given time, roughly half of the carrier’s aircraft were stowed on her
hangar deck, and these had to be fed up to the flight deck in just the
proper order and at just the proper times to replace the aircraft that
were even now shrieking skyward off Jefferson’s catapults.
Jefferson had four catapults and could hurl aircraft aloft two at a
time, one off the bow, the other from the waist. However, it took
nearly thirty minutes to ready most aircraft from a standing start, and
space both on the flight deck and below on the hangar deck was sharply
limited. Though the launch order for today’s operation had been worked
out previously in painstaking detail, Jefferson’s Deck Handler and his
crew in Flight Deck Control would have their work cut out for them.
The “Mangler,” as the Handler was called, was responsible for moving
aircraft from the hangar deck up to the flight deck by way of just four
elevators, mapping out each movement with the aid of large maps of both
decks, plus precisely scaled plan-view silhouettes of each aircraft.
Getting the right aircraft to the right place at the right time, without
creating bottlenecks at the elevators or while feeding into line,
without brushing against another aircraft in tractor-towed maneuvers
carried out with scant inches to spare, always seemed nothing short of
miraculous.
Sprinting across the flight deck to Tomcat 202, Batman and Malibu saw
that Chief Leyden already had the aircraft hooked up to external power
cables and the “huffer,” a small tractor that injected air through a
hose directly into each engine’s turbine fast enough to allow the engine
to run on its own.
Though Leyden and the blue shirts working with him had already inspected
the aircraft, Batman gave it a quick external, checking the fuselage for
obvious damage or open access hatches, tugging on the deadly, white
darts of the AIM-54Cs to make sure they were secured and wouldn’t drop
off during the stress of a cat launch. He traded a jaunty thumbs-up
with Leyden, then climbed up the Tomcat’s access steps and settled into
the cockpit. He felt the aircraft rock as Malibu dropped in behind him.
Quick check … donning helmet and mask, checking oxygen lines and
electrical connections, removing safing pins from the ejection seats,
fastening seat belt and chest harness. He brought the canopy down.
As Batman began flipping console switches and bringing the F-14’s
engines on line, he thought again about Tombstone. When he’d first come
on board the Jefferson, Stoney had been all but an object of worship for
the young Lieutenant Wayne, despite the royal ass-chewings the younger
officer had received from him a time or two for hot-dogging. Now,
Stoney was a friend, and he was carrying one hell of a burden on his
captain’s epaulets. It would be especially rough today. As superCAG,
he normally would direct the operation from Jefferson’s CATCC rather
than fly with his pilots, and Batman knew that was hard on the man.
Worse still, today’s battle would be run from Shiloh’s CIC, leaving
Stoney in a more or less supernumerary position.
Batman decided that he didn’t want to be in the CAG’s shoes for
anything.
His engines were running, the blue shirts had broken down 202’s chains
and chocks, and a plane director was signaling for him to come ahead.
Gently, Batman eased his thirty-ton charger forward, maneuvering toward
the catapults.
0710 hours
Tomcat 201
Over the Barents Sea
Coyote put the F-14 in a gentle starboard bank. The BARCAP was on
station now, at an altitude of 32,000 feet. Early morning sunlight
sparkled off an ultramarine sea. His wingman, Mustang Davis, was
holding Tomcat 206 some fifty feet off Coyote’s starboard wingtip.
Nightmare Marinaro’s 204, and his wingman, Slider Arrenberger in 209,
were about ten miles behind and to the north of Coyote and Mustang,
positioned to get maximum information from their powerful AWG-9 radars.
The Russian force was close enough now to track. When set to
pulse-doppler search, or PDS, the F-14’s AWG-9 radar could determine
range and speed on a five-square-meter target out to a distance of 115
nautical miles–over 130 standard miles. Their radar was now showing a