Part of the war fighting machine in the Korean Peninsula is a GCI (Ground Control Intercept) Radar site. Ours at OSAN, AB was located west on the coast of South Korea. It’s looked similar to this.
For a typical mission, the flight lead would call our GCI site (Callsign Blue Boy) and brief with the controller assigned for the flight. Occasionally, the Blue Boy controller would request a “bubble check” on the way out to our working airspace. Blue Boy was located west of Osan near the coast of South Korea. We normally passed high over head on the way to the airspace while climbing for altitude. When a bubble check was requested, we would delay the climb out and proceed to the bubble at low altitude and, of course, at high speed. Subsonic speed that is. Supersonic speed at low altitude, close in, could cause physical damage. The point of the bubble check was a little motivation for the controllers who were in a fairly remote location and spent most of their time in a dark room with no windows. With advance notice of an impending bubble check, they would come outside and watch from the cat walk that extended around the radar dome.
So, on one sortie, I made the normal phone call, briefed our controller on our mission setup, and offered up a bubble check. He enthusiastically accepted my offer.
We briefed a two ship intercept mission with radar, heat, and guns (simulated) available. Each of our setups would start with a fifty mile separation, call ready, fights on, and take up intercept headings from Blue Boy. We would first practice long range radar contacts, shoot radar missiles (Fox 1) to reach out and touch our opponent. Then we would maneuver for turning room and convert to the stern for heater (infra red, Fox 2) shots. At this point the fight would typically turn into a knife fight in the phone booth, in the vertical, uphill, in a scissors, and a gun fight at the end. At an appropriate time, we would knock it off, separate back to the start points, and do it all over again. These sorties typically lasted between 30 to 40 minutes depending on how vigorously we used AB.
So, we finished the briefing, went to the ops counter, signed for our jets, went down to life support to gather up our flight gear, and stepped to the jets. After preflighting the jets, we climbed up, strapped em on, started up, and taxied to EOR (End of Runway) for pre takeoff checks by crew chiefs. Once completed, I called for take off with the tower, received clearance for takeoff, and lined us up for a two ship formation takeoff. A quick engine run up, thumbs up from #2, a head knot from me to release brakes, and we were off. As lead, I would push the throttles all the way to the mechanical MIL power stops and reduce back a half inch or so to give #2 a power advantage in maintaining position.
After lift off, I rocked #2 out to tactical formation as we leveled at about 500 feetish. I took up a heading for Blue Boy and switched us over to tactical frequency and checked #2 in on the radio. As prebriefed, I gave Blue Boy a heads up for the bubble check. The controller replied, “Roger that, see ya on the catwalk”. Now, with a visual on the radar dome, we selected AB, #2 was stacked slightly high, still in tactical spread, and I prepared for a close inspection of the dome. Just short of the dome, I pitched up slightly, rolled to inverted, and passed over the dome close enough to see that no one was on the cat walk.
After passing, I rolled back upright, came out of burner, and started us climbing up to the prebriefed setup altitude. A few miles west of the dome, Blue Boy comes up on the radio and asks if we were still doing a bubble check. YGTBSM! We had just passed directly overhead in AB at transonic speed (about 500+ knots) and they didn’t hear us?! All I could say was “yeah, about two minutes ago”. Crickets and then “We didn’t hear anything”.
Maybe if we were supersonic?
