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Description
My OC, Commander Laura Heidelberg, fighter pilot in the United States Navy. She's normally a pretty serious no nonsense person and isn't the type to do pinup photo shoots like this. Her close friend Mary Alcazar was eventually able to persuade her to let herself go once in a while though. She is modeled after the likeness of actress Rachel Weisz.

Art by the always awesome TychyTamara .

Laura Madeline Heidelberg was born in Ocean City, New Jersey in 1991 into a bred and true US Navy family. Her father before her, Emile Heidelberg, was himself a Navy fighter pilot and her mother, Anna Perelman Heidelberg, had been a yeoman. Her uncle, Joseph Perelman, had also been a Navy fighter pilot. Her grandfather had been a patrol boat skipper in Vietnam and her grandmother had served in the war as a nurse. It was only natural that Laura would follow in their footsteps.

Laura's father had flown A-7E Corsairs and saw combat while participating in the US peacekeeping operation in Lebanon in the early 1980s. He would later take part in suppressing Libyan anti-air defenses during Operation El Dorado Canyon in 1986. Her Uncle Joseph flew F-14A Tomcats in CAP (combat air patrol) missions in many of the same operations in and around Libya that her father was involved in as well as Operation Preying Mantis against Iranian forces in 1988. He would go on to participate in the First Gulf War where he managed to shoot down an Iraqi Mirage F1 and would then later nail an Iraqi Su-22 during Operation Southern Watch the following year. He was the US Navy's only Tomcat pilot to score more than one kill.

Growing up hearing her father and uncle's war stories, as well as watching movies like Top Gun and The Final Countdown, Laura was determined to become an F-14 pilot herself. Unfortunately, the US Navy retired the Tomcat in 2006, long before she could get her hands on it. She would eventually end up having to settle for the F/A-18E Super Hornet. All things considered, there were far worse alternatives.

Laura graduated from the Annapolis Naval Academy in 2014 and would earn her wings the following year. As a Second Lieutenant, she was assigned to the US Navy's VFA-31 Strike Fighter Squadron (aka the "Tomcatters," the closest she'd ever get to flying an actual F-14) aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and took part in Operation Inherent Resolve, the US campaign against the Islamic State of the Levant (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria.

While providing CAS (close air support) to the Syrian Democratic Forces (the majority Kurdish militant alliance backed by the US) during the brutal 2017 battle to retake the city of Raqqa from ISIS, Laura first began to question her country's purpose for being there. Terrible as ISIS was, she was quite sickened by the the excessive collateral damage to the city caused by US airstrikes, including some of the ones that she herself had carried out. The United Nations would later speculate that the majority of civilian casualties during the battle were caused by US and coalition strikes.

Also, while she had no love for Syrian dictator Mukhtar Salem and nothing but sympathy for the Syrian Kurds, she couldn't understand the logic of backing them at that point in the conflict. When the decision had already been made not to go all the way with regime change like they had in Iraq in 2003. By backing the Kurds, the US had greatly angered their longtime (and treaty bound) ally Turkey which was dealing with a Kudish insurgency within their own borders which had connections to the SDF. Also, by leaving Salem in power, they were allowing the Russians and Iranians (both of which backed Salem and had forces inside the country) to keep a foothold in the region. This resulted in a number of tense stand offs between US, Russian AND Turkish aircraft in the skies over Syria, as well as an escalation of tensions between the US and Iran.

To make matters even worse, Israel repeatedly launched airstrikes against the Syrian Arab Army (regular armed forces who were mostly loyal to Salem) and Iranian positions close to the capitol of Damascus. The reason of "self defense" was given for the strikes but no evidence was ever publicly presented. Israeli aircraft had actually used civilian passenger jets and at one point even a Russian reconnaissance plane to help shield themselves from radar. The Russian plane would end up accidentally being shot down by Syrian anti-air defenses as a result.

