Aces From Hell

Chapter 2 - Flight of the Devils

The Saudi prince Sultan Bin AbdulAziz Al Saud was deep in thought, he knew that the events of yesterday, where 5 Saudi Lightning F.53 which were downed wouldn't have been the work of Yeminis! "The Yeminis simply do not have the kind of training to pull this off", thought the prince but it didn't matter now, for there was someone who was so good and chose to fight on the Yemini side! Those "Yemini" pilots were the only thing standing between the Saudi prince and his ulterior motive which was to carry out a regime change in Yemen to neutralize the threat posed by the Egyptian puppet government in Yemen. His only focus right now was on neutralizing the Yemini Air Force and achieving complete air superiority over Yemen! With those "Yemini" pilots out of the way, the Saudi prince would be able to succeed virtually unopposed. And he was right. The Yemini military was underequipped to take on the Saudis, or to even defend themselves from the Saudi invasion. Diya Al Din knew this and he had pinned all his hopes on Lima Security. But he did not have to worry. Far away from Riyadh, in the Sanaa military airbase, a high ranking officer of Lima Security who was the chief of military operations was briefing the pilots Storm, Vladimir and Lightning on their next "big move". The briefing was over in a short time but a successful completion of objectives drawn up in the briefing would have far reaching consequences. It would totally destroy the pride and arrogance of the Al Saud family. But the chief of military operations was worried. The war had broken out quite suddenly and they had been called at short notice! They had very little resources left to expend. In short, they had to make every shot count. The chief knew if his boys failed, then this war is lost and the Yemini civilians will pay the price in blood! The pilots were also aware of the crisis which was looming over them. Diya Al Din promised a huge reward should the pilots succeed in bringing the war to a stop, now was the time to show to the world the stuff that the pilots of Lima Security were made of. At noon 1200 hours, Storm scrambled his Mig-25P and took off from Sanaa military airbase and headed for the newly constructed airstrip in Karora, Ethiopia, he was also followed closely behind by Vladimir and Lightning.

Lightning was in his F-4E Phantom II but Vladimir was not flying in his MiG-23M. Instead, he chose to fly in a Yemeni Air Force MiG-21PFM as he was well trained in it and Yemen had a small stock of KH-66 GROM missile which could be fired from the MiG-21PFM. The munitions to be used for the planned "big-move" were delivered to the airstrip at Karora by a An-24 of Yemeni Air Force. The munitions included the Kh-66 missile, rocket pods for Vladimir, AIM-7 Sparrows and AIM-9 Sidewinders for Lightning etc. The trio reached Karora before 1300 hours while the An-24 reached at 1400 hours. After fitting their aircrafts with the appropriate loadout the trio set for the first part of their mission which was to take out the fuel storage tanks at Shoaiba Oil Terminal located about 300 km away from karora. Vladimir was to strike the Oil Tanks with his two Kh-66 missiles and rocket pods while Lightning and Storm were to provide escort to Vladimir. The trio maintained low altitude to avoid detection for as long as possible. They reached within 25 kms from the target and the radar of the Saudi Air Defence picked up their signatures. Immediately the Saudi pilots tried to scramble their F-5E to intercept the intruders. But they were not fast enough!!!.

Storm immediately increased his altitude to 20,000 feet in five minutes and began flying at mach 2.5 over the Saudi airspace to distract the 3 Saudi planes into following him while Vladimir attacked the massive Oil Tanks. The plan worked. The Saudi planes were "Decoyed" by Storm and followed him. Meanwhile Vladimir turned on the Missile Launch Power switch on his right side in the cockpit of his MiG-21PFM. Then he switched the HuD of his plane into Ground mode. After this, he moved the weapon selection dial into position 1-2 to select the Kh-66 GROM missile fitted onto pylons 1-2. After this he set his Sapfir-21M radar to Fixed Beam mode by turning on the respective switch. After the "Locked-Beam" appeared on the radar, Vladimir moved the reticule on the HuD over the massive oil tank and locked it once it was over the target. He, then set the target distance calculation switch to auto and the range scale needle started to show the range to the target. Once the range was within 10Km, Vladimir fired his Kh-66 and maintained course. The missile raced towards the massive oil tank and after few moments, it impacted at the side and its warhead detonated upon impact. The massive warhead (nearly 250 pound) and the huge explosion set off the secondary explosion of the fuel and the impact of the blast blew everything around it several hundred metres away. By that time, Vladimir had repeated the same procedure as above and "locked" onto the second tank. And he fired his second Kh-66 from a distance of 4 Km and in short while, the second fuel tank met the same fate as before.