Читать книгу El Dorado Canyon - Joseph Stanik - Страница 12
ОглавлениеPrologue: The Air Battle Near Tobruk
“Bogeys have jinked back at me for the fifth time. They’re on my nose now, inside of twenty miles.”1
“Master arm on. Master arm on. Centering up on the T.”
“Bogeys have jinked back into me again. Sixteen miles. Centering the dot.”2
“Fourteen miles. ‘Fox one’! Fox one!”3
“Aw, Jesus!”
“Ten miles. He’s back on my nose! Fox one again!”
“Six miles. Six miles.”
“‘Talley two’! Talley two! Eleven o’clock high. They’re turning into me!”4
“Five miles. Four miles.”
“Okay . . . Got a missile off.”
“Good hit! Good hit on one!”
“Roger that. Good kill! Good kill!”
“I’ve got the other one.”
“Select ‘Fox two’! Select Fox two!”5
“All right, Fox two!” . . .
“Shoot him!”
“I don’t got a tone!”6
“Lock him up! Lock him up!”
“Shoot him! Fox two!”
“I can’t! I don’t have a fucking tone!”
“Good kill! Good kill!”
“Good kill!”
“Pilot ejected.”
“Okay. Let’s head north. Head north.”
“Let’s go down low, on the deck. Unload, five hundred knots. Let’s get out of here!”
“We’re showing two good chutes in the air here.”
“Roger that. Two Floggers. Two Floggers splashed.”7
THIS FRENETIC DIALOGUE between American airmen was captured by the recording equipment in their fighter aircraft. It describes vividly the air battle that took place between two U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcats and a pair of Libyan MiG-23 Floggers on 4 January 1989 in the noonday sky over the central Mediterranean Sea. The entire engagement—from the moment the Floggers left their base in Libya until the Tomcats shot them down—lasted about seven and a half minutes. The combat occurred just sixteen days before the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
At the start of the new year 1989, Ronald Reagan and Muammar al-Qaddafi were engaged in a process that had become all too familiar during the previous eight years. Typically it involved the following progression: first an underlying controversy, then an escalating war of words, and finally a demonstration of American military power. On three previous occasions the process had culminated in hostilities. There were important differences between this confrontation and those of 1981 and 1986, however. This time the controversy did not involve an illegal territorial claim, subversion, or terrorism.8 It concerned the likelihood that Libya was developing the capacity to produce chemical weapons. This time the military action did not take place in the Gulf of Sidra or in the skies over Tripoli and Benghazi. It happened north of Tobruk, an historic city in northeast Libya. This time the battle between U.S. and Libyan forces was for the most part unexpected (whereas in 1981 and 1986 the United States had determined when and where it would challenge Qaddafi militarily). This time Qaddafi called the shot by deciding to confront a U.S. naval task force as it steamed through the central Mediterranean several miles from the Libyan shoreline. Nevertheless, the outcome of this clash was the same as the others before it: for the fourth and final time in eight years Ronald Reagan’s military had trounced the armed forces of Muammar al-Qaddafi.
