Other weapons were just being uploaded, and Henry Cobb, who had had little experience with the Megafortress project, could only shake his head in amazement. The forward section of the bomb bay contained two four-round clip-in racks that held AGM-136 TACIT RAINBOW antiradar cruise missiles. The aft bomb bay contained a Common Strategy Rotary Launcher filled with smooth, oblong-bodied missiles — eight TV-guided AGM-84E SLAMs, or Standoff Land Attack Missiles.
“Looks like the Megafortresses are getting loaded for bear,” Cobb remarked. They could also see the loading procedures for the Stinger airmine rockets in the tail launcher.
Watching this Megafortress getting ready for combat made McLanahan feel strange — a crashing wave of
But that wasn’t his bird now. He had a new one, a bigger, darker, more lethal one — the B-2 Black Knight, modified like the EB-52 to be a strategic escort bomber. All of the B-2’s weapons were internal, and the sophisticated sensors were buried within the wing leading edges or in the sensor bay in the nose under the crew compartment. The reconnaissance pods were gone, to be replaced by rotary launchers that would carry much more lethal warloads than cameras and radars.
The B-2’s ground crew had just arrived for the pre-takeoff inspection, and since the two crewmen were awake at least an hour before they intended, they had time to look over their Black Knight before reporting to the briefing room. They found little changed. The maintenance crews were going through a normal pre-flight as if the plane were going on another training sortie — they were less than four hours from takeoff and no weapons had been uploaded yet. “Where are the missiles?” Cobb asked McLanahan. “I thought we were loading up on Harpoons or SLAMs for this run.”
“Won’t know what we’ll be doing for at least another two hours yet,” Patrick replied. “We don’t know yet if we’re going after ships, or radars, or ground targets — it could be anything. Once the Joint Battle Staff decides, it’ll take them just a few minutes to snap those launchers and bomb racks in and do a ground check. They can probably do it while other planes are launching.”
They completed a casual walkaround inspection, chatting with the maintenance crews along the way. It was apparent that each and every one of them was just as apprehensive, just as nervous, just as concerned for what was happening on Andersen Air Force Base and in the rest of the Pacific as Cobb and McLanahan.
One of the munitions maintenance men stopped inspecting a SLAM missile seeker head when McLanahan greeted him. “Think we’ll be flying tonight, sir?” the man asked. The “we” was not just a demonstrative — ground crews were just as emotionally and professionally tied to their aircraft as the flight crews. When McLanahan’s B-2 rolled down the runway, a hundred other minds and hearts were right in there with him.
“Wish I could tell you, Paul,” Patrick said. “They tell us to be ready, that’s all.”
The man stepped closer to McLanahan, as if afraid to ask the question that had obviously been nagging at his consciousness: “Are you scared, sir?” he asked in a low voice.
Patrick looked back at the man with a touch of astonishment at the question. Before he could reply, however, some other technician had pulled the man away. “That’s McLanahan, you butthead. He’s the best there is,” Patrick heard the second tech tell him. “He’s too good to get scared.” None of the other crew chiefs dared to speak with the two aviators.
Cobb and McLanahan finished their inspection, checked in with the security guard, who inspected their bags before allowing them to leave, and then the two B-2 crew members stepped out of the hangar into the twilight.
Unlike the controlled, calm tension inside hangar 509, outside it was sheer bedlam. The ramp space in front of the hangars was the only clear space as far as either man could see — the rest of the base was filled with aircraft of every possible description, and the access roads and taxiways were clogged with maintenance and support vehicles.
