After a year at Naval Air Station Pensacola, future RIOs were assigned to the Replacement Air Group (RAG), a squadron dedicated to training naval aviators in specific aircraft types.
During the Vietnam War, the Grumman F-14A Tomcat was the first of the American teen-series fighters, which were created using air combat experience against MiG fighters. Despite the fact that the F-14 was a powerful dogfighter, the Tomcat’s fleet air defense duty set it apart. The aircraft was equipped with a strong weapons system known as the AWG-9 that could support the AIM-54 Phoenix, which had an unparalleled one-hundred-mile range and a small onboard radar to guide itself to the target during the last phase of flight.
The AWG-9’s outstanding capabilities necessitated the employment of a Radar Intercept Office (RIO) in the F-14’s back seat to optimize it at various stages of a mission. However, as stated by Tomcat RIO Dave “Bio” Baranek in his book Before Topgun Days: The Making of a Jet Fighter Instructor, being a good F-14 Radar Intercept Officer needed numerous phases of instruction.
After a year at Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola, future RIOs were assigned to the Replacement Air Group (RAG), a squadron dedicated to training naval aviators in specific aircraft types.
Bio was posted to NAS Miramar’s Fighter Squadron (VF) 124 Gunfighters, the RAG for West Coast Tomcat Fleet squadrons, where he was trained as an F-14 RIO.
According to his account in his book, one of the first Tomcat flights stands out in his mind.
Bio and his F-14 instructor pilot (IP), Ron “Crush” Gollhofer, flew a cross-country flight to Denver shortly after arriving at RAG. The flight took place over the weekend, according to Baranek, and he and Crush, along with their wingman, arrived at Buckley Air National Guard Base (now Buckley Air Force Base) outside Denver. They slept at Gollhofer’s parents’ house and attended a Broncos football game, but the highlight of the vacation, according to Bio, was their departure Sunday evening, which coincided with his third Tomcat flight.
When they were ready to take off, Crush instructed Bio to request an “unrestricted climb,” which would allow them to bypass the stepped climb profiles that accommodated a wide range of traffic, from propeller-driven Cessnas to Boeing 737s, and instead use their fighter’s power to quickly gain altitude. Despite the fact that it looked perfectly acceptable for a combatant, it was simply a request that had to be made and granted or denied. However, because air traffic around Buckley was sparse, the request was granted, and Buckley Tower gave Bio and Crush permission to take off and climb to 18,000 feet without restriction.
To better grasp what an unfettered rise looks like, Baranek places us in the cockpit of their Tomcat, which is about to take off: “We took the runway. Crush pressed the brakes and ran the engines to military power, and the jet’s nose dipped. He wiped out the controls, throttled up to the afterburner, checked the instruments, and asked if I was ready to go. I was, and he released the brakes. The nose popped up and we accelerated quickly. I called airspeeds, we rotated, and Crush raised the landing gear and leveled off to fly down the runway as we accelerated. In the evening darkness, I was keenly aware of the bright blue-white glow of flame from our engines forty feet behind me. Lights on hangars and buildings streaked by in my peripheral vision. I looked at our rapidly increasing airspeed as we neared the end of the runway, and Crush yanked back on the stick to launch us into a steep nose-high climb. ‘Buckley Tower, Navy November Juliet 426, airborne, switching Departure.’ I tried to sound like I belonged here, but I’m sure the controllers in the tower knew that I was both new and loving it. Since Buckley is about 5,600 feet above sea level, it took quite a bit less than thirty seconds for us to reach our assigned altitude of 18,000 feet. Crush smoothly leveled off while I rapidly switched through the Departure Control frequency and contacted Denver Center. We were cleared to climb to a higher altitude and start the route back to Miramar. I was storing all the sensations and images in my long-term memory, and looking forward to a nice flight home, when Crush said, ‘Okay, get some contacts on the radar.’”
A MISSILEX (a Missile Exercise, in which a “live” missile is launched against a drone acting as an airborne target) was perhaps the most difficult training setting for a RIO of all the scenarios experienced by a Tomcat crew. In his book Before Topgun Days, Baranek recounts the story of the second AIM-7 Sparrow he ever fired: in December 1982, while assigned to the VF-24 Fighting Renegades Fleet squadron, he and Lieutenant Commander Steve “Drifty” Smith were selected to fire a Sparrow at a target over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California.
Because the missile shot had to follow a test and evaluation (T&E) profile, both the drone and the Tomcat had to fly supersonically, which added to the already difficult practice scenario.
Drifty pushed the throttles to Zone 5 (highest afterburner for F-14A) as they approached the launch range, and they sped to Mach 1 when an AQM-37 target drone was launched by an A-6 Intruder operated by the Pacific Missile Test Center.
Let’s join Bio in the Tomcat cockpit once more to experience the tense moments he had during the MISSILEX: “Our range to the target was thirty miles. That may sound like long-distance, but we were supersonic and so was the drone. Add the two speeds, and you find that the range was shrinking by more than two thousand feet each second. […] One minute after the start [of the intercept], we were at the right range and angle to launch the Sparrow. I pushed the red ‘missile launch button. The 500-pound weapon jumped off the jet with a strong thump – that was the small explosive charges that made sure it cleared the plane – and rocketed out ahead of us. […] I sweated the radar picture. I had two small green lights indicating the radar was still locked on the drone. But the track was near the edge of my scope. If it went off the scope, that meant the radar antenna could not turn enough to follow the target. Our radar would break lock, the AIM-7 would go ‘stupid,’ and I would have to try to find that little drone again. That was hard enough when fighter and target were going 300 knots or less; at over 600 knots… I didn’t want to think about it. Halfway through the turn, my “radar lock” lights went out. I had messed up the intercept! ‘Broke lock,’ I growled to Drifty. ‘Going to search.’ I didn’t have to include the dammit! that I was thinking. ‘Bio, relax,’ Drifty drawled. ‘It was a direct hit. We broke lock because the target is gone. We just blew it out of the sky.’”
All images used belongs to the author Dave “Bio” Baranek