A revised novel chapter: The Pursuit

Below is a greatly revised rough draft of my novel project.  I want to have all of the "slap-bang" action of a good military thriller, but as I have begun to develop the back story, many larger themes seem to emerge on their own that deserve to be explored.

The final version, should it ever see the light of day, will be much more polished and streamlined.  The idea of to include enough "jargon" to add detail and authenticity, basically to draw you as the reader into that cockpit until you can small the foul rubber of the oxygen mask.  The challenge is to do so without bogging down the smooth flow of the narrative.  Enjoy!

Evgeny Golubev taxied past a line of sleek MiGs and bulbous-nosed Yak-25 test bed aircraft at the test range near Akhtubinsk.  The vibration of the idling Lyul’ka engine and bouncing over the large, roughly-laid hexagonal  concrete pads that made up the hardstand and taxiway could not distract him from the awakening, ravenous pit in his stomach.  The T47 test program was winding down and in recent weeks his thoughts wandered to his next assignment, whatever it might be.  The programmed flight test would be the first all-up test of the new K-8 weapon system with automatic ground guidance against a radio-controlled VUM target drone.  The sudden news of high-speed intruders headed south from Vladimirovka had changed things.  Each of the two brightly-painted missiles hung from the tiny delta wings of his large interceptor carried only 40 kilograms of test equipment, not live warheads.  However, Golubev’s airplane was the only one available with a hope of catching the Capitalist aggressors before they slipped away.

Although by far the most advanced aircraft at the field, his Sukhoi T47 jet , call number 475,was singularly inelegant, looking for all the world like it had been made out of a section of bright silver stove pipe, with incongruously sleek semi-delta wings and empennage countered by the ugly spike of a large central conical radome projecting from the inlet duct.  The Oryol radar housed inside had checked out for the trials mission scheduled for the morning, as had the pair bright orange K-8T missiles under the wings.  Pausing at the end of the runway, Golubev goosed the mighty Lyulka engine in the rear of his plane and checked the gauges.  Oil pressure and turbine inlet temperature looked good, engine response felt right.  For a brief moment while he awaited final clearance to depart, Golubev examined the array of small, multi-colored lights arrayed around the square display for the Oryol radar.  Voiceless commands relayed from the ground by the Lazur’ data link system would illuminate different lights to prompt a response by the pilot…a far cry from the cables and simple instruments of his beloved Pe-2.  Golubev chuckled bitterly.  A child’s jewel box for juvenile pilots.  His checks complete, Golubev readied for take off.

“475. Request permission for maximum departure.”

“Roger, 475.  Cleared for maximum departure.  Take course 100 and climb to 110.”  To achieve maximum speed at best fuel economy, Golubev would cruise out at 11,000 meters.  The intercept would take place over 400 kilometers east of his starting point, and even under the best of circumstances he knew that his fuel state would be critical.

“475.  Departing.”

Selecting afterburner, Golubev’s discomfort evaporated as he was slammed back hard in his seat as the big Sukhoi jet hurtled down the runway.  Pulling his gear and flaps up quickly and coming out of afterburner, Golubev continued to accelerate at full military power to best climb speed.  Although possessing tremendous power making his interceptor the fastest in the Soviet Union at Mach 2, at full afterburner the thirsty AL-7F-1 turbojet would exhaust his fuel supply in just over eight-and-a-half minutes.  Golubev would have to conserve fuel to close with the speedy intruders and depend on GCI to get him in the right position to intercept them.  The airspace was now surely full of Soviet interceptors, but they lacked either the speed to close on the targets or the range to line up on them and make the intercept with cannons or simple beam-riding missiles.  Golubev would run close on fuel but besides his clear speed advantage, his Sukhoi T-47 carried the most advanced interceptor weapons available, even if they were test articles.

As the Sukhoi interceptor climbed out, the Lazur’ data link system was activated and course information from silent ground controllers was fed directly into the autopilot.  Immediately, Golubev’s head slammed hard into the side of the canopy as the jet bucked and spastically hunted for its designated electronic position in the sky as he sped upward on 15,000 pounds of thrust.  The basic Su-9 interceptor that his aircraft had been modified from was a nimble, responsive aircraft, if a bit nose-heavy.  His T47 tried responding instantaneously to the Parkinsionian electronic hand of Lazur’ guidance rather than the smooth, coordinated direction of an experienced pilot.  Momentarily nauseous as he held on and watched the direction lights on the instrument panel before him, Golubev became enraged at the entire situation.  His prototype had not been wired with a switch to disengage the autopilot control.

“475. Disengage autopilot—immediately!”  His aircraft shook and wobbled for several more seconds as it continued its ascent towards the stratosphere, but finally went slack as its electronic seizure passed and he took full control.

Maintaining his course of 100 degrees and a speed of Mach 0.9 for several more minutes, Golubev passed 10,000 meters and began to level off at his assigned cruise altitude.  Glancing at his watch, he estimated that he was about ten minutes away from his target.  Above the top of the radar display, a yellow “>” light illuminated and Golubev followed the command to begin a gentle right turn.  Under computer control from the ground, the optimum geometry needed to smoothly put his interceptor behind the fleeing American intruders was relayed for the pilot to follow and steer, making all of the decisions for him.  Golubev’s job with this new modern wonder was simply to execute.  The light went off and the center light came on indicating that he was on course.  The left and right arrow lights flickered to direct adjustments to his intercept geometry, as needed.  Suddenly, an amber “100” light came on.  100 kilometers to the target.  At that instant, the Lazur’ system passed a command deep into the bowels of the Sukhoi interceptor and the Oryol radar began to awaken from its cold mechanical slumber and its hundreds of vacuum tubes began to warm up.  Meanwhile, another command was passed to his altitude indicator, moving a pair of cross hairs to 7,500 meters.  Golubev began a gentle descent taking him below the contrail level and down to an altitude where the antenna for the Oryol could establish a good “look-up” angle on the target and maintain a clear view, free of any extraneous reflections from the ground far below.  Accelerating to just below the speed of sound during his descent to 7,500 meters, the tracks of his interceptor and the American planes began to converge as he approached from their low right and began to fall into trail behind them.  At 40 kilometers—two minutes away from crossing their track if he continued east, the Lazur’ activated Golubev’s radar and steered the antenna up and to the left toward the targets now crossing ahead from his left.

