The Fly Boys Page 32

  In August, when construction of the long concrete runways at Kawon had been completed, somebody had the bright idea that the BroadSwords based there could make do with shorter runways because the F-90s were lighter and carried no external ordnance. By summer’s end, the F-80 Shooting Star and F-90 BroadSword groups had exchanged places, and Steve and the rest of the 19th Squadron was settled in at Kawon, twenty-five miles south of Seoul.

  “I didn’t notice any defensive fire back there at all, did you?” DeAngelo asked.

  “Nope, that was nice and easy,” Steve replied. “Just the way you like it, huh, Mikey?”

  “Affirmative,” DeAngelo replied. “A good ending to a mission that started out like shit.”

  “I’ll say,” Steve chuckled.

  Four Shooting Stars had started out from Kawon, but malfunctions had forced one airplane to return immediately to base and another to make an emergency landing at nearby Suwon. Steve had been upset, but he hadn’t been surprised. These days a fifty percent down rate wasn’t unusual within the Shooting Star squadrons. With all the moving around, Maintenance and Supply never had the chance to set up decent workshop facilities. Meanwhile, dust, rust, and just plain old age were catching up with the hardworking F-80s. What compounded the problem was that no more Shooting Stars were being built. The Air Force was switching over to Broad-Swords for fighter duty, and to the F-84 Thunderjets built by Republic Aircraft for the fighter-bomber work which was currently being handled by the Shooting Stars.

  With half of his flight down, Steve had briefly considered scrubbing the mission, but he’d radioed DeAngelo to talk it over and Mike had been game to push on. Like Steve, Mike had realized that it was important to deliver today’s second punch in the one-two combination FEAF had initiated against Kumch’ong and the other enemy airfields. Stomping the enemy had become a matter of psychological, as well as strategic importance.

  The peace talks that had been halfheartedly stuttering along might just as well have been about some other war for all the good they were doing the armies slugging it out in Korea. The newspaper editorials had begun calling it “The Seasaw War” because the commies and the UN-American forces seemed doomed to keep trading the same stretches of ground back and forth.

  New Year’s Eve, 1950, had seen the commies launch a successful push toward Seoul that was barely stopped at Wonju. A counteroffensive against the Reds had been launched in February, and by April Seoul had been retaken, and the UN was once again north of the 38th parallel. April also saw a new Supreme Commander of UN Forces as Truman sacked MacArthur for publicly suggesting that Asia had replaced Europe as the likely arena where all future contests between the East and West would be fought. The new commander, General Ridgeway, had barely eased into his post when the communists launched another ferocious offensive, taking back the 38th parallel in an onward-rolling series of “banzai” attacks. It didn’t seem to matter how many commies were killed; more just kept on coming. Finally, the enemy’s human wave began to falter and the UN forces managed to once again cross the 38th.

  Meanwhile, back home the editorial writers who had grown sick of writing about seasaws, began lamenting Korea as the “Battle of the Hills.”

  Throughout the months of fighting American air power had continued to fly ground support and strategic bombing missions, but things had changed. FEAF no longer owned the skies, now that the commies were pouring in MiGs. Latest intelligence counts had it that over five hundred MiGs had been thrown into the battle. The brass felt that there was only one fighter that had any hope of wresting away the sky from all of those MiGs, but there were less than one hundred BroadSwords in all of Korea.

  Outnumbered so badly, there was no way the Broad-Sword patrols could be everywhere at once, so the MiGs found it easy to evade the BroadSwords in order to attack the B-29 formations and Shooting Star fighter-bombers. By late summer the MiG situation had gotten so bad that the area along the Chinese–North Korean border—dubbed “MiG Alley”—had been put off limits to all airplanes lacking BroadSword escort.

  A lot of the F-80 jockeys had grumbled about the restriction. For Steve, the turn of events was doubly humiliating. Not only had he been proven wrong about his father’s BroadSwords, but now he had no chance at all of becoming an ace in this war, since Shooting Stars had been relegated to flying strategically important, but nevertheless pussy missions like today’s wienie roast at Kumch’ong.

