Forums → Art, Music, and Writing → Deci (Short Story)

Wow, the Germans have MiGs? The story seems very detached but detailed.

Wow, the Germans have MiGs? The story seems very detached but detailed.

I know, just thought that Luftwaffe meant the Nazi one. But Luftwaffe refers to plain old air force in German...Even the current Bundeswehr can be referred to as the Luftwaffe.

Assumptions aren't good...Assuming makes an: Ass.Of.You.And.Me (ASS.U.ME) In this case just me.

Oops, Bundeswehr refers to the German forces in general. I meant the airforce of the current Bundeswehr.

Luwtwaffe is the German term for airforce. I can see why you would get confused as it does, understandably, have Nazi connotations. I shjould have clarified, my bad.

The current Luftwaffe still retains possession of MiG-29s, but I don't believe they are in service anymore.

Well, just a small mistake on my part, so never mind. Maybe have a more personal feel to the story. It seems...more like a description.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Part 2

The following morning, after an early night in the comfort of a bed that never once threatened to snap shut on me or hurl me to the floor, I rose at seven and made my way in our minivans with the rest of the crew over to the ops centre.

Although it was still January, the air was warm and muggy, even at this time of the day. From previous experience of Deci, I knew it would be several hours before the light mist that hung over the base would burn off. Fprtunately, the prevailing conditions had not stopped Deci's would be Top Guns from taking to the air. From several miles away, behind the fog curtain, the air reverberated with the sound of aircraft roaring into the sky from the main runway.

It was when we got to the end of the 2 mile straight stretch of road that led from the accomodation block to the ops centreand rounded a coup-le of buildings that we saw them. In the mist, with the dull light of the washed out sun behind them, they were visible only in silhouette, but this only made them seem all the more sinister. There's something shark like about the MiG-29, though I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Perhaps it is the razor like vertical tails or the slight curvature of the spine aft of the cock pit that give the aircraft its menacing, yet sleek an dsensual look and remind you at the same time of its effortless speed and power.

Aerodynamically the MiG29 is superb, although it is let down by its Russian made on board electronics. As Luftwaffe technicians scurried about the aircraft, it was just possible to make out the dummy AA-11 missiles on their underwing pylons. These were reputed to be the best short range dogfight weapons in the business, even better than our AIM-9M Sidewinders.

The important criteria here, what makes on e missile better than the another, relative primarily to the seeker, the missile's manoeubrability and its kinetic energy - how much 'oomph' it has left at the extremity of its range. The combination of these factors yields the missile's 'no escape zone': a volume of sky in which no matter how many evading manoeuvres a fighter pilot attempts, the missile will always kill him.

The no escape zone of the AIM-9M was good, but on the AA-11 it was awesome. But because the AA-11 and the AIM-9M are the same class of weapon, we reckoned, rightly or wrongly, that we could defeat it through good flying. The MiG-29, though, had one crucial advantage over our Harrier. It also carried a medium range air to air missile, the AA-10, a radar guided weapon with a 25km range. As we had nothing comparable, it was like going into a boxing ringknowing that your reach is half that of your opponent's. This is what made the spike and drag, or 'Doppler notch' tactic so crucial. If we could stay invisible on the MiG-29s radar until we got within killing distance of our short range AIM-9Ms, we stood a good chance of coming out of the engagement alive.

The silence from the rest of the minivan told me I wasn't the only one mulling over the contest to come.

Today, meanwhile, our orders were to concentrate on honing our air to ground weapon skills. As soon as we got inside the ops centre, we were greeted by an old and bold squadron leader called Swampy Lake. Our first obligation was to attend a mass flying brief for new arrivals at the base, a thirty minute session that covered all the dos and don'ts of operational life at Deci. Since most of us had heard this before, Swampy tried to make it as succinct as possible.

The essential point for the initiates was that there were two main training areas: the instrumental ACMI range over the sea to the west of the island for aerial dogfighting, and the Capo Frasca range in the north west corner of the island for gunnery and bombing work. Each of these had tightly regulated entry and exit points and there were a number of no-go areas, especially when we were armed.

The guys who had never been to Deci before learned that Capo Frasca had five principle targets: a circle of stones to the north of the range, one to the south used for bombing and three 20ft long strafe panels, each fitted with acoustic scoring sensors. These deduced whether or not our bullets were on target and automatically relayed the score of each pilot back to the range controller. In addition to these targets, there were several old tanks and trucks scattered around the range. We were pretty much free to have a pop at these whenever we liked.

As soon as the welcome talk was finished, we went into the sortie brief. We didn't have long at Deci, we were due back on the carrier in a week's time, so every sortie over the next few days would count.

Today our task was to practice our 'steep bomning' work to the point of perfection. Although we did have access to so called 'smart weapons' in the form of the Paveway II laser guided bomb, they were expensive pieces of hardware and were available for use against only the highest priority targets.

For the rest we had to rely on our trusty old 'iron' or 'dumb' bombs, weapons that have changed little since the first bombs were dropped in the 19114-18 war. Using the capabilities of our aircraft to the full, we've been able to increase bombing accuracy considerably since those days, but the techniques involved require no less practice. The fact that we'd never dropped 'live' bombs during our steep dive practice in the UK only served to make our lives more difficult.

