Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (57 page)

 
          
It
took several more hours and much restrained but angry appeals all the way to
the office of the prime minister, but eventually the tugs were allowed to be
brought into position, and the
Independence
was moved away from the wharf and into the
bay. Protesters on loudspeakers and bullhorns tried to convince the tugboat
captains and harbor pilots not to assist the carrier out, and for a brief
moment it appeared as if their appeals might take hold, but seemingly by inches
the great warship was under way and heading out into the
Gulf
of
Sagami
.

 
          
The
Independence,
now with its escort
group assembled and in formation—three anti-submarine warfare frigates, two
Aegis guided-missile cruisers, and a replenishment ship—was about twenty miles
south of the tip of the Miura Peninsula, roughly in the middle of the Gulf of
Sagami, when it was safe for fixed-wing flight operations to get under way
again. There were still a few protesters shadowing the carrier group, but they were
not allowed closer than three miles from the carrier, well outside the
perimeter established by the escort frigates. The battle group had accelerated
now to flight ops formation speed of twenty-seven knots, so very few of the
smaller protester’s vessels could keep up.

 
          
The
first aircraft to launch were the rescue helicopters, two huge Sikorsky SH-3H
Sea Kings with two pilots and two rescue swimmers on board. Next were the E-2
Hawkeye radar planes, which could extend the radar “eyes” of the battle group
out almost 400 miles. The Hawkeye’s crew would act as the long-range air
traffic controllers for the carrier, vectoring incoming aircraft toward the
carrier until the final approach controllers on board the carrier itself took
over. One KA-6D aerial refueling tanker then launched, followed by four F-14A Tomcat
fighters on outer perimeter air defense patrol, with two more Tomcats
positioned on the number three and four catapults on alert five status, ready
to launch and help defend the carrier group.

 
          
The
first aircraft to arrive was the least attractive but most appreciated aircraft
of all—the twin turboprop C-2A Greyhound, known as the “COD,” for Carrier
Onboard Delivery. The COD ferried crewmembers, passengers, supplies, spare
parts—and most importantly, the mail—on and off the ship several times a day. Ungainly
and slow when “dirtied up” and ready for the “trap,” or landing on the carrier,
the COD was cleared to land, reporting its landing weight as 48,000 pounds,
just two thousand shy of max landing weight—it was loaded to the gills with
crew members who hadn’t made the departure, extra crew members, a few civilian
passengers participating on a “Tiger Cruise” for a few days, and a pallet of
mail sacks.

 
          
The
approach was a little high, and that spelled trouble right away. Nailing the
airspeed, nailing the initial approach and rolling in on final at the right
altitude to capture a centered Fresnel glide path landing indicator, called the
“ball,” then nailing the desired angle of attack, making very slight
corrections to stay on centerline and stay on glide path—that was the key to a
successful “trap.” Corrections in a heavyweight COD had to be made very, very
carefully—crew members describe it as “thinking” throttle movements rather than
actually applying huge inputs and then having to take them back out again. Many
pilots liked to carry a little extra airspeed, knowing that a plane configured
to land, with gear, flaps, slats, and hook extended, was going to slow down
fast with the slightest reduction in airspeed; also, it took several seconds after
any throttle advancement for the turbine engines to spool up to desired power,
so being on the positive side of the power curve was important. But high and
fast was a bad combination.

 
          
Altitude
was corrected with power, airspeed corrected with angle of attack—just the
opposite of cruise. The pilot pulled off a fraction of an inch of power, and
immediately felt the sink rate increase. He had to ignore the sensation of
sinking too rapidly and concentrate on his scan— ball, airspeed, ball, AOA,
ball, centerline, ball. Enough of a power correction: the LSO, or landing
system officer, ordered more power just as the pilot was pushing the throttles
forward. The tiny speck of a carrier deck was quickly becoming bigger and
bigger. Enough power; recheck and correct pitch angle to get the AOA indexers
centered again.

