Spoils of Invasion

Michael G. Crawford

Chapter Five

Now that she was here, it didn't feel as exciting as it felt frightening. She wasn't afraid of the flying, it was the learning. In three weeks she would have to demonstrate she had learned the avionics, the propulsion, and the airframe of the F-15. She would have to show she understood every instrument, every switch, every setting. It was terrifying. In the course of learning to fly she had absorbed an incredible amount of lore, the little bits and pieces that made the private pilot competent in the very simple aircraft.

Even flying the complex Lear jet had been easy as compared to this machine. She sat in the cockpit going over it all again. On the left side was the throttle station. Below it was the armament panel, with its display showing what stores were mated to the wing pylons. This could be a new ECM pod on the right pylon, combined with a pair of Sparrows on the left side to counter balance the ECM gear. Optionally it could be a full load of Sidewinders. Or in its most deadly form, it could be GBUs, glide bomb units or smart bombs with laser guided heads called LGBs. Enough weapons in one load to wipe out a small town in one pass.

On her right was the optional gear rack. This small 18 inch by 12 inch rectangle of space now had the black box for the ECM and FLIR gear inserted. With this she would be able to counter enemy ground launched or air to air missiles. The FLIR unit would give her a magnified image of a ground target, despite utter darkness. Below this area was the controls for all the radio gear. In front of her were the two video display units, or CRTs. She could, by pressing the right lighted and labelled square button, display the image from the FLIR unit, her AGM-??? radar unit, or moving map display.

The right unit would show an image from the magnifier on a Maverick air to ground missile, or the image from the seeker on the Paveway LGBs. On her windshield, a heads up display or HUD would flash the crucial altitude, speed, G forces, and compass heading, as well as azimuth and horizon crossbars. And if she chose a ground weapon, a small pipper would appear, her gunsight. This she would place on her target, squeeze the trigger, and her ground weapon would be on its way to that spot. Give or take 30 to 50 feet depending on how good the guidance on the missile was today. If it were a heat seeking missile selected, then she would have a shape, like the gunsight. Only in this case there would be a much larger circle which showed the lethal area, the area where if she fired, the heat seeking sensor would have a high probability of finding her target.

This was also backed up with a tone in the headset built into her helmet. When tone stopped warbling and became a solid unwavering pitch she would have radar "lock on". If the missile were heat seeking only, then the target radar would tell the missile where to look as the missile left the rail. But this also was the case for the radar portion of a dual capable missile. These were the best of the lot, and as usual in short demand.

The idea was to acquire the target with radar, launch the missile in the correct direction. The missile would travel a goodly distance say 10 miles or so on radar, then as it got within heat seeking range, then switch to the infrared thermal sensor and home in to the target on heat. If it didn't acquire a heat sense, then it would try its best on radar. At $125,000 a pop, they didn't waste too many of those on training, so she would probably only get one to shoot with. And that only after she demonstrated her proficiency on the target drones with the lower cost infrared only Sidewinders.

And that all assumed she could get past flying the cruel bitch of an airplane. Her first flights had not been very inspiring to say the least. It was dammed touchy, and had a tendency to start a slow roll to the right no matter how she tryed to trim it. Keeping the fighter level in either dimension was a real bear. And the engines were finicky too. She had found herself constantly fidgeting with the throttles, trying her best to keep the correct airspeed with porposing along over-correcting with power or elevator. A disaster really.

Oh her instructor had been kind, but it really had been a miserable performance. And she was damned glad the instructor landed the thing. The airplane was big, and it felt big in the air. The feedback from her ass told her that all through the landing she would lost it a number of times.

She sighed, not worried now about anyone hearing her, as she sat in the cockpit alone. Well she'd just have to get up there and keep after it. She remembered the tough times she had fought while tooling around in the Debonair with Uncle, the hood over her eyes. No visual to go by, and just her feelings and the instruments, with the instruments usually winning the battle for correctness. She had never suffered vertigo while in her instrument training, but she knew from the first ride Eagle, that it wouldn't take much for her to zero on reflex. Then her only choice for survival would be to force herself to pay close attention to the instruments. And the only way to make that work was to practice enough for instant recognition for what the were saying. With a decreasing speed meaning a climb, combined with the artifical horizon ball tilted off to the right means your climbing with the left wing down, and if you stall you will definitely fall off on the right wing, and probably need a slight correction to the right with both rudder and aerilon to level her it. had been through them all before, but this bird could easily perfomr some lulus. She had to watch for the low speed and high yaw rate, it was a problem of the aircraft after a high pitch up and low velocity and low power, it went into a flat spin. In other words, the F-15 would give up on flying under these conditions, and just waver around in the air like a floating feather, with just about as much control.