As a general principle, we target everything through the HUD, which is situated on the coaming in line with the pilot's forward view out of the cockpit. Th esteeper you dive, the more accurate the drop. If you were ever brave or foolish enough to dive vertically, the laws of physics dictated there would be no errors at all and you'd hit the target bang on every time.

But here other factors come into play. At all times, you have to be mindful of the threat from surface to air missiles. Dip below 10,000ft and these suckers will get you. The steeper the dive, the higher your initial run in to bomb release needs to be. Based on a 60 degree dive angle, we calculate on starting our bomb run from 20,000ft releasing at 14,000ft and pulling out at 10,000.

The HUD gives us three different options for bombing. The first and simplest is called ASB1 (Air to Surface Bombs One). This is where we use the HUD in its simplest mode, bombing through the cross hairs and praying that the weapon falls somehwere near its intended target. In the modern era of warfare, in which collateral damage, that euphemism for the destruction of a church or school building, has become the dirtiest of words, this is a technique we'd only ever consider as a last resort.

ASB2 brings into play height, speed and wind information that is fed into the weapons aiming computer, the WAC, significantly boosting accuracy. But we're still talking a miss distance of around 150ft from a bombing height of 8,000ft plus, which isn't great news for any civilians who might happen to be down there at the time.

It's only the third bombing mode, ASB3, that we start to get really good bombing accuracy, and that's because we're adding the air to ground ranging capabilities of the radar to the equation. As soon as the radar has got an accurate reading of the distance between the aircraft and the target, two V shaped symbols merge into a diamond shape. All you have to do then is wait for a T symbol to pass through the diamond, which signals the moment for weapons release. If everything's working properly, this should give you a bombing acuracy of 100ft CEP 9circular error probable, the term that denotes average miss distance from the target).

Getting this right over the next few days would be crucial to the maintenance of our cherished 'swing role' in Afghanistan, the ability to perform either air to air, air to ground or recce roles at the drop of a hat. There are very few aircraft in ISAF with swing role capabilityand certainly none, aparty from ours in the UK, which is something that akways gets up the nose of the Royal Navy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Phew, that's enough typing for now, expect part 3 later.

Hmm, just noticed certain things were censored, like c0ckpit.

Anyway, Part 3

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Joint Force Harrier, not surprisingly, prided itself on the swing role capability of its Harriers. If we could validate our steep dive work at Deci, we'd be able to declare our swing role for ISAF's Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) at Kandahar in Southern Afghanistan the moment we arrived in theatre. The CAOC was the command and control centre that drew up all the sortie plans for the multitude of aircraft taking part in the Afghan operation. Ou r own man, the indomitable but injury bound Smitty, was on his way to Kandahar to act as our representative there.

With the swing role capability under our belts, we'd be assigned all the plum missions, and the honour and tradition of the Royal Air Force would be upheld. But this increased the pressure on us to perform now. If we fucked up on Capo Frasca over the next couple of days, we wouldn't get ticks in all the right boxes. And as decent a fellow as Squadron Leader Swampy Lake seemed, I was sure he'd be on to his mates at Kandahar within minutes if we failed to make the grade.

In the rarified atmosphere of the CAOC, the news would spread in a flash and before we knew it we'd be the talking point of all other ISAF aircrews, but for all the wrong reasons.

That afternoon, we sent up a three ship to put the theory into practice. I watched Henry, Oz and Shaggy take off, each of them with four 14kg practice bombs strapped under their wings. Then I sprinted the couple of hundred yards from the maintenance area to the ops room to follow the sortie's progress on the radio. The form was for the jets to assume a racetrack pattern, with 2 miles separating them, a few miles from the range perimeter. Each pilot would then await his turn to go in to bomb the target, the northernmost of the range's two circles.

After a couple of runs, as I listened to the strikes being called in, I realised that we had a problem. All the bombs were landing about 150ft long and to the right, about 2 o'clock from the barrel at the centre of the stones. If the strikes had been all over the place, I'd have put it down to plain poor training, but the consistency of the hits suggested that the problem was endemic.

To prove the point, Hnery issued instructions tot he pilots to introduce an offset aim point, short of and to the left of the barrel for the last of their bombs. This resulted in some pretty close hits and confirmed that the problem was with the aircraft not with us.

That night we did some pretty fevered brainstorming. It was obvious that there was a glitch common to all the aircraft. The question was what was it? Someone, Little Engines, I think, suggested that the Doppler aerials under the aircraft might be picking up bad signals off the sea as the jets banked across the water on their final run in to the target.

In a bomb run, the WAC calculates the aim point for the bombs after number crunching a range of different inputs from the aircraft's sensors. Height, speed and bearing are easy pieces of data to gather and process, but a fourth, wind, is less so. Its speed and direction are measured by taking data from the inertial navigation system, which works out how fast the aircraft is moving through the sky, and from the Doppler aerials beneath the plane, which calculate how fast it is moving relative to the ground. The difference is the wind drift, and depending on the wind's speed, this can mean the difference between a bomb that is on target and one that misses by hundreds of feet.