 
          
OK,
OK, the pilot told himself, this was not going to be a pretty landing, but it
was the first of about three he’d make today. He was now at the reins of a
bucking bronco. If everything starts smoothly and inputs are gentle, the ride
down the chute is smooth and easy—relatively speaking for carrier landings. But
very often, if one parameter is off, then it’ll be hands and feet dancing on
the controls, throttles, and pedals all the way—and that’s the way it was on
this one. The ball was staying centered, but it was like controlling a
marionette dance routine.

 
          
On
touchdown, he was still on the backside of the power curve, nose very high,
power coming up but way late. All carrier landings were characterized as “controlled
crashes,” and landings in a heavyweight COD were even more so. This was going
to be a doozy—a two-wire trap, just fifty feet from the edge of the fantail,
slow and wobbly. He was not going to earn any Brownie points for that one. The
nose was going to come down like a felled tree if he didn’t fly it down
carefully before the arresting wires stopped him short. The pilot felt the jerk
of the arresting wire, saw the deck director signal a good catch, pushed the
throttles to full power in preparation for a bolter in case of a broken wire,
saw the edge of the landing deck coming up to meet him but at the same time saw
the airspeed rapidly decreasing, felt his body squished harder and harder
against the shoulder straps, jammed the throttles to idle . . .

 
          
..
. and then his aircraft, his carrier, his world disappeared in a flash of white
light.

 
          
“The most important lesson learned from the
Persian Gulf War of 1991 is this: if you are ever to go to war against the
United
States of America
,
be sure to bring a nuclear weapon.”

—
Republic
of
India
’s
military chief of staff

ELLSWORTH AIR FORCE BASE,
RAPID
CITY
,
SOUTH
DAKOTA

FRIDAY, 20 JUNE 1997
,
2232 HOURS LOCAL (
SATURDAY,
21 JUNE, 0032
HOURS ET)

 
          
With
flashes of lightning from an early-summer thunderstorm illuminating the night
sky to the west, the first aircrew bus rolled out onto the aircraft parking
ramp. The ramp was brown and dusty with disuse, with tall weeds poking up
through the cracks in the reinforced concrete. The bus rolled along in between
two long lines of airplanes, finally turning in and parking between two of
them. All of the planes were surrounded by maintenance men and vehicles; all
except the ones toward the back of the line were encircled with red ropes supported
by orange rubber cones, with the cones toward the nose of each aircraft marked
“ECP,” or “Entry Control Point.” The aircrew stepped off the bus, unloaded
their gear, and shuffled toward the armed security guard at the gap in the rope
marked “ECP” as if they were in a dream—or perhaps caught in a nightmare.
Although it was much easier and quicker to just step over the red rope
surrounding the plane, the crew members knew what dire consequences awaited
them if they dared to do so—security police terms like “kiss concrete” and
“jacked up” came immediately to mind.

 
          
The
guard checked each crewman’s line badge against his access list, then waved
them inside the roped-off area. They met with the airplane’s crew chief and
assistant crew chief, where they reviewed the aircraft Form 781 maintenance
logbooks, accomplished a short crew briefing covering restricted area access
and preflight actions, then ran through the first few steps of their “Before
Boarding” and “Before Power-Off Preflight” checklists.

 
          
Two
of the crewmen, each carrying one of the steel CMF containers and their helmet
bag, began climbing up the long, steep ladder into the belly of the plane,
followed by the other two crewmen carrying the canvas pubs bags. After a quick
check to make sure both of the aft ejection seats were safetied, they piled
their gear onto the upper deck, then used “monkey bars” to pull themselves up
into their seats both left and right. Once they were in their seats, the second
two crewmen could climb past them, crawl down a short tunnel, over the chemical
toilet, and into the cockpit.

 
          
While
the pilots were performing their “Power-Off Preflight” checklist, the two
crewmen behind them slid one steel canister each into slots behind and beside
their seats, then secured the canisters to the aircraft with steel cables and
padlocks. Each CMF container had two compartments: the smaller top compartment
was closed and sealed with a steel numbered trucker’s container seal, secure
but easy to open and access; the bottom compartment was sealed with the same
cable and padlock that secured the canister to the plane as well as a trucker’s
seal—a little more difficult to open than the top compartment.