Watching the director lights in his peripheral vision, Golubev stared intently at the small B-scan radar display in front of him.  Target azimuth from his interceptor was displayed to the left and right of the “0” marking at the bottom center, while range was displayed vertically out to 40 km at the top.  The radar was less sensitive from the rear of a target, so as he continued closing he expected to see his first blip at somewhere inside of 25 km to target.  Seconds dragged on interminably as he unconsciously steered his T47 according to the Lazur’ command lights.  The “φ” light came on, giving the command to engage afterburner and close with the target.  Golubev felt a sharp kick as the huge AL-7F poured forth in its fury.  The heavy nose of his interceptor suddenly dipped down as he crossed over into the supersonic realm, but Golubev instinctively eased back on the stick as he remained intent on his radar scope.  Finally, a faint, ephemeral blip began to show at 17 kilometers range.  With each sweep of the Oryol radar antenna as it scanned the space in front of his interceptor, two blips began to resolve at about 20 degrees right as they became brighter.  After several good, consecutive blips, Golubev double-checked the position of the contact, confirmed that the Lazur’ showed that it was not friendly, and felt for the range gate switch on the throttle through the heavy glove of his left hand.  He adjusted the position of the two short horizontal bars until they were bracketed over the closest target, the one on the right, now at 13 kilometers slant range.  Golubev set the selector switch to fire a single missile.  The “Zakhvat” light came on indicating that the Oryol had locked on to the target as the scope display changed to a large set of cross hairs superimposed on a circle, with two small, bright blips just above it at the one o’clock position.  A bright, yellow “↑” illuminated, giving the command for Golubev to trade speed for altitude in a zoom climb toward his target, reducing the vertical component of his slant range to the American planes to pop up somewhere within 8,000 meters of his target, right in the heart of the launch zone for the R-4MT missile.  Pressed downward in his seat as he ascended, Golubev’s rage flew in front of him as he maneuvered to put his target in the center of the reticle on his screen, waiting for the small white light indicating that his missile was “seeing” its target and ready to launch.

Far to the south, over the southern shoreline of the Caspian Sea, Major Carl Hunt sat in the dimply-lit belly of the RB-47H, listening to the cacophony of electronic signals being recorded by its equipment.  He could hear the cascading, almost bubbling tones of the Scan Odd rasping Scan Fix radars of MiG-17 and MiG-19 interceptors searching for the escaping Voodoos.  Occasionally, one set of tones would change to sharp, paired “ticks” as the antenna scan rate changed to try to acquire the targets.  Closing his eyes, he could paint a mental picture of the chase with Soviet interceptors being guided to points in front of the Voodoos, reaching out, nearly getting a fix on them only to run low on fuel and return to base, as the tones faded out, replaced by yet more trying to find a better position.  He opened his eyes as he heard a new set of tones, vaguely familiar but not quite right.  For a moment, it almost sounded like a Scan Three search tone, unique to the Yak-25 Flashlight-A interceptor.  A relatively slow, low-to-medium altitude interceptor typically encountered in Europe or over the vast frozen reaches of northern Soviet territory, the subsonic Yakovlev aircraft would be hopelessly outmatched by the speed of the F-101s at altitude.   But the faint tone persisted as the rolling electronic surf of electronic signals continued to merge in and out from his headphones.   Hunt fiddled with the center frequency of his sensitive receiver equipment to try to get better reception of the new signal.  Tuning down slightly into the low portion of X-band, the signal became clearer.  The oscilloscope display showed the characteristic rapid pulse frequency of the Scan Three, but the transmitting frequency was definitely lower and the scan pattern of the antenna sounded different.  Expecting the signal to drop out at any second as all of the others had, Hunt closed his eyes and listened intently, trying to capture and memorize every nuance of the ghostly signal in his headphones.  He froze as he heard the tone change rate from a broad search to a narrow acquisition scan pattern.  Whatever it was that was carrying the modified radar must have been very fast to not only close the distance, but be able to do so within the matter of a few minutes.  Momentarily exhilarated at the haul of new signals intelligence collected and digested in the bowels of the sleek Boeing bomber, Hunt went cold and numb as the tone changed again, from a manic ticking to the harsh, grating metallic sound of an epileptic grinding a huge steel pipe on rough concrete.  Whatever it was had just locked onto a Voodoo and was most likely preparing to fire.

Climbing through 9,000 meters, Golubev edged the throttle back to decrease his rate of closure as he leveled off.  He thought that he could see two faint pairs of smoke trails ahead and above him.  As he closed inside 8,000 meters to the target, he picked out the trailing aircraft, with the unmistakable planform of an American F-101, although its sleek lines were spoiled by a very large store on its centerline, surely a fuel tank.  Golubev keyed his mic.

“475.  Targets in sight.  Two type F-101 fighter.”

“You are understood.”

“475.  I am attacking the rear target.  Attack by four-fourths.”

Well within range and now settled just to the left into his target’s “deep six” position, Golubev pressed and held the trigger on his control stick.  The left R-4 missile roared from its launch rail and began to corkscrew crazily as lanced up and away at Mach 3 on a sharp tendril of gray smoke, the green tracer on the aft end of the missile tracing a tightening spiral as it converged on the distant target.  The test missiles had been rife with quality problems with their solid rocket motors due to inconsistent molding of the rubber-based fuel often causing the thrust to be off-center.  The proportional guidance system of the missile struggled mightily to compensate, but the problem often led to a “miss” of the target.    Golubev eased the stick forward to maintain vertical separation as he watched the missile through his canopy.  After three seconds, the smoke ceased and Golubev saw the flare steady as it approached the tail of the American F-101 ahead of him.     

