Captain Timba 🛫

#TomcatTails #TomcatTuesday Tomcats versus Eagles at Tinker AFB It’s the early 90s and my VF-24 Renegades and the VF-211 Checkmates (what’s called a “sister squadron” but always pronounced “weak sister squadron”) went on a detachment to Tinker AFB to participate as Red Air during an exercise called Coronet Sentry. As per usual, my buddy Cheese had to rename every det we did to something humorous, so this det was forever known as “Cornhole Surgery”. As I’ve said previously, if you’re Red Air your job is to simulate FSU (Former Soviet Union) tactics and aircraft with serious limitations on your weapons. You’re basically a missile sponge for the Eagles but everyone continues to the merge to get some really good DACT (Dissimilar Air Combat Training). We arrived on an afternoon with 8 jets, I think, parked on the ramp and unloaded our gear. The maintainers arrived the same day with all the tools/parts and our personal pack up. We were escorted to quarters and came to find out the aircrew were going to be in the USAF Alert Facility. I’ll let some USAF dudes correct me here but I’m pretty sure that Tinker operated the E-3A and E-3B as well as the EC-135 Looking Glass missions, some REALLY secret squirrel high side stuff and the crews were in this same alert facility on call to man up if World War Three was starting and the Soviets took a shot. That is a SERIOUS f’ing mission and those USAF dudes that stand that alert for the last 7 decades are freaking amazing. But in this case, the USAF decided to give the alert facility to a bunch of Navy Fighter Pilots. Mistake number one. We loaded all our trash in; flight suits, t-shirts, socks, some civvies, our golf clubs, and a SHIT TON of booze and food, not to mention all of our “mental health support” to include boom boxes, cards, dice, cigars, and more booze. On the first night, our flight schedule showed an All Aircrew meeting in the briefing auditorium at 0800 and the first flights in the early afternoon. Standard Fighter Pilot Math says that if the NATOPS rule about drinking and flying is “12 hours bottle to throttle”, then the 2pm briefs tomorrow means we’re going to put a big old face on until 2am. QED. NATOPS, by the way, is the aircraft “bible” and stands for Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures. EVERYTHING you need to know about your jet is in NATOPS. Read it, heed it. This publication is aircraft specific and the program started in the late 50s. When it came out, my Dad had been a Naval Aviator for a few years and told me that they said it stood for Not Applicable To Older Pilots. Funny f**kers. Funnier quick side note. We’d often twist hard/fast rules to be more entertaining. Two examples: - Flyovers were often limited to 1,000 feet, 500 knots. “Roger that, 1,000 knots and 500 feet.” - No drinking 12 hours prior to flight and no smoking within 500 feet of the jet. “Roger that, no smoking 12 hours prior and no drinking within 500 feet of the jet.” Many aviators have learned that no-drinking lesson the easy way (meaning no on died). Myself included. At any rate, it’s night one and Welcome to Tinker! We throw a literal rager once someone gets back with some bags of ice. We’ve got loud music playing all over. Smoking lamp is lit (a Navy thing) and we’ve all got stogies stuffed in our faces. Booze is flowing like wine and mixers are for sissies. Every room has some kind of card game or dice game going on and it’s WAY loud in this cinderblock underground center of Air Force Excellence. What’s for dinner you ask? Dunno, let’s take a look at our gedunk locker. “Gedunk” is another Navy term: From Navy History and Heritage Command – “Gedunk refers to ice cream, candy, potato chips, and other snack foods, as well as to the place on a ship where these items are sold. The first known published usage of the term "gedunk" in a non-naval context is in a 1927 comic strip which refers to "gedunk [ice cream] sundaes.” So dinner is beef jerky, Fritos, Moon Pies, Doritos, Red Vines, and whatever else we have in this cruise box (giant steel trunk) of flavor. One of our cohort, Dumpy (who fell asleep on the shitter, hence “Dumpy”), literally only eats gedunk all cruise. Yuck. The festivities continue well into the evening and we eventually all flame out at about the right time to get a solid 4 hours of sleep. The next day is hilarious. We’re all in the briefing auditorium and in walks the Commanding General of Tinker. I’m assuming that’s his job but at any rate, he’s a two star and he is clearly NOT very happy. “It’s come to my attention that several of the visiting aircrew have violated our Alert Facility rules significantly. Let me reiterate; there is no drinking, no smoking, no eating, and no gambling, and no loud music in the Alert Facility.” Hunh, we got a hat trick plus two!! Next he says “And I’d appreciate it if the senior squadron leadership come see me this afternoon to discuss these rules.” Oops. Our Skipper, Squatty, was a good dude (bit of a yeller but solid) and his body slowly turned red from the neck up and over his head to his face. We tried our best to NOT do that thing you’d do in middle school where everyone goes “oooooooo….”