 
          
The
top compartment of the CMF, or Classified Mission Folder, container held the
launch authenticators, the decoding documents necessary to authenticate a
launch order under the SIOP, or Single Integrated Operations Plan—the plan to
fight an intercontinental nuclear war. The lower compartment, secured by a
padlock as well as a steel seal to better protect the contents, held the
decoding documents needed to authenticate a nuclear attack order and to prearm
the nuclear weapons, the attack timing sheets, and the charts and computer data
cassettes they needed to fly their attack route. The green canvas bags
contained more decoding documents and the charts and computerized flight plan
cassettes to fly the escape and refueling routes on the way to the Positive
Control Turn-Around Point, known as the “fail-safe” point—the point where they
could not pass without a valid attack execution order broadcast by the
President of the United States himself.

 
          
They
opened the green canvas bags and took out several red vinyl binders,
paper-bound booklets, and a couple of grease pencils, stuffing each booklet
into a slot or cranny around their workspace so they could have quick and easy
access to it, even in the dark. They then completed their own checklists,
making sure all of their equipment’s power switches were off, and plugged their
oxygen masks and interphone cords into the aircraft outlets and placed the
helmets over the headrests of their ejection seats, ready to go. When they were
finished, they all climbed out of the crew compartment and met back outside on
the ground.

 
          
They
performed the walkaround inspection together, beginning at the nose gear strut
and working clockwise past the nose, right side, right engine nacelles, right
wing, and then into the forward bomb bay. Even though the crew had practiced
this procedure regularly over the years, this was the first time all but one of
them, the crew OSO, or offensive systems operator, had ever done it for real:
preflight a B-1B Lancer bomber in preparation for nuclear war.

 
          
“Cripes,”
Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Roma, the crew OSO muttered aloud. “We’re
back in the big glowing smoking hole business again.” The other crew members
just stood and stared. For Roma, this was like some kind of nasty dream, like
the world’s worst case of deja vu. It was the middle of the Cold War all over
again.

 
          
Joe
Roma was an eighteen-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force, not including three
years in the Civil Air Patrol in high school in Corfu, New York, and four years
as a full-scholarship ROTC cadet at Syracuse University—he had worn some
version of an Air Force uniform for over half his life. Proudly, most of that
time was not spent in a blue uniform, but in a green one—an Air Force flight
suit. He had attended two years of undergraduate, advanced, and B-52 bomber
combat crew training, then been assigned to a B-52 bomb wing in northern Maine.
Because there was not much to do up in Loring Air Force Base, Maine, most of
the time, Roma—tall, slim, dark, and athletic, but too boyish and
gangly-looking to be taken seriously by the really good-looking ladies in
Aroostook County, Maine—had busied himself with the intricacies of the
venerable B-52 bomber.

           
His dedication had been rewarded
with rapid advancement from R (Ready) crew status to E (Exceptional) status,
then simulator operator, instructor nav, S (Select) crew status,
Standardization-Evaluation Crew, then back to Castle Air Force Base for upgrade
to radar navigator; then quickly through R-, E-, and S-crew status, instructor
radar nav, then Stan-Eval again. In the meantime, he transferred to Andersen
Air Force Base on
Guam
, another remote assignment, and he immersed
himself in career-building projects: a master’s degree in business
administration, a half-dozen military schools by correspondence. He was
selected for a variety of Wing and Air Division-level assignments, such as
target study officer, weapons officer, command post controller, and Wing
bomb-nav officer, in charge of training and outfitting the B-52 squadron
navigators. Roma loved every new assignment, and the Air Force rewarded his
enthusiasm and dedication with rapid promotion to major.

 
          
But
nothing he’d ever done compared with his newest assignment: to be part of the
initial cadre of instructors for the B-1B bomber at McConnell Air Force Base in
Kansas
. The B-1B was everything he’d wished the
B-52 could be: fast, sleek, stealthy, powerful, accurate, and reliable. The
“Bone” became Roma’s new obsession. Roma, still unmarried, was promoted to
lieutenant colonel in short order and eventually became chief of Stan-Eval for
the B-l Combat Crew Training squadron, the first navigator ever selected to
that position—before or since. Roma was then reassigned to Ellsworth Air Force
Base as bomb-nav operations officer of the
Strategic
Warfare
School
, the “graduate school” for long-range
bombing planners and commanders. While at the SWC, Roma studied and worked with
the commander of the SWC, then-Brigadier General Terrill Samson, becoming one
of Samson’s strategic bomber experts, developing strategies and tactics for
employing bombers in any kind of conflict anywhere in the world. Roma was
“getting great face time,” as his fellow crewdogs put it, and he was considered
a shoo-in for a choice Pentagon assignment, for
Air
War
College
, perhaps even a bomber squadron of his own.

