Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (75 page)

           
“Radar contact, second and third
B-52 bombers,” came the report from his fire-control officer. “I have a good
track on both planes—they should be turning this way just like the first. Five
minutes before the next one passes close enough.”

           
This was going to be incredible, the
captain thought—he might easily kill a second, and perhaps even a third B-52
with his 57-millimeter gun tonight. He would certainly get his own frigate
after tonight . . . “Move farther west,” he ordered his helmsman. “I want to be
as close as possible to these last two bombers.” The helmsman went to flank
speed in order to get a few meters closer to the bomber’s track— every hundred
meters closer was another dozen rounds on target.

           
“Second bomber turning east, range
decreasing . . . he’s coming this way, sir . . . I’m getting jamming on my
fire- control radar . . . forward 57 switching to electro-optical sights with
data link from
Jinan
. . . target
reacquired, forward 57- and port 30-millimeter report ready.”

           
This was perfect, really perfect.
The other patrol boat escorting the destroyer
Jinan
had no data link with the destroyer’s
air-search radar, so all he could do was follow
Yingkou
's tracers. He would never be credited with a kill. . .

           
“Thirty seconds . . . twenty seconds
... all gun mounts report ready . . . fifteen seconds ... all guns stand ...”

           
He never finished the sentence. The
first CAPTOR torpedo mine had armed immediately upon hitting the water and,
despite the incredible sounds of destruction from the B-52 crash, had locked
onto the engine sounds of the Haijui- class patrol boat as soon as he gunned
his engine, and ejected its deadly torpedo. The torpedo switched on its active
sonar, acquired and locked onto the patrol boat, accelerated to nearly fifty
miles per hour, and hit the patrol boat near the engine compartment one foot
below the waterline. A shaped charge rammed a titanium nosecap through the
patrol boat’s hull, and the torpedo actually swam three feet inside the port
engine room before its eight-hundred-pound warhead exploded. With most of its
stem blown apart,
YingJcou
slipped
under the surface in less than two minutes—about as long as it took the last of
the burning debris of Trick Zero-One to hit the water.

           
The other two B-52s in the first
south attack group avenged their leader’s death with a flurry of Harpoon
missile launches, and within minutes three more of
Jinan's
patrol boats had been destroyed.
Jinan
itself, overwhelmed by Harpoon missiles
from the south as well as the flight of Tomahawk cruise missiles from the
southeast, was hit by both a Tomahawk and a Harpoon and was put out of action.

Aboard the EB-52C Megafortress
Diamond One-One

           
It was a surprise for Major Kelvin
Carter to see the COLA (Computer Generated Lowest Altitude) computer command a
climb after so many hours at one relatively stable altitude, but as the
Megafortress approached the tall, rocky peaks of the Nenusa Archipelago
islands, the EB-52 wanted to climb six hundred feet to clear the tallest peak.
Carter edged his Megafortress slightly south of the tiny radar dots, and, after
the computer realized it would safely clear all the terrain, the Megafortress
sank back to one hundred feet above the eastern
Celebes Sea
.

           
Alicia Kellerman was busily plotting
the positions of the other planes in the strike team as she heard position
reports come over the radio. “All right!” she said. “All six BUFFS in the
number-two east group and Diamond One-Two made it through. They’re two minutes
ahead of us.”

           
“What about the others?” Carter
asked.

           
“The south group got hit real bad,”
Kellerman summarized. “One of the B-2s and a B-52 from Castle got shot down . .
.”

           
“Our B-2? Cobb and McLanahan?”

           
“Cobb and McLanahan made it through
OK. It was a Whiteman bird. One other 509th Black Knight from the north group
aborted when they lost an engine; all the other planes from the north group
made it.

           
“The other five B-52s from the south
group look like they took out that destroyer to their east and a few patrol
boats, so they might make it through. There’s another destroyer battle group
coming in from the west—that might be a problem when the strike package
egresses to the south. No other reports: everyone else appears to be heading in
on schedule. Kane on the EB-52 escorting the east number-two strike group got
two Chinese fighters.”

           
“Search radar at
eleven o’clock
,” Atkins reported. “Golf- band search ...
Sea Eagle 3-D air-search radar, Luda-class destroyer. GCI signals, possibly
more fighters coming in from the northwest.”

           
“That destroyer’s at forty miles,
and he’s got five escorts with him,” Kellerman added, checking her updated ISAR
radar display. “We’ll be going in about sixty seconds ahead of the south B-52s.
We’re within TACIT RAINBOW range, EW. Line ’em up and let’s get those suckers.”

Bangoy Strait, near Davao,
Mindanao, the Philippines

Same time

           
It was the largest assembly of
Chinese warships since the Korean Conflict, all concentrated within ten miles
of the city of
Davao
—and they were ready to begin their assault.

           
The assault group was split into two
groups, each led by a People’s Liberation Army Navy destroyer. North of Samar
International Airport in Bangoy Bay was the destroyer
Dalian,
with six patrol boats as escorts, in overall command of
five ex-United States LST-1-class tank-landing ships, each with two hundred and
fifty People’s Liberation Army Marines, ten light tanks, and twenty armored personnel
carriers; and four Yukan-class landing ships, each with over four hundred
Marines and one thousand tons of cargo and equipment. Each amphibious assault
ship had several smaller landing craft that would each drop thirty Marine
engineers ashore to clear wires or traps and soften up beach defenses; then the
landing ships themselves would drive to shore, beach themselves, and disgorge
their fighting men in massive waves. Helicopters from the Yukan-class ships
would then begin to drop Marines and artillery pieces nearby, and the whole
company would fan out across the countryside, secure the coastal inlands north
of the airport, then drive south.

