In this article:
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!
Dogfight 2 F-14 Tomcats V 1 A-4 Mongoose
They were low, climbing slowly, and easily highlighted against the low cloud layer behind them. Hawk listened to the communications between the fighters. Their comm and radar work was good. They had his bearing, altitude, and range down pat, but they didn’t get sight of the A-4 until less than four miles away and by that time Hawk had already started a conversion turn on Mauler.
“Talley ho!” “I’m engaged, you’re free,” Mauler bellowed over the radio. That transmission signaled his wingman to extend out of the fight while Mauler turned on the A-4.
“Roger, I’m free,” Shifty announced. Hawk floated his port turn to keep both fighters on the left side of his airplane. Keeping sight was far easier with the fighters in one piece of sky and Mauler assisted in that effort by not crossing to Hawk’s right side before the merge.
Mauler was still in a ten-degree climb at the merge. Hawk continued in a port turn into Mauler being careful not to bleed airspeed. He made no move to descend to Mauler’s altitude but instead invited Mauler to climb to his and thereby forced him to shed more airspeed. At this point it was all about being smooth and suckering Mauler into a hard-turning fight while Mauler’s wingman extended out of the engagement.
Fighter tactics decreed that Mauler’s wingman would extend about three miles, make his best turn, and come back in shooting. If Hawk could stay close to Mauler, if he could force him into a tight rolling scissors, it would be unlikely that his wingman would have a clear shot.
A different breed of Mongoose
In reality, Hawk had no trouble coaxing Mauler into a tight rolling fight. At the first pass Mauler had his fangs, talons, and knife out. It was very clear he wasn’t worried about the airspeed disparity and hadn’t yet realized he was squaring off with a different breed of Mongoose.
Seconds after he passed Hawk, Mauler hauled back on the stick. White tendrils of vapor uncoiled behind the F-14’s wingtips, the nose arced upward, and the wings of the mighty Tomcat extended forward as Mauler’s speed decreased.
Hawk stole a glance at the wingman now two miles away and heading southeast out of the fight; Hawk punched his mental stopwatch; he had about forty seconds to do something impressive with Mauler—forty seconds before the wingman would become a threat again.
Hawk switched his gaze to Mauler’s F-14 and studied the telltale signs of life and energy which were the bellwether of Mauler’s next move. The wings were fully forward, maneuvering slats and flaps were down, white-hot plumes belched out the tailpipes, and the nose pointed nearly straight up—Mauler was about out of energy.
Hawk patiently bided his time and continued a gentle nose-up turn into Mauler. Hawk knew the Mongoose didn’t have the muscle to challenge the Tomcat in a vertical fight, especially at thirty-five thousand feet, but if there was anything the Mongoose could do with cat-like speed, it was swap ends from a nose-high attitude. He planned to pull up and into Mauler as the Tomcat’s nose fell through the horizon. If Hawk timed the move just right, he’d be in position to complete a rudder-reversal over the top of Mauler as the Tomcat passed under him.
Slat deployment
Mauler was a scuffler of the first order, and his next move, even at thirty-five thousand feet, came as no surprise. With no airspeed to speak of, Mauler continued to pull the Tomcat’s nose in a tight arc through the top of a loop. The Tomcat was on its back now and its nose continued to sweep down through the horizon and toward Hawk. That’s when Hawk made his move. He leveled his wings and gradually increased backpressure on the stick. He followed the pressure with elevator trim, a technique which gave the Mongoose an even better turn-rate. The nose made a graceful sweep up and into Mauler as Mauler descended toward Hawk.
When the nose of the Tomcat was about thirty degrees below the horizon, Mauler stopped his pull and rolled upright. The jet’s trajectory would carry it slightly below Hawk’s flight path but slightly was all Hawk had hoped for.
Just as the Tomcat passed under and to the left of Hawk’s A-4, he completed the move he started seconds earlier. He tugged back on the stick, buried it in his lap, and felt the familiar and comforting ka-thunk that announced slat deployment. A quick glance in both rear-view mirrors confirmed that the slats had extended fully and symmetrically. Hawk stomped on the left rudder and pushed the stick to the left. The Mongoose completed a dazzling pirouette on its left wing. When the nose broke through the horizon, Hawk neutralized the ailerons, countered the yawing pendulum effect of the nose with right rudder, and eased the stick slightly forward—but not enough to retract the slats. The Mongoose stabilized in a position below and behind the Tomcat, now headed south.
No shot
A warning tone sounded in Hawk’s mind; forty seconds were up. He should be hearing something from the wingman soon.
“Shifty’s four miles southeast. Only one contact. No chance for a Fox One. Switching to Sidewinder.”
“Good idea. And you need to get a shot real soon,” Mauler growled.
That was an understatement. Hawk was behind and eclipsed by Mauler. Shifty would have difficulty determining which heat source the Sidewinder was looking at with so little angular separation between the two jets and couldn’t risk calling a shot for fear that the missile would track on Mauler’s greater heat source.
From the beginning, Mauler had taken an extraordinary chance by engaging the Mongoose in a tight turning fight. And now the fighters were in the midst of a conundrum. Shifty couldn’t figure a way into the fight and Mauler couldn’t figure a way out. Mauler was absolutely convinced he was fighting a hard-wing Mongoose and pushed the fight into a tight rolling scissors thinking it would be over quickly. Hawk’s first rudder reversal and the stupendous turn on the bottom of the rolling scissors should have left no doubt it was not the same Mongoose Mauler thought it was. And if the first full rolling scissors didn’t enlighten him, the second surely would.
