Kevin Miller - Raven One

The extensive training the two pilots had been through allowed them to maneuver by instinct, each managing air speed and angles to get behind the other and into a firing position. If one of them allowed too much separation, the other would fire a missile shot. If the other got too close, the “knife fight inside a phone booth” could lead to a position change at best — or a raking guns shot at worst. They rolled and pulled in three dimensions, the background changing from water to sky to water, as they craned their necks to full extension in an effort to keep sight.

With his experience, Wilson got every angle he could with his available air speed, and moved Prince forward on his canopy. After less than a minute, they were passing 10,000 feet in a rolling scissors, with Prince going up and Wilson coming down, building knots. Prince fell off right, and Wilson had the energy to loop — if he remained patient and resisted the desire to keep pushing Prince around the sky. Wilson got off the g and let the aircraft ride the burner cans into a loop, a graceful pull into the vertical that stopped his downrange travel. His purpose was to flush Prince out in front and underneath.

For an instant, the two pilots saw each other in the cockpit as they passed on the horizon, their visor-covered eyes padlocked on their opponent, mouths gasping for air in short, deep breaths against the pressure. Hold it! Hold it! Wilson said to himself as he watched Prince descend and gain air speed. He fought the urge to overbank and allowed the optimum separation to build. Wilson slowed below 100 knots and let his nose track down to the horizon. About a mile below, sharply set against the blue Gulf, he saw condensation stream off the wingtips of Prince’s gray fighter as Prince pulled to meet Wilson once again. As Wilson’s nose fell through the horizon, he mashed down on the weapons select switch. The familiar Sidewinder growl sent a greeting through his headset. One second later, the growl changed to a high-pitched Scrrreeeeeee! as the seeker-head locked on to Prince’s engine heat. Wilson squeezed the trigger.

“Fox-2,” he radioed to Prince.

“Out of burner, chaff, flares,” Prince replied.

“Continue,” Wilson answered.

Sensing Prince had little air speed to counter, Wilson closed the space between them. He pulled up at the bottom of the loop and turned to align his fuselage with Prince, who was only 2,000 feet above the hard deck. Selecting GUN on the control stick with his right thumb, Wilson rendezvoused on the inside of Prince’s turn. Prince appeared to be motionless in the sky, doing little to throw off Wilson’s impending shot.

“C’mon, Prince!” Wilson shouted into his mask as he pulled the green pipper to the back of the nugget’s aircraft. Prince was arcing again, not pulling down and into him, not making his aircraft skinny. In essence, he had rolled over and exposed his neck for the kill. He had given up. From 1,000 feet away, Wilson pulled the throttles to idle and squeezed the trigger.

“Guns, knock it off!” Wilson transmitted his disgust along with his words.

“Lead, knock it off, joker, ” Prince replied.

Wilson saw that he, too, was a few hundred pounds below joker fuel as he maneuvered to join on his flight lead. Both aircraft accelerated to 300 knots and began a long climb to high altitude. The pilots routinely climbed to bladeland , as they called it, in an effort to “hang on the blades,” or to conserve every drop of fuel they could as their jet turbine blades turned in the cold, thin air. They would need it for the recovery 35 minutes hence.

Wilson slid into position on Prince’s right side and inspected Prince’s aircraft for popped panels, fluid leaks, or anything out of the ordinary. He glided below the Hornet to check the bottom of the aircraft and then moved to the left side, bottom and top. Satisfied, he drew forward to where Prince was waiting for him to take the lead so Prince could inspect Wilson’s fighter using the same procedure. When the checks were completed, Prince resumed the lead. Via hand signals they learned that each aircraft had roughly 6,000 pounds left.

Wilson eased away from Prince as they leveled off at 28,000 feet, turning left and to the east as they drew too close to the Saudi coast. Dammit, Prince! he thought. Not getting it is one thing, but not trying is something else. Wilson scribbled notes, mixed with arrows and symbols, on his kneeboard card. First, he recorded his recollection of how the fight ended and followed that with notes about the initial nose-high move they took at the first merge and how that became a rolling scissors. He wrote ARC at a point in the engagement where Prince arced to lose angles, and recorded his estimation of his Sidewinder shot range. Once on deck, they would review their video tapes before the debrief. Wilson knew it would not be a smooth one. He hoped Prince could end the hop on a positive note by managing their fuel before leading them into the break. The post-flight debrief was not going to be easy.

The formation steadied up on a heading of 060, with Wilson 400 feet away in loose cruise. Wilson looked down as a heavily laden southbound tanker plied the textured blue surface below. It left a wide wake behind, as the load of hundreds of thousands of tons of crude began its long voyage to Japan, or Europe… or Houston. Forty miles to the north he could make out Valley Forge, escorted by the guided-missile destroyer, Stout . Though they were at a max endurance fuel setting, the two Hornets cruised along at 250 knots indicated air speed. Wilson checked the winds at altitude: 125 knots on the tail, cooking right along after the frontal passage. He looked about the sky for other traffic and scanned his radar in range-while-search mode. Clear.

Wilson’s thoughts returned to Prince. He was different from the others, different from any other pilot he knew. First, Prince was a loner. Despite his good looks, he had no wife or girlfriend. Wilson realized the same could be said of the XO, but with Prince it was different. Saint could be engaging when he wanted to be, particularly with his superiors, but Prince always looked angry and impatient. He thought he knew all the answers and bristled at constructive criticism about his flying or division paperwork to the point he almost talked back, even to seniors. Prince was careful not to cross the line, but he went right up to that line way too often. Among the department heads and senior JOs, Prince was a “project.” They needed him to pull more of his own weight, but after a year in the squadron, it seemed they had made little headway with him. Wilson tried to put the upcoming debrief out of his mind and enjoy the day, even though it had turned out to be a day in bladeland on Prince’s wing.

They were nearing the Iranian coast, but Prince had given no indication he was about to turn away from it. After giving Prince every opportunity to monitor his own navigation, Wilson began to fear an embarrassing call from Alpha Whiskey and keyed the mike.

“Let’s bring it west.”

Prince remained silent and continued ahead.

“Now!” Wilson growled over the radio. The lead Hornet still did not respond. He can’t even stay out of Iran! Wilson thought, considering this the last straw in an unsat check ride.

When Prince didn’t respond, Wilson guessed Prince had switched up to another frequency on the secondary radio.

“Prince… Prince! You up?”

Growing concerned, Wilson added some power and nudged the stick to get closer to his flight lead. Prince wasn’t moving, and as Wilson slid closer, he saw Prince’s head slumped down.