Raised in a conservative Jewish family, Laura had always been fairly pro-Israel. But the constant attacks against Damascus, in direct violation if International Law, combined with the fact that the Syrians didn't even have any real way of effectively fighting back didn't sit well with her, Salem or no Salem. It made her question for the first time the official establishment narrative about the Israeli-Palestine conflict. It made her question for the first time the official narrative of the 1967 Israeli attack on the Naval surveillance ship USS Liberty that had killed one of her great-uncles. It also made her consider for the first time just how rarely it was that International Law had been adhered to by her own country. Of course, Laura never actually told anyone about her doubts at the time. Like most active duty US Military servicemen and women, she simply kept her mouth shut and followed her orders.

In the Summer of 2019, after serving with distinction for several years in the skies over Syria and Iraq, Laura was selected for the US Navy's Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program (aka "Top Gun"). After graduating, it was then her duty to return to VFA-31 to teach her squadron mates all that she had learned throughout the nine week course. Just as soon as she made it back however, the Tomcatters were suddenly and unexpectedly transferred to Mayport Naval Station in Jacksonville, Florida, under Southern Command (the US's unified combatant command responsible for the Caribbean, Central America and South America).

Many other assets had also been transferred rather quickly to SOUTHCOM in the Fall of 2019. US President Michael Dorf had declared at the beginning of the year that the current Leftist Bolivarian government of Venezuela under Jorge Carballo was "illegitimate" after a disputed election several months earlier. The US now recognized Right-Wing opposition leader Carlos Santillan to be the country's "rightful interim President." Dorf cited that the corrupt Bolivarian regime (named after Venezuelan founding father Simon Bolivar) had effectively turned oil rich Venezuela into a "narco-terror state" that was exporting illicit substances all around the region and "providing both oil and a safe heaven to Hezbollah and other Iranian backed terrorist groups."

The US Justice Department placed a sizable bounty on the head of Carballo and many members of his administration. Joint US Navy/US Coast Guard vessels began doing large scale "drug interdiction" missions in the Caribbean as a way to affect maximum pressure on the Venezuelan leadership. The US Treasury Department enacted crippling new sanctions (in addition to the ones that had already been in place for years) which devastated Venezuela's already ravaged economy and only added to the suffering of the country's people. At the US's direction, the United Kingdom seized Venezuela's vast gold reserves which were being kept inside the Bank of England. In theory, this "campaign of maximum pressure" was supposed to turn the Venezuelan people against their government and eventually compel them to stage a full scale uprising. But just like the similar US campaign against Iran, it only drove the people further into their current leadership's arms.

A failed (and likely US backed) coup attempt against the Bolivarian government in the early Spring, an attempted incursion by Venezuelan military exiles (lead by ex US Special Forces members and also probably US backed) to try and capture Carballo during the Summer, and a brief but deadly border clash with neighboring US ally Colombia in early Fall (which resulted in fatalities on both sides and multiple Colombian aircraft being shot down) did little to ease tensions. With "rightful interim President Santillan" and his opposition gaining no further ground and Carballo and the Bolivarians becoming increasingly entrenched, it seemed that armed conflict was unavoidable.

Then President Jorge Carballo made a terrible mistake by announcing a new strategic partnership with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The two countries already had somewhat of a alliance due to their mutual suffering under US economic blockade. This was much more public and overt however, and it finally provided President Michael Dorf with the excuse he'd been waiting for.

The now infamous "Two Birds Plan" was officially enacted. It called for massive simultaneous aerial bombing campaigns of both "leading state-sponsors of terror" Iran and Venezuela. The two campaigns were code-named Operation "Persian Liberty" and Operation "Latin Freedom" respectively. Then First Lieutenant Laura Heidelberg and the Tomcatters would be leading the charge in "Latin Freedom."

The Russians were able to get wind of the plan beforehand, and being supporters of Carballo, discretely passed the information to his government. With war now inevitable, the Venezuelan President controversially decided to launch a first strike, grabbing his one and only chance at taking the fight to the US forces.

On January 2nd, 2020, twelve of Venezuela's Russian made Su-30 Flanker-E fighter jets armed with Kh-31A anti-ship missiles took off and headed for the two nearest US warships, the Navy Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Barker and Coast Guard Legend-class cutter USCGC Sea Tiger. Both were traveling together as part of the aforementioned "drug interdiction" operation and were still well out of range of the carrier strike groups which were only just now leaving the US East Coast.

