Crashback by Michael Fabey

Author:Michael Fabey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

CHAPTER 7

Dragon Slayer

It’s a cold, oh-dark-thirty morning in January 2014 as Harry Harris walks across the tarmac at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa. A compact man with graying black hair, he’s dressed in a green flight suit and a well-worn brown leather flight jacket—which is also a well-earned leather flight jacket. As a naval flight officer, Harris has already logged 4,400 hours in the air—and now he’s about to make it 4,408.

The aircraft Harris will be flying in on this mission is a P-8A Poseidon, one of a half dozen Poseidons recently deployed to the Western Pacific. The Poseidons are the navy’s new multi-mission airplane that eventually may replace the various versions of the old P-3 Orions, including the EP-3E Aries version that was involved in the Hainan Island midair collision discussed earlier. The land-based Poseidon has a cruising speed of about 500 mph, a range of about twelve hundred miles with a four-hour on-station window—that is, how long in patrols once it reaches its mission range—and a price tag of about $200 million each. “Multi-mission” means just that: Able to be armed with an array of anti-ship missiles, depth charges, torpedoes, and sonobuoys, and packed with latest-generation electronic gear, the Poseidon can be configured to perform antisubmarine warfare missions, anti-ship strikes, antimine operations, ground strikes on land targets, and electronic signals intelligence-gathering—all while cruising as high as forty-one thousand feet.

Although the Poseidon is based on the Boeing 737 design, no one would mistake it for a commercial airliner. For one thing, except for an observation porthole near the cockpit, there are no windows along the sides; for another, under the wings there are cigar-shaped pods the size of kayaks for the aircraft’s electronics gear and mounts for Harpoon anti-ship missiles. In the cabin there are a couple rows of high-backed seats and six consoles arrayed along the left side to manage the aircraft’s electronics: radar, acoustic sensors, powerful high-resolution and infrared cameras; the cameras can capture the logo on a sailor’s cap from twenty thousand feet up, while the infrareds can actually see through new paint that may have been slapped on to disguise a suspect ship’s name and hull number. The P-8A even has a hydrocarbon sensor to detect exhaust fumes from submarines cruising at snorkel depth; in other words, this plane can smell submarines.

The Poseidon crew is much smaller than the crews of the older P-3s, just nine officers and enlisted personnel, including two pilots and a tactical coordinator (TACCO) to manage the mission; the pilots fly the plane while the TACCO analyzes the data and controls the plane’s weapons. This particular Poseidon is manned by members of Patrol Squadron (VP) Sixteen, the “War Eagles,” and the mission today is simple: head out over the international waters south and east of China and see what they can see: ships, aircraft, electronic chatter, submarines—especially submarines.

It’s simple, but that doesn’t necessarily make any mission routine—particularly not this one.

One reason this mission isn’t routine is because Harry Harris is on it.

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