“He hit us with a radar sweep powerful enough to paint us,” McLanahan said. “He must know we’re out here.” McLanahan used the tracer rounds to find the frigate with his forward-looking infrared scanner, and the imaging heatseeking telescope locked on easily to the huge vessel. “I got a lock on the big mother ship. That must be the frigate. Laser rangefinder on… laser firing…” Immediately the laser rangefinder computed the precise distance to the target, completed the firing solution for the B-2’s complement of weapons. McLanahan touched the right-bomb-bay icon on the bottom of his Super Multi Function Display, and the weapons computer picked a SLAM TV-guided missile, automatically reducing the SMFD screen in half and using the right side of the big screen to display SLAM seeker video transmission. “The shit’s going to hit the fan as soon as this puppy goes,” McLanahan reminded Cobb, then he moved the Bombing System Switch from “Manual” to “Auto.” “Missile Counting down… missile one away…”
The right bomb-bay doors slid open, and the single CSRL launcher ejected a SLAM guided missile into the slipstream. The missile fell about fifty feet as its gyroscope stabilization system steadied the fifteen-hundred-pound missile; then, when the air data probes detected the proper airflow and deceleration parameters indicating a clean release from the Black Knight bomber, the powerful turbojet engine kicked in. Following the initial heading from the B-2’s master computer, it descended to less than one hundred feet in the blink of an eye and steered immediately on course for the frigate, taking it on an “over-the-shoulder” trajectory as the B-2 sped away. Seven seconds later, the launcher had rotated and ejected a second missile.
The radar operator on
And then he made a fateful mistake — he shut down his radar a second time, thinking they were under attack by antiradar missiles again.
The CIC officer in charge realized tfre Sea Eagle radar was down again, but hesitated a few seconds before ordering it reactivated so the antiaircraft guns could train on the supersonic targets. There were other supersonic antiradar missiles in the American arsenal, such as the HARM missile — this could be one of them. “Deploy decoys. Bridge, CIC, incoming missiles, evasive action, radar down.” He waited a few seconds for the antiradar-missile decoys to be ejected, then ordered the Sea Eagle radar reactivated and the antiaircraft guns brought on-line.
But at almost Mach one, it took only sixty seconds for the
first SLAM missile to reach its target. With less than thirty seconds left in the first missile’s flight, they had just enough time to acquire the missile and let the Sea Eagle search radar slave the I-band “Rice Lamp” fire-control radars on the incoming missiles. The 37-millimeter guns on the
The left half of the Super Multi Function Display was displaying video transmitted from the.imaging infrared camera on the first SLAM missile, and even Henry Cobb, who normally sat with eyes caged straight ahead on his instrument panel, couldn’t help but take a few glances at the picture as the missile bore into its target. The image was incredible — the sea, seen as shimmering green streaks along the bottom of the picture, whizzed past like some sort of early sci-fi warp drive; and, in the center, the hot dot slowly enlarged and took the shape of a huge warship. The missile was right on course.
Suddenly, several flashes of light could be seen popping from the warship. “They got a lock on the SLAM,” McLanahan said. On the right side of the SMFD, he touched the spinning circular cursor on the 3-D image of the destroyer, spoke “Change target,” then slid his finger to the left. The SLAM missile veered left in response. Just as the video image of the destroyer was about to disappear off the screen, McLanahan slid the cursor to the right, and the missile followed. A few seconds later, McLanahan replaced the cursor on the destroyer. “Thirty seconds to impact,” he told Cobb. “C’mon, baby, you can do it…”
But his efforts were useless. As soon as the missile settled back on course to the destroyer, another large flash erupted, and the video went dark. “Dammit! Lost the first SLAM.” The words SLAM 1 NO CONTACT flashed three times on the left half of the SMFD, then the video from the second missile filled the screen.