The Barker was hit by five missiles and would ultimately become the first US warship to be lost in combat since the Korean War. 82 sailors would go down with her. The Sea Tiger escaped any direct hits, but a glancing blow on on her bow peppered the ship's forward section with deadly shrapnel, killing 2 and wounding several others. Aboard the Sea Tiger was Laura's younger brother Robert, who had "rebelled" against the family by joining the Coast Guard instead of the Navy. He was thankfully not among the casualties, but it nonetheless provided Laura with a personal motivation that she'd never really had while over in the Middle East. The Venezuelans had just effectively tried to kill her little brother. She intended to make sure they didn't get another chance.

Laura and VFA-31 were assigned to the carrier USS George Washington and were among the first US planes to be launched when Latin Freedom kicked off on January 7th. On that first day, she and her flight leader, Lt. Commander Gary Yuen, were in their F/A-18E Super Hornets flying CAP off the Northwestern coast of the Paraguana Peninsula when they got the call from their E-2 Hawkeye (airborne early warning aircraft). Two Venezuelan F-16A Falcons were approaching fast from the South. Shortly thereafter, they picked up the two hostiles on their own radars and with the war officially on, Laura and Yuen were "cleared hot" to engage.

Laura and Lt. Cmdr. Yuen each targeted an F-16 and fired an AIM-120C AMRAAM missile at BVR (beyond visual range). Both Venezuelan pilots managed to dodge the missiles thanks to their chaff countermeasures and evasive "notching" maneuvers. Two more AMRAAMs were fired and astonishingly, they were both once again dodged. It would later be revealed that the two enemies were in fact Majors Miguel Soros and Vito Esperanza, the Venezuelan Air Force's most senior and experienced F-16 pilots, and they would push their outdated warplanes to the very limit.

The the two pairs of fighter jets then "merged" and a classic dogfight ensued. At one point, Major Soros briefly managed to get on Laura's 6 o'clock position and got off an Python-4 (an Israeli made short range heat-seeking missile) but she was able to evade it by dispensing flare countermeasures and pulling some evasive maneuvers. About 40 grueling seconds and a lot of pulled Gs later, she managed to turn the tables, get behind her opponent, get a lock with her AIM-9X Sidewinder (US made heat-seeking missile) and fired. Soros popped flares and attempted to evade but he was not quite fast enough. The sidewinder's proximity fuse detonated right behind him, tearing apart his engine and shredding off a wing. Laura Heidelberg had just become the first female fighter pilot in US history to score an air to air kill.

Maj. Soros then ejected from his doomed plan, one of only a few Venezuelan F-16 pilots to safely do so. The US embargo had caused a critical lack of spare parts for many of their aircraft. Turkey however, having long had good relations with Venezuela and despite being a member of NATO, would negate this somewhat by secretly supplying them with parts. Still, this resulted in their already outdated F-16As having some of their systems rendered unreliable, especially their ejector seats. Maj. Esperanza would not be so lucky when Lt. Cmdr. Yuen shot him down. He ejected and got clear of his aircraft but his parachute and backup both failed to open, causing him to fall over 1,000 feet into the sea. His helmet would be discovered washed ashore on a nearby beach a few weeks later, but his body was never found.

After that, Laura and the rest of her squadron would continue to do CAP missions for the majority of the US air campaign, occasionally helping out with the suppression of what remained of Venezuela's anti-air defenses. When the land invasion began in late February, they would also assist with providing close air support to troops on the ground, but Laura would not face anything like she had on that first day again. By the time the infamous Battle of Diablo Valley occurred in late September (a story for another day), she and VFA-31 had already been rotated back to the US mainland.

After returning home, and especially after the the disasters in Venezuela, Iran and Iraq had fully played out, Laura and many other veterans had become notably jaded and cynical in regards to her country's foreign policy. She was giving serious consideration towards leaving the Navy when Daniel Seretto was elected President. The new Commander and Chief would institute a massive shift in both domestic and foreign policy. He would also devise a special mission, code-named Operation "Redeemer," in order to "achieve equilibrium" for past US mistakes. Laura and two dozen other fighter pilots (including Mary Alcazar) would be selected for that mission... and history would be made.

To be continued...