“475.  Missile away...there is a hit”

With no warning, Lundquist saw a blur of motion over his right shoulder, punctuated by flash and a puff of smoke and debris from the aft end of Smith’s Voodoo as it seemed to buck forward with the impact.  He caught a glimpse of a large, cartwheeling orange object arcing above the stricken airplane, shedding large fragments as it disintegrated and began to fall to earth.  Instinctively snapping left to avoid the object, Lundquist rolled slightly right and looked back.  Low, just at the edge of his vision, Lundquist could just make out a purplish-gray contrail below him, headed by a fleeting silver dart of a Soviet interceptor.    Turning his attention back to Smith’s aircraft, Lundquist could see that the left nacelle and wing were clearly damaged, but the tough Voodoo still kept flying.  Red hydraulic fluid was beginning to leak back from the spine of the aircraft, along with two white plumes of vaporizing fuel issuing from the torn rear of the engine nacelle and a gash on the spine near the Number 4 fuselage tank.  A brief explosion of flame and fragments from the red line painted on Smith’s aft fuselage was grave evidence that the turbine in his left engine had failed.  The stream of fuel vapor from the engine slowed to a trickle as Smith shut down the dead left engine, pumping ragged black smoke behind it in its death throes.  Now on only one engine, Smith’s Voodoo began to descend toward the thick air below.  The white stream of fuel from the emptying fuselage tank traced a path to his dying airplane that could be seen for miles.  Lundquist activated the Model 102H pod and, positioning himself a few hundred feet behind and below Smith’s left wing,  dropped chaff to try to break the Soviet interceptor’s radar lock and buy some time. 

Golubev noticed the Lazur’ indicators around his radar display go out.  The American planes were somehow jamming the data link system to his interceptor.  His radar still had contact until he saw a diaphanous puff of material issue from the underside of the other, intact American aircraft.  An elliptical blotch of static spread across the center right of the Oryol radar display as the two target blips merged into it and disappeared.  The attack display disappeared as the radar broke lock and began to reset and acquire the target.  Golubev spat out a curse.  At least ten seconds would be wasted just to reacquire the target, ten precious seconds of fuel wasted as the dial continued its inexorable descent.  Golubev was in perfect position for a cannon kill and had every advantage over both American aircraft.  His T47 retained space provisions for the pair of wing root-mounted cannons mounted in its Su-7 predecessor.  But in this modern Soviet age of industrialization and technology, such anachronisms were deemed unnecessary.  With voice communications out for the moment, GCI personnel would never hear Golubev roaring invectives at the Americans and at that stumpy, bald peasant Khrushchev and his preoccupation with his toys.  Seconds passed, and he watched the blip of the other American F-101 resolve only to be spoiled by yet another well-timed cloud of chaff.  Fifteen or twenty more goddamned seconds!  The large American fighter weaved ponderously in the thin air ahead of Golubev in a series of check turns to throw off his tracking solution and keep a tally as he held station, two kilometers below and six behind him, waiting for the radar to lock on again while keeping an eye on the fuel gauge.  Golubev punched the side of his canopy in rage.  The pain in his now cracked fifth metacarpal felt good.  For the first time in years, Golubev felt truly alive again.

A minute had now passed, and Golubev couldn’t get his radar to lock on to the damned American with his damned countermeasures.  With a useless missile on the right wing, no communications, and the fuel needle visibly moving down to 800 liters of fuel, Golubev began to consider his options.  There was no way that he was getting back to Akhtubinsk.  Fuck!  His right hand throbbing as tried to crush the life out of the control stick of his jet, Golubev advance his throttle and closed and the second target, fishtailing slightly as he battled the weight and drag of the dead missile under the Sukhoi’s tiny wing.  He moved up and pulled abreast of the American fighter, scarcely 15 meters away off of his left wing.  Unconsciously adjusting for the wobble of his interceptor, Golubev could clearly see the steady, insolent blue eyes of the American pilot staring back at him, laboring under his oxygen mask.  Golubev knew that American fighter aircraft were generally larger and heavier than Soviet designs, but was briefly impressed with the graceful mass of the F-101, but his thoughts instantly turned to more sanguine matters.  Laden with the large underslung pod, which he now surmised to carry electronic countermeasures, Golubev noticed that in the thin air at 11,000 meters the American seemed to struggle to stay in the air, riding nose high with its great mass borne by an impossibly small wing.  The American and his stricken wingman completely vulnerable deep within the territory of his Rodina, and there was nothing Golubev could do about it.  Unless…he pulled forward ever so slightly and gently applied right rudder, sliding the sharp wingtip of his interceptor through the American’s cockpit….  The only regret is that I can kill only one American today by doing so.  What do I do?

Lundquist was shit-out-of-luck and he knew it.   He could see the pair of empty missile pylon under the left wing of the Soviet fighter, which appeared to be some variety of Fishpot interceptor.  The cylindrical nose forward of the cockpit carried a neat row of four small, red stars.  No one had ever seen a Fishpot this close before, but it didn’t quite look like the picture from his deck of aircraft identification cards back in his quarters.    The Soviet pilot had cold, hard brown eyes, no doubt amped up over his recent near kill and just dying to add another notch….  The hard eyes looked back toward the Sukhoi fighter’s left wing, gauging position and distance.  Crap.  Jettisoning the pod would turn out to be a windfall for Soviet technicians, so that was out.  But, damn it!  What else am I supposed to do?  He could accelerate but judging by the engine on that damned interceptor off of his wing, “Ivan” over there would have no trouble keeping up while he burned up fuel and would have no hope of making the border, with or without the pod.  Already teetering on the edge of a stall, maneuvering was also out of the question.  With regard to fuel, he should have turned back by now…what’s he doing here?  All that Lundquist could do was stare back and wait to see what the Soviet pilot would do.  Well, just make up your mind and either way let’s get it over with….