           
The main attack force was four miles
south of
Davao
, in
Davao
Gulf
itself. Led by the destroyer
Yinchuan
,
its amphibious assault force had ten
LST-1-class tank-landing ships and eight Yukan-class landing ships, plus
numerous smaller landing craft, minesweepers, and support ships. This group had
the responsibility of securing the highlands west of
Davao
, encircling the city itself, and then
linking up with the northern group to help secure the airport.

           
By 0135 hours, two hours ahead of
schedule, the two Luda-class destroyers had moved to within eight miles of the
landing area and opened up with their 130-millimeter cannons, peppering the
beach and treelines near the intended landing zones with one round every second
per vessel. The rounds were of all different types—most were standard shells
weighing fifty pounds and carrying eight pounds of high- explosives, but some
were shells that carried infrared sensors that homed in on heat sources such as
vehicles or machine gun nests, incendiary warheads that spattered napalm to set
buildings or heavy brush afire, or bomblets that spread out over a wide area to
increase the destruction of each shell. Helicopters with infrared spotting
scopes were used to spot targets for some of the guns, but mostly the Chinese
were content to bombard the area without regard to specific targets. The
destroyer
Yinchuan
turned a few of its rounds on the area
surrounding
Samar
International
Airport
, hoping to scatter some of the defenders
that were certainly waiting for the Chinese to come ashore.

           
After twenty minutes of continuous
bombardment, the Chinese assault ships began launching wave after wave of small
landing craft with Marine engineers and security guards to clear a way for the
assault ships to beach themselves. The gunfire from the destroyers became much
more selective, targeting and hitting a few large-caliber shore-gun
emplacements to provide covering fire for the landing craft. While raking the
shore with 37- and 25-millimeter gunfire, the landing craft dropped some
frogmen overboard to search for water traps or mines, while the others went
ashore to begin hunting for minefields and to suppress heavy gun emplacements
on shore. Except for a few widely scattered mines, they encountered almost no
resistance. It took the first waves of landing craft less than ten minutes to
reach the beach.

           
After twenty-five minutes of
bombardment, each 130-millimeter gun on the destroyers had expended one-third
of the rated life for its barrels, so the heavy shelling ceased and the search
began for attacks against the landing craft. They found a few snipers and
encountered light resistance from hit-and-run grenade attacks, but the Chinese
Marines sustained only a few casualties.

           
“Sir, report from Rear Admiral
Yanlai,” Captain Sun Ji Guoming, the chief of staff for Admiral Yin Po L’un’s
flag staff, said. “The amphibious assault has gone better than he expected. The
first landing craft are ashore with few casual-

           
ties; the second wave will land in a
few minutes. No heavy resistance is being encountered from
Samar
’s forces.”

           
A tremendous weight seemed to be
lifted from Admiral Yin’s shoulders. Ever since Captain Sun and a few of his
other advisers had recommended against Marine landing until the American Air
Battle Force was dealt with, he had been worried that his decision to proceed
with the assault was a bad one—now it seemed to be remarkably prescient. “Does
Admiral Yanlai have any suggestions?”

           
“No, sir,” Sun replied. “He is
proceeding with the planned operation.”

           
“The plan supposed
Samar
’s usual stiff guerrilla resistance to the
landing forces,” Yin said. “
Samar
has
obviously fled. It is time to step up the attack—with the American force
nearby, it is essential. Order Admiral Yanlai to land the LSTs and troop-landing
ships after the second wave of Marines is ashore.” '

           
The flag staff turned toward Yin in
complete shock, and Captain Sun could not help but blink at his commanding
officer in surprise. “But . . . sir, in only two landing-craft waves, we have
less than three hundred troops ashore, and most of those are lightly armed
engineers and Marines. They don’t have the equipment or strength to conduct a
thorough search and destroy operation. In daylight hours they can hardly
proceed faster than a half-mile inland—at night they may be on the beach for
hours, easily until daylight. They have not even begun to probe the area for
resistance. It would be madn— I beg your pardon, sir, in my opinion it would be
unwise
to send in the large landing
ships until we can be sure the area is free of resistance.”

           
Captain Sun sustained Yin’s furious
glare with uneasy fear. He had come very close to total insubordination by
calling Yin’s order “madness,” and only Sun’s long-standing relationship with
Yin, as well as the fact that they were in the middle of a war, prevented him
from being dismissed right then and there.

           
“As you were, Captain,” Yin growled.
“Our plans and normal operating procedures are based on the level of resistance
and the greatest threat facing our forces. The resistance so far is low, and
the threat from American bombers is very high. Those ships are vulnerable. The
more men we can get off those ships and safely on land, the better. Order the
landing ships ashore
immediately. ”

           
By using a Mode Two interrogator,
which broadcast a short, coded signal to other American aircraft in the area
commanding the other aircraft’s beacons to emit a short identification signal
in reply, Patrick McLanahan could discover where other aircraft in the strike
force were located and display it on the God’s-eye view on his Super Multi
Function Display—in turn, this would be transmitted to the EB-52C escorts in
the other strike packages so they could update their situational displays. The
data would also be transmitted via NIRTSat communications satellites to the
Joint Task Force commander on
Guam
and to
the
National
Military
Command
Center
at the Pentagon.