Description
My OC, Commander Laura Heidelberg, fighter pilot in the United States Navy. She's normally a pretty serious no nonsense person and isn't the type to do pinup photo shoots like this. Her close friend Mary Alcazar was eventually able to persuade her to let herself go once in a while though. She is modeled after the likeness of actress Rachel Weisz.

Art by the always awesome TychyTamara .

Laura Madeline Heidelberg was born in Ocean City, New Jersey in 1991 into a bred and true US Navy family. Her father before her, Emile Heidelberg, was himself a Navy fighter pilot and her mother, Anna Perelman Heidelberg, had been a yeoman. Her uncle, Joseph Perelman, had also been a Navy fighter pilot. Her grandfather had been a patrol boat skipper in Vietnam and her grandmother had served in the war as a nurse. It was only natural that Laura would follow in their footsteps.

Laura's father had flown A-7E Corsairs and saw combat while participating in the US peacekeeping operation in Lebanon in the early 1980s. He would later take part in suppressing Libyan anti-air defenses during Operation El Dorado Canyon in 1986. Her Uncle Joseph flew F-14A Tomcats in CAP (combat air patrol) missions in many of the same operations in and around Libya that her father was involved in as well as Operation Preying Mantis against Iranian forces in 1988. He would go on to participate in the First Gulf War where he managed to shoot down an Iraqi Mirage F1 and would then later nail an Iraqi Su-22 during Operation Southern Watch the following year. He was the US Navy's only Tomcat pilot to score more than one kill.

Growing up hearing her father and uncle's war stories, as well as watching movies like Top Gun and The Final Countdown, Laura was determined to become an F-14 pilot herself. Unfortunately, the US Navy retired the Tomcat in 2006, long before she could get her hands on it. She would eventually end up having to settle for the F/A-18E Super Hornet. All things considered, there were far worse alternatives.

Laura graduated from the Annapolis Naval Academy in 2014 and would earn her wings the following year. As a Second Lieutenant, she was assigned to the US Navy's VFA-31 Strike Fighter Squadron (aka the "Tomcatters," the closest she'd ever get to flying an actual F-14) aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and took part in Operation Inherent Resolve, the US campaign against the Islamic State of the Levant (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria.

While providing CAS (close air support) to the Syrian Democratic Forces (the majority Kurdish militant alliance backed by the US) during the brutal 2017 battle to retake the city of Raqqa from ISIS, Laura first began to question her country's purpose for being there. Terrible as ISIS was, she was quite sickened by the the excessive collateral damage to the city caused by US airstrikes, including some of the ones that she herself had carried out. The United Nations would later speculate that the majority of civilian casualties during the battle were caused by US and coalition strikes.

Also, while she had no love for Syrian dictator Mukhtar Salem and nothing but sympathy for the Syrian Kurds, she couldn't understand the logic of backing them at that point in the conflict. When the decision had already been made not to go all the way with regime change like they had in Iraq in 2003. By backing the Kurds, the US had greatly angered their longtime (and treaty bound) ally Turkey which was dealing with a Kudish insurgency within their own borders which had connections to the SDF. Also, by leaving Salem in power, they were allowing the Russians and Iranians (both of which backed Salem and had forces inside the country) to keep a foothold in the region. This resulted in a number of tense stand offs between US, Russian AND Turkish aircraft in the skies over Syria, as well as an escalation of tensions between the US and Iran.

To make matters even worse, Israel repeatedly launched airstrikes against the Syrian Arab Army (regular armed forces who were mostly loyal to Salem) and Iranian positions close to the capitol of Damascus. The reason of "self defense" was given for the strikes but no evidence was ever publicly presented. Israeli aircraft had actually used civilian passenger jets and at one point even a Russian reconnaissance plane to help shield themselves from radar. The Russian plane would end up accidentally being shot down by Syrian anti-air defenses as a result.

