters. “This is something, Alexei; they cannot take this from us, no matter what.”

Andrei Tupolev had believed in the Tupolev Tu-144 because he had to believe in his son Alexei. Alexei believed in it because he had distilled his father’s wisdom, his design team’s best efforts, and his own administrative skill in the pell-mell rush to have the aircraft fly in 1968, as both Khrushchev and Brezhnev had demanded.

Both father and son knew that the design was rushed, despite the preliminary design information that had been stolen from the French and English. Both men knew that there were faults that had to be corrected before full-scale production could begin.

“Yes, Father, but the thought of the Concorde sticks like a bone in my throat. It is embarrassing that they have been able to do so much in the last year. It will kill our foreign sales.”

The preceding June the second Concorde had made a world’s sales tour to the Middle East, the Far East, and Australia. Sales were made to China and Iran. It was heartbreaking. There was no way the Tu-144 could be committed to such an itinerary, not yet.

The two men, so devoted to each other, had long since settled their disputes over some of the radical design paths forced on the Tu-144 by time and technology. Andrei Tupolev hated the idea of a delta wing and, more recently, the canard winglets, while Alexei accepted these as a fait accompli of the schedule. On the other hand, Alexei would have preferred a less complicated nose section, using a television system to aid the pilots in landing. His father had insisted on the heavy and time-consuming nose that drooped for takeoff and landing to give the pilots better visibility. Both men still believed in their own ideas, long after there was any question of changing it.

Where they differed most was on the potential for sales of the SST within the Soviet Union. Andrei felt that the design was premature, that another ten years’ work needed to be done on improving the passenger cabin and lowering landing speeds. Alexei, knowing how primitive the passenger accommodations were on most current Russian airliners, felt that passengers would endure the noise and the cramped cabin in return for the speed.

For perhaps the hundredth time, Andrei said, “I just wish we had had more time to prepare the airplane for the Paris Air Show. We looked like ragamuffins compared to the Concorde.”

At the last Paris Air Show, the Concorde and the Tu-144 had been eagerly compared by foreign observers. With its spotted paint and worn tires, the Russian SST showed the ravages of more than thirty months of test-flying. To Tupolev’s acute embarrassment, it looked shabby and worn compared to the sleek, fresh finish of the Concorde. Tired as he was, he had once again led the promotional charge, insisting in briefing after briefing that the prototype Tu-144 was still provisional and that a more sophisticated version would be flown soon. There was more truth than anyone knew or would admit in that statement.

“The French and the English had so many advantages. Their governments leave them alone to conduct their business. No rush to first flight, no demands that certain components be used.”

Alexei nodded. “And most of all, they had the magnificent Olympus engines.” Both men were silent, contemplating the power, the fuel economy, and the relative quiet of the Concorde’s Rolls-Royce engines.

They had known that Tu-144’s engines were not powerful enough from the start, but there was no other option. The Tu-144 could fly supersonically only with the afterburners on, and this brought the range down from 4,500 kilometers to about 2,000—almost ruling out export sales.

Andrei’s office was filled with photos and models, and on his desk was one of the second prototype of the Tu-144, originally intended for the factory celebration. Some security-conscious bureaucrat had ruled that it was too secret to be seen on open display and removed it from the lineup. Andrei had asked that it be placed on his desk, and now, ever so gently, he extended his finger and ran it over the model, tracing the shape of the wing and the engine nacelles.

Alexei’s eyes followed the movements of Andrei’s finger. Both knew that it was here that a fundamental mistake had been forced on them. The wing, lovely despite its foreign delta shape, was optimized for flight at supersonic speeds. It was perhaps the most modern element of the design, much more complex than the wing of the first prototype. It now incorporated variable camber, twist, and negative dihedral, and further changes were contemplated. The engines, which had been moved outward ten feet on this aircraft, now had square intakes.

The absolutely crucial error was that the Kuznetsov NK-144 engines were optimized for subsonic flight. This mismatch of wing and engine design was a mistake of colossal proportions, but one that had to be accepted to meet Khrushchev’s and later Brezhnev’s mandate for a flight in 1968.

The early French and English data had helped enormously, but the final design was by Andrei’s own team. They had followed British practice by testing the wing design on an “analog” aircraft, a MiG-21 fitted with delta wings. The veteran MiG test pilot, Oleg Gudkov, flew the analog and found that the delta wing created a cushion of air—ground effect—that would greatly reduce the Tu-144’s takeoff and landing speeds. The analog had come along to late to have any effect upon the prototype’s design, but it provided insight that enabled them to proceed so swiftly with the redesign of the second aircraft.

The model showed the canards, the forward flying surfaces that Andrei resented so much as a makeshift, an obvious admission that there was a flaw in the design of the wing.

Pointing to them, Andrei said, “My God, Alexei, this is no different from the Wright brothers! We’ve come sixty-nine years since they first flew and we are still sticking little wings up front.”

Alexei did not respond. Advances in technology were forcing the use of canards on many designers. They were complex and they added weight, but they worked. With the ground effect and the canards, the Tu-144 was now spared the hard landings that threatened integrity of the intricate twenty-four-wheel main undercarriage. The canards added lift and further reduced the landing speed, but Andrei hated their complexity, their appearance of being an add-on. He always wanted his airplanes to be simple and elegant. Canards were just the opposite.

At last, just as Alexei knew he would, Andrei ran his finger along the nose of the aircraft, raising and lowering the cockpit. This had been his invention, it was his principal contribution to the design, and he was proud of it. Alexei knew what was coming and deferred to it.

“I tell you Alexei, that there is no substitute for the human in the cockpit. No television set, no computer, no array of computers, can ever replace the best flight computer of all, the test pilot’s brain.”

Andrei suddenly sat back in his chair, overwhelmed by fatigue. Alexei rose to help him, and the elder Tupolev struggled back, pointed to the Tu-144’s nose, and said, “There it is, my son. That is my last contribution.”

One day less than three months later, Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev died peacefully in his own bed.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

December 20, 1972

Hanoi, North Vietnam

B
eating Tom almost to death seemed to have given Fidel the Cuban a proprietary interest in him. Fidel closely monitored Tom’s recovery, even arranging for some minor medications. But as soon as he was able to walk, Fidel arranged for him to be sent to a filthy holding pen prepared for the most dangerous prisoners, called Alcatraz by the American prisoners. He and Pavone were thrown into separate underground cells, damp and ruled over by the usual collections of insects and rats. After a few weeks, the agonizing moans from Pavone’s cell had stopped. Tom reluctantly assumed that he had died. It was a terrible blow to Tom’s morale, for Pavone had done so much to help him and, in the end, he was unable to do the same for Pavone.

Sometime in the fall of 1971, there had been one forced trip back to the Hanoi Hilton to be filmed by news cameramen, and afterward Tom had been returned to Alcatraz. There he had survived only by the force of will.

Two days ago, after the American bombing of Hanoi had begun in earnest, he’d been brought with other prisoners back to the Hoa Lo prison. While most of the others had apparently been quickly processed into the general POW community, Tom was still held incommunicado in some area of the block-square complex. Other prisoners told him via the tap code that he must be in what they called New Guy City, but in time it was apparent he was in some high-security cell they were not familiar with. It was hard to understand the lingering malevolence the North Vietnamese seemed to hold for him. Apparently conditions in the Hanoi Hilton had begun to improve a little after 1969, but Tom had never experienced any relaxation of the harsh treatment. Even now he was deprived of talking to men such as Alvarez and Risner, heroes whom he included in his daily prayers.