Kevin Miller - Declared Hostile

And he was late. Start time was in five minutes, and he had yet to preflight and strap in… and calm himself down. As luck would have it, Wilson’s jet, 301, was parked farthest away on the bow, some 700 feet distant from where he undogged the hatch and stepped onto the flight deck.

His brief to the seventy aircrew and staff in a cram-packed Ready Room 5 had been disjointed. He had been able to concentrate on the “snapshots” of where everyone should be at a given time, and on the target area tactics, but that was it. The rest had been haphazard. He was not sure about the threat, not sure about support assets, not sure about the command and control. The good news was that, except for the Air Force tankers, it was an all-Navy strike. If the AWACS showed, fine. Wilson and the others knew they could manage okay with support from their own Condors , who would have an E-2 orbiting over the tanker track. They had covered the basics in the briefing—81 percent good — but, to Wilson, much had been left out for a strike of this magnitude. Training would have to make up for the lack of detail.

As Wilson strode forward, leaning into the stiff breeze, he surveyed the scene. Hundreds of sailors from fuelers to catapult maintenance crewmen prepared the ship and aircraft for launch, and all the jets, canopies up, were surrounded by squadron technicians and trouble-shooters. Weapons were still being loaded, and some jets had been towed into parking spots for start up. A launch of 30+ planes was big, most everything on the flight deck, and Billy Martin’s aircraft were in the hangar bay waiting for Wilson’s strike to go. The ship would then bring them up two at a time on the four massive deck-edge elevators. This was going to be a challenge as the ship was pitching and rolling such that the launch — and certainly the night recoveries — would be sporty. Low, gray clouds were scattered along the horizon under an umbrella of high overcast as Coral Sea pounded through the white-capped waves to her expected launch posit.

Wilson walked past Ghost as he strapped himself into the ejection seat of his jet, 310, parked over the Cat 2 jet blast deflector. The jet was loaded with HARM missiles the nugget pilot would launch against a fixed SAM site near Río Salta. Ghost may have more than he bargained for , Wilson thought as he continued forward. The young aviator flying his first combat sortie would need to join up, plug on the tanker, then deliver his weapons on time to suppress the site, at night. He would have to fly hundreds of miles back to the tanker and then find the ship for a night pitching-deck recovery — after some five hours airborne. Varsity for sure . All the strikers would depend on the HARM shooters using the call sign Lance , including this young pilot, to do their job so they could do theirs. It would be the same with the fighter sweep, using the call sign Blocker , and the jammers using Volt . All had to work as a cross-functional team with precise timing for the overall mission success of the dozen strike package jets led by Wilson, call sign Slash . Wilson again scanned the horizon and observed the deteriorating weather. How he missed the Caribbean.

After the main and element brief, Wilson had darted into the wardroom to make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He managed to cram it down before signing for the jet. In the ready room he checked out a pair of NVGs, a .45mm pistol, a blood chit, and took a call from air ops. No, the strike can’t launch any earlier! After suiting up in the paraloft, he transited the length of the ship to the jet, taking furtive glances at the PLAT monitors whenever he could to gauge the weather. At every point, he felt the deck heave and roll underneath him.

All day the ship and air wing ordnancemen had built bombs in the magazines and loaded them on to the jets, loaded missiles, loaded chaff and flares. They were still loading as Wilson tramped between the bow cats against a forty-knot wind to the last jet on the bow, his jet. It was surrounded by maintainers, and a technician sat in the cockpit.

Oh, oh .

Chief Murrill met him as he approached.

“Skipper, we’ve had a minor crunch. A bomb cart hit the right stab.”

“How bad, Chief?” Wilson asked him, concerned about both the jet and the time needed to fix it.

“A gash in the lower part of the stab. A bomb fin scraped it but didn’t break the skin. The airframers say it’s good to go, but the electricians are running flight control diagnostics tests to see if any maintenance codes are popped.”

With Chief Murrill following, Wilson walked past the troubleshooters and over an electrical cord to see for himself. Crouching low, he saw a foot-long scratch in the bottom of the right horizontal stabilator. Somewhat deep, the gash exposed the black composite material. An airframes troubleshooter, Petty Officer Willen, hovered nearby.

“Petty Officer Willen, what do you think?”

“Sir, you can fly with it. We’re gonna put speed tape on it, but we need to check that the jolt didn’t damage the actuator. We’re checkin’ for codes now, sir.”

Wilson frowned. The checks would take more time that he didn’t have. Just then the air boss came over the 5MC loudspeaker. “ On the flight deck, aircrews have manned for the seventeen hundred launch. Time for all personnel to get into the proper flight deck uniform, helmets on and buckled, goggles down, sleeves rolled down—”

As the air boss continued with the prestart litany and crews moved into position to start the engines of three dozen aircraft, Wilson leaned in so both Murrill and Willen could hear over the swirling wind.

“Okay, Chief, if your guys say it’s up, I’m taking it. Going to do my preflight and get in, but we don’t have much more time to troubleshoot. Make a call early, and I’ll get into the spare. This is combat and I’m leading.”

“Roger that, Skipper,” Chief Murrill said. Willen nodded his acknowledgment.

As dozens of turbine engines around him sprang to life, Wilson did a quick preflight check. The ordies loaded the bombs, missiles, chaff and flares according to plan. An overworked sailor accidentally running a bomb cart into 301’s horizontal stab could be dealt with. No one had screwed up on purpose. The accounting could wait.

Way up forward, mere feet from the deck edge, Coral Sea’s pitch was pronounced. High winds buffeted him as Wilson ascended the ladder and lowered himself into the ejection seat where the plane captain helped strap him in. Perched on the forward deck edge, Wilson felt nothing but limitless sea beyond his left shoulder. Over 400 miles distant — and 2.5 hours away — was San Ramón. Are they waiting? Do they know?

Wilson sent the plane captain down with a smile as he closed the canopy to finish connecting himself to the seat in relative calm. Outside, the engines of the dozen jets parked on the bow howled as their pilots monitored their inertial navigation system alignments and entered waypoint coordinates. Wilson energized the battery and signaled the plane caption to begin the start sequence.

With his squadron troubleshooters and Chief Murrill watching, Wilson started the right and left engines and began setting his cockpit up for the flight. Off to the right, Petty Officer Willen stood ready to test the right stab, and Wilson gave him a thumbs-up. With that, Willen gave him the signal for back-stick. Wilson complied, holding it steady. No trouble codes were present on his flight control computer display. Willen had Wilson cycle the controls as other technicians near the stab watched it move. Satisfied, they gave another thumbs-up to Willen who relayed it to Wilson. Firebird 301 was an up jet.