“No shot,” Shifty announced. “I’m blowing through to the northwest.”
Hawk glanced at the Tomcat as it streaked past. The wings were fully swept and based on the closure Shifty had good speed. The wingman was doing his part, Hawk noted for the debrief.
“Roger, Shifty, but get back here soon,” Mauler spouted. Hawk calculated that he had another ninety seconds before Shifty would become a factor.
Hard right turn coupled with rudder
Hawk was in an offensive position on Mauler, low and behind, but the nose of his Mongoose was well below the Tomcat and no immediate threat to Mauler. Still the Mongoose was enough of a concern that Mauler tugged hard on the stick well before he had built up the energy, he needed to take it pure vertical over the top.
Hawk gingerly coaxed the nose up all the while watching Mauler’s Tomcat for its next move. This time Mauler didn’t have nearly the energy he needed. Even the thirty-five thousand foot-pounds of thrust vomiting out the tailpipes could not propel the Tomcat to the altitude sanctuary Mauler had hoped for. Hawk caressed the nose up and the Mongoose responded with a dazzling pitch-rate and a climb toward the Tomcat.
He quickly glanced at the airspeed—two hundred knots. His left hand instinctively reached for the flap handle and pushed it down; one, two, three, four. Hawk counted off the seconds it took to position the flaps to half, then lifted the handle to the centered position to lock them. The flaps were set at half, the slats were out, ninety-three hundred pounds of thrust raged out of the Mongoose, and he had the Tomcat treed.
Hawk continued the pull and let the nose settle just in front of the Tomcat as it clawed desperately for more altitude. With what little airspeed Mauler had he made a brilliant move, a hard-right turn coupled with rudder. His nose sliced through the horizon and the Tomcat passed to the right of and underneath the Mongoose.
Knock-it-off
It was impressive. Only a few pilots could have made a turn like that without departing. Hawk nudged the control stick, touched lightly on the rudder pedals, and felt for the perfect combination of aileron, elevator, and rudder to follow the Tomcat through its move. Mauler’s Tomcat completed the nose low turn then seemed to pause wings level with the nose just above the horizon as if to assess how well the move worked.
Hawk tugged lightly on the stick. The nose responded and settled just in front of the Tomcat. Hawk was at about nine hundred feet in trail, co-speed with the Tomcat and had stable piper placement. Although he didn’t call a gunshot, at this range he could just about pick the wing panel he wanted to target and Mauler knew it.
Shifty came through a second time and made another valiant attempt to save his leader but as before, the proximity and alignment of the two jets did not allow for either a Sparrow or a Sidewinder shot.
Two additional descending rolling scissors failed to unsaddle the Mongoose. Hawk had several snap shots not worthy of announcement, and two long, stable tracking shots that needed no announcement. He could plainly see Mauler’s helmet rotated toward him and could almost feel his rage.
The point was made. Hawk called a knock-it-off. Shifty and Mauler acknowledged the call and took their jets north.
Hawk returned to the south station. There were two additional set ups that day. On completion of the third fight they headed north for the return to Miramar.
Pulling the bolts out
Back on the ground, Hawk completed the maintenance paperwork then went immediately to VF-124 to debrief. On the way to the briefing room Mauler intercepted Hawk and invited him into his office. “Hawk, ya got a minute?” Mauler asked.
“Sure!”
Mauler was the operations officer and had an office commensurate with his position. Hawk pulled up a chair and sat down facing Mauler. “Hey, I thought those slats were supposed to be bolted up?” Though it was phrased as a question, Mauler’s tone was clearly accusatory.
“Well, they were at one time, Mauler, but we pulled the bolts out. Now the Mongoose flies like it was supposta.”
“They’re supposed to be bolted up. And if they’re not, the leading edge of the wing is supposed to be painted red. It’s a safety thing. If they come out asymmetrically, the pilot needs to be able to see, immediately, which one is stuck so he knows what to do!”
Without knowing it, Hawk’s posture changed. He set his shoulders square and leaned slightly forward in his chair rotating weight to the balls of his feet. For those that knew him well, this was his, I’m done taking shit posture. “Mauler,” Hawk retorted, “that’s absolute bullshit and you know it. First, they’re no longer supposta be bolted up, and secondly there’s no directive to have the metal under the slats painted red.”
“Well, there was when I was at TOPGUN,” Mauler barked.
Dogfight against A-4 Mongoose: Things have changed
“Mauler, you’re not at TOPGUN now and things have changed. They’re not painted red because I don’t want my airplane lit up like a stoplight when the slats are out, and I don’t need my opponent figuring out my energy state from the position of the slats. As far as safety goes, if they deploy asymmetrically, you know instantly which one is stuck just by the feel—and if you don’t—you need to find another line of work.”
Mauler was annoyed by the exchange, but he was plenty hot that he just had his ass handed to him by an airplane that, according to the maneuverability charts, wasn’t supposed to beat up a Block 90 Tomcat. Mauler quieted down. He was thinking.
Mauler and Hawk put on their game faces and walked to the briefing room.
By the time the debrief started, Mauler was no longer angry. He was as arrogant as ever, but a semi-calmness had returned. He reconstructed the fight, spoke of the student’s good points and the not-so-good points, and commented, several times, that he had never seen an A-4 maneuver as it had.
And that was true. He’d never flown against a soft-wing Mongoose before.
Epilogue—
All the regulations and gold braid in the Pacific Fleet cannot enforce a sailor’s devotion. This, each officer in command must earn on his own.
—Lieutenant Commander Arnold S. Lott:
Brave Ship, Brave Men, 1965
Photo credit: U.S. Navy
