Chris Penningroth’s Weltanschauung

     Today’s mission was for Cash and I to go up and practice a maneuver we call "The Grease."  I have no idea why we call it that.  Maybe because someone thought it would be a slick way for us to get to a merge with a Bandit?

     Cash and I have been flying F-16s together for a long time.  We started as wingmen together at Spangdahlem, and both of us were flight leads at Kunsan.  After Kunsan, he went to fly the F-117, while I went to drive a HMMWV.  We did a rejoin here at Misawa, both of us with our wives now in tow.  Whatever was going to happen today was going to be fun, just because.

      And it was! Fun, that is.  We took turns being offender/defender, the defender simply had to turn slightly sideways, it’s what we used to call a ‘Notch’ maneuver, except now we have LINK-16, and we can lock up an adversary with that instead of our own radars and find our way to a merge.  We’re essentially using AWACS or GCI to show us where we’re being attacked from, and then pointing at them after we’ve dragged off any incoming missiles.  As if I needed more proof, I did well enough that I was absolutely sure I flew sideways long enough to get out of Cash’s radar picture (he later confirmed I did), and he still put his nose right on me and "spiked" me with his radar. 

     We finished off the day with a 6k offensive BFM set for me, but we didn’t get far before we were both low on gas.  We safed it up and went home, another 1.4 in our logbooks. 

     The flight for today was another ACM hop with Kane as the lead and Gimbel as the wily Red Bandit.  Since I was the only field grader in the flight, el Gimbel was looking forward to trying to gun me.  I scoffed at the young whippersnapper (and fortune was kind in that I didn’t have to skulk about my scoffing after the flight).

     The usual administrivia took place from takeoff to ‘Fight’s on!’  We started with an Intercept to a BVR shot.  I killed Gimbel (simulated) from over 20 miles away.  Easy enough! 

     The second engagement was an intercept to another BVR engagement, only Gimbel flew at us at a high-fast flyer and put his radar on both of us.  Typically in that situation we’d let #3 and #4 handle that while #1 and #2 dragged, so we practiced our abort maneuver and terminated.  We went back to our side, he went back to his, and we called to begin set #3.

     The third engagement had Gimble flying at us pretty low (and fast).  It was good to see, we flew in nearly directly over him and did a split-S to complete the intercept.  Easy enough yet again!

     After that intercept, we turned student-body-180^o and set up for a defensive perch.  We basically let Gimbel stay behind us, pretended he was a bandit that just showed up at our six-o’clock, practiced a defensive break turn, and shot him down (simulated).  Once we got the ‘kill,’ we terminated and got ready for set #5.

     To begin engagement #5, we set up a CAP in the center of the airspace and sent Gimbel off to do his worst! We got a total of three ‘Tap the CAP’ fights.  Gimbel attacked Kane unsuccessfully, and I shot him down (simulated) for his efforts on the first pass.  The second pass was a mirror image of the first, with Gimbel attacking me unsuccessfully and Kane getting the shot in.  The third time was a little tougher, when the three of us merged Gimbel turned knife-edge to me as he flew over me (where the sun happened to be), so I lost sight of him.  In complying with the rules, I had to call ‘No joy’ so Kane knew I couldn’t see Gimbel anymore and therefore couldn’t shoot him.  Gimbel, as part of our formation, had to listen to the same radios, so he knew I couldn’t see him.  He therefore switched his attack from Kane to me, and managed to get nearly to guns range when Kane finally pulled all the Gs he could, got his nose around, and shot Gimbel with a simulated heat-seeking missile before Gimbel could start shooting at me.  Whew! After that, we were all out of gas, so we safed up our simulation switches and headed back home.

     The only noteworthy event of the flight (other than the fights) was the crow I saw pass right below me on final approach back to the base.  I saw the crow again after I landed, or I should say I saw what was left of the crow.  It turned out the giant vacuum cleaner under my nose sucked the bird right into the lip, severing the poor avian, with half going down the mouth, and the other half skittering down the left side of the airframe.  I was pretty lucky the entire bird didn’t go down the engine, who knows what might’ve happened. 