Golubev checked his gauges and then looked back over at the American pilot calmly watching him, as if he hadn’t a care in the world.  I hate this fucking invader and his country as much as anything I have ever hated in my life.  Just slide my wing right into his face and it is done.   But would I be throwing my life away by doing so?  And if so, for what?  For what?  He stared for a long minute into the eyes of his American counterpart, but already knew the answer to his question.  Golubev keyed his microphone to report to ground control, unsure if it would get through.

“475. Target position 50 kilometers south-southeast of Gurev.  Target course 180, altitude 110.  Target speed 900.”

There was no response.

“475. Fuel 500 liters, unable to return to base.  Making for Gurev.”

Again, his transmission was met by silence.

Golubev glared over at Lundquist once again and carefully edged his jet even closer.  With his left hand, he flashed what looked like a “victory” sign at the arrogant American.  Lundquist saw the unneeded translation in the enraged face of the Soviet pilot: I will gouge your fucking eyeballs out if I ever see you again.  And with that, Golubev slid his airplane away, smartly banked right, and peeled away from the lumbering American fighter, leaving them alone once again within the infinite expanse of the burning blue canopy above.

Lundquist repositioned ahead of and about a thousand feet above Smith as they went “feet wet” over the azure expanse of the Caspian Sea, its brilliance further highlighted by the dun-colored ground and haze around and below them.  He could see the Tupqaraghan Tubegi peninsula ahead of him, jutting westward into the sea.  Early warning and GCI radars stationed at the tip at Fort Shevchenko were trying to paint his aircraft as the pod’s ECM equipment continued to scream its silent rage into the ether.   Lundquist seemed to have slipped by the MiG-15s based at Astrakhan, at least temporarily, and he flew on to live for at least that moment but had so far yet to go.  Ahead lay Baku and the MiG-17s of the 82^nd Fighter Aviation Regiment which were surely taking off and beginning their slow climb to circle lazily at a perch along his flight path at 50,000 feet or more.  Even with the unladen RF-101s headed that way, he could be sure that at least several flights would turn their attention to him as he continued south toward Mehrabad.  He had five chaff cartridges left.  How can I be sure that these pods are jamming their radars and GCI?  If I can’t maneuver with the MiGs waiting out there, how can I throw them off?  Smith was in very bad shape, the recce birds were now far ahead.  His pod was now useless with the airplane barely getting by on the power of one touchy and overburdened Sundstrand generator.  The same pods that were keeping them alive right now could prove to be their death sentence.  Giving in to the flood of cortisol as the immediate danger passed, Lundquist began to shake uncontrollably, alone in the azure at 36,000 feet, with that damned pod as his only protection as he continued south toward the faraway Reshte-ye Alborz mountains and the safety of Iran.  Will I be alive an hour from now?

Something Extra: Comparing the F-101B Voodoo and Tupolev Tu-128 "Fiddler"

I have just had the pleasure of reading a new book on the Soviet Tu-128 "Fiddler" interceptor by Alan Dawes, Sergei Burdin, and Nikolai Popov.  I have written a brief review of the book on Amazon which may be found here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1WMHLDVQRUJT5/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1781554048&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books  Having just written a book on its American counterpart, the McDonnell F-101B, I felt that it would be informative to compare and contrast the two aircraft.  But before making those comparisons, a brief resume of Soviet all-weather interceptor development is in order.

Experimental work on airborne intercept radars began in the Soviet Union after the end of World War Two.  Their first all-weather interceptor, the MiG-17P "Fresco", was fielded beginning in 1952.  Armed with a triplet of 27-millimeter cannons and powered by a non-afterburning VK-1 engine, the MiG-17P housed the first successful Soviet intercept radar, the RP-1 Izumrud ("Emerald"), known to NATO as "Scan Odd."  Although using an unwieldy dual-antenna design with separate search and tracking dishes, it was capable of automatically tracking a target within 1.1 nautical miles, while the maximum search range was 6.5 n.m. against a bomber-sized target.  The Izumrud radar was less sophisticated and had lower performance than the closest Western equivalent, the AN/APG-37 radar of the North American F-86D Sabre Dog.  However, following the timeless Russian maxim that "the better is the enemy of the good," The basic Izumrud radar was produced for most first-generation interceptors; the MiG-17P "Fresco-B", MiG-17PF "Fresco-D" with afterburning VK-1F engine, and the supersonic MiG-19P "Farmer-B."  The Izumrud also proved capable of being adapted for first-generation "beam-riding" air-to-air missiles with the RP-1U radar of the MiG-17PFU "Fresco-E" and the RP-2U radar of the MiG-19PM "Farmer-E" interceptors, each carrying four RS-1-U or RS-2-U (NATO: AA-1 "Alkali") beam-riding missiles.  In both cases, cannon-armed and missile-armed interceptors could only engage targets from dead astern within a narrow 7.5-degree cone. and only from a very close range at that at a maximum range of 1.9 n.m. for the AA-1 "Alkali.".  The same held true for a second radar, the RP-6 Sokol (NATO: Scan Three) radar that armed the longer-ranged but slower Yakovlev Yak-25M "Flashlight-A."  Well into the 1960s, these interceptors formed the backbone of Soviet Air Defense forces, the PVO Strany.  From 1959, they were joined by the Mach-2 Sukhoi Su-9 "Fishpot," equipped with a different radar (TsD-30, NATO: "Spin Scan") but still armed with the beam-riding "Alkali" missiles (modified RS-2-US, in this case), and having a very limited combat radius due to its powerful but thirsty Lyul'ka AL-7F-1 engine.  As the 1960s approached, the best distance that PVO interceptors could manage was a combat radius on the order of 200 nautical miles, or in the case of the Yak-25M "Flashlight-A," 500 n.m.  Due to common limitations of radar and armament systems, all were limited to rear-quarter, close range attacks against speedy B-47 and B-52 bombers deployed by Strategic Air Command.