Course, she grined to herself, it would be a funny situation that got her to be below 200 knots except for takeoff and landing. She planned on flying this bitch to the max!

With that slight change in attitude, the feelings of power and maneuverability returned with a rush and she sat there remembering how wonderful she had felt at times during her flight. Before the excitement wore off, she powered down the systems and climbed out of the cockpit and down the ladder. She backed away from the bird for about ten steps, looking over the lines in the harsh glare of the ramp lights, appreciating the almost avian looks of the F-15. It was indeed an impressive looking bird, certainly deserving the name Eagle.

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"Okay Lake. Pull the nose up, and begin a nice slow roll, say about 5 seconds worth."

Darla added a little back pressure, and the nose came up above the horizon a bit, then she gently moved the stick to the right. The Eagle followed her directions smoothly and the roll cut a circle in the air along the horizontal axis. She sighed a bit as the feelings of power and maneuverability returned to her, the confidence building as she realized she had the touch now, even if she was ragged on some of the finer points. It was beginning to feel like her airplane now.

As she finished up the roll, the instructor added, "Good roll out, like the way your nose stayed up until it was all level. Good job. Now on a snap roll...well I tell everyone this, but it never seems to do any good. Remember its a fighter. The bitch has a max roll rate of better than 360 degrees per second. And if you slam the stick from side to side, you're gonna give us both a headache. So watch the stick as I do one."

The stick smoothly, and fairly quickly moved to the right, and then back to the center, all in about a half a second. She had been watching it closely trying to record it in her mind so she would be as close to the same rate as he. She had felt the change in G direction as the Eagle rolled through a full circle, and through a corner of her eye she had managed to track the artificial horizon as it spun around, and had noticed that the instructor had hit the straight and level on the nose at roll out.

"Okay, your airplane" he said, and she wiggled the stick a little to confirm it as she replied "I got it."

She pulled her nose up a tad, then taking a breath, she repeated the instructors move, the aircraft spinning in the tight motion along the horizontal, with little change in altitude. She had overcontrolled a little, requiring her to mop it up a bit, but it wasn't a bad performance.

"Damn good. I like it. Usually my students wind up banging their heads or doing one and a halfs all day. I can see this is gonna be easy. Take me through some horizontal figure eights now, then after your loosened up, we'll try a couple of loops."

As she worked through the basic moves to get the feel of the aircraft, she worried about whether the guy was just humoring her or not. She had watched some of the others flying at orientation, and she knew she was competing with some pretty hot pilots. Certainly they wouldn't have any trouble with this stuff.

On the landing the instructor was talking all the way down, correcting just about everything she did. She tried to conform as best she could, knowing full well that ir-regardless of her skill, every instructor had something to say about landings. Landing an aircraft was never perfect, just close to it. The only place for perfection was at flare and touchdown. Between there and say 600 feet off the runway, the airplane was shit in the air, just barely able to stay up or blasting along at too high a speed with great control but also too much lift, barely able to settle onto the runway.

"Three-niner-four on final, touch and go" she radioed, and got the roger from the tower. She was a little rocky with the rudders, and the instructor constantly commented on it. But she managed to touch it down only twenty feet past the appointed spot beyond the threshold, and she felt pretty good about the landing overall.

"Flaps up, power up...rotate" she said outloud as she performed the transistion from a landing aircraft to one taking off.

"Three-niner-four extended to downwind" she radioed her intentions, and again got the roger. Ahead of her there were eight aircraft in the pattern, so she had to wait a bit before rolling out into the pattern. Joining the long line of aircraft tracking along, she took a peek to see where the others were landing. Just about everyone was hitting it on the nose, and she began to feel the pressure. When it came to intellectual challenges, her intelligence always won her through. But flying skills were mechanical and required high physical control. Practice was the only improver. She vowed to spend as much time as she could on the basics in this aircraft. Sure she'd spend the prerequisite time on the ranges and such. But she hoped she would never have to land without being able to run a couple touch and gos.

