CARRIER 6: COUNTDOWN By Keith Douglass

had exploded, and that meant bits of shrapnel had just ripped through

the aircraft and probably scattered themselves across the deck. Damn!

CHAPTER 22

Monday, 16 March

1705 hours (Zulu +2)

Air Ops

U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

Chalk this one up to tired men, Tombstone thought.

The flight deck of a supercarrier had often been described as the most

lethal working environment in the world, a place where mistakes or

carelessness routinely killed people. Thirty minutes after a chain and

chock man had stumbled into a Prowler’s intake, the fire was out and the

aircraft safely evacuated, but hurtling fragments from the Prowler’s

turbine fan might have damaged some of the Cat Three equipment. Worse,

those scattered fragments continued to pose a risk both for Cat Three

and for Cat Four next to it. Bits of metal or other debris the size of

a bottle cap might still be lying on the deck, hazards that could get

sucked into the intakes of other aircraft, damaging them in turn. FOD,

or foreign object damage, was the bane of all carrier operations.

In peacetime, the alpha strike would have been cancelled and further

catapult launches halted until an FOD walk-down could be carried out,

with hundreds of sailors walking in line abreast down the entire length

of the flight deck, picking up each bit of debris they found. But this

was not peacetime, and a delay now would cripple the operation. Half of

Jefferson’s aircraft were already headed into Russia at this very

moment.

Tombstone reached out and picked up a telephone, punching in the number

for the Air Boss. “This is CAG in Ops,” he said when Barnes came on the

line.

“What’s your assessment, Boss?”

“Shit, Stoney. Cat Three’s down until we can get that Prowler cleared

away,” the Air Boss replied.

“Okay. How long? What’s the downtime gonna be?”

“They’re working on it. Maybe an hour before we can walk-down the

area.”

“And Four?”

“Piece of cake. They’re starting a walk-down on Four now. Call it

thirty minutes.”

Tombstone juggled the numbers in his head. White Storm’s flight

operations, as laid out in that mountain of paper transmitted from the

Pentagon the day before, had allowed for the possibility of two cats

going down for that long … but only just. They would have no

additional time to spare.

“Okay, Boss,” Tombstone said. “Put the Prowler over the side. Yeah,

munitions and all. Do your walk-downs, but make ’em damned fast. I

need those catapults at four-oh ASAP.”

“We’ll do our best, CAG.”

“What are you talking to me for, then? Get on it.” He hung up the

receiver. On the PLAT monitor covering the waist catapults, deck

crewmen were already scurrying across the deck, together with one of the

ubiquitous tractors or “mules” used to tow aircraft.

The accident had crippled the EA-6B, but not destroyed it. Still, time

was more precious now than equipment. The Prowler, and the millions of

dollars’ worth of sophisticated electronics aboard, would be tipped over

the side rather than allow it to further delay the mission. Too long a

delay in the launch schedule, and Jefferson’s aircraft would be

returning after dark.

Night landings were always far more hazardous than recoveries made

during the day, and while bombing strikes were planned throughout the

night, the plan called for a reduction in the number of missions in

order to keep the hazards associated with night ops to a minimum. Rather

than face the drastically heightened risks of a night mission, he would

have to scrub the alpha strike until tomorrow, and that meant the Marine

assault would be going in with a lot more enemy hardpoints and radar

sites operational than would be the case otherwise.

Pilot fatigue was Tombstone’s principal worry now. Tired men made

mistakes, as had just been demonstrated on Cat Three. And every

military officer tasked with planning long-range bombing strikes always

had to keep in mind what had happened during Operation El Dorado Canyon.

El Dorado Canyon was the code name of the American bombing raid against

Libya in 1986, launched in retaliation for Libyan terrorist activities.

Part of the assault had been assigned to Air Force F-111 Aardvarks

attached to the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing based at Lakenheath, England.

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