Raised in a conservative Jewish family, Laura had always been fairly pro-Israel. But the constant attacks against Damascus, in direct violation if International Law, combined with the fact that the Syrians didn't even have any real way of effectively fighting back didn't sit well with her, Salem or no Salem. It made her question for the first time the official establishment narrative about the Israeli-Palestine conflict. It made her question for the first time the official narrative of the 1967 Israeli attack on the Naval surveillance ship USS Liberty that had killed one of her great-uncles. It also made her consider for the first time just how rarely it was that International Law had been adhered to by her own country. Of course, Laura never actually told anyone about her doubts at the time. Like most active duty US Military servicemen and women, she simply kept her mouth shut and followed her orders.

In the Summer of 2019, after serving with distinction for several years in the skies over Syria and Iraq, Laura was selected for the US Navy's Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program (aka "Top Gun"). After graduating, it was then her duty to return to VFA-31 to teach her squadron mates all that she had learned throughout the nine week course. Just as soon as she made it back however, the Tomcatters were suddenly and unexpectedly transferred to Mayport Naval Station in Jacksonville, Florida, under Southern Command (the US's unified combatant command responsible for the Caribbean, Central America and South America).

Many other assets had also been transferred rather quickly to SOUTHCOM in the Fall of 2019. US President Michael Dorf had declared at the beginning of the year that the current Leftist Bolivarian government of Venezuela under Jorge Carballo was "illegitimate" after a disputed election several months earlier. The US now recognized Right-Wing opposition leader Carlos Santillan to be the country's "rightful interim President." Dorf cited that the corrupt Bolivarian regime (named after Venezuelan founding father Simon Bolivar) had effectively turned oil rich Venezuela into a "narco-terror state" that was exporting illicit substances all around the region and "providing both oil and a safe heaven to Hezbollah and other Iranian backed terrorist groups."

The US Justice Department placed a sizable bounty on the head of Carballo and many members of his administration. Joint US Navy/US Coast Guard vessels began doing large scale "drug interdiction" missions in the Caribbean as a way to affect maximum pressure on the Venezuelan leadership. The US Treasury Department enacted crippling new sanctions (in addition to the ones that had already been in place for years) which devastated Venezuela's already ravaged economy and only added to the suffering of the country's people. At the US's direction, the United Kingdom seized Venezuela's vast gold reserves which were being kept inside the Bank of England. In theory, this "campaign of maximum pressure" was supposed to turn the Venezuelan people against their government and eventually compel them to stage a full scale uprising. But just like the similar US campaign against Iran, it only drove the people further into their current leadership's arms.

A failed (and likely US backed) coup attempt against the Bolivarian government in the early Spring, an attempted incursion by Venezuelan military exiles (lead by ex US Special Forces members and also probably US backed) to try and capture Carballo during the Summer, and a brief but deadly border clash with neighboring US ally Colombia in early Fall (which resulted in fatalities on both sides and multiple Colombian aircraft being shot down) did little to ease tensions. With "rightful interim President Santillan" and his opposition gaining no further ground and Carballo and the Bolivarians becoming increasingly entrenched, it seemed that armed conflict was unavoidable.

Then President Jorge Carballo made a terrible mistake by announcing a new strategic partnership with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The two countries already had somewhat of a alliance due to their mutual suffering under US economic blockade. This was much more public and overt however, and it finally provided President Michael Dorf with the excuse he'd been waiting for.

The now infamous "Two Birds Plan" was officially enacted. It called for massive simultaneous aerial bombing campaigns of both "leading state-sponsors of terror" Iran and Venezuela. The two campaigns were code-named Operation "Persian Liberty" and Operation "Latin Freedom" respectively. Then First Lieutenant Laura Heidelberg and the Tomcatters would be leading the charge in "Latin Freedom."

The Russians were able to get wind of the plan beforehand, and being supporters of Carballo, discretely passed the information to his government. With war now inevitable, the Venezuelan President controversially decided to launch a first strike, grabbing his one and only chance at taking the fight to the US forces.

On January 2nd, 2020, twelve of Venezuela's Russian made Su-30 Flanker-E fighter jets armed with Kh-31A anti-ship missiles took off and headed for the two nearest US warships, the Navy Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Barker and Coast Guard Legend-class cutter USCGC Sea Tiger. Both were traveling together as part of the aforementioned "drug interdiction" operation and were still well out of range of the carrier strike groups which were only just now leaving the US East Coast.