     The mission for today was for me to be the ACM bandit for Kane and Drago.  They asked me to pretend to be a Su-27 ‘Flanker,’ which would be relatively easy given our two-tank configurations which would limit our maneuverability somewhat.  They wanted three intercepts to engagements and three defensive perch setups.  No problem! We all briefed, stepped, and flew out to the training area, where we FENCED-in and I cleared off to my side of the area and prepared to die like a man for the next forty minutes.

     After the first ‘Fight’s on’ I elected to lock Kane way out at range as soon as we turned into each other.  When Kane realized I was about to shoot him with simulated radar missiles, he turned around, doing his best to keep my attention while he cleared Drago to attack me.  Drago did a great job of flying high through the sun to keep me from seeing him until he arrived at about two miles at my four o’clock.  I tried to do a defensive break turn and put out flares to try to keep him from shooting me with an AIM-9M, but he had enough range back to shoot me with an AIM-120, and unfortunately since there’s no real defense against that, he got a valid ‘kill,’ so we terminated the fight and Drago flew back to rejoin Scooter, then all of us reset for the next fight.

     After the second ‘Fight’s on,’ I felt like trying to avenge my previous self, so I locked up Drago with my radar this time.  I climbed up on the other side of a cloud layer and flew about 5,000′ above it towards them.  We’d see if Kane would realize it early enough to climb up over them (which would make him really easy to see, not to repeat last time when Drago got to use the sun against me)!  I don’t think he realized what I’d done in time and ended up on the low side of the cloud layer.  In any case, Drago had done the same thing this time that Kane did last time.  I had no shot at the retreating Drago; I couldn’t see Kane below the cloud, and although I knew in a general sense where he was, and according to our training rules it wouldn’t have been legal to dive through the clouds to find and attack.  So we kept in our blocks, terminated that fight, and flowed back to our corners to begin round three.

     This set, I decided to try to hide in the open as equidistantly from the cloud deck and ceiling at about 16,000′ and delayed using my radar, hoping to sneak up on them visually.  They found me on their radars instantly, so I threw my radar back at them in retaliation.  I locked up Kane, but Drago was close enough to him that my radar beam hit his aircraft, too.  Both of them thought they were ‘Spiked,’ and Drago started his turn away before Kane did, so Kane continued towards me, attempting to pounce.  Within seconds they realized their error.  Kane took an offsetting heading (while partly unbeknownst to him, I fired a pair of simulated radar missiles at him) while Drago turned back towards me to help his wingman.  Kane kicked off some chaff, which made my training simulation missiles unreliable, so I didn’t call a kill and continued to merge with him, which is a lot more fun than killing people BVR anyway.  Kane didn’t see me until I was already at about his nine-o’clock, so he started a relatively defensive break turn.  Lucky for him my AIM-9M wasn’t working properly, so I had to try to close in for a guns kill.  Within 180^o of turn, Drago found me and shot me with another AIM-120, well before I could close the distance for a gun attack.  Drat! I kept at Kane’s six-o’clock and followed them so we could begin their defensive perch sets. 

     For the first perch, I saddled up behind Kane.  After their defensive break turn, I stuck at Kane’s six o’clock and elected to get him first, simulating a bandit who did not see Drago (’cause no pilot in their right mind would ignore an F-16.  No dice, Drago was on his game.  I had essentially gone belly-up to Drago, and he shot a simulated heat-seeker straight at the hot part of my engine.  That ended that fight! We reordered ourselves and prepared for the second perch setup.

     This time I flew behind Drago, who was on the right, got them to break left, and switched immediately to start a high-aspect fight with Kane.  Unfortunately, that’s all the specifics I remember.  One of them (I think it was Drago) did eventually shoot me, and I didn’t shoot either of them.  The third perch set worked a little better for me.  I stuck behind Kane through most of their defensive maneuver, then switched late to fight Drago.  I managed to start a 2-circle fight with him, which was just what I would have wanted.  I was at a much better energy state than both of them, and I could win a 2-circle fight over time 1v1.  The problem was Kane was still out there, so after beating Drago down completely on energy, I switched to Kane one more time and took him single circle.  Since Kane was also low on energy, I simply went high after I crossed his tail and pulled all the Gs I could to get into a gun WEZ.  I was about to shoot him when Kane had to terminate for airspeed (we were under a 200 KIAS minimum airspeed restriction at the time).  Drat! Saved by the bell, as it were.

