Forums → Art, Music, and Writing → The Balkans - A Pilot's story - Fiction
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This is a fictional tale of a harrier pilots experiences in the Balkans conflict. I hope you like it.
P.S pls excuse any spelling/grammar mistakes, i did the best i could without spellcheck.
The yellowcoat's hand changed from a balled fist into the signal that gave me my instruction to roll: fingers and thumb of the right hand splayed wide, the gesture held there in freeze frame for a good long moment.
I felt the HMS Illustrious heave as another big wave started to ride the length of her. The swell merged uncomfortably with the steel claw that was already raking its way through my guts. No matter how many times I launched off the deck of a ship, each time seemed like the first. Controlled bl00dy mayhem, rendered more interesting by a two minute infusion of high octane adrenalin.
The Harrier's Pegasus engine was already belting out tons of thrust, but i still toggled the throttle for more. The aircraft bucked against the brakes and held there, its entire rear half hanging over the fan tail, with nothing but the height equivalent of a six storey block of flats between me and the surface of the Adriatic. A little extra power never hurts at this stage if you want to keep from deep sixing over the side.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of angry grey eddies and white foam whipped up by HMS Illustrious' powerful screws, then the rear of the ship started to haul back again. Never mind the yellowcoat. This was the real signal to move.
I released the brake and eased the Harrier forward.
The yellowcoat gave me a thumbs up and pointed to the flight deck officer, the FDO, distinguishable by his white vest; my next point of contact.
I manouvred the aircraft down by the tramlines, reached the 500ft marker and stopped. My wingman was visible in my mirror a respectable distance behind me.
Five hundred feet between you and the ramp exit feels like nothing when you're sitting in a fully loaded aircraft - a think skin of aluminium wrapped around several tons of fuel, a quaking power plant and several million quid's worth of electronics. On this occasion, because of the high threat level, I had the additional weight of a 1000lb bomb to contend with. Why we bothered, I couldn't really fathom. No one had dropped a bomb on the Serbs yet. And if the UN carried on the way it was going - moving the goal posts every time Karadzic and his cronies pretended to step into line with UN resolutions - no one ever would.
The FDO was standing 30 feet to my right. He was holding his red flag in the air and the green one down llow, his eyes fixed intently on the lights by the bridge that would tell him when he was clear to launch. Seconds from the signal, there was still one last big check i had to do. If the Pegasus was going to fail on me, I needed to know now.
I rotataed the engine nozzles all the way down and spun up the power. The Pegasus's fan is as wide as a big family saloon car and the noise that it throws out is deafening. Even with his ear defenders on, the FDO winced visibly.
He was so close I could see the tauntness of his expression and rivulets of spray on his face. The poor sod had been out here long enough for a thin crust of salt to form like fine powder on his cheeks in little drifts in the corner of his mouth. Even though I was seconds from being launched across the tops of the waves, I knew where I'd rather be.
The rule book said you needed to be registering 100% or more as you thundered down the deck. After one second of roll, though, I was commited to launching whether i got full power or not. A carrier deck is a place of simple truths.
The light on my instrument panel told me I was riding a good engine. I brought the throttle back to idle, rotated the nozzles aft, and then, almost immediately, shoved the power back up to 55%. Ahead of mme, I could see the bow starting to fall and for first licks of ocean swelling beyond the grey metal of the ship. Come on, I found myself willing the FDO as i risked a last glance at my flickering engine instruments. Let's light the bl00dy candle.
I got my wish.
I had a momentary impression of the lights changing below the bridge, then the FDO brought up his green flag. I slammed the throttle forward. There was a seemingly interminable pause as the Pegasus fought to reach full power. The sound of its screaming machinery filled the cockpit. I stood on the breaks and felt the vibration transmit throughout my body. The aircraft wanted to go, but not yet, I told it, not yet.
I shoved the throttle to the stops and the power hit 100. The aircraft started to skid across the deck. I released the brakes and felt a giant boot in the back as 21,000lb of thrust shot out of the nozzles and propelled the Harrier forward.
The FDO and the bridge disappeared in a sickening streak of colour on the periphery of my vision.
A quick glance at the rpms, a minute adjustment on the rudder bars to keep the aircraft straight and i was heading for HMS Illustrious' ski-jump at the speed of heat. For a brief moment it filled my vision: a grey mountain, almost indistinguishable from the sea beyond. Then i shot over the ramp, gasping as the aircraft, no longer supported by the deck, lurched towards the waves.