  It boggled Steve’s mind that he’d been warned off engaging the enemy. He was a fighter pilot, dammit. A jet jockey in the cockpit of an F-80, not a little boy in a soapbox racer who needed to be told by his mama that he couldn’t cross the big, bad, busy street unless he had his older brother, Mr. BroadSword, looking out for him.

  Sure he’d heard all the stories about what a super airplane the MiG was, but what those stories left out was that, the few times when an F-80 was being piloted by somebody who knew what he was doing, the Shooting Star had managed to draw blood against its adversary.

  It was the first lesson of fighter piloting, and Steve had learned it when he’d been a Flying Tiger, up against the Japs over Rangoon: It’s not the machine, but the man who makes the difference in a dogfight.

  So what if the MiG was a state-of-the-art machine? Everyone knew that the commies were putting poorly trained Koreans into the cockpits. Through the grapevine he’d heard all about the pussy NKAF pilots. When they bounced from behind, they would huddle in their MiGs’ armored cockpits, unwilling to break either way because that would expose their canopies to gunfire. He’d heard about the North Koreans who’d bailed out of their airplanes at the first hint of trouble, who’d demonstrated inept gunnery, inability to manuever their airplanes, and a total lack of cooperation between the pilots in a flight.

  Steve was ready to turn in his wings if he couldn’t knock such pilots out of the sky, no matter what the capabilities of their respective machines.

  If only he got the chance. He’d been brooding about it since November, when the first MiGs had appeared. For ten months he’d been listening enviously to the stories of F-80 pilots who’d happened to run into stray MiGs.

  If only it could happen to him….

  They were at twenty thousand feet, flying over the Ye-song River and approaching the 39th Parallel, when Steve spotted the twin contrails high above, like thin white scars against the blue hide of the sky. “Mike!” he called excitedly. “We’ve got company!”

  “I see them,” DeAngelo said as the sun glinted off the two silver specks drawing the parallel contrails. “What do you think? We’re awful far south,” he added nervously. “They must be BroadSwords, right?”

  “Dunno. Could be MiGs,” Steve said slowly. “We’re not too far from Sariwon or Simak.”

  “Come on,” DeAngelo laughed derisively. “We pulverized them a long time ago.”

  “Maybe the Reds got one or both back into operation.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “They might have,” Steve protested.

  “Christ, you sound positively wistful,” DeAngelo said.

  Steve just laughed. “They can’t have seen us yet. We’re in their blind spot.” He paused. “Let’s take them!”

  “No way! They might be MiGs.”

  “You just said they couldn’t be,” Steve pointed out.

  “I’ve been wrong before.”

  “Mikey, listen to me. If they are MiGs—and I hope like hell they are—there’s a pair of them. One each. We could each nab a kill.”

  “If they’re drawing contrails, they must be at 45,000 or better,” DeAngelo said. “We don’t belong up there, Steve.”

  “That’s bullshit, Mikey. I say we can take them.”

  “It’s against current Far East Command regs to engage them.”

  “We can say that they bounced us,” Steve replied. “There’s no reg against defending yourself. And who knows, maybe after we get these two FEC will rescind that bullshit rule about how us Shooting Star squadrons are supposed to run away and leave al
l the fun to the BroadSword jockeys.”

  “I just don’t like the idea of going looking for trouble,” DeAngelo muttered.

  “Come on, Mike! We’ve got all the advantages in this setup. We’ve got the drop on them, and we’re experienced pilots while they’re probably just a couple of NKAF trainees.”

  “I’d like to get home to my wife and kids in one piece.”

  Steve paused. “You’ve been laying eggs too long. You’ve forgotten that you’re a fighter ace!”

  “I haven’t forgotten, Steve. It’s just not that important to me anymore. I’ve got my family to think about.”

  “Look,” Steve began crisply, “I’m going after them. If they’re BroadSwords, no harm done. I’ll just wax their tails to show them who’s boss, but if they’re MiGs…”

  “Fuck you, Major!” DeAngelo exploded savagely. “I’m your wingman, and that means I go where you go.”

  “Well, okay!” Steve said, gratified. “Friends stick together.”

  “Right, friend. And when we get home, I’m going to punch your fucking face in for making me do this!”

