"Angels High"

"Homeplate, this is Striker One. We are being jammed by probable enemy force from the North West. Enemy raid strength and raid direction is unknown. Please advice."

The radio officer on the damaged Iowa was momentarily startled by the voice, before he realised who was speaking to him on the net.

Flight Lieutenant Catherine 'Vixen' Scarlett was the first female combat pilot in the United States Navy. She was a damn fine pilot, with the reflexes of a cat and the killer instinct of a tiger. But it had been a hard road to the Mark III Martin-Baker ejection seat of the Grumman F-14 Tomcat for her.

She reckoned that half of her time was spent fighting off the attentions of both male chauvinistic pigs (who sought to get her sacked) and overenthusiastic Romeos (who sought to get her into the sack) rather than actually engaging the Reds.

It wasn't her fault that the Romeo's on the Iowa swarmed to her like bees to a flower. In fact, Scarlett had often cursed her good looks. She acknowledged that looks had helped her a lot when she was trying to get her way, or avoid getting into trouble for her many brushes with the military police. However, more than one superior officer had looked upon her with contempt as an empty-headed blonde bimbo (she cut her hair to shoulder length in a fruitless attempt to avoid the stereotype) who was going to get good REAL men killed trying to take care of her.

And dealing with female superior officers was hell. Scarlett had gone around with her hair tied back in a severe bun, worn baggy clothing, and stooped her posture in vain attempts to avoid the hostile attentions of other females in the service with heavier shoulderboards who were jealous of her youth and looks.

The Vixen reckoned that the Reds were easier to fight. At least it was pure skill against skill. no backroom politics to worry about.

Vixen did not have the stocky build that most pilots, male or female, had. Rather, she was rather tall and lanky, with a set of magnetic green eyes that had perfect twenty-twenty vision. She was best described as a 'waif, only on the tall side' as quoted by her backseater, Flight Lieutenant (jg) Howard 'Bear' Jones. He had gotten the job of being her RIO (Radar Intercept Officer) for two of his qualities. A fine sense for the F-14 Tomcat's electronics, and a neutral attitude towards females in the Navy. Meaning, he didn't try to put her down or get her into the sack. And Scarlett was infinitely grateful for that.

The Vixen chewed on her lower lip, a habit that she unconsciously displayed when nervous or excited. The radio crackled.

"Wait one." There was a pause as the radio officer conferred with Rear Admiral Burke, the overall commander of the Iowa's battlegroup. The four F-14's continued cruising in a wide, slow figure eight pattern to economise on their fuel.

The Iowa's flight deck was still fouled, it wouldn't do to start losing planes before the battle due to 'flames-outs' -Navy jargon for "running out of fuel in mid-flight". Carriers needed clean decks for flight ops, even the smallest piece of debris could end up being sucked into an engine and bring down an expensive plane and experienced pilot. For this reason, the fuel-carrying A-6 Corsairs were unable to take off to give the fighters a top-up of fuel via mid-air refuelling before the upcoming battle.

Vixen was worried. She knew that the Russians had an air force. Thankfully, it wasn't any match for the air-power of the Allies. In her youth, she had listened to stories of the massed MiG attacks of the Stalin War. During those dark days, Allied airmen had an average lifespan of a few days, the Russians enjoying a numerical advantage of ten to one. Entire columns of good men had died before ever seeing the front-line.

Now, the tables had turned and it was the Allies that enjoyed numerical advantage, if only in numbers of fighter jets. However, Vixen was no fool.

With the battlegroup crippled by the submarine attack, the Russians would be idiots to give up the prize of the Iowa and her support vessels.

Now two questions remained. Would the Russians hold off their air attack force and wait for the fighters to start flaming out? Or would they come in with a full swing and roundhouse punch, relying on brute force to shoulder past the Allied CAP (Combat Air Patrol) and attack the crippled fleet?

Either was not good. Vixen had no desire to end up in the freezing waters of the Artic. She was certainly not overly enthusiastic to become a frozen Popsicle snack for some commie-loving polar bear.

Her RIO suddenly called out from the backseat.

"Vixen. The Reds are going for the unsubtle approach. Jamming has increased and distance to source is getting lower fast. These guys are definitely on afterburner, anxious buggers eh? The commander of the jammers is smart, he is using on-off tactics so that the Phoenixes cannot use their home-on-jamming lockon feature."

He was referring to the AIM-54 Phoenixes carried by the Tomcat. With their extremely long range of over a hundred miles, the Phoenixes were a crucial advantage for the Allies, giving them the 'first-strike' advantage that was so important in air combat. The multi-million dollar missiles also had 'home-on-jam', which allowed the Phoenix to lock onto jamming planes without needing a radar lock from the Tomcat.

Problem was that the jamming effected the radars of the Tomcats and Phoenixes, reducing the Allied advantage. The Phoenix had a good chance of hitting with optimal conditions. However, given the weather conditions and the on-off jamming, the pilots might as well throw stones at the MiGs. The on-off jamming was working very well for the Reds. The HARM air-to-ground missiles had a memory feature to memorise the location of a ground-based radar site even if it had shut itself down for self-preservation. Such a memory feature was useless in a Phoenix, the targets being able to move in the time that the missile had lost the jamming signal.