The solution was to fly a longer circuit between bomb drops, thereby extending the inbound leg after the final turn on to the target. This extended period of level flight on the run in gave the Doppler aerials the 30 seconds of level flight they needed to provide the WAC with good information. If that still didb't work, it was suggested we should take the forecast 5,000ft wind (mid drop) and type it manually into the system. Because this was something of a lsh up, it was only to be used as a last resort.

We crossed our fingers that this fix would work.

Two hours after daybreak, Gazza, Mel and I took off as Vixens Three, Two and One respectivel, with me leading. We quickly established our racetrack pattern at 20,000ft and received our OK to bomb. As I bled some speed off in the turn, reducing my airspeed to 350 knots, I could see the other two aircraft int he pattern behind me, vapour trails spilling off their wingtips as they followed me around the pattern.

'Vixen One in hot,' I called signalling I was ready to bomb. Out of the corner of my eye, even from the height we were at, I could clearly see the circle of stones and the barrel in its midst. To make sure I was afequately lined up from the start, I put the target into the left hand quarter light of the canopy, threw a last glance at the altimeter to make sure that I was at the ocrrect height for the comencement of the run, then I rolled inverted, pulling the nose down and rolling right side up in one fluid movement to establishg the 60 degree dive angle.

From 20,000ft 60 degrees looks no bloody diffferent from the perpendicular. I was hanging from my straps with the entire island laid out below me. The speed built up rapidly, 350,400,450 knots on the indicator, giving me no time to admire the view. I knew I had only six, maybye eight seconds, to get the two Vs on the HUD lined up either side of the target.

A kick of the rudder and a slight adjustment on the stick and the little white barrel at the centre of the rin of stones slid beautifully into the middle of the sight. Now I pressed the 'accept'button on the top of the stick and imagined the radar doing its thing: squirting radio frequency energy onto the target, receiving the signals as they bounced back to the antenna and calculating the distance in the blink of an eye before feeding the results into the WAC.

Suddenly, bingo, the Vs slid towards each other until they merged as a diamondexactly over the target. The WAC had accepted the data. I maintained the diamond over the target for a few more seconds, it always seems like an eternity, waiting for the moment when the T bar moved up from the bottom of the HUD through the target bull. And then it started to travel. Wait, wait, wait... at last it hit the centre of the diamond, I depressed the pickle switch on top of the stick and the bomb dropped.

Now came the bit I loved: a yank on the stick, wrenching it back into my stomach, to get the nose of the aircraft back up again. The gs hit me with the equivalent of six times my body weight exerted from head to toe, dragging vital body organs, lunfs, heart, liver, guts, with them.

Just as it feels you're about to faint from the sudden loss of blood, most of which has by now drained into your boots, training and discipline take over. As speed started to drop I applied full power. Then fighting the gs, which were still coursing through the aircraft, I transferred the leaden weight of my left hand from the throttle to the nozzle lever, found the chaff and flare button and punched it with my thumb.

Although there was no danger of any SAMs shooting us down over Deci, it had been drummed into us ever since we'd received news we were heading to Afghanistan taht we needed to hone our countermreasures discipline in practice sessions such as these so that it would become second nature in the danger zone itself. The most dangerous moment in the bomb run is when we're in exactly this situation, in the pull out, our minds and bodies depleted by the crippling effects of g, and the jet losing airspeed. If you punch chaff and flares into the airstream now, there's at least a fair chance that the missile that's heading for you at this precise moment will latch on to those little metal filings or those flares and explode among them, not against you.

I was back up to 20,000ft before I knew it. As I looked back over my shoulder towards the target, the controller came on the air.
'Vixen One, score Delta Hotel,' he announced dispassionately. Delta Hotel stood for direct hit. I whooped into my microphone, then addressed the other two. 'Pressure's off, guys. You can't do any better than that.'

Mel and Gazza gave it their best shot of course. All the bombs fell within 50 ft of the bull: a uniformly good CEP. Gazza excelled himself by achieving another very good score, letting himself down slightly by targeting the wrong circle of stones, the southernmost set, several hundred feet from the actual target. He was right to brace himself for some heavy piss taking in the bar that night, but, like the rest of us, he was secure in the knowledge that our remedial action to the Doppler problem had worked. We could declare our swing role to ISAF with confidence. Over Afghanistan, there wouldn't be asingle mission we couoldn't be called on to perform.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Less techinical stuff perhaps. But nice story. Is it 100% real btw?

Well I was thinking, for most of the story to make sense, you need the technical stuff. Most people have no clue how jets really work other than what they've seen on Top Gun, know what I'm saying? But yea it's legit. My sqn went to Deci last year, you'll see what happened next.

Most people have no clue how jets really work other than what they've seen on Top Gun

i thought top gun was like porn for you pilots lol

it's pretty much a 90 minute gay porn/US Navy recruitment film.

the whole uh slow motion shirtless volleyball scene is probably the gayest scene in top gun

well you know what they say join the navy; three square meals a day and all the gay sex you can handle

Very technical story, but I personally like technical stuff like this. Great so far. . .update plz.