The combat radius of existing and projected Soviet interceptors was completely inadequate to provide coverage of the far northern reaches of Soviet territory from austere forward operating bases positioned along the northern frontier.  With the conspicuous exception of the Su-9, PVO interceptors lacked the performance to reliably close on fast-moving intruders from the rear, and in all cases the maximum firing ranges of their cannons and missiles were within the defensive ranges of the bomber's gun armament.  An ability to be able to engage such targets from the forward hemisphere was deemed to be vital.  Compounding the problem was the deployment of new supersonic cruise missiles from late-model B-52s, the North American GAM-77 Hound Dog.  Presenting a small, very fast radar target, interception would prove to be difficult, if not impossible.  The new interceptor would have to possess sufficient range to not only patrol the approach routes over the Barents and Kara Seas, but to engage bomber targets before reaching their missile launch points within range of vital Soviet targets.  Realizing this need for the a long-range interceptor with the ability to engage from the forward hemisphere, Tupolev was charged to develop a new interceptor from a promising (though unsuccessful) tactical bomber design, The Tu-98 "Backfin."  Using the latest Soviet radar and missile technology under development, these new features were integrated into one of the first Soviet equivalents of the USAF "Weapon System" concept as the Tu-128S-4 "Fiddler."

Looking at the basic performance figures, the Tu-128 and F-101B were not dissimilar.  The two aircraft had similar combat radii, and although not quite matching the Mach 1.75 placard speed of the Voodoo, the Tu-128 could manage Mach 1.56 with full missile armament.  The gigantic RP-S Smerch ("Tornado," NATO: "Big Nose") radar conferred a useful 27 n.m. detection and 21.6 n.m. lock-on range against bomber targets, and was coupled with a pair of semi-active radar homing R-4R (NATO: AA-5 "Ash") missiles of up to 13.5 n.m. range.  Two more heat-seeking R-4T "Ash" missiles were also carried to provide a secondary rear-quarter attack capability from up to 6.5 n.m. away.  Although the "Ash" missile was more closely equivalent to the US Navy's AAM-N-6 Sparrow III missile and possessed a useful "snap-up" capability to reach higher targets, each radar-guided missile was deemed to have only a 27% kill probability against a B-52 type target, without any electronic countermeasures (ECM) use by the defending bomber.  To achieve a 92% kill probability against a single B-52 target, PVO planners anticipated a pair of fully-armed Tu-128s carrying a total of eight missiles to ensure it.  In contrast, as what was then the IF-101A in 1955, the intent was to ensure three bomber kills per interceptor through the use of GAR-1 Falcon missiles and new atomic armament, consisting of a pair of MB-1 "Ding Dong" rockets.  The MG-13 fire control system for the Voodoo, closely based on the MG-10 system under final stages of development for the Convair F-102A in the mid-1950s, was modified to ensure proper detection, targeting, and fuzing of the MB-1 rockets during forward-hemisphere engagements.  The 300-yard diameter fireball and resulting blast from the detonation of the 2-kiloton W-25 warhead of the MB-1 would take care of the rest and go a long way toward meeting the three-kill-per-interceptor design objective.  In contrast, the "Ash," a very large and capable missile for its day, had a 118-pound high-explosive blast-fragmentation warhead.

The F-101B had a maximum area intercept radius of 720 nautical miles against a co-altitude target.  In contrast, employing a solely forward hemisphere attack at maximum range, the Tu-128 could cover a radius of out to 1,355 n.m.  However, if needed to come around for a rear-quarter re-attack, the maximum interception boundary was reduced to 664 n.m.  When it first rolled out in the late summer of 1954. the F-101 was by far the largest and most powerful fighter aircraft ever built.  It was dwarfed by the Tu-128 when it first flew in March 1961.  The two huge Lyul'ka AL-7F-2 engines each produced 15,432 lbs. dry and 22,046 lbs. in afterburner, versus 10,700 lbs./16,900 lbs. for the Pratt & Whitney J57-P-55 engines of the F-101B.  However, at "dry" thrust used to maximize area intercept radius, the Lyul'ka engines used nearly 30% more fuel per pound of thrust than the relatively economical J57 engines.  Multiply that by 1.44 times greater thrust per engine for the AL-7F, and the math shows that two such engines would suck down fuel in a hurry.  To confer the specified combat radius for the new Russian interceptor, it had to carry a prodigious amount of fuel within an airframe to match.  While the F-101B tipped the scales at 51,724 pounds at maximum gross takeoff weight, the Tu-128 weighed in at 94,800 pounds.  At a total length of 96.8 feet, the "Fiddler" dwarfed the impressively large F-101B, at 71.1 feet long.  More than five times heavier and far larger than the MiG-17PF interceptors that preceded it, the penalty paid to carry all of this fuel was a huge parking footprint on austere Soviet airfields and strict "G" limitations on the airframe that drastically reduced maneuvering performance, posing a particular problem in the event that the Tu-128 needed to perform a stern conversion into the rear quarter of the bomber after a failed forward-hemisphere attack.  While the relatively primitive Su-9 "Fishpot" could be reefed around the corner at 9 G and maintain pursuit at Mach 2,  the Tu-128 was stressed to a maximum of 2.5 G, and a maximum safe speed of Mach 1.22 at the 44,800-foot combat altitude of a loaded B-52G Stratofortress.  Unless a very careful conversion geometry was flown, the Mach 0.87 speed of the B-52G under those conditions and impressive maneuverability at altitude would have made closure and re-attack by the Tu-128 a very tough proposition with a maximum closure speed of 188 knots.  The Tu-128 did have good snap-up capability given its relatively low cruise altitude and sheer size, but zoom climbs were intensely disliked by "Fiddler" pilots, who instead would opt to point the nose up at the target and take advantage of the snap-up capability of the "Ash" missile.  High performance supersonic targets could, at least theoretically, be engaged in a snap-up attack but this required the interceptor to reverse course to come on the same heading directly beneath the target, but positioned in front of it with the antenna at maximum elevation to reduce lock-on time and engage the target.