     That was all we had time for, so we "safed" it all up, pointed our noses at steerpoint 20, selected TACAN channel 101X, and followed the green blips in our navigation system as six or so GPS satellites pointed out the way home. 

     Today’s missions were 2 x air combat maneuvering (ACM) with Lt Col Z once again.  Col M and Crutch were to be our formidable Red Air adversaries.  Lt Col Z and I would CAP in the center of the airspace and have the bandits go to either side, and we’d simply fly back and forth intercepting them until we all ran out of gas. 

     The most difficult thing about today’s flights was the mass briefing at oh-dark-fifteen.  I don’t usually drink more than one cup of coffee when I do pit-and-go missions (I hate having to try to either choose between keeping the end-state of the fluid in either the bladder or the bag).  Waking up can be hard to do (to twist a phrase from a Chicago song).  It’s even tougher with less than one cup o’ Java.

     We flew off of the runway we haven’t been using for the past three months, so today we had to spend a little extra time reminding ourselves what the pattern procedures were for the westbound runway.  That and there were thunderstorms aplenty to dodge today.  It made for several disparate problems–plenty of static on the radios, at least one lightning strike, a sporty TACAN approach with limited visibility, and poor braking action on the runway.  On the other hand, these problems made the administrative phases of flight worth mentioning!

     While the comings and goings were a little unusual, the aerial sparring was pretty routine.  Maybe routine is a bad word for it, since I haven’t flown ACM in a year.  In any case, it’s a little like riding a bicycle, the muscle memorization for the piccolo drill with HOTAS takes a few sets, but comes back. 

     We were also flying with the two wing tanks previously mentioned, so while we had plenty of gas and got a lot done, we were a bit limited on our turn rates, and the extra tanks caused us to bleed off energy ‘like you read about.’ That said, I can’t remember how many intercepts we got. 

     I remember three of the intercepts ended up in turning engagements where either Lt Col Z or I would be essentially doing BFM against one of the bandits while the other maneuvered to get into a position to fire (without hitting each other or the bandit).  These fights went fairly well.  The bandits did a superb job, aided by the solid undercast that highlit us everywhere we could go (‘Bugs on rugs,’ as the saying goes).  They even got a surprise assist from another flight just outside the airspace (that one turned out well for them, which is to say badly for us).  Several times we decided we’d be ‘Heaters only,’ which is to say we were to use AIM-9M Sidewinders or our gun, but no AIM-120s.  That meant that no matter how well our IFF interrogators were working, we couldn’t take max-range shots to simplify the intercepts. 

     At the end of the day, both Lt Col Z and I were pretty happy with the sortie.  After 2.6 hours of banking and blasting, Gs and G-sles*, we were tired, thirsty, and had to get back to the desks that our additional duties demanded.   The difference between going to the office first thing in the morning and going after a great flight is a startling amount of positive motivation!

* G-sles:  Rhymes with measles, and is a very similar condition.  While measles weakens the capillaries so that they burst near the skin’s surface and causes little red splotches, pulling 7+ Gs in a fighter jet can cause capillaries to burst in a similar manner.  We get used to Gs pretty fast, but after we’ve had a layoff and haven’t pulled 7+ in awhile, we’re more susceptible again.  This condition is harmless. 

     Fortune was with me today, I got on the schedule yet again for a BFM hop, this time with ‘Scooter.’  He wanted to work on his one-circle fights (Drat! There went my plan to play the fiendish MIL-power two-circle bandit!).  He graciously offered to give me a blue engagement, though.  I accepted (who wants to be a MIL-power-only bandit all day?). 

     The flight started like every other, with a mass briefing, a flight briefing, step, start, taxi, takeoff, departure, FENCE-check, and a G-warm-up.  We got situated for our first high-aspect pass from a butterfly setup with me as the Red fighter.  We called ‘Turn in, fight’s on!’ and pointed noses at each other to get started.

