Mike Sutton - Typhoon

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First published by Penguin Michael Joseph 2021
Published in Penguin Books 2022

Copyright Mike Sutton and Clifford Thurlow, 2021

The moral right of the authors has been asserted

Front cover photos Paul Biddles and Scott McPhee

Picture credits: Keith Campbell, Capture A Second Photography

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future editions of this book.

ISBN: 978-0-241-53601-8

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Dedicated to the families of pilots everywhere

The soldiers voice burst onto the radio.

Dragon. Are you visual with three ISIS fighters running to the east?

Affirm.

Roger. They have been engaging friendlies and are now repositioning to attack the flank. They pose an imminent threat. We need a strike on these targets immediately. How long will it take you to set up?

The American accent requesting air support was doing his best to disguise the urgency in his voice.

Copy. About sixty seconds.

It needed the lightest touch on the controls to ease the Typhoon into a left turn, staying high over the advancing ISIS fighters. I trained the targeting camera into the middle of the fight and looked down through the canopy.

Below, a huge battle was raging on the outskirts of Ramadi, to the west of the capital, Baghdad. Coalition troops were bogged down by enemy fighters who fired automatic weapons as they dodged in and out of trenches carved deep into the ancient bedrock. Soldiers were running in all directions. All around them were puffs of dust kicked up by rounds as they smashed into the ground. Smoke from an RPG spiralled over the trench line and slammed into a compound wall.

We had to keep emotions under control and work out who was who.

I could see on the Litening pod camera three ISIS fighters race across a field, protected from the Iraqi forces sight line by an extended patch of scrub. They separated. Two ran to the north and set up a new firing position. The third continued along an irrigation channel, stooped with rifle in hand, then threw himself down against a bank of earth and opened fire once more against the coalition troops.

We needed to split the Typhoon formation and strike both groups. I glanced across at my wingman Cal, Nick Callinswood. He was about a mile away and slightly high, his jet appearing like a grey dart against the chalky blue sky. The Typhoon looked ready, menacing. Cal had flown close air support missions on Tornados in Afghanistan. I was glad of his experience.

Dragon 2, are you visual with the individual who just broke from the three?

Affirm, Cal answered.

Your target. Well prosecute simultaneously. Deconflict laser codes. Well strike on a heading of 060 degrees, from battle formation.

Dragon 2. Copy.

We could not release a GPS weapon against mobile targets. If they moved at the last moment, the weapon would likely miss and hit the programmed coordinate. By using the laser spot and slewing the camera to put the target in the cross hairs, the weapon entered a home-on-laser attack that would be more accurate.

Dragon cleared to engage. The soldiers voice was rushed, pressing. He was a specialist, our eyes on the ground trained in coordinating air support. A joint terminal attack controller (JTAC).

I settled the targeting camera, fired the laser and pressed down hard with my thumb on the red weapon release button on the stick. I felt a small thud through the airframe as a Paveway 4 laser-guided bomb was unleashed into the airflow.

One away, thirty seconds, I called on the radio.

I stared back into the cockpit and made constant minute adjustments to the targeting system. I could hear my breath racing through the oxygen mask. I heard Cal release too, moments later.

The earth erupted. The three fighters were killed outright and instantly. I felt nothing. No elation. A numbness.

There was no time to dwell. In a fast jet, theres never enough time.

Troops in contact, the radio screamed once more.

Cal was immediately retasked onto another group of ISIS fighters engaging the Iraqi troops. He carried out another direct hit. It was relentless.

We had struck multiple targets across the region. An anti-aircraft gun, an ammunition storage building, a sniper and now direct support to troops badly outnumbered. It had been such an intense fight we were running out of weapons. Beneath us, the fighting raged on.

The attack controller was straight back on the line.

Dragon. Confirm you have the 27 mm today?

Affirm. We have 27 mm.

Roger that, he replied. Ive got a gun target for you. Standby for the talk-on.

Holy shit.

A gun target. Three enemy fighters hidden in a scrappy bush pinning down friendly troops.

This was something I had trained to use for years in the Jaguar and Typhoon but had never been required to fire it in anger. Strafing was risky. We were almost clean out of bombs and such was the severity of the situation on the ground, they wanted to resort to fast jet cannon fire. It would be the first operational use of the Typhoons gun.

My throat had become dry and I could feel the sweat streaming down my neck. To fire the gun, I would need to get really low, right on top of the fighters involved in this contact. My heart quickened. I could feel the pistol resting against my chest. The last captured airman had been brutally killed by a screaming mob. Ejecting in these circumstances was a horrific prospect. This thought and a thousand others reeled through my mind and were instantly wiped like raindrops from a windscreen. I needed total, complete and absolute focus.

In the head up display, I selected the gunsight. It showed a single dot, which had to be placed on the target, surrounded by a range countdown circle. During a strafe attack, you need to point the aircraft, not the gun. There was no guidance or precision homing to assist. The cannon was fixed to the boresight of the airframe. I had to line up the aircraft nose and physically aim the 27 mm rounds at the mark. The aircraft computers could take into effect the force of gravity on the rounds as they left the cannon at almost 4,000 feet per second. This was my only assistance.