Free Thud Ridge by Jack Broughton Page B

manual, Mallard." He had switched his radio to a preselected discreet frequency and would no longer know what everyone else was up to, but he felt he would rather look a bit harder to keep track of the rest of the flights and at least be able to direct his own people without being cut out on every transmission.
    "Laredo, contact and guns, Phu Tho."
    "Laredo—Ozark."
    "Lead, Ozark's calling you."
    "And the contact is down."
    "Ah, Pintail—this is Nash four five. Ah, what—"
    "Calling Pintail, say again?"
    "All flights, the gap is open, the gap is open" was a reasonably good assurance that the way back out was no worse than it had been on the way in.
    "OK, Laredo, we'll be heading back out now." The game was not over by a long shot and I had constantly drilled into all our guys the examples of the Thud driver who was relaxing straight and level at 18,000 feet on the way out, thinking he had it made, only to be blown from the sky by a wild but accurate Sam, and the flight lead who got complacent and low and slow with 50 miles of the homeward trip under his 'belt, only to ran across the top of a stray gun that knocked him out of the sky. We lost them both.
    Elmo gave up on the radio. "Elmo lead, let's go to another channel."
    "Rog, Elmo's, let's go to flight manual, flight manual."
    But the supporters and their escort took up the vacated ether. "Three, I'll take the top."
    "Three, Roger, OK."
    "Hello, Pintail—this is Nash four five. Do you read?"
    Patient Don showed not the slightest annoyance as he launched into the same discourse again. "Roger, Nash four five—this is Pintail. Go ahead."
    "Roger, Pintail, what are your inten—"
    "This is Royal, this is Royal. Time is four three, Mig scramble, sector sierra sierra, time four three, Royal out." That was the single most irritating call of the bunch, and it came from the heavy-voiced controller far from the battle, viewing the area on his radarscope, who seemed overjoyed to blast everyone off the air with his powerful transmitter. One of his scope heads had plotted a launch and, following the rales, he felt obliged to let the world know.
    In the first place, the coordinates were worthless, and the information was old and contained nothing resembling direction, altitude or speed. Secondly, nobody cared what time it was by his clock, and we didn't need to be told twice who it was, as we could recognize his voice anytime and anywhere. Those of us with some knowledge of the state of the art in the recognition and defense business could not fathom the complete lack of accurate and timely information that would have done us some good, and which could have been presented in a far more acceptable manner. I complained repeatedly and bitterly about this completely unsatisfactory system, but my complaints either fell on deaf ears or else got me chewed out, as I supposedly did not have all the facts. I was able to see a very slight improvement toward the tail end of my tour over there, but the warning and control systems we use today are unsatisfactory and antiquated, run by insufficient numbers of inadequately trained people. Should you agree, don't bother taking up the sword for the cause. The real lack of aptness in the system is buried under mountains of phony statistics and denied by those in a position to demand improvement in the system. You have to go up there and get exposed to it from the driver's side, under stress, and nobody with enough horsepower to do anything about it is going to be caught in that position.
    Royal's reverberating tones faded, and the chatter and the withdrawal progressed. "Pintail—Harpoon."
    "OK, Laredo, keep your eyes open. We got two up there at eleven o'clock."
    "That's a four-ship flight."
    "OK, got them just below those clouds." Their external fuel tanks were empty and now could only slow them down when they needed speed, so he said, "Let's get rid of the tanks," and they jettisoned them. Laredo had found the Migs, no thanks to the warning