. Most of us succeeded. So later in the morning, Squatty takes the face shot for his boys, comes back and says something like “Guys, c’mon. Keep the music down.” And so we have our first day of Red Air. Pretty fun working area, nice 60-70 mile sets, and we dutifully die like dogs under the onslaught of Eagle AMRAAMs shot from the high 30,000 foot ranges while we lumber along in the mid 20’s. Had some great merges and honestly, those Eagles are f**king impressive in a turning fight in the high 20s. If you can drag them down to the mid-teens, then the Tomcat wing starts to carry the day. That Eagle airframe is optimized for the high altitude fight and we just can’t turn that well up there. Down in the thicker air? Different story entirely. I’ll save the Eagle ACM stories for the Red Flag #TomcatTails. Much more interesting there. The other really funny thing that happened involved my good friend “Bart” who is probably reading this. The Officer’s club wasn’t that far from the Alert Facility and we had several occasion to hoist a few with our brethren in Blue (weren’t any Sistren yet…that’s later). Good bunch of dudes. I give the AF nerds shit because that’s my job but we’re all steely eyed killers that are the worst nightmare for America’s enemies. You do NOT want to be on the receiving end of an American Fighter Pilot, USAF or USN. They were cordial and gracious, but we tended to imbibe a bit more because they were driving home, we were staggering home. And on one staggering night, Bart decides he really has to pee before he goes through the manned gate into the alert facility. The place is surrounded by chain link with barbed wire on the top and is SERIOUSLY secured. Bart decides to take a leak on a fairly innocuous piece of green hardware that’s stuck in the ground outside the fence. Looks a bit like base drum with a rounded nose, kind of pointed at a 45ׄ° angle skyward. Hmmm, Wonder what that is? Turns out it’s a listening device intended to ensure that nothing approaches the facility from the perimeter. In the telling from Bart’s buddies (the VF-211 weak sister nerds), a jeep comes RACING up to them standing around watching Bart pee on a listening device and the AF security dudes jump out of it, guns drawn, put Bart on the ground with a rifle the back of his neck screaming at him to stay down. Naturally, WE think this is hilarious because it’s happening to our sister squadron. It all gets sorted out, and there are some more “meetings” with the 2 star but life moves on. So here’s the point of the story that the flying gets interesting. Bear in mind, it’s 1994 and the Tomcat/Phoenix combo is pretty supreme. Also, the Eagle/AMRAAM package is a true killer of men. We’d watched them work over the last week and MAN could they do some slaying. A wall of eight Eagles at 35,000 feet, AWACS providing laser GCI, multiple AMRAAM launched from 30 miles……..us lowly Tomcats were sucking up a couple “rammers” each. F**k. But hey, that’s the Red Air mission. Toward the end of the det, the AF dudes ask us to play real world Tomcats vs Eagles, meaning use your normal fighter load out of Phoenix and Sparrow and ‘Winder. They’d heard of the Phoenix but had never gone against such a weapon, so we were happy to oblige. I’ve talked about this before, and yes I’m a bit partial, but the AWG-9/APG-76 and Phoenix combination was UNBEATABLE in any scenario. We’re slinging 100 mile missiles before you even know we’re there; you’re dead before you even see us. On that day, a number of miracles happen. We’ve scheduled a 4 v 8, four Tomcats (red air) versus 8 Eagles. We man up, and get all 4 Tomcats out of the chocks. Miracle number 1. We all get airborne (miracle number 2) and all of our radars work (miracle number 3). Tomcats are in a division to the west, Eagles are in two divisions to the East. We call “speed and angels”, they call “speed and angels” and it’s “FIGHTS ON” and we turn in at about 70 miles. I was a Lieutenant so I’m dash 3 leading my section but we’re in a wall of Tomcats, one mile abreast, heading east. I look down at the repeater of the RIOs scope and there they are, all eight Eagles on the screen in Track While Scan or TWS. TWS allows you to track multiple targets and put missiles on them vice doing a radar lock on a single target. And THAT is the value of the Tomcat because it could track 6 targets and independently fire 6 missiles at them. The RIOs discuss the “sort”, meaning what target they’re shooting at (normally outside in) and get a plan together. Dash 1 (lead) calls “Fox 3 two Eagles to the north”. Dash two calls “Fox 3 two Eagles to the west”. Similar calls from Rage 3 and 4, and we have one Phoenix targeted on each Eagle. Bear in mind, this is at nearly 60 miles. The Eagles don’t even have radar on us yet; they can’t see that far. The systems track the simulated shots, we turn left 45° to stop our down range travel as the “feenie-bombs” head toward their target. Data link shows all of us the other jet’s screens so we know what’s about to happen, and at about 40 miles, Tomcat lead calls “Time out kill, all Eagles are dead.” With a 130 pound warhead and a wing-root seeker, there’s no WAY they’d survive. Eagle guys are like…….? What? Seriously? We merged, mixed it up, had some fun, then landed and went to the debrief with our tapes. We showed them the radar tapes/images and they were like “Holy F**k!”. Yes. They’d had a few Ground Controlled Intercept (GCI) calls about the Tomcats to the west but didn’t have radar on them and “boom”, all Eagles are dead. AWG-9/Phoenix is a bad ass combination!

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