Before it lost alll its ballistic energy, I rotated the nozzles 35 degrees and felt the cushioning downward thrust of the Pegasus as I clawed for airspeed.
Only when I heard the ker-klunk of the undercarriage as it folded into the belly of the plane did i relax my grip on the stick and tilt the Harrier towards the Dalmation coastline.
Thanks for reading! Next installment tommorrow.
- 11 Replies
I found some spelling errors
a think skin of aluminium wrapped around several tons of fuel,
Meant to be a thin skin of aluminium.
He was holding his red flag in the air and the green one down llow,
Meant to be the green one down low
Ahead of mme,
Meant to be me
Thouught id better clear up the spelling errors i didnt get with the proofread.
Wow, that was very good. Very descriptive, i can't wait for the next part =)
Wow, that was very good. Very descriptive, i can't wait for the next part =)
Thanks, well wait no longer.
The story continues on from where it left off.
Btw this is the prologue of the story, the first bit being Prologue pt 1 Making this Prologue pt 2. Enjoy.
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Twenty minutes later, a crackle in my headset signalled I had a message inbound. The voice of the AWACs controller steadied on the ether.
'Vixen Two Three, this is Magic from Chariot. Proceed to Italy and contact Fortune Zero Five on TAD three.'
I acknowledged before I had absorbed all the information. My sixth sense must have already got the gist of it, though because the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. Simething big was going down and we'd just flown straight into the thick of it. The exercise had switched to something infinietly more deadly.
I checked my map. 'Italy' - codename for the besiegd town of Gorazde - was 20 miles to the south east of my present position, 10,000ft over the battered ruins of Sarajevo.
I banked the Hrrier and reached for the bundle of OS maps tucked under my left leg.
Keeping one eye on my instruments, I picked out the main map from the fan of charts, shoved those I didn't need back under my thigh, then did a swift bit of one- handed oragami to ensure that the folds of the main map took me away from the Sarajevo area and out over Gorazde.
My last move in this cockpit version of Twister was to open up my notebook - an aircrew companion known as the 'green brain' - at the page containing the codes the forward air controller, the FAC, had to provide to demonstrate that he was genuine.
I looked up and saw the weather closing in. The cloud cover over Sarajevo had been intermittent, but the base of the dotted cumulus stacks had steadied at around 12,000ft. As i rocketed towards Gorazde, I found myself reluctantly forcing the nose of the the aircraft down towards the 10,000ft mark. To see the target, I needed to stay below the angry wisps of grey steam vapour that seemed to be bunching over the target area.
I cursed under my breath. I was heading for SAM City and there was nothing I could do about it.
Before I had taken off, I had refamiliarised myself with the locations of Serbian SA-2 and SA-6 missile batteries. These were ancient but formidable Soviet supplied surface-to-air missle systems-SAMs- with operating altitudes of 90,000ft and 50,000ft respectively. Because our intelligence was up to speed on the positions of these weapons it was easy enough to steer clear of them, but what the intel guys couldn't plot, because there were just too many of them were the Serbs' man portable air defence systems, or MANPADS, shoulder launched missiles. On top of that, there was Triple A, anti aircraft artillery. That was bl00dy everywhere, too..
Normally, neither the MANPADS nor the Triple A bothered us that much, becase we spend most our time above their effective height range of 10,000ft. But as I watched my altimeter dip below the magic safe base height mark, I kissed all that goodbye. I'd just crossed into a very dangerous patch of sky.
The green brain contained the codes that hooked me into the new frequency. Trying to read this $hit as I'm thudding through the choppy air spinning up from the mountains below is like trying to read a telephone directory while driving round a pot holed version of the M25 at 120mph. At last the numbers swam into view. I reached up and twisted five dials low down on my left hand side.
'Vixen Two Three. TAD Three. Go.' I checked with my wingman that he was turned in as we readied ourselves at the top of the switchback ride.
I'm a family man with three kids. I pictured them back home, savouring the sunshine of a warm, mid April afternoon, or dodging the showers on a shopping run in the local town. This isn't really happening, the voice inside my head attempted. It's just another alert. It'll all be over by the time you get there,mate. You wait. You'll see.
Sixty Seconds to target.
'Vixen Two Three,' I checked with the wingman.
'Two Four,' his reply crackled back.
As a pair,a fighting unit, we're locked and loaded. Now to make contact with the FAC.
'Fortune Zero Five, this is Vixen Two Three.'
There was a brief pause, then a voice burst into my ears: 'Vixen Two Three, this is Fortine Zero Five. You're loud and clear.'
