And there were no bingo fields ashore if someone miscalculated and planes started running out of gas.
“Things sound pretty confused over there, Admiral,” the lieutenant continued. “But CATCC reports that they’ll have “sixteen Tomcats up within the next ten minutes.”
Sixteen? He tallied them in his mind. Right. Ten from VF-97 and eight from VF-95. Minus one shot down a few minutes ago, and another tipped into the drink by a catapult malfunction.
Against an aerial armada of well over a hundred Indian aircraft. Most of those would be strike planes, clumsy with bombs and rockets for the fleet. But still . . .
“Very well,” Vaughn said. “Keep me posted.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Vaughn watched the lieutenant hurry away and found himself, unaccountably, thinking of the Battle of Midway.
It was strange comparing that battle with what would probably go down in the history books as the Battle of the Arabian Sea. Midway, remembered now as the turning point in the Pacific campaign of World War H, was the subject of
228
intensive study by every Naval cadet at Annapolis, and its lessons were part of the training and background of every U.S. Naval command and staff officer.
Beyond the obvious—the facts that this battle, like Midway, would probably be fought with the two fleets never coming within sight of one another, and that air power would be the dominant arm in the clash—there were few similarities. The Indians would be relying primarily on their airfields ashore to smash the American force. At Midway, American land-based aircraft had been largely ineffectual.
There was one important comparison, however, Vaughn realized. The lieutenant had said it: confusion. The Naval Academy’s teachings on Midway emphasized the fact that both sides had made plenty of mistakes, usually because of poor intelligence.
Victory had gone to the side that made the fewer mistakes.
“Admiral?” Captain Bersticer said, approaching. He handed a message-transmittal sheet to Vaughn. “This just in from the Jefferson, They want to know if they should stand down from the preflighting for Mongoose.”
Vaughn scowled, reading the message. Jefferson’s crew had been working straight through the night readying the carrier’s Hornets and Intruders for the air strike against the Indian supply lines. With the carrier’s flight operations sharply curtailed by the damage to her forward catapults, space and equipment would be at a premium. To continue with the strike might cripple their ability to get all of the Tomcats aloft and keep them up.
Yes, it might be best to abort Mongoose completely. No one would blame him, least of all his peers in Washington. The defense of the carrier and her consorts came first . . . and by breaking down the bomb-laden F/A-18 Hornets and loading them with Sidewinders and Sparrows, he could increase the battle group’s air defense strength by two more squadrons.
The idea was tempting. . . .
Something made him hold back. “Negative,” he said, handing the message back to Bersticer. “They can concentrate on getting the Tomcats up, but let’s keep moving with Mongoose. I don’t want to give up on that yet.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
ARMAGEDDON MODE
229
He continued toying with the idea. What was familiar about rearming the F/A-18s? Why shouldn’t he . . . ?
Then he remembered. Only moments earlier, he’d been thinking about Midway, and the part confusion had played in the battle that reversed the trend of Japanese victory in the Pacific.
Confusion. Orders to unload the bombs and ground-strike missiles from the Hornets and replace them with air-to-air missiles would create incredible confusion among flight crews already exhausted by working some twenty-four hours straight. By giving those orders, he would be begging for a catastrophic accident, like the one that crippled the Forrestal off the coast of Vietnam in 1977.
But there was more.
At the Battle of Midway, the commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese carrier force, Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, had opened the battle by launching a bombing raid against the American naval base and airstrip on Midway Island. A second strike force of ninety-three aircraft was ready on the decks of his carriers, armed with torpedoes in case the American fleet appeared.
But the returning planes of the first strike force reported that damage to the island’s facilities was not as extensive as had been hoped. Nagumo, unaware that the Americans were in the area, had ordered the second strike force to unload its torpedoes and rearm with incendiary and fragmentation bombs for another attack on the island.