Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat (5 page)

With the Cold War still in full swing, Europe was the primary theater of operations. We had bases in the Far East, but I wasn’t interested in that part of the world.

Now, the operational (that is, non-training) Air Force was divided up into several large sections. There were the strategic aircraft—like bombers, transports, and air-refueling tankers. The bombers were there to fly deep into enemy (Soviet) airspace and drop nuclear bombs on Russian cities. Transports and tankers kept everyone supplied and full of fuel.

Then there were the tactical assets, like fighters, forward air controllers, and reconnaissance types. The fighters, in Europe at least, were basically speed bumps. We were to be thrown into the melee to slow down Russian tanks. You see, prevailing wisdom had decided that the big Soviet armored thrust, which would sweep across Europe to the English Channel, would come through the Fulda Gap on the West German border. This was a narrow pass in the Hartz Mountains and was assumed to be the focal point for the opening tank battle of World War III. Naturally, the U.S. Army and NATO were deployed around it, and the airspace above was nicely divided into chessboard sections called Restricted Operating Zones. Maps were drawn and color-coded, procedures exhaustingly created by officers with too much time on their hands, and, over the course of three decades, everything was neatly organized. There was, however, one problem.

It was nuts.

We were outnumbered ten to one by an enemy that had no problem turning Western Europe into a wasteland. They had nukes and would use them in a heartbeat if an all-out hot war broke out. This, of course, meant we would also have to use nukes. So Europe, with its beautiful cities, rivers, art, and good wine would become an immense, glowing parking lot for several generations. This war would make all previous conflicts look like Little League games.

Like I said, it was nuts.

To this day, I’m still not certain how we avoided all that. Mind you, I wasn’t too interested in geopolitical considerations at the time. Like most young warriors, I was a fairly simple tool. I had silver bars on my shoulders, wings on my chest, and a cool jet to fly. I didn’t care too much about who I was supposed to fight. And if you’re one of the guys doing the fighting, you have to believe you’re more vicious and lethal than the guy sitting in the opposing cockpit.

And we
were
the best.

The Royal Air Force, and maybe some NATO types, might take issue with this statement, but they used our equipment and had been through our training programs. We also had a generation of fighter pilots who’d seen combat in Southeast Asia within the past twenty years. The ones that survived and stayed in the Air Force were generally first-class aviators. They passed on tactics and techniques that had kept them alive in combat, as well as lots of other lessons you can’t learn from books. They also taught me how to think. Well, tactically, anyway.

When I arrived, the 52nd Wing was composed of the 480th, the 81st, and the 23rd Tactical Fighter Squadrons. It was a Wild Weasel flying wing, dedicated to hunting down and killing enemy air defenses, and I ended up flying in the 23rd Tactical Fighter Squadron—the famous Fighting Hawks. This was an unusual squadron, as it contained two types of aircraft. The venerable F-4G, left over from the Vietnam War, and the F-16C, which hadn’t seen any war with the U.S. Air Force. I discovered that one big reason I’d been able to get to the 52nd Wing was that very few F-16 pilots wanted to be here. The wing had mixed aircraft because the Air Force had decided to replace the aging F-4G but, of course, hadn’t given much thought to what would take its place.

We had a generation gap. Actually, two gaps. One between the pilots and one for the aircraft. Most of the pilots were great guys and had remained with the F-4 because, in the curious fashion of men and machines, they loved it. Others were within a few years of retiring and didn’t want to learn new technology or incur the extra years the Air Force would make them serve in return for the training.

So, I found myself in a new world. It was the real thing. We were less than ten minutes flying time from the Fulda Gap and the vodka-swilling Russian Horde; here, no one cared much about shiny boots or trivial rear-echelon bullshit. We’d been told that if the balloon ever went up, our average life expectancy was about ninety seconds—that does a lot to your outlook.

I also came face-to-face with another peculiar form of life, something called an EWO. This was short for Electronic Warfare Officer, and I’d never met one before. I was dumbfounded that the military could find a guy to ride along in the back of a fighter with absolutely no control over his destiny. I’d seen
Top Gun,
watched Goose die, and vaguely understood that certain planes, mostly Navy, had such people. But I’d never met one.

