clipboard once more. “That’s all I have at this time, sir.”
“Very good, Stoney,” Admiral Tarrant said. He slid off the table and
looked at the other officers in the room. “Anyone have questions?
Comments?”
Admiral Morrisey stirred. “Enemy aircraft losses were–what? One
hundred forty, you said?”
“That’s the estimate, Admiral. Most of those were knocked down by F14
Phoenix strikes, though, and many were not confirmed.”
“Still not bad … a kill ratio of twelve to one.”
“Nine to one if you count our junkers,” someone else pointed out.
“Yeah, but we don’t know how many Russkis were junkers by the time they
made it back to base.” Morrisey looked pleased. “I’d say our boys are
holding to the old Top Gun balance sheets.”
During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Navy’s kill ratio had averaged two or
three enemy planes downed for every one of their own lost. Then the
Navy Fighter Weapons School–better known as Top Gun–had opened at NAS
Miramar, near San Diego. A grueling, five-week course in Air Combat
Maneuvers that pitted naval aviators in realistic mock combat against
better aviators, Top Gun had literally changed the course of the air war
in Vietnam almost overnight. As soon as Top Gun graduates had begun
flying combat missions–and passing on their training to their fellow
aviators–the Navy’s kill ratio had rocketed to thirteen to one.
“Good combat ratios are all very admirable,” Tarrant said, “but they
don’t help us in this situation. The Russians, remember, can always
ferry in more aircraft. It will be some time before we have that
luxury. In other words, this command cannot afford to lose even one
aircraft, not even if we trade it for fifteen of the enemy’s.”
“I should also point out, sir,” Tombstone added, “that from now on
exhaustion is going to be a factor. Some of my people have been up
three times so far this morning. Most have been up twice. With the
heavy patrol schedule, I expect that by dawn tomorrow every NFO I have
will have been up at least four or five times, and that’s going to start
wearing them down fast.
Same goes for the deck crews, turning around that many aircraft,
round-the-clock refueling and rearming. Those guys’re going to be dead
on their feet soon. Exhaustion means mistakes, accidents, and downtime
when equipment fouls or bits of metal get scattered across a flight
deck.”
“Understood,” Tarrant said. “All I can tell you is that we’re going to
have to play this one as it’s dealt to us. Other questions?”
“Yeah,” a tall, gangly commander next to Tarrant said. “Why the Sam
Hill’d they do it?”
“Not my department, Dan,” Tombstone said with a tired smile. “I’d say
the answer’s more in your line of work.”
The tall commander was Daniel Sykes, and he was Tarrant’s chief
intelligence officer. It was his responsibility to know what the
Russians were doing, and why.
Sykes shook his head. “So far, we just don’t have the data to go on.
The Russians lost … call it fifty percent casualties. Plus one
hundred fifty cruise missiles, not counting the ones on bombers that got
clobbered before they could launch. Nearly all of them shot down or
decoyed into the sea.”
Only three cruise missiles had made it through the carrier group’s
defenses, but those three had hurt, Tombstone thought. The Blakely had
rolled over and sunk in five minutes, taking 201 of the 205 men aboard
with her.
There’d simply been no time for her to lower boats, and no time for
helicopters to rescue more than those four before the rest succumbed to
hypothermia. In Ike’s battle group, besides minor damage to the
Gettysburg from an antiradar missile, the frigate John C Pauly had taken
a half-ton warhead from a Kingfish amidships, while in CBG14 both the
DDG Truesdale and the FFG Dickinson had been badly mauled. All three of
those ships were again under way, the fires aboard under control, the
wounded air-evaced to the Jefferson, where they were being made ready
for a series of medevac flights to Narvik, then Lakenheath, and finally
the States. It had been touch-and-go aboard the Dickinson and the Pauly