  “That’s a deal,” Steve laughed. “But for now, you’d better punch tanks.”

  “Tanks jettisoned,” DeAngelo announced.

  Steve watched his own wing tanks fall away, and increased his throttle. As he pulled up, heading for those two silvery specks in the bright blue sky, he felt an anticipatory tingling in his groin.

  He had to laugh. This is better than sex.

  His prey—either MiGs or BroadSwords; the two swept-wing jets looked so much alike that Steve wouldn’t know until the last moment—were traveling above and directly ahead of him. That set them up perfectly for a yo-yo attack. Steve would climb as rapidly as he could and then go into a shallow dive to gain extra speed. When the distance between himself and his target had closed, he would pull up into his attack, and if everything went smoothly, the enemy’s belly would be in his gun sights.

  As Steve leveled off and then began to angle down into his dive, he noticed that DeAngelo had come right along with him. The consummate wingman, DeAngelo hadn’t needed to be told what tactic Steve was using. Mikey had merely watched and then played follow the leader.

  As Steve came out of his dive and began to pull up toward his adversary, he saw on its wings the red five-pointed star outlined in white that told him that this fight was for real. He armed his guns as he stared up at the MiG, his gloved fingers itching in anticipation of firing that first burst. The Soviet-built fighter was a burnished gray aluminum color, except for its nose and tail, which were painted blue.

  He was two thousand feet below the MiG; still too far away. On his port side, DeAngelo had moved off a bit in order to execute his own attack. Steve noticed that DeAngelo’s MiG had the same blue nose and tail, but in addition, had a jagged blue lightning bolt stretching the length of its fuselage.

  Steve had closed to one thousand feet. The NKAF pilots are afraid to break, he thought, grinning wolfishly. They’re just crouching and taking it. This was going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. Pop, he thought, get ready to eat your words about F-80s versus MiGs—

  Six hundred feet. His sights were planted on the MiG’s gut.

  Now. The F-80 shuddered as he loosed a burst of armor-piercing incendiary from his six nose-mounted .50s.

  Above him his MiG abruptly raised its nose and rolled to starboard down Steve’s vector fighter in a steep descending turn that put the MiG below and behind Steve.

  Out of sight—

  Cursing, Steve broke to port as DeAngelo’s panicked voice filled his helmet:

  “Steve, I lost mine! Do you see him?”

  Before Steve could reply he felt his F-80 taking a jarring hit from his MiG’s cannons. The fucking commie had used his superior speed and climbing ability to come around and lock on to his tail.

  “Steve. He’s on my six!” DeAngelo cried out. “Get him off me!”

  “I’ve got my own troubles, Mikey,” Steve muttered as he abruptly attempted a high-speed variation on the yo-yo, pulling up sharply to reduce his speed. The sickeningly abrupt move pushed his stomach up into his rib cage, but the maneuver worked. The streaking MiG overshot beneath him. Steve immediately mashed down the F-80s nose and cobbed his throttle, centering his guns on the MiG’s tailpipe and holding down the firing button. His guns raised sparks off the MiG’s tail and wings.

  “Steve, I can’t shake mine—” DeAngelo said.

  Mikey’s voice was sounding reedy; he was scared. Like he was near crying. He never wanted in on this, Steve thought, feeling guilty.

  “Dive!” Steve called to DeAngelo. “Get low, where you’ve got the advantage!”

  “I can’t! I’d give him a clear shot at me. He’s real close, this son of a bitch. I haven’t seen aerial combat maneuvers like this since I was up against the Luftwaffe. Oh, he’s good, whoever he is. North Korean trainees, huh?” Steve could hear DeAngelo’s sarcastic sneer.

  “Oh, shit! He’s on my six again. He’s sticking to me like he’s glued there! I’m taking hits!”

  Steve desperately wanted to look around for Mikey, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off his own MiG, which was jinking around in a series of random turns and skids, trying to spoil Steve’s aim long enough for it to get some altitude, where the MiG’s superior speed might get it out of gun range. It might have worked, Steve thought, but all dogfights cost altitude, and this one had dropped down to 15,000 feet. Down here the heavier F-80 had the speed advantage, and Steve was too good a shot. As the F-80’s guns continued to hammer sparks off the MiG, Steve guessed that the commie pilot must have concluded that the way things were going, he was not going to last long enough to get back up to 25,000, where he could have things his way.

