Read Online Flash Point by James W. Huston - Free Book Online

around him. There were men in different colored shirts running all around, looking at innumerable things on the airplane. If anything was wrong they would signal that the airplane was down, and they weren’t going to go anywhere. A man ran up to their plane on the left side and held up a board with a number on it — 62,000. Wink gave a thumbs-up and the man took the weight board and turned it to the catapult officer sitting at the side of the flight deck with only his head showing above the deck level. The officer acknowledged the Tomcat’s weight, and dialed it in to the catapult.
    On the signal, Woods brought the wings out of oversweep and put them into automatic. The wings swiftly swept to their full forward position, 20 degrees back from straight out. It was one of the truly remarkable things about the F-14, that it could sweep its wings back and forth, either manually or automatically. It made the large airplane very maneuverable, and a serious fighter. Woods continued to taxi forward slowly, steering the nosewheel with the rudder pedals, and touching the brakes at the top of the rudder pedals to keep from going too fast. As the F-14 approached the shuttle the yellow shirt gave the signal to kneel. Woods hit the switch and the nosewheel collapsed on schedule. The plane crouched down and the launch bar dropped to the deck, working its way over the shuttle as they taxied forward. The yellow shirt signaled Woods to slow the plane down and he felt the familiar clunk as the bar dropped home. Automatically, Woods hit the brakes. The yellow shirt took a quick look and stepped to the side, looking down the track and at Woods. Another man crept under the plane, careful to stay out of the suction of the jet engines. He attached a hold-back bar to the rear of the F-14’s nosewheel to keep it from rolling forward too soon. The bar in place, Woods took his feet off the brakes. Everything looked normal. The yellow shirt raised his right hand at the same time that he slid his left hand toward the bow of the ship. The shuttle jerked forward and put the plane in tension — pressure from the catapult — but not enough to launch them yet.
    Woods put the throttles at full military power and pushed the handles outboard into the detent to keep them from coming aft on the cat shot. “Checklist,” he said calmly, running through it from memory. “Fuel pressure, fuel flow, engine rpm, and TIT all good. No caution or warning lights. Full aft stick.”
    “Clear.”
    “Forward stick.”
    “Good,” Wink replied.
    “Left,” Woods said.
    Wink looked at the port wing to check all four spoilers.
    “Right . . . and rudder.”
    “All good,” Wink said.
    “Ready?” Woods asked.
    “Ready,” Wink said immediately.
    Woods checked his instruments once more. He put his head back against the seat and saluted with his right. The catapult officer, from his glass bubble buried in the flight deck; looked down the deck, examined his instruments, and pushed the launch button.
    Woods felt the immediate jerk of the plane as it was pulled down into the flight deck then hurtled forward by the catapult. The rapid acceleration was thrilling. The shuttle pulled the F-14 from a dead stop to one hundred thirty-five knots in two seconds.
    “Good speed,” Wink said calmly in the same voice he always used when he was sure they had enough airspeed to fly and didn’t need to eject from a cold cat shot.
    Woods rotated the nose up gently above the horizon and climbed away from the carrier, banking hard left into a clearing turn to get away from the ship. An F-18 had been launched off one of the bow cats just before them and had turned to the right, away from them, for the same reason. Woods raised the landing gear and flaps and set his speed at two hundred fifty knots. He climbed to five hundred feet and leveled off.
    Wink changed the radio to Strike and called to report airborne. He strained to look around and saw Boomer being shot off the catapult behind