The Barker was hit by five missiles and would ultimately become the first US warship to be lost in combat since the Korean War. 82 sailors would go down with her. The Sea Tiger escaped any direct hits, but a glancing blow on on her bow peppered the ship's forward section with deadly shrapnel, killing 2 and wounding several others. Aboard the Sea Tiger was Laura's younger brother Robert, who had "rebelled" against the family by joining the Coast Guard instead of the Navy. He was thankfully not among the casualties, but it nonetheless provided Laura with a personal motivation that she'd never really had while over in the Middle East. The Venezuelans had just effectively tried to kill her little brother. She intended to make sure they didn't get another chance.

Laura and VFA-31 were assigned to the carrier USS George Washington and were among the first US planes to be launched when Latin Freedom kicked off on January 7th. On that first day, she and her flight leader, Lt. Commander Gary Yuen, were in their F/A-18E Super Hornets flying CAP off the Northwestern coast of the Paraguana Peninsula when they got the call from their E-2 Hawkeye (airborne early warning aircraft). Two Venezuelan F-16A Falcons were approaching fast from the South. Shortly thereafter, they picked up the two hostiles on their own radars and with the war officially on, Laura and Yuen were "cleared hot" to engage.

Laura and Lt. Cmdr. Yuen each targeted an F-16 and fired an AIM-120C AMRAAM missile at BVR (beyond visual range). Both Venezuelan pilots managed to dodge the missiles thanks to their chaff countermeasures and evasive "notching" maneuvers. Two more AMRAAMs were fired and astonishingly, they were both once again dodged. It would later be revealed that the two enemies were in fact Majors Miguel Soros and Vito Esperanza, the Venezuelan Air Force's most senior and experienced F-16 pilots, and they would push their outdated warplanes to the very limit.

The the two pairs of fighter jets then "merged" and a classic dogfight ensued. At one point, Major Soros briefly managed to get on Laura's 6 o'clock position and got off an Python-4 (an Israeli made short range heat-seeking missile) but she was able to evade it by dispensing flare countermeasures and pulling some evasive maneuvers. About 40 grueling seconds and a lot of pulled Gs later, she managed to turn the tables, get behind her opponent, get a lock with her AIM-9X Sidewinder (US made heat-seeking missile) and fired. Soros popped flares and attempted to evade but he was not quite fast enough. The sidewinder's proximity fuse detonated right behind him, tearing apart his engine and shredding off a wing. Laura Heidelberg had just become the first female fighter pilot in US history to score an air to air kill.

Maj. Soros then ejected from his doomed plan, one of only a few Venezuelan F-16 pilots to safely do so. The US embargo had caused a critical lack of spare parts for many of their aircraft. Turkey however, having long had good relations with Venezuela and despite being a member of NATO, would negate this somewhat by secretly supplying them with parts. Still, this resulted in their already outdated F-16As having some of their systems rendered unreliable, especially their ejector seats. Maj. Esperanza would not be so lucky when Lt. Cmdr. Yuen shot him down. He ejected and got clear of his aircraft but his parachute and backup both failed to open, causing him to fall over 1,000 feet into the sea. His helmet would be discovered washed ashore on a nearby beach a few weeks later, but his body was never found.

After that, Laura and the rest of her squadron would continue to do CAP missions for the majority of the US air campaign, occasionally helping out with the suppression of what remained of Venezuela's anti-air defenses. When the land invasion began in late February, they would also assist with providing close air support to troops on the ground, but Laura would not face anything like she had on that first day again. By the time the infamous Battle of Diablo Valley occurred in late September (a story for another day), she and VFA-31 had already been rotated back to the US mainland.

After returning home, and especially after the the disasters in Venezuela, Iran and Iraq had fully played out, Laura and many other veterans had become notably jaded and cynical in regards to her country's foreign policy. She was giving serious consideration towards leaving the Navy when Daniel Seretto was elected President. The new Commander and Chief would institute a massive shift in both domestic and foreign policy. He would also devise a special mission, code-named Operation "Redeemer," in order to "achieve equilibrium" for past US mistakes. Laura and two dozen other fighter pilots (including Mary Alcazar) would be selected for that mission... and history would be made.

To be continued...