The performance of the RP-S Smerch radar was conferred by the sheer size of its antenna.  Incorporating transistors in addition to traditional vacuum-tube elements, The basic RP-S radar was probably roughly equivalent to the basic MG-13 units of earlier production F-101B aircraft up through Block 110, which had a maximum tracking range of 30 n.m.  They were not equivalent to the upgraded MG-13 units first tested in February 1960 with 40 n.m. tracking range against an F-106-sized target and capable of dealing with closure speeds in excess of Mach 4, entering production with the F-101B in summer 1960.  It took some time for Soviet technology to catch up in the Tu-128 when they were retrofitted with a version of the "Fox Fire" radar of the MiG-25 "Foxbat," itself developed from the RP-S radar as the Smerch-A, to the new RP-SM standard.  Although testing of the new RP-SM system had been concluded in 1974, it was not until 1979 when the bugs were worked out of the system and operational units began to convert to the upgraded Tu-128M aircraft.  Although noted Soviet avionics expert Paul Martell-Mead compares the Smerch-A/RP-SM radars most closely to the AN/APQ-109 unit of the McDonnell-Douglas F-4D Phantom, in my estimation it compares more closely with Project Kitty Car-standard MG-13 units of the F-101B.  All F-101B aircraft had been modified to that standard during the latter half of 1961, four years before the Tu-128 entered service and eighteen years before Tu-128M aircraft entered operational service.  The F-101B, along with all other Century-series interceptors, underwent a further, radical upgrade of their Hughes fire control systems under the Interceptor Improvement Program.  Under this program, the MG-13 units of all USAF F-101B aircraft were upgraded under Project Bold Journey between February 1963 and December 1966.  Besides incorporating a number of anti-ECM modifications such as LORO (Lobe On Receive Only) and an anti-chaff switch, the new MG-13 IIP fire control system now had a maximum radar range of 200 n.m, and also incorporated a sensitive infrared search-and-track (IRST) system that allowed upgraded interceptors to detect targets flying in ground clutter, and also introduced much-improved AIM-4D Falcon infrared-guided missiles.  These were roughly equivalent to the upgraded "Ash" missiles of the Tu-128M, but unlike the Soviet aircraft could be more effectively employed in the face of jamming or radar failure since they could be cued to the target by the IRST system mounted on the nose.  Such systems would not come into use in Soviet service until the mid-late 1970s with the introduction of MiG-23 and upgraded MiG-25 "Foxbat-E" interceptors.  By this time, the F-101B had long been retired from active USAF service, although it would soldier on through the mid-1980s with the Air National Guard and Canadian Armed Forces.

In the final analysis, while the Tu-128 offered some very impressive qualities, even by the time of its first flight in 1961 it was already outclassed as a long-range interceptor by the McDonnell F-101B.

A brief programming note

I will get caught up this week on historical updates and so forth.  However, over the past few days I have been perusing the excellent new history of the Tu-128 "Fiddler" by Alan Dawes, Sergey Burdin and Nikolai Popov.  There is a lot of information in it, so I am currently going through my copy with a fine-toothed comb.  So far, this is the best book that I have read on Soviet-era air defense.

The Tu-128 was, broadly speaking, the Soviet equivalent of the F-101B in terms of its role, missions, and basic capabilities.  It is very interesting to read about Soviet design approaches to the same sets of problems faced by McDonnell engineers when tailoring the Voodoo to the interceptor mission.  I am planning to write a detailed review of the book for Amazon once I have finished it, and will post an in-depth comparison of the two aircraft here as a "Something Extra" entry.

Thanks for joining me in this dusty little corner of cyberspace.  Tell your friends and spread the word!

http://www.amazon.com/Tupolev-Tu-128-Fiddler-Alan-Dawes/dp/1781554048

This Day in McDonnell Voodoo History, February 28th:

In 1969, an F-101F proficiency trainer assigned to the 123^rd TRW at Richards-Gebaur AFB crashed at Buckley ANGB, CO, injuring pilots Lt. Col Mervin Johnson and Capt. John Molini of the 192^nd TRS, Nevada ANG.  The accident occurred not before an order to deactivate the 123^rd TRW and demobilize the attached Air Guard units with after the repatriation of the crew of the captured USS Pueblo.

This Day in McDonnell Voodoo History, February 25th:

In 1955, the IF-101A interceptor program was officially endorsed by Headquarters USAF.  This would lead to the F-101B version that served into the mid-1980s.

Photo: The IF-101A was one of two different Voodoo interceptor proposals considered for production as a backstop to the continually delayed F-102 program.  While the proposed IF-101B had systems more along the lines of the "ultimate" F-102B interceptor (to become the F-106), The IF-101A was a minimum-change version of the basic F-101A that would borrow the fire control system and armament of the "interim" F-102A  to provide a high-performance long-range interceptor with a relative minimum of technical risk.  Within a short period of time, the IF-101A concept would undergo rapid evolution.  Here, the J57-P-13 engines and "pitch-up fillets" that first appeared on Block 15 F-101A aircraft are visible.

Photo Credit: McDonnell Douglas via Bert Kinsey / Detail & Scale

Black Magic: The Unknown History of the Voodoo

58 years after it was written, the official history of the development of the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo remains classified.  However, since the mid 1990s, a great deal about the airplane and its original mission has come to light.

In the Fall of 1945, the bombers of the United States Army Air Force represented by far the most potent military force in history.  Having delivered the atomic bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the waves of hundreds of huge, silver B-29s over all of the major cities in Japan were in the process of being forgotten.  Japanese cities were incinerated by the square mile with the most advanced and expensive aircraft in the world, a true marvel of aerodynamic design.  Three years later, that capability had almost completely evaporated as the new commander of what was now Strategic Air Command, General Curtiss LeMay, began the onerous task of reforging the broken sword of American strategic airpower into a potent new weapon with which to face the newly-realized threat of Soviet expansion.

Beginning with his command of the first American bomber group deployed to England to take the war to Germany and as he advanced to commands within the Eighth Air Force and, finally, the 21st Air Force charged with the destruction of targets in Japan, LeMay understood better than anyone the potential of strategic airpower and what was needed to not only ensure that units and equipment were mission-capable, but also what was needed to keep his precious crews alive.  During the air war over Germany, one of the decisive innovations was to use long-range fighters to provide escort for the slow, heavy bombers to their targets and back, fending off the vicious attacks of the Luftwaffe.  While the technology had changed drastically with the dawn of the jet age, the basic concepts of strategic bombardment had not.  Increasing numbers of ever more swift jet interceptors were being fielded and it would only be a matter of time before the Soviet Union developed effective interceptors of their own.