 
          
That
never happened, but not because of Joe Roma. The heavy bomber in general and
the B-1B bomber in particular was the new albatross around the military
budget’s neck. Although the “Bone” was a far more deadly bombing platform than
any other attack plane in the world, many of the bomber’s specialized systems,
especially the electronic warfare system, had never been perfected; and because
of high gross weight due to refitting the plane to carry cruise missiles, there
were lots of restrictions on B-l flight parameters. Congress was ready to cancel
the B-l, and only passing an intensive six-month operational readiness
assessment saved it.

 
          
Disappointed
but not dejected, Joe Roma went back to the Seventh Wing at Ellsworth Air Force
Base as the Wings chief of Standardization- Evaluation, spending as much time
doing flight and simulator check rides as he did at his desk. Flying meant more
to him than promotion or command, and he had a huge warehouse of information to
pass on to the young crewpuppies. By the end of the year, all of the B-lBs were
going to be in the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserves, and probably so
would Joe Roma. With all of the B-52s going into retirement, the B-lBs accepted
more of the long-range bombing responsibilities, including the nuclear mission,
without exceeding treaty nuclear delivery vehicle restrictions.

 
          
Now,
when the Wing was called to war, evaluators and instructors were no longer
required—but aerial warriors were in great demand. Joe Roma asked to go back to
the only place he ever really wanted to be— in the cockpit of the B-1B Lancer
bomber. As a tribute to his expertise and knowledge, he was assigned the
greenest E-status crew—top-notch flyers, but totally inexperienced in pulling
alert—to be the first Ellsworth crew to begin generating a plane to get ready to
go to war.

 
          
“Ted,
we need a lifter, flashlight, and dental mirror,” Roma asked his crew chief.
The lifter was a maintenance platform that was wheeled inside the bomb bay that
lifted the crew up twelve feet in the air so they could reach the weapons. Roma
opened his “plastic brains”—crewdog slang for his checklist—and reviewed the
weapon settings written on the proper page in grease pencil. “Heres what we’re
looking for, guys,” Roma said. “We were briefed these settings during target
study. They’re easy to remember—the weapon designers were smart and made all
the normal settings with green
S’
s,
so that’s what we look for. All
S
’s
mean the weapons are safe and they’re set correctly—retarded laydown burst, low
yield, two-minute delay, no contact backup. I want each of you to use the
mirrors to check the settings.”

 
          
This
supersonic B-1B Lancer was rather lightly loaded. The aft end of the forward
bomb bay contained a Common Strategic Rotary Launcher with eight AGM-89
Advanced Cruise Missiles, each with a 1,000-mile range and 100-kiloton nuclear
warheads, five times more powerful than the weapon that exploded over
Hiroshima, Japan; with terrain-comparison and satellite navigation, the cruise
missiles had twenty-foot accuracy even after a three-hour low-level attack
flight. The aft bomb bay contained a 3,000-gallon auxiliary fuel tank.

 
          
Once
the weapons were inspected, the crew continued their walka- round inspection of
the aircraft, then climbed up the boarding ladder and assumed their stations on
the flight deck. A few moments later the interphone came alive as the pilots
turned on battery power, followed by the interior lights when external power
was applied, and the crew began their “Power-on Before Engine Start”
checklists. Roma powered up his equipment, started a full cardinal heading gyro
alignment on his Offensive Avionics System, loaded the mission cartridges into
his navigation computers, then checked in with the Ellsworth command post:
“Rush- more Control, Rushmore Zero-One, radio check.”

 
          
“Loud
and clear, Zero-One,” the command post senior controller responded.
“Authenticate Oscar-Mike.”