At the first attempt, I failed to get the nescessary authentication off the guy. As I was wondering what the problem was, I heard what at first I took to be an irregular jamming signal, like a series of thumps. Then it started to dawn on me what was happening.
'We haven't got time for this $hite, mate!' the voice on the ground yelled in between more artillery bursts. ' We're getting bloody shelled here!'
Through the head up display, the HUD, I could now see a pall of smoke between the ground and the cloud base ahead of me.
'Authenticate, X ray Yankee' I insisted.
Three or four seconds ground by. The airspeed indicator was clipping 440 knots. The tension was killing me.
Suddenly, there was a crackle in my headset. ' Bravo. It's Bravo.'
I heard several more bursts of shellfire. Then the FAC said: 'We know there's a tank or two above the ridgline to the north of Gorazde. That's what you're gonna take out, mate. All right?'
I grabbed the map and scoured the topography. A moment later I found it, a sharp divide between two alpine faces running north-south about 10 miles north of the beseiged Muslim enclave.
I was now down to only 8,000ft, right in the heart of the MANPADs and Triple A envelope.
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I have completed the rest of the prologue, but it's all written down and typing it out takes a while. I iwll try get more done tonight if possible.
Prologue Part III
I shot over Gorazde, banking the Harrier tot he left. Columns of smoke were rising from the houses below, but in the still air it could have been wood smoke. It was not what I imagined at all. From my vantage point, there was little discernible damage..
The ridgeline suddenly veered towards me. For a brief couple of seconds, it undulated and coiled below the aircraft. And then it was gone. I was out over the mountains again and pulling into a 'dumb bell' manouvre that would bring me back again, this time frim another direction.
As I hauled back on the stick, feeling the gs wrenching at my oxygen mask and sucking my guts into my boots, my brain tried to review every nook and cranny of the densely wooded topography I'd just seen.
'Vixen Two Four, spot anything?' I asked.
He was positioned 500 yards behind me and a little to the right, in strike formation. I was about 500 feet below the base of the clouds. He was a little higher. As wingman , his job was to watch out for me. Over this place, that meant keeping his eyes peeled for SAMs.
'Negative.'
I heard the disappointment in his voice. The FAC must have caught it, too. 'We're pretty bl00dy sure there are two tanks diwn there, mate,' he yelled, hope in his voice. ' Do you see'em?'
The ridgeline loomed large in the HUD again.I banked the aircraft and peered hard past the canopy glare. My eyes watered with the effort.
'Come on!' the FAC yelled incredulous when I told him I'd found nothing,' you must have seen 'em.'
I elected to give it one last try. This time I pressed even lower, scanning the terrain feverishly as I tore towards the ridgeline. For a moment I could see nothing but trees. Then, quite unexpectedly, a plume of smoke broke through the branches.
Instinctively, I made a minute correction towards it and shot overhead. As i did so, I caught the unmistakable outline of an olive green main battle tank. And then I spotted another. The second vehicle was on the move, sending a stream of thick, clogging exhaust into the air.
'Tally!' I yelled. 'Two T55s.'
'Tally!' the wingman responded. He'd seen them too.
'That's your target,' the FAC announced drily.
As we started pulling round, I asked to be 'cleared live' by Vicenza. This was the authorisation I had to drop the bomb. In the meantime I armed the fuse. I was in the middle of this instinctive routine when I heard Vixen Two Four shout a warning.
'Flares!'
As I hit the countermeasures button to release the flares, I threw my head around, wondering if I'd catch a glimpse of the silver thin frame of the projectile as it slammed into the aircraft. Instead I saw a trail of smoke rising vertically from the ground and disappearing into the cloudbase to my right. My relief was tempered by the realisation that the missile had passed between our two aircraft before I'd had a chance to react.
The voice of the FAC was back in my headset.'Come on, man. We're getting shelled to $hit down here. Do something for Christ's sake!'
I switched the HUD to ground attack mode, lined up on the ridgeline and rolled the Harrier into a dive. The tanks slid neatly into the middle of the sight. I pressed the accept button, waiting for the radar to range the distance between me and the tanks, but nothing happened. The diamond symbol that had flashed up with unfailing regularity every time I'd done it on exercise failed on the one occasion I really needed it to materialise.
I hauled back on the stick and pulled into a 5g,30 degree climb. I went into another dive, but the same thing happened again. Then Vixen Two Four had a go, the same thing happened to him.
