Carrying a Nuke to Sevastopol (continued)

"Manhandling that plane--low, slow, and inverted--was the best thrill around, at least while in full flight gear."--Joe Shea, Duxbury, Massachusetts

You're not targeting Sevastopol but the military airfield on the mainland beyond, to take out the MiG-15s that would otherwise intercept the big bombers of the Strategic Air Command.

There it is: cliffs, beaches, dockyard cranes, and--as you close the distance--Pokrovskiy cathedral in the center of town. The Russian anti-aircraft gunners probably know you're coming, but they can't see you in the radar clutter of the Black Sea. Anyhow, there's nothing you can do about ack-ack. The Able Dog has been stripped of its 20-mm wing guns, rocket racks, and all external armor plate.

You switch to internal fuel, push the throttle to the stop, and toggle water injection on. (You never added water in training; it boosts the horsepower over 3,000 but takes a bunch of hours off the life of the engine.) Again that bellowing growl, as the tachometer winds up toward 2900 rpm, manifold pressure gauge to 60 inches, and airspeed indicator to 275 knots. Only the radar altimeter holds steady--50 feet above the water--as you accelerate toward the Sevastopol waterfront. Fifty feet is life.

When the onion tops of Pokrovskiy cathedral flash under the port wingtip, you press the pickle button, lying comfortably beneath your thumb on the left side of the joystick. (There's another pickle lower down. Some guys tape a thumbtack to the second pickle, with the point out, but you don't bother with that. You're good.) The red lamp goes dark; the earphones go silent. The timer begins to count: one potato, two potato....

At 15.5 seconds, the red light and the tone return, and the horizontal needle slumps to the bottom of the gyro. It has become an accelerometer. You haul back on the control stick, lifting the needle back to the middle of the dial. Centrifugal force drives you into the cushion, flattening it. When you've centered the horizontal needle, you're pulling the 4.5 Gs that were set in the Hell Hole. You weigh 765 pounds instead of the 170 that showed on Forrestal's wardroom scale, and the MK 7 weighs nearly four tons.

The vertical needle has become a yaw-roll indicator, showing whether your wings are perpendicular with respect to the target. With skill and cunning, you fly the two needles, keeping them crossed in the center of the dial. You are now on line with the target and describing the desired arc away from the ground. Perhaps incidentally, the needles also oblige you to keep your attention inside the cockpit instead of looking outside for the green stitchery of Russian anti-aircraft fire.

When the Able Dog points 60 degrees nose high, there's a muffled bang. The Douglas ejector foot, powered by a 40 mm shell, has blasted the MK 7 off the centerline pylon.

"I viewed that thump as good news. It meant that the awful-awful was on its own, and so was I."--Al Schaufelberger, St Helena, South Carolina

Now the red lamp goes dark and the earphones go quiet. You listen to the engine's agony as it pulls the Able Dog vertical. You go over the top at 2,000 feet, by which time your speed has bled off to 90 knots and you're pulling maybe half a G--basically hanging there, upside down, trying to locate Sevastopol. By the time you're pointing 30 degrees nose-down, you've picked up enough speed to roll upright. The cockpit fills up with the stink of cordite from the Douglas ejector foot.

Though it resembles an Immelmann turn and is sometimes mistaken for one, this maneuver is a Half Cuban Eight. (The dive before rolling upright makes the difference.) It enables a pilot to reverse direction at the greatest possible speed, while simultaneously losing the altitude gained in the pull-up.

Behind you, the MK 7 describes a graceful parabola through the cloudy morning: up, up, and over, like a stone from David's slingshot. When it has fallen to within 1,000 feet of the ground, a barometric switch will turn on the radar sniffers and then (if the Russians aren't jamming) the radar altimeter. You want the bomb to explode 200 feet above Sevastopol airfield. If the Russians are jamming, the baro switch will trigger the bomb anyhow, at more or less the same altitude--and if the barometer fails, there's a contact fuse.

The flash will envelope you at the instant of the burst. The Able Dog's rudder and elevator are painted white, so they won't crisp from the heat. Long seconds later, the blast will catch up. By this time you'll be at 200 feet and heading straight out, presenting the Able Dog's skinny end to the shockwave. If it catches you straight on, and if all the assumptions were correct, you will survive.

Then you can throttle down to long-range cruise, so low and slow you can count the propeller blades as they go by. You'll grind open the canopy, clear away the stink of cordite, and fill your lungs with fresh air. About the same time, the pain will start again in your right buttock, worse than before, as if making up for the pain-free minutes from the IP to here. You'll switch to the starboard drop tank, pop another aspirin, and fly home to . . . what?

"If we had to do the real thing in a Able Dog, in my opinion, none of the pilots would have survived. And I think we all knew it." -- Ralph Davis, Palm Desert, California

First off, the assumptions might have been wrong, and the Able Dog mightn't have withstood the heat and concussion of the bomb it carried to Armageddon. Second, the Russians weren't entirely without countermeasures, even against an intruder flying at 50 feet off the deck. According to Viktor Belenko, a defector who worked for the U.S. Navy in the 1970s, the "doctrinal response" of the Soviet Union was crude but devastating: recall all friendly fighters with the radio command carpet, then explode thermonuclear bombs at 50,000 feet.

Would a Able Dog get through that? Perhaps. Would Forrestal still be on station near Crete to receive it? Not likely.

Jay Velie was 24 years old and believed himself immortal. Ralph Davis's squadron--VA-104, the Hell's Archers aboard Forrestal--sometimes had grass airfields assigned to them, in Turkey or Romania, which fantastically were supposed to be stocked with avgas. In the Western Pacific, Joe Shea had his own plan: "Some of us," he recalled, "scouted out very remote locations in Japan that would offer no appealing targets for the Russians. We figured to land on the roadway or wheels up and go live in the mountains for a while."

Some nuclear-attack squadrons didn't count on returning. Their boast: "Double the range!" If Breakeven Four Zero One didn't intend to fly back to Forrestal, he could have humped that MK 7 all the way from Crete to the Kremlin. Afterward, he'd simply open the canopy, drag his lame legs over the side, and parachute down to present himself for interment. That was the plan, anyhow.

"We didn't really worry too much about the mission. Sort of figured it would be the end of the world anyway." -- Dick Davis, Glenwood, Iowa