1515 hours, 14 January
Tomcat 101, Marshall Stack
Bayerly was still seething as he held his aircraft at two thousand feet,
maintaining his position several miles astern of the U.S.S. Jefferson.
The holding pattern, called a Marshall stack, was primarily used in
rough weather or at night, but with all of the carrier’s far-flung
aircraft lining up for their traps, several low on fuel, the Air
Marshall had shuffled them into the stack, giving each its own priority
on the big green board in Ops which kept track of aircraft status.
From fifteen miles out, the Nimitz-class nuclear carrier looked tiny, a
sliver of a gray rectangle almost lost on the wide, gray sea. The other
ships of CBG-14, Jefferson’s Carrier Battle Group, were scattered across
the ocean in all directions. Bayerly could make out the lean shape of
the U.S.S.
Vicksburg, the group’s Aegis cruiser, trailing the carrier astern; the
DDG Lawrence Kearny and the DD John A. Winslow were positioned well out
on either flank. Farther out still, mere specks on the western horizon,
were the CBG’s two ASW frigates, Gridley and Biddle.
“Tomcat One-oh-one,” Jefferson’s Air Marshall said over Bayerly’s
headphones. “Charlie now.” That was the signal to leave the Marshall
and begin his approach to the carrier.
“One-oh-one, roger.” He banked the F-14, descending to eight hundred
feet and going into the final turn which would bring the aircraft in
above the Jefferson’s wake. Pulling out of the 4-G turn, Bayerly cut
the throttles back to idle and popped the speed brakes. As the F-14
dropped below three hundred knots, the Tomcat’s wings began to slide
forward. Bayerly overrode the wings with the manual control, keeping
the Tomcat looking clean and sleek as it went into the break.
Don’t go ballistic on us, Magruder had said. Bayerly reached up to wipe
the sweat from his eyes and found his hand blocked by his helmet visor.
Magruder’s words still burned.
Bayerly’s discontent had been gnawing at him, ever since the drama of
Operation Righteous Thunder had played itself out in the skies over
Wonsan three months earlier. He was hard pressed to even identify the
emotion, but he knew it was connected with Tombstone Magruder and the
lionization which had been directed at him ever since the Korean raid.
They’d been treating the guy like a genuine grade-A hero … press
interviews, TV, the Navy Cross from the Secretary of Defense, the works!
What Bayerly felt was not jealousy, exactly, but it was closely akin …
a sense that blind luck had once again shown a vicious prejudice. As if
the nephew of the carrier group’s admiral needed any more luck!
His speed dropped quickly. At two hundred eighty knots Bayerly let the
wings slide forward, providing extra lift and control at low speed, then
lowered the landing gear. At two hundred thirty knots he lowered the
flaps, still slowing, still descending, now at six hundred feet above
the waves and a mile abeam of the Jefferson.
The carrier looked bigger now, but she still carried the impression of
being an impossibly small target on a very large ocean. The Jefferson’s
island rose along the starboard side of her flight deck in a tangle of
radar antennae and masts, of catwalks and windscreens. From off her
port side, he could see the aircraft arrayed on her deck, appearing tiny
and white against the dark surface of her “roof.”
Passing the carrier’s stern, Bayerly set his rate of descent at six
hundred feet per minute and initiated a twenty-two degree bank to the
left.
Sweeping across Jefferson’s wake some three quarters of a mile behind
her, he worked the controls to line up for his approach to the deck.
From here, he could see the Fresnel lens system on the port side, across
the flight deck from the island. The Fresnel lens, or “meatball,” an
arrangement of lights which changed their relative positions as he
changed his, showed him whether or not he was aligned properly with the
carrier’s deck. It was time now to “call the ball.”
“One-oh-one,” he said, identifying his aircraft. “Tomcat ball. Six
point one.” The number gave his fuel state, sixty-one hundred pounds.
“Roger ball,” the voice of Jefferson’s Air Boss replied from the