General LeMay wanted a fighter force under his sole and direct operational control, with no other mission but to provide escort and support for his forward-deployed B-29 and B-50 bombers, as well as for the gargantuan Convair B-36 and the swift, high-flying B-47.  In October 1948, he summoned the one fighter pilot on his staff, Lieutenant Colonel William "Dinghy" Dunham, to draft a letter detailing the specifications for a new, purpose-built fighter.  As time passed and nuclear weapons technology proceeded at a breakneck pace, new miniaturized weapons suitable for fighter carriage became feasible.  Afforded the capability of striking air defense and other targets in support of following bombers, the new nuclear-capable fighters enabled the "strategic fighter" concept to be born.  Dunham's proposal led to the selection of a developed version of the canceled McDonnell XF-88A Voodoo.  As the design evolved, it would become the ultimate expression of the strategic fighter concept as the F-101A.

Photo: Mock-up of the McDonnell Model 36W, the F-88K, soon to be recast as the F-101A.

Photo credit: Gerald Balzer Collection, Greater St. Louis Air & Space Museum

While Tactical Air Command was developing its own nuclear delivery capability, it used relatively small, low-yield weapons such as the 20-kiloton MK 7 and 15-kiloton MK 8.  The interim F-84G and F-84F fighters assigned to strategic fighter wings used the same weapons, since they were all that were available and nothing larger could be carried.  SAC wanted the ultimate expression of its strategic fighter to have commensurate firepower.  The smallest and lightest strategic-level weapon available was the new MK 5 weapon, intended for relatively short-ranged B-50 and B-47 medium bombers.  With six selectable yields ranging from 20 kT to 120 kT, the MK 5 was just small enough that it could, conceivably, be carried by a large fighter airplane.  In 1953, while the new F-101A was well into design development, the concept of modifying the F-101A to carry the 44-inch diameter W-5 warhead in a streamlined casing was explored.  The concept was deemed feasible and the F-101A was modified to accommodate the large, 33 foot long, 10,000 pound store on a centerline hook. By June 1954, the lightweight TX-15 Zombie hydrogen weapon and another weapon that remains classified were also being considered for the new Model 96 store, to be manufactured by McDonnell.  In any event, it promised the Voodoo far greater firepower than any fighter aircraft before or since.  Ranging out nearly 1,000 miles from base, air-refuelable, and with a top speed of over 1,000 miles-per-hour, the reincarnated version of the Voodoo would form SAC's irresistible sledgehammer to breach the defenses on the approaches to Moscow and other targets within the heart of the Soviet Union.

Photo: Concept drawing of the F-101A/XW-5 weapon system, April 1953.

Photo credit: US Department of Energy

Drop testing of the Model 96 pod began in 1954 from a B-47 test aircraft.  By the late Spring of 1955, testing was ready to begin on preproduction F-101A aircraft.  The history of flight testing of the weapon remains classified, but much can be gleaned about it.  During 1955, the F-101A was plagued with compressor stalls under any form of accelerated flight condition, as the year wore on and both engines and airframe were tweaked to problem gradually improved.  However, an insidious and far more dangerous problem lay ahead as the stall-free maneuvering envelope of the airplane was expanded--the infamous "pitch-up" of the Voodoo, which led to its first fatality in December 1955 with the loss of Captain John Dolan near Edwards AFB, California.  Already "squirrelly" at combat altitude and heavy fuel load, any handling deficiencies could only have been exacerbated by the presence of a large, heavy centerline pod.  The side area of the pod nearly doubled the area that the vertical tail had to hold stable, its cross-sectional area made a poor Area Rule distribution even worse, and the increased angle-of-attack needed to produce lift to counteract the weight of the Model 96 shape, ranging between 10,000 pounds with a full 849-gallon load of fuel and 4,000-pound empty drop weight would have brought the F-101A even closer to the razor's edge of the pitch-up boundary under cruise and even the most benign maneuvering conditions.

Photo: Special weapons test aircraft JF-101A 52-2427 after takeoff during a later test flight with the Model 96 store.  The large size of the pod with respect to the small wings and control surfaces of the Voodoo is particularly noteworthy.

Photo credit: Gerald Balzer Collection, Greater St. Louis Air & Space Museum

As an integral part of the WS-105A weapon system, McDonnell made valiant efforts to salvage the pod concept.  McDonnell had envisioned a modular concept in which different capabilities could be added to the basic F-101A by interchangeable pods with different mission equipment.  A developed version of the pod, the McDonnell Model 102, could carry various types of buddy-refueling equipment and in the Model 102H and Model 102J electronic countermeasures equipment.  The jammers specified for the Model 102H, the AN/ALT-6, AN/ALT-7, and AN/ALT-8 along with an AN/ALE-1 chaff dispenser, comprised the new SAC-standard ECM systems being retrofitted at that time to the B-47 and B-52 fleets.  The last gasp for the pod concept came in March 1956 with the Model 117A store, intended for carriage by both F-101A fighters and RF-101A reconnaissance aircraft.  Carrying similar equipment to the Model 102H, its development was discontinued along with all of the other pod concepts that same month.  Integration of the basic Model 96 store with the lightweight, 2 MT yield W-27 was also halted.

