from 2006, written as 10 x mma free msgs on nokia net phone. odd how my lover is annie and when i roll our warplane, her hair is all wild. like in the crap film 50 shades... also that stupid cunt putin the dog should take note, this story is from the soviet/russian side. and portrays them as people. this could happen... actually t720 plane... my error.
FINAL FLIGHT
Harriers hit us at dawn. Did their job pretty well. Bombed our runway, cratering the tarmac in a dozen places, killing six groundcrew, two aircrew and two officers. Our fuel truck went-up, too, as did three planes. We can use the grass to fly; we’ll miss our groundcrew, but we can service our own jets. Sacha and his WSO never got to the shelter. A sad loss, we’ll fight back even harder. Officers, screw them. Fuelling by hand from 50-gallon drums and hand pump is hard, but what we train for. Our planes can’t be replaced. Scorched and blasted to bits, like our lost men. Gone. Time to fly, to hit back against NATO. Yes, we’ll really screw them over. Everyone to the briefing tent, including my Annie. She’s my co-pilot, navigator, Weapon System Operator, and sensor operator. She’s good, that’s why I chose her to be with me in battle. She is second-to-none – and I’m in love with her, completely. If our officers knew of our affair, I’d be grounded – she would be transferred at the least. But, this is war – World War III, to be exact.
We receive a full briefing considering our field conditions. Our officers are jerks, but good at their job. Everyone listened, wanting to miss nothing. We all knew some would die.
To our warplanes! Take the netting off – annoying as it always snags on the eight-blade prop. Open the cockpit canopy. Annie climbs into her front cockpit to do the pre-flight check and bring the systems up. I do the walkround checking to see if anything isn’t as it should be. I get to the weapons and remove the arming pins. Our loadout is two Brightstar IF air-to-air missiles on each outer wing pylon, two Saffron anti-tank missiles inboard, two Medusa anti-radar missiles on the inner wing pylons and, to enhance our range, three drop-tanks: two inboard of the Medusas and a centreline one behind the semi-recessed twin 23mm cannon pack. This Annie armed when I was in the cockpit. Nothing amiss, I climbed aboard and did my own pre-flight, checked with Annie that everything was green, then closed the canopy.
Signalling to the groundcrew to remove the power lead, I initiated start-up procedure: six steps to get our eight-blade prop spinning. Hear the APU whine and turn the turboprop over. Noise building, even in my earphones. All okay on the MFD showing engine parameters. Move the single throttle from idle to minimum to max power. Feel our bird come alive. See Annie busy with her screens. Check to see if she is okay, that our plane is; switch to encrypted channel and quick clearance to go. Yes! We roll out of our earth revetment to the grass take-off strip. Why didn’t the Harriers sow denial weapons? We’d have lost more jets. Full power, away we go, bumping over the grass past burnt-out planes, to the sky. We are airborne! Climb out at shallow angle to stay below NATO radar (we don’t believe it, radar has moved on) and give us maximum surprise.
Our fuel burn is higher but we are so near the front... I scan my three MFD screens, see we’re being picked up by NATO radar, so I drop us lower – our radar-absorbing paint and carbon fibre helps, but death is death. My tension increases.
I see Annie before me, her head moving from display to display, to her HUD, to look outside and back again. I feel the urge to tell her what she means to me, that the songs are true. I don’t. I order a new course to our target. We all fly alone. Good or bad tactics? Historians will discuss this later, if anyone survives this.
Suddenly, our RWR comes alive – NATO fighter! I turn into the threat that my display shows is to my port. I order Annie to turn our ECM jammer to manual then to auto. Should’ve done it before! Could be our death! I switch my HUD to dogfight mode and do a series of turns to check our tail. Clear. There! Sun glinting on a canopy, a flare of flame as a missile is launched. Heat-seeker this close; dropping chaff to break his lock, flares to blind his missile. Come on, Annie, jam his radar, be my eyes. G-force crushes me, my turn takes us to a wing above the ground. Be careful! Climb, full combat power. Turn, roll, face him. His Sidewinder misses as my turn is too tight and the missile cannot follow us. BANG! As it detonates twenty metres away, shockwave from 25 pounds of iron filled with explosives shakes my plane. A Devil slap, white-hot shrapnel cuts into the right wing, two neat holes in the carbon fibre skin. I glance at the holes, at my MFD showing minor damage only, nothing bad, and at the holes again, then at the enemy. I recognise him as an F-20 Tigershark as she shoots past. NATO’s best fighter means trouble.
Annie turns our radar to air-to-air, gives me control of it and our two Brightstar missiles and wishes me luck as I turn and follow him. Almost out of sight, he arcs around in a high g-turn to re-attack. My Topaz radar acquires him, I lock him up with my HOTAS controls and I grunt as a green box appears on my HUD. His coffin, should he enter it. My helmet sights back it up, gives overkill when my enemy is outside my HUD. I bring our nose up, roll wings level and speed towards him. Several hundred feet up and climbing, visible to AWACS and everyone else scanning heavenwards. Growl in my ear. Lock-on! F-20 in my helmet sights, just above my HUD. Press the tit, port Brightstar ignites on a tail of fire, spears away so fast. I half roll, turn and dive away for the deck. I punch out half-a-dozen flares and chaff, ignoring the centre MFD and HUD repeater saying that Annie is dispensing the same damn countermeasures. Close in, our jammers struggle due to his high power agile radar. The RWR gives bearings on two search radar. SAMs. More dangerous than any F-20 – hidden death from below. Cutting it fine, I dive us below tree level, roll into a valley and safety. Our RWR goes black. Glancing around and above, I see a brief explosion over a hill. Did we get him or did he evade our missiles, like we did his – just? Ground warning horn blaring – ten feet limit! I pull-up around fallen boulders, turn around valley sides, follow a winding path. In my element, I lift my wing as the horn goes off again. Annie shouts her curses at me, the war...