After three more attempts, the instructor radioed for her, "Three-niner-four final for full stop."

She said "check" to insure he knew she had heard, and pulled the rest of her flaps in, enduring the inevitable yawing motion as the big fighter sluiced its way to the ground. He flare was perfect this time, with hardly a bump onto the runway, even though she had overshot the landing mark a bit. She preferred it that way so "what the hell, mark me down" she thought to herself.

"Nice job. I like 'em smooth myself, Lake. Tomorrow we'll do some stalls and such then if you feel up to it you can take her out on your own."

"Great!" she replied, hoping she didn't sound too silly or nervous. But it was good to know that he felt she was at least capable of handling the valuable plane on her own. But then she figured he had reason. They had gone over the rules pretty well, and she had been through dives and loops, pulling the Gs and backing off the throttle to avoid supersonic flight, and hard climbing turns with 6 Gs and all the rest.

*******************************************************

Thinking back over that first week, Darla wondered if she would feel like that every time she climbed into a newer plane. Would the next generation fighter make her feel like a novice all over again?

It didn't really matter now. She was more than capable in the Eagle, and was about to demonstrate that to that snob Carl Zepperson, her ACT (Air Combat Training) instructor. The bastard had chewed her out on every pass this morning, and never gave her a bit of slack.

"Range is active" reported Combat Command, and Darla began to search the sky for her bogey. She had elected to stay "quiet", keeping her radar unit on standby, meanwhile waiting for her threat warning receiver to show someone trying to paint her. If both pilots attempted this then they would wander around aimlessly, never finding each other. The problem was, the aggressor was out there with a vector to her from Combat Control.

"Screw it" she said out loud, and pitched over to make her run at the desert, to drop her fake Maverick on the bombing range. Just as she lined up and was ready to pickle her threat receiver began to chirp slowly at her. An air to air search radar, but it hadn't found her yet. She pickled off the entire load all at once, figuring that now she had a foe in the sky actively looking for her, she needed all the performance she could get. Nothing worse than trying to play air superiority fighter with a load of fat old Mavericks hanging off the pylons. She smoothly moved the throttle up past the afterburner gate, and pulled the Eagle into a screaming bank up and to the left, figuring that her bogey would be coming at her on the run.

It was nice to be right, because when she saw the direction of the search radar, there he was in a steep dive to intercept her at the far end of the run obviously expecting her to exit in a smooth bank away from the hills to the west. With the hills reflecting the signals, despite their being miles away, her opponent probably had her on his scope. Still, it most likely wasn't a great return. He'd be concentrating on the radar clear area just above the ground clutter, waiting to spot her pull up from the bomb run.

Fine. She kept pulling for altitude as he flashed down range. In a moment she would appear on his scope if he was searching 360, but if he had narrowed his radar to the 35 degree scan in front to improve his resolution, she would be off screen.

She banked again and was about to begin her own pursuit, when a tingle told her she was forgetting something. She did a passive sweep with her ECM gear again and got a helluva jolt. Sitting at her rear at one oclock was a low amplitude emitter. Someone was about to come up with fire control from behind her. Shit!!!! She groaned as she pulled a 7G turn to the right, diving so deeply, the artificial horizon went all dark. She recovered from the dive with a scissors sweep, and then turned into her pursuer, who by now was trying to get inside her turn. With a upward scissors she captured back some of her altitude, then swung back to her original target hoping he was still around.

And what luck. The guy, not seeing his prey, had gone into a wide turn to search, and in just the right orbit. She selected the launch and leave Sparrow, placed the piper on the orbiting fighter, squeezed off a shot and softly, in the sexist voice she could muster, "Guns, Guns, Guns" and then rolled three turns grunting as the Gs built up on each successive roll.

"Shit!" she moaned as she pulled back into another upward scissors looking for her pursuer. But he was gone. She had no choice now but to go active on radar. Switching the set on, she felt the moan of the generators as the big dish pulsed out in its high amplitude search mode. No joy. That meant the bastard was behind her somewhere. Son of a...