By early 1956, it had become clear that the F-101A would be unsuitable for the strategic fighter mission envisioned for it.  Indeed, with the deployment of the fast, very high-flying B-52 and the switch from high altitude penetration to low-altitude missions for the workhorse B-47, the entire strategic fighter concept was rendered obsolete.  State-of-the-art just a few years prior, the W-5 warhead was on its way to becoming a museum piece.  New weapons on the horizon such as the small TX-28 hydrogen bomb promised greater yield with much lower drag and better range performance than the massive Model 96 pod.  Originally intended to equip at least three fighter wings for SAC, the F-101A and improved F-101C were deployed with only a single combat wing, the 27th Strategic Fighter Wing at Bergstrom AFB, Texas beginning in May 1957.  SAC operated the Voodoo for only two months as plans were already in motion to transfer it to a less than enthusiastic Tactical Air Command and get out of the fighter business altogether.  Plagued with troubles and with its future far from certain at that point, the Voodoo would go on to make history and become one of the key assets of American national policy during the most critical years of the Cold War.

Photo: The second special weapons test aircraft, 53-2428, carrying a T-63 "shape" for the interim MK 7 weapon.  Standard for the tactical nuclear strike role in the late 1950s, the Voodoo would go on to carry the MK 28 weapon as its mainstay over most of its active USAF service.  The powerful megaton-range MK 43 "laydown" weapon would also later be carried, but was primarily issued to the RF-101C Voodoos of the 38th TRS, which had assumed a secondary nuclear strike role in the aftermath of the Berlin Crisis of 1961.

Photo Credit: Gerald Balzer Collection, St. Louis Air & Space Museum

Something Extra: My next project--The McDonnell F3H Demon

It's natural during the course of any research project to read up on a lot of subjects that have nothing directly to do with the task at hand, but that provide vital context and are interesting in their own right.  In some cases, the source documentation needed to expand on one of these little "rabbit holes" is fragmentary with much important information lost.  But in others, even when there have been recently-published titles, sometimes by sheer luck you find small, but very important nuggets that have been missed and provide an opportunity to tell not only a more complete story, but use that story to talk about a lot of other things along the way.  This was the approach that I used with my recent book on the McDonnell F-101.  I got to talk about key developments that opened the road to Mach 2, the realities of nuclear testing, nuclear weapons design, and peel back the placid memory veil covering the Eisenhower years and reveal just how dangerous those times were, and how rapidly things escalated to the brink of nuclear war on two occasions during the subsequent Kennedy administration.  In a more subtle manner, I was also able to draw attention to parallels between the mindset and decision-making process of Kennedy, his inner circle, and its relationship with military authorities with that of the current Obama administration. History is useless if it does not illuminate the past to guide the future.

A few months back, I received a gratis copy of a new book on the F3H Demon by my friend Tony Buttler.  (You can read an excellent review here: http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2014/11/warpaint-series-no-99-mcdonnell-f3h.html).  Since I had at least some familiarity with it as it was built by McDonnell side-by-side with the F-101, he asked me to comment on it.  Fortunately, I had a couple of books covering the F3H in my library as well as some files related to engine development and the like.  Tony's book is intended more for modelers, but he encouraged me to write a more comprehensive technical history along the lines of the F-101 book.  I began to write an outline, knowing that there was another more comprehensive book as the opening title of the return of Bert Kinsey's outstanding Detail & Scale series...now available as digital books far superior to the already-renowned paperbacks published in the 1980s and 1990s (available here: http://www.detailandscale.com/f3h_demon_digital_book.html).  His series of books have been invaluable over the years, and with a new digital format that allows as many pages of material as desired, what could I possibly add?

My usual procedure is to take all of the information that I can find from every source available and fit it all into a master time line.  This approach has proven very useful in establishing connections and patterns to guide further research and hopefully tell a compelling story, as well as to vet information and check for typos or just flat-out bad information.  But as I began fitting the pieces together and filling them out, I remembered something that I had seen several years ago on the NASA Technical Reports Server.  In an old report that I ran across, I saw a wind tunnel model of the distinctive fuselage and inlet duct design of the F3H.  I rediscovered that report and much more, finding that those studies were first commissioned just after World War 2, and at least two years before the Navy announced its competition for a high-performance interceptor that would become the McDonnell F3H.  This had been missed.

Photo of transonic axisymmetric inlet model, circa late 1946.  Source: NACA Technical Note 2684.

The travails of engine development for the F3H have long been documented, and in the mid-1950s made national headlines under the blinding scrutiny of a Congressional inquiry.  The original Westinghouse J40, which turned out to be a truly worthless piece of hardware, was replaced by the workable, if only marginally better, Allison J71.  With the J71, the production F3H-2 version proved to be severely underpowered.  But the funny thing was, I had seen several photographs of the airplane in full afterburner.  Each of the photos showed clear "shock diamonds" in the afterburner plume.  These can only be produced if the exhaust gases are exiting the nozzle at supersonic speed, which in turn could only be produced by an advanced convergent-divergent nozzle.  Hmmm....  Kinsey's book shows excellent details of the exhaust nozzle of an F3H-2 in a museum.  It is clearly a convergent-divergent nozzle design and would have been among the first (if not the first) production turbojet engines so equipped.  This has not been mentioned nor explored before.  If the J71 was a "dog" with such a nozzle, what would it have been like with a conventional, sonic-limited convergent nozzle?  Something else to write about....

The F3H was recast with new armament, switching from a combination of 20-millimeter cannons and unguided rockets to cannons and the first production guided air-to-air missiles, the Sperry AAM-N-2 Sparrow I.  Not much has been written about this.  The Sparrow I has always been considered a failure (and it was) but as the first deployable interceptor missile system, its development deserves to be covered in detail.  No such study has been published.  Other F3H-2 subvariants were equipped with early naval tactical nuclear weapons as well as much improved Sparrow III missiles.  The missiles and the Westinghouse radar and fire control system were carried over into the legendary McDonnell F4H-1 Phantom.  Much ink has been expended on the story of the Phantom, and justifiably so.  But little has been written on the development of this key component of its armament system.  An understanding of the development of this system is critical to understanding more modern and even current developments in radar-guided air-to-air missile and fire control systems.  A thorough treatment of this story could fill a small but critical role for those trying to achieve that understanding.  So, more to write about....

The enemy, of course, is time.  But the stories have to be told, and the muse--that beautiful bitch!--can never be denied for long!  So, it looks as though another book is in my future.