  Abruptly the MiG broke to port and went into a spiral dive. Steve put himself in the commie’s shoes and immediately guessed what the MiG pilot had in mind. The Red was hoping that Steve would try to stay on his tail, forgetting that in a dive the heavier Shooting Star would automatically increase its velocity and, hopefully, overshoot.

  Nice try, pal, Steve thought as he abandoned his position on the MiG’s six, and threw his heavier Shooting Star into an even steeper angle of descent. The negative G-force drove the blood up into his brain, and his vision began to go red-out, but the punishing dive allowed him to gain on the MiG. He pulled up for another try at the MiG’s belly and managed to stitch holes along its silvery gut from nose to tail. He finally must have hit something important, because the aircraft began to flounder, leaking black smoke from its tailpipe. The MiG pilot blew his canopy and bailed out.

  Steve came up and around in a vertical climb aileron turn, spinning 360 degrees like a top in order to look for DeAngelo. At twenty thousand feet Steve saw his wingman maybe two miles away, still being pursued by the MiG.

  “Hang on, Mike! I’m coming!”

  Steve pulled out of his climb and cobbed the throttle for maximum speed. Behind him the MiG he’d killed had brushed a bold slash of smoke diagonally across the sky as it fell. Its pilot was wafting down beneath his deployed chute.

  As Steve streaked toward DeAngelo, he saw Mike roll into a spiral dive.

  “Good move, Mikey!” Steve radioed. “Be ready to wax him.”

  As the MiG overshot the F-80, DeAngelo reversed his direction with a roll, pulling up in perfect position to lock on to the climbing MiG’s tail.

  “Nice flying!” Steve roared, relieved and elated. “Now get him, Mikey!”

  But DeAngelo broke away from the MiG. He was trying to run.

  He never wanted any part of this fight, Steve reminded himself sadly. He hasn’t got the killer instinct anymore.

  Within moments the MiG had come around to again lock on to DeAngelo’s six-o’clock position.

  DeAngelo may have lost his killer instinct, but he’s up against a born killer, Steve realized as he watched the MiG begin to squeeze off rounds from its nose-mounted trio of one 37-millimeter cannon and twin 23-millimete
r guns. The MiG’s cannons had a slower rate of fire than machine guns, but each hit counted more, especially when its target had lost its nerve and refused to take any evasive maneuvers as it tried to escape.

  The irony of the situation was not lost on Steve. It was DeAngelo who had reverted to a trainee’s behavior of crouching within his armored cockpit and hoping for the best as a clearly superior enemy ravaged him.

  I got Mikey into this, damn me, Steve thought. I’ve got to get him out—

  But the MiG was still too far away. Steve began firing anyway, in the hope that he might remind the commie that it was two against one, and in that way scare him off. At the very least, Steve figured his shooting would distract the MiG pilot long enough for Mike to get some relief.

  It didn’t happen. That damned commie in his blue lightning bolt MiG showed steely concentration, taking his time lining up his shots as he attacked DeAngelo.

  Steve saw the cannon rounds striking Mikey’s Shooting Star. Pieces of the airplane were flying off. It began to leak smoke.

  “Hang on, Mike, I’m almost there—”

  “No good. She’s hurt bad, and so am I…. Shrapnel or something…. I can’t control her. I’m bailing out!”

  Steve saw the Shooting Star’s canopy blow off. The commie, to his credit, immediately broke off the attack.

  Come on, Mikey, do it! Eject!

  The F-80 abruptly vanished in a blossom of flame. Steve stared, horrified, as the fiery rain of wreckage that had been Mike DeAngelo’s airplane plummeted to earth from out of the oily smudge of smoke that hung in the sky.

  There was no sign of Mike.

  Steve flew toward the MiG, intent upon killing it. The MiG took the time to do an insolent, eight-point roll in celebration of its victory, and then it streaked off toward home.