Word: pretarget
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...victim, an Army surplus M-47 tank having a bad day. The desert is a Jackson Pollock abstract, and Anderson is so low that when he is just four miles away, he can't see the tank. He searches for a clump of bushes named in briefings as a pretarget landmark. Reaching it, he tugs slightly on the F-16's stick. The jet rockets up 3,000 feet in a standard "pop up" bombing pattern. Climbing, Anderson feels his face droop and his body react "like a marshmallow" to a gravity force four times his weight. Through heavy eyelids...
Gunsmoke's final two days gave Hamilton a chance to test his faith. The target was an old Navy surplus plane surrounded by protective earthen dikes. Pilots had to approach it "in the weeds" -- 200 feet above ground again -- from 150 miles out, flying over pretarget locations at precise times. Finally, Hamilton and others had to evade smoke missiles while dropping a bulky parachute-equipped 500-lb. bomb. Hamilton, alone among all Gunsmoke pilots, elected to try an F-16 computer program called dive toss. The pilot fixes the target inside a box projected on the up screen, punches...
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