Trafford Publishing: Cold War Fighter Pilot

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Cold War Fighter Pilot

by Harold Wade

225 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #04-1029; ISBN 1-4120-3202-4; US$21.00, C$24.00, EUR17.50, £12.00

For those would-be pilots who want to know what it is like to train for and to fly military jet fighters.

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about the book about the author excerpts catalogue info

About the Book

Cold War Fighter Pilot covers experiences leading up to USAF pilot training for the author and then describes in considerable detail the flight training and a variety of experiences that are intended to explain what military pilots do as well as how and why they do it. Technical terminology is minimized or explained, yet enough of it is included to give the reader an idea of the complexity of the job. The author logged over 3,000 hours as a USAF fighter pilot, instructor pilot and maintenance fight test pilot, much of it in supersonic aircraft.

About the Author

Harold Wade was born in the Depression year of 1930 and grew up in Northeast Georgia after moving from South Carolina at age seven. WWII had ended just before high school was completed. After initially serving in the enlisted ranks of the USAF, an opportunity for pilot training by way of the aviation cadet program was seized upon.
Pilot training was completed and commissioning as a Second Lieutenant began a thirteen-year stint as a fighter pilot, flight instructor, and maintenance flight test pilot. Those jobs resulted in many varied aspects of flying high performance aircraft, some of which were supersonic.
After leaving the Air Force, residence was taken up in Summerville, South Carolina, on the coast, near Charleston, with wife Kathy and four sons. A small business, specializing in marine electronics, was established and operated until recently. Flying was continued by working on weekends with the local airport operator, the Civil Air Patrol and as partner in a Cessna 172. Harold and Kathy are now retired in Summerville.