     Scooter began a turn towards me, and I turned the same cardinal direction as he did to start the one-circle fight.  After 180^o of turn we were pointing at one another again.  He left his power out of AB a little too long, so he only ended up with a 30-knot advantage at that pass (as we learned in the debrief).  We passed close aboard with him slightly low, so we continued our turns in the same direction.  In the debrief when we drew it up, the circles were overlaid, which I haven’t seen before, usually a one-circle fight ends up going rougly the same direction once it starts and looks like overlapping sine waves.  Anyway, I tightened up my the turn a bit, he kept his turn going, and we met fairly neutral but with a good horizontal separation.  Given the turning room, I couldn’t resist, so I started a lead turn across his tail for a two-circle fight and increased my bank to 120^o or so to use some vertical down to maintain what energy I had.  The two-circle fight lasted about another turn and a half before we approached the floor.  I transitioned back to level turning flight, and since he had use of his afterburner and we were at lower altitude where the mighty GE F110-129 engine works really well, he raced around and got on my tail.  I allowed one missile shot (two were required to call a kill), then clamped, or tightened my turn to try to force a) the imaginary missile to overshoot, and b) Scooter to overshoot.  It worked a little bit, but most importantly, it dropped me below our agreed-upon 200 knot minimum airspeed at the floor, so I called terminate over the radio.  Scooter acknowledged the terminate, then we dumped our noses, picked up fighting airspeed again, and climbed back up to 18,000 feet for the next fight.

     We set the next fight up same as before, starting from a butterfly setup.  After the ‘Turn in, fight’s on’ call, we pointed at one another and as we approached the merge, I began a lead turn slightly early to try to entice him to go two-circle against me.  It sort of worked.  He initially turned into me, but nearly immediately afterward he rolled out and began climbing straight up.  If you go vertical, you stand a decent chance of the other guy losing sight of you if he looks back in the cockpit to check his airspeed or something (thank you, Mr JHMCS inventor. . . no need to look back in the cockpit for such things!).  It’s a truism, lose sight, lose the fight.  In any case, I watched him go vertical, and even if you see it, you still have to react correctly, otherwise the bandito can get to a spot where he can put his lift vector at your six o’clock, and that makes the fight that much tougher.  When I saw that, I pulled for all I was worth (I got 8+ Gs) and after 180^o of turn, I actually felt nearly offensive, so rather than go drastically uphill, I decided to try to enter his turn circle.  This would have worked really well except for one thing:  He climbed up into the sun! I momentarily lost sight of him, so I called ‘Blind’ on the radio.  He came back with ‘Continue,’ which meant he still saw me and we could keep fighting.  In retrospect, if I’d immediately gone more uphill and floated the turn at 6G for a second or so, I would have kept him out of the sun.  On the other hand, we would have passed high-aspect and the whole fight would have taken longer.  After about 3 seconds, he appeared out of the sun, passing directly above me.  Perfect! Well, maybe more lucky than perfect, if I hadn’t caught sight of him, who knows where he could have gotten?! In any case, once I saw him again, I pulled everything the jet would give me (about 7G that time), and ended up draining away nearly all my airspeed going over the top.  Lucky for me, I was the Blue fighter, so I had afterburner available.  Not so for Scooter! He had little choice but to point his nose way down in order to get his airspeed back.  I just gently nudged my nervous stallion degree by degree until my nose was pointed slightly downhill, and the engine boosted by generous quantities of JP8 did the rest for me.  I put my nose in his direction, got a radar lock from just over a mile behind him at his 7 o’clock, and simulated shooting two AIM-120s at him.  Score one for Blue!

     We terminated that fight with both of us near bingo fuel.  We didn’t lose any altitude to speak of on that fight, so we immediately set up a 3K’ perch set, just for the sake of doing something useful.  After that, both of us were bingo, so we ‘safed’ up our switches and rocketed on home.

     Everything else after that was, as we say, standard!

     The squadron is starting to put up two external wing tanks, which means we’re going to start doing more intercepts, SEAD, and air-to-ground training.  The past couple months of BFM have been a lot of fun.  Hopefully we’ll get to do plenty of ACT, which is my second-favorite.  Still, with two wing tanks, we can’t usually pull more than 7G, so "max-performing" the jet won’t be as strenuous.  On the other hand, we’ll be getting more flight hours. 

     Me defensive 3K. . . stupid left-turning engagements!