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.