However, in 1988, the military still had aircraft like this. The USAF had its F-4G, F-15E, and F-111, while the Navy had the F-14 and EA-6. Egocentric F-16 pilot that I was, I’d never paid any attention to any of them. This, I later discovered, had been an intentional goal of the F-16 training program. The wave of the future was single-seat, multi-mission aircraft. That is, a jet that can do many things and only use one guy to do it with.

Of course, there’d been lots of single-seat combat jets before the F-16 came along. F-86s, F-104s, F-105s, etc., but the future, according to the Pentagon, was even more advanced technology. Technology that made cockpits and displays so good that one pilot could do what used to take a crew. This philosophy had been shoved into our craniums from the beginning.

Single seat, single engine, baby.

It’s a great motto.

In short, rely on yourself, because if you don’t do it then it won’t get done. This had been preached to us, fed to us, mixed in our drinks, and by now was habit. So I, and every other F-16 lieutenant, was unprepared for non-pilots inhabiting our flying world. To make it worse, many of the EWOs had washed out of pilot training or couldn’t get in to begin with. They’d gotten as close to the action as they could by becoming “backseaters.” The fact that they wore the same flight suits and patches, although with different wings, didn’t seem to make much of a difference. With the arrival of the F-16, they could see that their time was limited, and this definitely didn’t improve their attitude or our reception. Neither did the arrival of a flock of young, single-seat fighter pilots who were just starting their careers.

N
OW, EACH TIME A PILOT COMES INTO A NEW BASE, HE GETS TRAINED
. It doesn’t matter who he is or what rank he holds, there will be some sort of training program. It is, of course, tailored to the experience level of the pilot and his previous qualifications. My checkout, like that of all inexperienced new arrivals, was very involved. Despite the past two years of continuous training, I was still a Fucking New Guy (FNG). I wasn’t Mission Ready (MR) yet, since this was a qualification quite properly reserved for frontline combat units. A squadron in Germany would never trust the readiness of their pilots to instructors sitting back in the Arizona sunshine. Besides, different bases had unique areas of responsibility. Some were primarily air-to-ground attack units, others did nuclear strike or night attack. The 52nd was officially a Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) wing. Wild Weasels.

The first flight in this, or any local training program, was called a Local Area Orientation (LAO). Sort of a wake up, look around, learn the procedures and local landmarks type of ride. It was always done with an instructor pilot (IP), and, like all training sorties, it was graded. As this was a mixed squadron, the lead aircraft was an F-4G, so I got an instructor pilot and an instructor EWO. Again, something I’d never seen before.

Planning for tactical mission starts at least one day in advance, and being a typical Type-A FNG, I wanted to make a good first impression. So, for days prior to the flight, I pored over maps, talked to other pilots, and did all the other FNG things. There are lots of booby traps in any elite unit, and fighter squadrons are certainly no different. Anyone new is treated with wary politeness until he proves himself, which I was intent on doing in a hurry.

Now, older guys who had been in other squadrons have less of a row to hoe than someone like me. Yet still, until the performance matches the paperwork, no one gets a break. And that’s the way it should be. There are too many lives and too much insanely expensive equipment at stake. So people were nice enough, but in a distant sort of way, because FNGs could get you hurt.

After planning, briefing, and going through the complicated dance of getting a fighter started up, checked out, and to a runway, I was finally airborne. It was exhilarating to be here, and I was determined to make no mistakes.

Germany was green, and the rolling, continuous hills of the Mosel Valley were dotted with clean little red-roofed towns. We zipped around, practiced flying in formation, flying at low level and getting oriented to the area. I was just a wingman, which meant I would almost always fly with a flight lead. My somewhat limited responsibilities included not losing sight of the leader, not hitting him, and not flying into the ground. Just as with any mission, everything that occurred, from the first radio call to my landing, would be graded, evaluated, and discussed.

After ninety minutes of this, we came back, landed, and met up again in the same room to debrief. I was sweaty, a bit pumped up, and fairly pleased with myself. Most of the mission had taken place at 450 knots, and I’d spent the majority of my time staring at the Phantom and keeping position. This meant I didn’t really have a great awareness of where I’d been exactly, but I never lost sight of him or did anything stupid. In the extremely unforgiving world of flying fighters that was good enough for a new guy on his first sortie. At least, I thought so.

