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Roger Ball!
He was the second of two children and born on 25 January 1940 in Shandon Baptist Hospital in Columbia South Carolina. He, in every way, gave the appearance of a normal, healthy, well-developed kid of average height, slender but not skinny. History would show that he was anything but normal.
His name was John Monroe Smith, and “Roger Ball!” is his story—a tale that should be told. It intertwines the true, firsthand accounts and experiences of a fighter pilot with the significant developments in the fighter community and historical events in which Captain John Monroe Smith, USN, call sign “Hawk” was a part. Finally, it speaks to the men who laid their careers and sometimes their very lives on the line for their shipmates and their country.
Hawk was a legend in the fighter community. During his thirty-year career, he forged a reputation as a skilled and lethal aviator in the air-to-air combat arena, a natural tactician, and consummate leader. To many, he was one of the most essential pathfinders in the modernization of the naval air war arts.
He was just a man, but his story, his life adventure, is a high-fidelity history of personal achievements for naval tactical aviation, devotion to a cause, and service to his nation. It was a time during and shortly after the Vietnam conflict that America became ideologically divided. The military was disillusioned with the intrusion of nonwarriors in the White House over the conduct of the war, and tactical aviation of all the services was struggling to catch up to the realities of the war’s hard lessons. It was a time when the Navy needed leaders and tenacious thinkers to set things right again. It was Hawk’s time!
TOPGUN F-5 Instructor who devising tactics to defeat Joe “Hoser” Satrapa F-14
Blue-gray smoke curled over the tail of Hawk’s Tiger as the tires kissed the baked concrete at MCAS Yuma Friday afternoon. He cleared the runway and taxied to the detachment ramp. Maintenance had assigned him an F-5 with a three-tone lizard paint scheme, one of several on TOPGUN aircraft. The lizard scheme wasn’t worth a darn over a blue water background or against a blue sky backdrop, but it was nearly invisible against the desert floor.
The assigned ramp was easy to find. Six behemoth Tomcats stood in proud formation on the ramp. Based on Wick’s description of the fights, if they could be called fights, it was easy to imagine the Tomcats smiling confidently as blood, entrails, and F-5 parts dribbled from their shark-mouthed radomes. Hawk had to grin. Win or lose, this was gonna be fun.
He climbed out of the airplane, and still wearing his helmet and parachute and carrying his suit bag, made his way into the squadron spaces. It was hot in Yuma, even in September. Heat waves shimmered off the tarmac, and it felt as if his boot soles were melting into the concrete. Some of the old timers at this Marine Corps Air Station pushed the theory on the new guys that the temperature was only partially caused by the desert climate. The other reason it was so warm was due to the radiation effects from the Mexican food served at the local restaurants.
Booker T. Washington shuffle
So, the story goes, hot sauce had to be served in Pyrex dishes, and the bathrooms were actually labeled “nacho jettison areas.” In the hundred-yard hike from his F-5 to their maintenance space, Hawk had already worked up a good sweat. He had just cleared the hatch when “Hoser” Satrapa noticed him walking to the maintenance counter. “Hey, Hawk’s here!” Hoser boomed.
The line shack was the only air-conditioned space within two hundred yards and it was packed with more than a score of troops and pilots from both forces. They all turned to watch Hawk, and with Hoser feeling his oats, they knew that something was about to happen. “Hawk, you ready for the Booker T. Washington shuffle?” Several in the room chuckled. Hawk dumped his helmet and mask on the maintenance desk and said nothing. Hoser had difficulty speaking in a normal tone of voice. Voice box damage or something forced him to put considerable wind through his vocal cords in order to be heard; consequently, every word he spoke was like taking a faceblast from a foghorn.
“I guess you got the dump on how your boys are doing. It’s been a real smorgasbord of Red Force crew.”
Crossing the line
Hoser was never bashful about putting the who into the conversation. Hawk set his suit bag on the deck and wiggled out of his parachute. “Yep. What I hear is the rules are mighty one-sided. You might be thinking you’re getting some great training, Hoser, but you can’t believe it reflects anything in the real-world,” Hawk countered. Even if Hoser had crossed the line and made it personal, Hawk politely kept the discussion oriented around training and what was, or was not, getting done. He was the XO of TOPGUN and expected to set the example. As soon as the who was in the discussion, objectiveness was lost.
“Yeah, I heard them whining about the restrictions, but hey, they enter the fight, we’re gonna kill ’em. Now that you’re here, we’re gonna kill you too! Wait ’til we nail you with our ‘Booker T. Washington shuffle.’ You won’t even see what hitchya!”
The room filled with laughter. This time Hoser had gone too far … even for Hoser. Hawk completed his paperwork and slowly turned toward a smiling Hoser. “Hoser, you can bring on your ‘Booker T. Washington shuffle.’ Hell, Hoser, you can try your ‘T’ Berry shuffle or anything else that makes ya happy, but when you’re done screwin’ around, I’m gonna blow your ass away!” Again, the room roared with laughter—louder now. Hawk hoisted his gear over his shoulder, turned, and headed for the hatch.