Recklessly, I scream at her, my Annie who’d die if I push instead of pull the stick. Who I’d never let anyone else have – like my plane. I killed the damn horn, pushed my control stick and we headed lower. Five feet above level ground, she screams in terror, startling me. I pull-up over a boulder as big as a tank. Glancing at my mirror, I see dust kicked up by my prop-wash. I let our nose rise, kick full right rudder and snap-roll in the valley. Scream my love for Annie, who turns to look at me in terror, some loose black hair twirling with the g-force. She sees my wicked grin and returns it, briefly. I level off as the valley dies out. Annie curses me, says she loves me for always, that I’m the best pilot. I smile. This is as close to marriage as we could get.
Hell! Armoured column! Tanks passing under us. No radar. I line-up to fire my 23mm cannon, see shells strike a tank without harm. Another. Too much top-armour. Troop carrier. Quick correction – got him! Light armour smashed by my explosive and armour piercing shells. I smile at the thought of NATO troops being blown to bits, burned alive and killed. Annie brings up ground scan on the radar, tells me what I can already see: thirty-plus vehicles on one narrow road; now SAM or anti-aircraft defence as the RWR was blank. I fire at another APC. Ordered Annie to lock-up a tank with a Saffron on our next pass. At full throttle, I open the air-breaks, turn on a wing and shoot back down the line. Annie smoothly talks herself through her act, launches. I felt the kick back as our port anti-tank missile left the rail. Down it went to kill a Challenger tank in one go. Soon, our other Saffron did the same, another tank and crew dead. What a run! Better than any training exercise, any day! Around again with guns blazing, searching-out troop carriers that stop to try and save their men. I get one kill, another damaged before my ammo runs out. Annie calls up the squadron and army tank-killing choppers to come to the party. We head-back to base.
Mission almost over, quick exhilaration of battle leaves me tired. Annie snaps me out of my reverie as we change course. My IFF gives off friendly signals as Annie tells me Major Topol, our CO, has congratulated us on the tank find. He is inbound to attack, co-ordinating with two other of our planes. Two others had used all their ammo on pre-set targets, they RTB. We had already lost one jet with crew missing. Annie made it clear that it was so nearly us, I stopped her. I am a better pilot than what-was-his-name? The new guy from Kirov. Newbies die first. Still, my two years on Sukhoi Su-25s in Afghanistan had taught me well. I was hit by small arms fire nine times, lost an engine to a Stinger and struggled back in a dying jet. There weren’t many 25s then, I was honoured by my CO but that meant little when I saw my comrades die every week. Then I learnt to hate officers, transferred out of the war to the new Aeroprogress training centre on the new Sukhoi T.134 attack fighter. My combat experience was needed due to their new design being ready to be shipped to the war. We spent two years deciding what worked, what didn’t. A guerrilla war was nothing for what we planned for: the full takeover of Western Europe by force. I was shocked when I learnt the truth, but I had expected it. NATO had sabre-rattled against our front line re-equipment. Our new T.134 was just such a weapon, along with attack choppers like our Mil 28 and Kamov 52, our MiG 29 and Sukhoi 27 multirole fighters, our Tupelov 22M3 and Tupelov 160 nuclear bombers. Not to mention the nuclear missiles for if – and when – NATO responded. We had new tanks, APCs and all the other equipment we would need. As the T.134 was a two-seater, I was crewed with Annie to show her what tactical fighting was all about. Falling in-love wasn’t part of the plan, our secret and ours alone. Now we needed one another like never before. It was total war.
Suddenly, our RWR came alive with three ground radars searching for us. Immediately one locked-on to us, warning tone changing from a mesmerising sound like a bird to an evil report that I turned down. A second had got intermittent lock. We, me and Annie, talked, planned. Climbing so we popped-up permanently on their scopes, we turned our jammer to manual. Annie gently found their frequency, told the computer to follow any shifts and jammed them every three seconds, on a low power setting. We didn’t have long before a Roland SAN came after us. Now! Annie ordered. She launched our port Medusa in hunter-killer mode, down the NATO radar beam. He would be hit, even if silent. He emitted and died, data linked to us before impact confirmed a hard-kill. Annie launched our last offensive weapon at another site; this was further and launched two Roland SAMs on our tail. I got us in the weeds, Annie dumped countermeasures and jammed them. Rolling and turning over flat fields at 500 knots was fast but not Mach 3 like a Roland. I checked my fuel on my MFD; time to drop our wing tanks. Jolt as they fell free, our centre one will follow when empty. Speed 550 now, no indication of a hard-kill. Both Rolands go whizzing off our track, ballistic. We got past them! Just one IR missile left, better take no chances. Got our map up on my centre MFD, check with Annie for best course. Fuel is okay but combat must be avoided.
On our encrypted radio something comes through. NATO just went tactical with nukes! Annie swears. This is it – they did it, pushed the button. More orders, Annie patches them to me. In code. I go white. All planes RTB to re-fuel and re-arm with tactical nuclear weapons. No words said, just a code sequence unique to each surviving plane. Target data discs would be given when we landed, our bombs loaded with engine running. Hot refuelling. Annie already gave me the two best ways back. I take the fastest. NATO troops fire small arms at us, red tracer arcs past us, missing. Jinking around trees and low hills we come to base. I send our codeword and slow to land. A fast blur distracts me. No! Annie!
Whiteness.
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