Excerpts

Scramble

The air base is quiet at 2:30 AM. There is not much activity at this time of night. The two pilots on duty in the upstairs lounge of the alert hangar are reading, but barely awake. The airmen are downstairs, most of them playing cards, and draining the ever present coffee urns with their contents something closely akin to battery acid. Their maintenance chores are caught up for now. Two all-weather interceptor aircraft are "cocked", one in each bay on opposite sides of the center section, and two more in the outer bays. Those are spare aircraft, available for increased alert status or for replacement in case there is a malfunction in one of the primary birds. All four have been fueled, armed and checked by the crew chiefs and the pilots.
The weather is below minimum ceiling and visibility for normal flying operations. Rain is pelting down from clouds almost on the ground. The weather briefing, when coming on shift, indicated solid clouds from less than a hundred feet all the way up to 40,000 feet. There will be no practice scrambles tonight. The birds are walking.
Suddenly, the klaxons blast out their raspy, buzzing sound and everyone instinctively jumps up to sprint to their place of duty. No one picks up the direct line to control to ask if the scramble is for real. The pilots bound down the stairs and burst through the doors leading to the bays containing their aircraft. The powermen are starting the auxiliary power units and the crew chiefs are already on the wing of their bird to assist the pilot aboard. Scramble instructions are coming over the PA system, but no one can understand them, because of the deafening noise from the start cart engines reverberating in the closed hangar. The massive hangar doors are opening. There is an air of excitement, and everyone is moving quickly, but being methodical and precise. They know their business well.
The lead pilot bounds up and over the side of his mount and settles in the seat. The crew chief helps him with the chute straps, shoulder harness, lap belt, radio cord and oxygen hose as the pilot lifts his hard hat from where it has been parked on top of the windshield. The master switch is on and all the cockpit lights are on. All eyes are mindful of the indicator light that will tell them when the electronic fuel control has warmed up sufficiently to begin the start procedure. The pilot is still working with his mask and chin strap when the lock-up light goes out, so the crew chief hits the switch to engage the starter.
The initial surge draws many hundreds of amps and the start cart engine groans, loses speed and then begins to recover as the starter brings the engine up to speed. With a shudder and rumble, the fuel lights off in the burner cans and the engine continues to accelerate. The engine noise changes from a whine to a roar. As it accelerates through about forty percent RPM, with all gauges reading normal, the pilot pushes up the throttle, closes and locks the canopy, and signals the crew chief to pull the chocks. The powerman has pulled the electrical cable from the side of the aircraft and is moving well away, because he knows the throttle is being advanced to full power to get the bird moving quickly. There will be a major blast from the tail pipe. The crew chief does not have time to get out of the way, so he just crouches down and holds onto his cap as the bird roars out of the bay, generating noise well above the pain threshold.
As the lead pilot emerges from the hangar onto the ramp, he looks over his shoulder and sees the wing-man coming out of his bay. The leader will lose face if his number two beats him out of the hangar, and he will try. The leader punches his mike button and tells the control tower, "Kilo Papa Zero One rolling." Next he hears, "Two checking in." Tower responds with, "Kilo Papa flight, this is an active air scramble, you are cleared for take-off on runway one seven left, wind light and variable, altimeter two niner eight four, scramble vector two two zero, angels forty. Contact Adcock on channel twenty."
By this time, the pair are nearing the end of the scramble strip and are approaching the runway at an illegally high taxi speed, but no one will complain. Just don't roll a main gear tire off the wheel in the turn. With full fuel and armament, these birds weigh a over twenty thousand pounds, with most of that weight on the two main wheels. Lead makes sure his light switches are on dim/steady for the benefit of Zero Two and continues checking things like secondary hydraulic flight controls and a dozen other things as they barrel down the strip.
The leader pulls onto the right side of the runway and Two pulls in close on his left side, slightly to the rear, in position for a formation take-off. The rain obscures almost everything except the dim runway marker lights which extend as far as one can see in the rain. The other end of the 8,000 foot runway is not visible. It is too dark for hand signals, but Two knows One is already on the brakes and holding at full military power, so he does the same and with a quick final check of his instruments, he says, "Two ready." Lead says, "A/B now," and they both pop the throttle handle into the full afterburner range and release he brakes. As they start rolling, lead reduces his power slightly to give Two a little extra power in case he needs it to keep up.
The abrupt roar of the afterburners, splits the night in two, rattles windows for miles around, and awakens the wives in their quarters adjacent to the base. They know their husbands are on a serious mission and pray for their safe return. The children whimper and go back to sleep. The wives watch the clock.
The birds roll and gain speed, spewing fifty feet of blue and yellow flame, as the wheels splash water from the wet runway and rain splatters against the windshields, the wing-man strains to see and maintain position on his leader. A few thousand feet down the runway they become airborne, and before the gear doors clunk closed they are engulfed in thick, dark clouds. There are no outside visual references. The leader is solidly on the gauges. Two is hugging lead from no more than six feet away. If he gets any further away, he will lose sight of the leaders running lights in the murk. They change radio channels to check in with control. Two must count the clicks on his channel switch, because he cannot take his eyes off the lead bird and they start their right turn for a heading of two two zero degrees.
The time is the nineteen fifties and the aircraft are all-weather versions of the Sabrejet, first line fighters of the period and a variant of the Sabre that cleared the skies of MIG 15s against great odds in the Korean conflict. The leader is a captain with over nine hundred hours in this type aircraft plus several hundred hours in other types. The wing-man is a first lieutenant with only slightly less experience. They could be making a lot more money as commercial pilots.
"Adcock, this is Kilo Papa Zero One, climbing through angels four, heading two two zero." "Roger, Kilo Papa flight, this is Adcock one five, radar contact, continue vector two two zero, climb gate (max power) to angels forty one." (One five identifies the individual controller) "Roger, climbing to angels forty one. (forty one thousand feet). "Kilo Papa, this is Adcock, your target is 20 degrees left at one hundred forty miles." The response from the pilot is two clicks of the mike button.
Airspeed is four hundred knots, the vertical velocity indicator is pegged at five thousand feet per minute and the fuel gauges are unwinding at very rapid rate. The fuel quantity indicator for internal fuel is moving and that means the two 120 gallon drop tanks are already empty. The machine climbs very rapidly in afterburner, but exacts a heavy price in fuel. Upon reaching assigned altitude, the fuel remaining will not be much more than half the original 5525 pounds.
As they bore on through the dense, black clouds, the only thing visible outside the cockpit is the lights from the other aircraft. The wing-man is still positioned nicely on the left wing, with nav lights blinking through the pea soup. Although the radar cannot see beyond thirty miles, the lead pilot works at fine tuning his radar and visualizing his position relative to the target. In this type interceptor there is no back seater to operate the weapons system. The complex Sabre has the highest workload of any aircraft in the inventory. Number two has a full time job for now, staying in close formation.
"Kilo Papa, this is Adcock, your target is unidentified, large, single aircraft, passing from south to north, maintaining angels forty one. We have no flight plan and no radio contact - identify - range to target now one hundred miles." Click-click.
It has now been ten minutes since the klaxons blast. Time since take-off is six minutes, but to the pilots, it seems like only a couple of minutes. They are only now becoming wide awake, having operated up to now mostly by reflexes. Lead squeezes the mike switch on the throttle and advises they have reached assigned altitude. "Adcock, Kilo Papa level, angels forty one, fuel 2550 pounds, oxygen OK. Two state fuel." "Two has 2500 pounds, oxygen OK." The fuel guzzling afterburners are shut down, but throttles are still set at about 98 percent power on the main engines to maintain .9 mach.
"Roger Kilo Papa, turn starboard two six zero, range sixty five." Click-click. The flight now breaks into the clear above the clouds and a half moon is providing some light with dim reflections off the tops of the clouds. A few stars are visible. "Two, this is One, cover me." Two now climbs two thousand feet and drops back about a mile, slightly off to one side. In the event the target is hostile, they may discover that when the lead aircraft gets shot at while making the ID. In that case, Two will survive and be in position to attack. They often swap positions for training and proficiency, but in this case, lead wants to exercise his responsibility as flight leader and take the risks involved. Lead also changes his lights from dim/steady to bright flash and looks more closely at the radar scope in the bottom center of the panel. The radar antenna is in the auto search mode, scanning high from left to right, and low from right to left, overlapping in the center. No blips yet.
"Kilo Papa, target now forty left, range thirty five." Click-click. Another minute passes while the closure rate is more than ten miles per minute. "Zero One, contact" he calls as the blip appears on his radar at twenty four miles. That is good performance for state of the art radar. Must be a big bird, he thinks. He notes the position is good. The controller has positioned them well. There still has been no response to radio calls on probable radio channels or the emergency channels.
The radar fire control system will not lock on beyond fifteen miles, so he takes manual control of the radar and positions the range gate marker at it's max of fifteen miles and waits for the target blip to merge with the range gate marker. The radar goes into automatic tracking, the attack display comes on, and he no longer has to manually position the antenna to spotlight the blip. "Zero One Judy", he calls to let the controller know he no longer needs positioning info from him. The controller stands by, but monitors closely in case the airborne radar breaks lock. The target may make things difficult by turning on radar jamming transmitters, dropping chaff, evasive action, or all three.
The tension builds as the pilot monitors the steering dot to make necessary corrections and wonders what the unidentified aircraft will turn out to be. A few high cloud tops are blocking his attempts to make visual contact at this distance. He will have to convert to an offset stern approach in another couple of miles and synchronize his flight path with that of the target. He is prepared to make an attack if fired upon and the wing-man is in good position to attack if necessary, but he hopes it will be friendly. As the range decreases he begins to reduce power and turn in behind and to one side of the target. He mentally reviews what has to do to arm his rockets.

Catalogue Information