High above the days celebration heralding the upcoming maiden voyage of the UES Macross, two pair of ES-11 Cat's Eye Aerospace recon aircraft were maintaining precautionary over-watch of the airspace around Macross Island. Their mission today, Combat Air Patrol (CAP).
Normally, only a pair of the islands Airborne Early Warning aircraft were tasked with this responsibility. However, with the particularly significant occasion in progress, UN SPACY command felt the need to augment the normal flight assignment in case of any untoward Anti-Unification League attempts to spoil the festivities.
Covering the eastern patrol quadrant, Cat's Eye Two maintained vigilance. Aboard the aircraft, a crew of five manned her powerful radar arrays & sensors coupled with the advanced communications suite vital to permit accomplishment of her mission.
As the flight was nearing the end of its assigned duty period the radar operator, an experienced NCO, called away initial contact with using his words,
a whole shitswarm of contacts. Of nearly singular mind being the well-trained professionals they were, the crew responded. After taking note of the primary contact heading her pilot, LT Ansel Nygaard, vectored the aircraft to permit full opportunity for his birds attached systems to fully prosecute and catalogue the contacts while not losing range. Seated immediately to his right, LT Victor Rykov, began the unenviable task of seeking to obtain some semblance of order among the field of rapidly multiplying bogies.
Thanks to Cat's Eye Two's enormous flat-disc shaped radome and advanced computer cataloging system, the
Electronically Scanned Radar Array was able to establish tracking of even this multitude of contacts easily. However, picking out and discerning active Electromagnetic (EM) emitters from the, now polluted, electronic signals environment required skills that only a trained operator could perform.
Tagging and ultimately neutralizing these EM emitters was of the utmost importance upon initial contact with a hostile entity as the overarching goal of this aircraft in any engagement, was the establishment and maintenance of battle-space signals superiority.
Although weaponless Cat's Eye Two was literally, the tip of the spear.
After overcoming the shock of the UES Macross' embarked Aerospace Combat Control (ACC) operator, Cat's Eye Two's embarked Communications Officer, LT Jimmy Millhouse, patched together a link permitting the UES Macross a full scope view of the evolving contact environment.
Warning klaxons could soon be heard across the entirety of Macross Island.
Now fully engaged in the mission and as enemy contacts began exchanging direct weapons fire with the valiant defenders of Macross Island, ACC quickly established a contact net with any aloft or responding ground assets, patching in little snippets of the overall battle-space to their on-board targeting computers.
Although having never obtained visual contact even once with the invaders, the operators of Cat's Eye Two continued to feed vital intelligence and tasking priorities to ACC, and by extension, the embattled war-fighters across and above Macross Island.
Cat's Eye Two was soon joined by Cat's Eye Three and Four, vectored in from their formerly assigned CAP patrol areas. Adding capability and redundancy to battle over-watch duties, these newly arrived electronic suites directly contributed in helping to maintain strategic-level oversight of the rapidly evolving combat area.
As the hours dragged on and with the fight only intensifying, commanders aboard the UES Macross made the fateful decision to attempt the mother of all flanking maneuvers. A hastily planned space-fold jump to the far side of the moon.
Flight vector's being random and variable, especially in the confusion of the day's activities, Cat's Eye Two and Three found themselves fairly close to the UES Macross prior to the engagement of her infamous drive system.
Receiving notice of the planned maneuver mere minutes before over the Air Control Net, LT Nygaard, on impulse engaged a single toggle switch above his head. Containing only a singular purpose the prescient LT activated it more out of training than any pressing need or desire to ensure it had been actuated.
The lockable switch, labelled
Instrumentation Vacuum Condition performed a simple task. All of the instrumentation associated with airspeed detection, i.e. the assorted pitot tubes and differential pressure (d/p) cells scattered across the hull of the ES-11 aircraft, were useless in space. However, these pitot tubes and d/p cells each contained integral environmental ports which exposed the, internally located, airspeed instruments to the external operating environment or slipstream in which the aircraft was currently being operated. Inadvertently exposed to a vacuum environment, these tiny ports permitted the expulsion of an aircraft's internal pressure to the cold reaches. The subsequent decompression could be catastrophic to the crew and aircraft alike. In light of preventing this from happening, actuation of this switch isolated the delicate internal instrumentation from the various external ports.
Not anticipating being caught up in the space-fold maneuver the crew of Cat's Eye Two was surprised at finding themselves suddenly in a full vacuum environment post-jump.
Surprised, but alive.
When this same realization hit the crew of Cat's Eye Three, it was already too late. Within moments and without taking the required action to mitigate or prevent it, uncontrolled decompression wrought its deadly effect and the craft imploded.
Recovering from the shock of environmental change and with the battle winding down, LT Nygaard was provided combat air control direction to direct his aircraft to the waiting embrace of UES Macross' space-door 7.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:02, Tue 30 Oct 2018.