I looked at my gauges. My fuel state was pretty iffy, but I was determined to have one last go. I approached from the north and went into the dive. Once again I failed to get radar lock.
I was pulling out of the dive, 30 degrees nose up feeling sick about the whole thing, when there was a massive bang beneath the aircraft and a violent jolt upwards. For a moment, the force that propelled me against my straps threatened to rip my shoulders off. Then, as a black curtain snapped around my head, there was a fearsome ripping noise, as if my brain and body had just parted company. I found myself falling into a cold place with a beguiling absence of sound. I was still falling when a flash of searingly bright light cut through the darkness, accompanied by an angry, grating noise that seemed to emnate from somewhere behind my eyes.
And then, suddenly, I was staring at a wall of flashing cockpit lights with the master warning horn going off in my ears. I'd been out for less than a second, but it felt as if I'd been to the end of the universe and back.
The harrier was upside down and hurtling towards the ground.
End of prologue
I have read a couple of stories on AG, but I have never really cared for one. I did like this one.
It was well written, though I have read better, I have also read a lot worse. Your experience with the subject matter really helps make it interesting to read. It was also quite exiting.
I had a paragraph here, but it was lame and showed that I got all my knowledge of the air force from Top Gun and Starship Troopers.
One of the other things I liked about this story was that it was written well enough that I actually cared about what happened. The main character is interesting enough, and while I'm not a huge fan of the first person point of view, certain styles work well for me. Fortunately for me, this is one of those styles.
Thanks, I can't wait to read more!
I'll echo much of what Xzeno said except...in my own way I guess :P
I liked this because it was very informative. It's not written so much as a story so much as a frank recounting, which gives it a personal touch. While some of the phrases and snippets here and there might read a little lumpily on another level they are welcome as it is written with authority and gives us confidence that we are being treated to real insight as to the real deal of air combat and the gears of war from a pilot's perspective. And not many bestselling authors who write on the subject can do that because, well, they've never been a military-trained jet pilot.
So yeah, carry on!
Thanks guys, it means a lot as ive always struggled writing narratives as english is my second language. Keep the constructive criticism going, its very useful when writing to know what readers like+dislike about it. Keep that going!
Also its very hard to get the balance in a story like this. I like to think ive written enough description to let the readers know what goes through a pilots mind and to understand the basics of whats going on, but hopefully not too much that the story becomes clogged with it, bearing in mind most people who read it wont have much knowledge of air combat.
Thanks again.
Also, as i footnote, I know i said the first two parts were the prologue, i actually planned to write a large chunk preceeding these events, however as i am going to a real war zone very soon i dont have tme to write it all. I will write continuing styraight on from the prologue and write the beginning of the story when i get back in a few months.
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The blast was so violent that for a fraction of a second, it knocked me out. When I came to, I found myself hanging from the straps, struggling to make sense of what I could see. The lights on my instrument panel were ablaze. I felt an overwhelming urge to laugh. In all my practice sessions on the stimulator, my instructors had given me a worst case scenario in which two, perhaps three things had gone wrong at once, but never for an emergency that lit every light on the coaming simultaneously.
I had a massive engine fire. The instruments had gone off the clock; the jet pipe temperature, normally at 500-600 degrees, was registering over 1,000.
I gave the aircraft full left aileron and it righted immediately. I throttled back to idle to see if I could get the jet pipe temperature down, but it made no difference. I had no choice but to shut down the engine in the hope that the rush of air through the turbine coupled with a burst of the extinguisher would snuff out the blaze. Then I'd try for a relight and, if that worked, get the hell out of there.
Less than ten seconds after the impact Tobes, my wingman, burst through on my headset.
'Dave, you've got a real bad fire, man! Eject, eject!'
I should have reached down and pulled the handle there and then, but half of my brain was now mesmerised by images from my past. Strange, I thought, but your life really does flash before your eyes when you're in the $hit. Just outside of the window of calm, I heard a small voice telling me that if I ejected now, I'd land in the midst of the very people I'd just been trying to bomb.
With the fireball now clearly reflected in my raer view mirror, I turned the stricken aircraft to the West. When I could no longer bear the heat through the fire wall behind me and had had enough enough of this game of chicken with planet earth, I reached down for the black and yellow ejection handle, closed my eyes, pressed my head back against the top box on the seat and pulled.
A half second ticked by, long enough for me to wonder if this was how it would all end for me: strapped to an aircraft from which my only deliverance would be a violent explosion as the fuel tanks blew.
And then I was hit by a massive force from beneath my seat.