So, when the instructor EWO, not the pilot, leaned across the table and began jabbing his finger at me and listing my inevitable transgressions, I didn’t quite know what to do. I mean, here was a guy who couldn’t fly an airplane giving me instruction on flying. I don’t remember how it started, but after a few minutes this is how it ended.

He said, “Your tactical formation was a little wide . . . and you were too far behind the wing line. You’ve got to stay completely line abreast.”

“Why?”

“Why?” He looked surprised and I noticed a vein in his forehead began throbbing. “Because that’s where I expect to see you, and if you’re not there, then I’ve got to find you. That takes up valuable time and pisses me off.”

“Why does it matter if you see me at all?”

“Excuse me?” His eyes went kind of pointy and his mouth tightened. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the F-4 instructor stop writing on the grade sheet and look up.

“Well . . . you’re not a pilot so why does it matter if you see me or not?” The EWO’s lips disappeared and I clearly remember that his face turned a deep, dusky red color. Like every blood vessel he had just exploded beneath his skin. “I mean, aren’t you busy doing something in the backseat?” Like winding the clock? I didn’t say that but I was thinking it.

It really was an innocent question; not contentious, because you had to earn the right to argue. I was just confused. However, the EWO made a little choking sound as he struggled to comprehend the enormity of what I just said. I saw his mouth open and close like a guppy, and he sat there with a stupid, stunned expression on his face. Lots of F-4 guys, this one included, had a cheesy mustache left over from the 1970s, and his was pointed straight out with rage and indignation. From his point of view, I was a peon. A Fucking New Guy. And in his world, he was a minor deity who dispensed knowledge to peanuts like me. If he’d been a pilot, I would’ve listened without question or comment. But he wasn’t a pilot, and in my world that meant you didn’t tell me how to do my job.

When the F-4 instructor pilot blinked a couple of times and managed to clear his throat, I was all ears, but it was too late to salvage the situation. As he pulled me out of the briefing room, I swear I saw the soles of the EWO’s boots sticking out from the ceiling, the rest of him having just shot up through the roof.

So it was a rocky start.

F-4 guys would also end every flight brief by adding, “Remember your crew coordination items,” and then the pilot and EWOs would talk among themselves. A few days after the exploding EWO incident, I was sitting in a four-ship briefing when the flight lead closed with that statement. The other F-16 pilot, also a lieutenant, with fantastic comedic flair but very bad timing, started talking to his fingers. I mean, they were his crew, right? The F-4 guys were not amused
at all,
but it got me off the hook. See, I wasn’t the only one.

Some of these EWOs were bitter wash-outs hanging on by their teeth to a doomed profession. A few of them just lived to belittle young fighter pilots, because we were a constant reminder of something they could never be. However, many EWOs were truly gifted, and I came to appreciate that fairly fast. They could listen to a few seconds of the audio signal from our Threat Warning Receiver (RWR) and instantly tell what type of enemy radar was trying to bite you. The good ones knew everything about the enemy systems we thought we’d face one day. A few could even identify individual radars by their unique sounds, and they were happy to share the secrets of their art. It was truly amazing to a young officer like me, and I soaked it in because, until technology caught up, the EWO was the heart of the Wild Weasel mission.

T
HE ORIGINAL
SA-
2, AND ITS
FANSONG
RADAR, HAD BEEN
built to kill bombers and reconnaissance aircraft. Jammers, countermeasures, and threat-warning equipment had leveled the playing field somewhat, but the most expedient countertactic was low-altitude flying.

You see, radars all have a gap, a blind spot in coverage, called a “notch.” FANSONG’s blind spot was its inability to separate the radar return of the target from the much larger return generated by Earth. If you flew low enough, you could hide in the ground “clutter,” and the radar would never see you—like wearing a black T-shirt to hide in the dark. If the radar can’t see you, then it can’t track and kill you. And if it had already launched and exposed its position, you could defeat the system by dropping down and flying very low. This kind of flight is impractical for most big aircraft, but it’s ideal for fighters.