F-14 Block 90’s immense advantages
“Yeah … well …” Hoser, for once, seemed to search for the right comeback. “I’ll see you on the range at twenty thousand feet, Hawk!” Hawk stopped and slowly turned toward Hoser. “Hoser, you can look for me at twenty thousand feet, but if you really want to see me, you’ll have to look over your shoulder!” No ovation was audible but the smiles and exhalation from the Red Force team was nearly deafening. Salvation had arrived. The gauntlet had been thrown down, and Hawk had lifted it on his sword tip.
The who was now in the fight.
That night the Red Force pilots gathered for dinner at Cretin’s Mexican restaurant just outside the main gate. Following dinner, they moved to the Holiday Inn pub. Hawk listened intently as the Red Force pilots described tactics and game plans used by the F-14 crews. Hawk had to admit; the Tomcat crews had done a bang-up job designing their tactics to optimize the Block 90’s immense advantages: the powerful radar and the new television sight unit. Their tactics allowed them to fly offensive formations, build a solid radar picture, positively identify the bogeys, and then launch missiles even before they merged with the F-5s. It was exactly the right thing to do in the real world, but it was precisely the wrong thing to practice in a training scenario.
The hardest of all scenarios
Acquiring and sorting contacts, and locking the radar on several F-5s after a thirty-mile setup with a known threat sector, and then launching missiles at a comfortable six-to-ten mile range was good practice for intercepts, but it did not acid test the Blue Force’s situational awareness, ability to handle pop-up targets, sort friend from foe after the merge, or exercise the pilot’s airmanship skills in a down and dirty duke-fest.
They weren’t always going to have the picture suitcased and they weren’t necessarily going to come to the merge with all the bad guys in sight. If the Navy-Blue Force thought this training scenario would prepare them for AIMVAL/ACEVAL they were delusional. If this was the way they were preparing for the big show, they were going to be carried home on their shields.
Hawk wanted the Blue forces to win at AIMVAL/ACEVAL. He wanted the Navy and Air Force Blue Force to test, modify, and hone their tactics and procedures in the hardest of all scenarios. By Hawk’s thinking, if they practiced under the most difficult conditions, against the toughest Red Force available, they would better adapt and survive when the fog of war confused their systems and confounded their situational awareness. Few people in the Navy understood the true performance characteristics and weapons system capability of the Tomcat as well as Hawk. He knew, intimately, how to stroke the airplane to extract maximum performance. Conversely, he knew precisely the most effective way to exploit the frailties of the systems. Cocktail glasses and beer bottles were slid to one side. Hawk grabbed several napkins and a pen. The Red Force pilots gathered around and grew silent.
Tactics to defeat Joe “Hoser” Satrapa F-14 devised by TOPGUN F-5 Instructor
Hawk began, “As you have now seen, the Block 90 has some pretty impressive capabilities. One-on-one, our F-5s can’t win a neutral fight against a properly flown Block 90. There are three major subsystems to the F-14. First, the radar and TVSU, then the engine-airframe group, and finally, the man-machine interface. If we break down the systems and work on the weak points, we’ll know how to beat ’em. “The AWG-9 radar is tough to beat … but it can be beat. Here’s what I think we need to do …”
For the next two hours Hawk explained the limitations and restrictions of the weapons system, the aircraft, and the crew. He detailed what the AWG-9 could and could not do, and drew diagrams listing ranges, aspect angles, airspeeds, altitudes, and other information, which articulated a game plan—the new Red Force tactics.
These tactics would take advantage of the most significant factors in the initial stage of the engagement: the radar and television sight unit. And it exploited the Blue Force’s Achilles’ heel—their over-reliance on the systems.
Two-versus-two
Hawk and Jack “Magic” Lewis climbed through twenty thousand feet on their way to twenty-five thousand in a dazzling blue Arizona sky. The eastern sun was twenty degrees above the horizon and washed the desert floor in shades of stone and bronze. It was no accident that they were given the western edge of the range to start from. Hoser had conducted the brief. He was leading a section of Tomcats.
Hill Billy was in his back seat and Boomer Wilson and his RIO, Ratso Reager, flew the number two Tomcat. Hoser had strategically selected the eastern side of the range; he wanted the sun behind him on the run in. The bogey pilots would make the first run with the sun in their eyes. Not a problem, thought Hawk. Running into the sun during the intercept meant the fighters would be facing the sun after the merge. If the plan went as designed, it wouldn’t matter where the sun was anyway.
Hawk glanced at Magic flying in loose cruise formation. Magic passed him a thumbs-up. Magic had completed his combat checks and was ready to go.
Click. “ TOPGUN two is on station, ready to play!”
“Roger, Hawk,” came the response from Hoser.
“We’ve got ninety degrees to go on the turn in.”
Photo credit: David “Bio” Baranek / U.S. Navy and News10 video via Fire Aviation