My head felt as if it was being driven through my body, finishing up somewhere between my boots. My last conscious sensation was a sharp pain in my chin. Then I blacked out.
I was awoken by another blow, so strong it drove the air from my lungs. I opened my eyes gasping for breath, sure that I'd hit the ground. But I was still 2,000 feet up. The second jolt had been my parachute snapping open.
As I twisted beneath my chute, I glimpsed the plane off to the west, still airborne and trailinga long plume of fire and smoke. My relief quickly evaporated as I looked down. Between my feet the forest rose to meet me. I heard explosions and machine gun fire.
You poor, dumb b@stard, I said to myself. You're coming down in the heart of the combat zone.
What's he gonna do now!?
I have just one small nit-picking request: instead of using $hit, could you please use s***? Technically the former is filter-dodging and it'd be better if the expletive use was understood only by those who already know them.
I have just one small nit-picking request: instead of using $hit, could you please use s***? Technically the former is filter-dodging and it'd be better if the expletive use was understood only by those who already know them.
K soz.
What's he gonna do now!?
You will find out later tonight hopefully. I havent written thisbit yet so it might take a bit of time.
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I came down in a gap between the trees but hit the ground hard.I attempted to roll, as I'd been taught to do, but the landing punched the wind out of me and all my training turned to rat s***. After the initial shock of the impact, I lay there, my breath coming in short, sharp stabs. I felt strangely peaceful. I stared up at what I could seeof the sky through the branches, mesmerised by the sun, a dull, flat disc behind the patchy overcast.
Keeping my head very still, I scanned my surroundings. They looked just like a stretch of the chase at home where Amelia and I took the kids at weekends.
Some movement on the edge of my vision made me turn. A red squirrel was skipping along a branch 10 feet from my head. Funny how the d*** things are under threat in England, yet clearly thriving here, I thought. The squirrel looked at me but evidently wasn't impressed, because it carried on along the branch, unperturbed by the intrusion.
Then it reached a curtain of dayglo orange and stopped short.
I don't know which of us found the sight of my parachute more surprising. It brought back all the trauma of the ejection - the crushing g-forces, the smell of cordite, the roar and the stillness - in a second of vivid replay. The squirrel stood up on its haunches, as if confronted by a predator, then scuttled into the dense branches at the top of the tree.
The silence of the forest returned and for a moment it was almost overwhelming. Then I tipped my head back and laughed. I'm not sure why, to this day, adrenalin, I guess does funny things tot he system when administered in big enough doses, but I laughed like I'd never laughed before, clutching my sides, the tears running down my face.
When I came to my senses again, I realised I was talking to myself. ' Well, Cooper, you've f****** gone and done it this time,' I said.
I stood up, a little shocked at how wobbly I felt on my pins, and dusted myself down, still muttering to myslef like an old drunk.
I stuffed my helmet, g-pants and LSJ into a hollowed out tree.
Amazingly, this is exactly what th survival guide tells you to look for when trying to find somewhere to hide your gear. This advice had caused some merriment on the course, I mean hollowd out trees aren't always quite so handy when you drop down from the sky behind enemy lines. I made a mental note to tell the boys when I got back to the ship. Tobes, Hoggy and Damo would p*** themselves laughing.
That was when it really hit me.
I'd been shot down behind enemy lines. Shot down. A cascade of information from all the intel briefs on the ship tumbled through my brain, but the only stuff I could latch onto was what the Serbs had threatened to do to pilots like me if they ever captured us.
I tried to move the parachute, but it was stuck in the branches.
I had no idea whether I'd fallen on Muslim or Serb held territory. The clouds had rolled back in again now, but my brief glimpse of the sun had allowed me to get my bearings. I fumbled for the Walther PPK that was tucked into a holster in my survival vest. I had twenty rounds. Twenty rounds to protect myself against people who were reputed to skin their enemies alive like rabbits, or burn them alive, or impale them on stakes, just for the hell of it.
I listened for the sound of a NATO jet, anything that mightreassure me that I was not forgotten down here. But the white noise that filled my head after the ejection had been replaced with an eerie silence. For the first time, I felt cold, really cold, and I began to shiver uncontrollably.
I heard a noise. At first, it sounded like it was part of the forest; the crack of a bough breaking or a stone bowling down a rock face. But it quickly steadied into something very definitely produced by humans.
Shoots. First one, then another, then several. Before long it sounded as if Serb troopers were raking the hillside below with bullets.
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More later tonight. Stay tuned!
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