Vixen cursed softly under her breath. This was going to be close. However, she told herself that this was what she got for daring to be a fighter pilot instead of a desk jockey or base-camp commando.

She smiled grimly. It was time to kick ass and take numbers. No prizes for second place in air-to-air combat. Only a place on the menu of a commie polar bear with an autographed picture of Romanov over his dining table.
(Bear didn't take offence at her frequent use of 'polar bear' jokes. But then, Bear was Bear. Even Vixen had trouble sometimes trying to get more reactions out of his placid exterior.)

The radio crackled again. This time, there was no hesitation in the radio officer's voice.

"All flights, this is Homeplate. Proceed forward and engage at maximum range. Do not, repeat, do not engage afterburner unless under missile attack. Flight deck will be clear in the estimated time of fifteen minutes. Hold off Russian attack and break away on command to clear the way for the Aegis SAM's. We will get fuel to you asap."

"Good luck."

The Vixen's lips curled in a half-smile as she pointed the nose of her Tomcat towards the incoming Reds.

"You ain't getting me for lunch, my furry buddy."

Vixen kept her eyes straight ahead, searching for the tell-tale pinprick of light that could grow into the head of an enemy missile in the space of an eyeblink. Her systems were still lost in the fog of jamming. There were at least a dozen Russian jammers out there with the bulky jamming pods tucked underwing and spewing out EM noise.

Bear counted down the range. They passed eighty, seventy, sixty.

Suddenly, Bear became animated.

"Burnthrough. We have burnthrough." Bear was referring to the Tomcat's AWG-9 radar having closed to a range where its signals were able to overwhelm the jamming.
"Vixen. Raid count is fifty-plus inbounds west. Figure a dozen jammers hanging back. They are coming in at two thousand feet. Can't be sure of plane types yet. Could be MiG-29's though, so watch out."

Vixen toggled the radio. "Homeplate, This is Striker One. We have burnthrough. Raid count fifty at two thousand west. Plus dozen jammers. Request weapons free." She reached down without taking her eyes off her front and flipped open the master arm switch, pulling the lever down into 'Fire' mode from its previous 'Safe' position.

"Striker One. This is Homeplate. Weapons free. Go to afterburners but watch the fuel. Good hunting."

Vixen kicked in the afterburners, the Tomcat surging forward to Mach 2.34 as the AWG-9 started to lock onto individual Russian planes. Around her, the other Tomcats were gunning their engines as well, Twenty-four F-14's against sixty-plus aircraft.

The odds were against them this time. However, the incoming planes were at a severe disadvantage. When the Phoenixes started to come for them, it would be a toss-up between dumping the anti-ship weapons that slowed them down, or holding on to them in hopes of breaking through the F-14's to launch them at USS Iowa and her battlegroup.

The radar locked onto the first target. Vixen automatically switching to Phoenixes and pulling the trigger. A white-painted missile dropped from the Tomcat, firing its motors. Another followed the first a second later.

Around her, smoke trails from the brilliant wakes of the AIM-54 Phoenixes lighted up the grey sky, each one a bundle of sensitive electronics and high explosive fitted with a remorseless robot brain, boosted by a rocket motor giving them a velocity of around Mach 5. They screamed in for the Russians, who were now just thirty miles out from the Tomcats and two hundred from the fleet.

The wave of blips indicating the Phoenixes closed in on the Russians. And twenty of the incoming wave were blotted out, terminated by the forty-eight Phoenixes. Vixen saw the blip targeted by her first Phoenix disappear off the scope with grim satisfaction. However, her second missile went wild, losing its target and falling harmlessly into the sea. Twenty kills out of forty-eight launches was bad.

"Damn it. The Phoenixes are suffering in this sort of weather. We are shooting down on the bastards and the winds are mucking up the sea's surface, giving the seeker heads false targets at water-level. Some of our birds must have gone into the drink instead." Bear commented dryly.
Vixen flicked the weapons over to Sparrow radar-seeker missiles. The other Tomcats of Twilight, Roland, Ukelele, Vandal and Wombat flights, each comprising of four F-14's, doing the same thing.

"They have a lock!" Bear hollered a moment before the alarm cut in. "Launch! Radar-seeker! Eleven o'clock low!"

Vixen glanced at the radar-warning display. Some Russian had gotten a lock on her Tomcat and launched a radar-guided missile.

She twisted the stick violently, letting the Tomcat fall over in a snap roll before executing a series of corkscrews and turns that confused the Russian radar-seeker head. At the same time, her left thumb triggered off a series of chaff bundles, the aluminium-coated plastic shreds cluttering the radar and offering the Russian missile a large number of ghost targets.

The rolls were punishing, Vixen straining for breath as the she fought to keep her eyes towards the direction the missile was incoming. 

Continued reading here...