A warble sounded from the threat panel, and the radar attack light lit up. Jinking to the left, then the right, she started to sweep upward to draw him in. She traded a little speed advantage for some altitude, more than likely the guy was making a shot from above so he had the energy advantage for now. "Shit!" she was being targetted. The "range gating" light lit up, telling her that the fellow was working on a lock.

With a roll she fell out of the climb and pulled heavy Gs to the right hoping to get him to scissors up to keep her in his sights. Noting his position on the threat receiver, she saw that he was in the same position which could only mean he had in fact made the up scissor.

She rolled left now, diving into an emmelman using gravity to help her now, hoping that he wouldn't have enough time to fire.

And luckily all she heard was the warble of a threat, not a lock. The guy could be shouting "guns" but her receiver said he didn't have a good enough lock. That would mean Combat Control was telling him he had a miss.

She corkscrewed through the emmelman as her pursuer flashed by pulling up, and then banking left as well.

With a quick intake of breath, she tensed her muscles as she took another 7G hit rolling to the right and dropping out of the the sky, plunging down and under her opponent. With a hard pull back and a return to her original course, she was now below and climbing slowly, while her opponent was above her and climbing quickly away. But he was technically out in front of her, and she watched as the pipper moved over to indicate she had a lock.

"Guns, guns, guns" she said proudly.

"That's a miss" she heard in her headphones.

"Damn" she said out loud, but remembered to keep her finger off the PTT button. Going to afterburner, she tried to close the distance.

On a hunch she selected the heat seeking Sidewinder instead of the Sparrow, and it locked on immediately. Then she had a brainstorm. If she shot two very quickly, her opponent might not understand what his threat receiver was telling him, and go to afterburner to escape the missile. Course that wouldn't be provable to the Combat computers on the ground. But so what, she'd try it anyway.

She re-selected the SARH Sparrow, fired and then selected the infrared Sidewinder. "Guns, guns, guns" she said softly again as the infrared lock pulsed bright red and the tone settling into a clear tone.

"Confirmed" she heard and she shouted with joy. Two in a day. Nice feeling. One more this week and she'd be an ace.

She yanked the throttle and her boards and rolled out of her attack only to see another F-21 Tiger go blowing by her like she was standing still. God she wondered if she had been bagged or not. She yanked the boards back in, shoved the throttle forward and pursued the new prey. But he was pulling away so fast, she knew he was supersonic. Watching the Mach gauge climb toward Mach 1, she figured, what the hell, if he can do it so can I.

Hanging in there, she could see that for the moment he was out pacing her. She checked to make sure her radar was on standby, and on another hunch she lowered her nose, choosing to gain airspeed instead of altitude. Sure enough her prey began to nose down a little himself, putting her, unitentionally in his blind spot.

He began a stiff turn to the left, and because she had less speed on, she was able to match the move. Normally the agile F-21 could out corner her big Eagle, but because of the speed differential she was able to pull a tighter turn. Not that she enjoyed the 7Gs again, but she was a little pissed about having three bastards after her.

She selected the Sparrow again, but waited for her range to close. She knew, that he knew she was back there. It was just a matter of waiting to see who would make the first mistake. They began the ballet, moving closer in tight turns and then further away. They danced like that for a full five minutes, Darla trying to get closer, and doing so, then her opponent would fool her and increase the distance. On another hunch she fired blind with the SARH sparrow selected for search, and rolled inside of him on the turn, one Sparrow and one Sidewinder left. As her opponent shifted to the left to evade the shot, she closed in too close for missiles. Now it was Vulcan time. She selected the gun and started to jink and shove the nose of the Eagle around, trying to get the pipper on him. But it just wasn't going to happen. She backed off on the throttle, and put her nose down for a second, then pulled hard up and left into his turn.

Now she had him. She shifted back to the Sparrow as the distance began to increase, and she called "Guns, guns, guns" in her soft voice.

"Confirm, Mad Dog, you are an Ace!"

"Yahhoo!!!!" she screamed on the circuit this time mashing the button down to make sure they new she was happy. "What a ride!"

Chapter Six
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Last Updated: November 8, 1996