Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (44 page)

 
          
The
captain closed his eyes. It had begun. Although not as he would have envisioned
the Battle For Chinese Reunification to commence, it had finally happened.
“Sound general quarters,” he ordered. The ship-wide mechanical alarm bells
began ringing immediately. “Clear the flight deck, launch the ASW helicopters,
prepare to retaliate against the rebel submarine. Haul anchor and prepare to
get under way. Warn the rest of the fleet that we will be maneuvering for ASW
air combat operations and ready all submarine countermeasures. Send a flash
satellite emergency message to Eastern and South China Sea Fleet headquarters
and advise them that the
Mao
carrier
group is under attack by Taiwanese submarine forces.”

 
          
The
first explosion occurred less than six minutes later, on the port side forward.
Yi was surprised to feel how much the deck shook and rolled. His big,
beautiful, 6,000-ton ship heeled and shuddered like a wooden toy boat wallowing
in a summer monsoon thunderstorm.

 
          
The
civilians crowding the flight deck thought that the alarm bells were part of
some demonstration or drill staged for their amusement, and so it seemed that
no one was reacting to his orders. Crewmen tried to herd the civilians to
stairwells, but they all stood around or moved closer to the helicopters, gun
mounts, and access hatches, waiting to watch the new demonstration they thought
was about to begin. He looked on with absolute horror as several children on
the ski jump, bowled over by the force of the explosion, fell overboard—the
deck-edge safety nets had been retracted into their stowed positions. He could
not hear the children s screams over the clanging of the emergency alarm, but
in his mind he could hear them all too plainly. Clouds of smoke began to billow
out from the port side, completely obscuring the forward flight deck. Civilians
were running everywhere in a panic, hampering the damage control party’s
response. A second explosion erupted, just a few dozen meters aft of the first,
also on the port side.

 
          
It
had finally begun, the captain thought again as he raced for the bridge. It
seemed a rather ignoble way to start such a glorious war of liberation and
reunification, but nonetheless it was finally under way. . . .

 
          
As
soon as the crowds of confused civilians could be cleared away, four ex-Soviet
Kamov-25 helicopters on the deck of the
Mao
began turning rotors and preparing to get under way; each helicopter was armed
with two E40-79 air-dropped torpedoes. Also launching from the fantail of the
carrier
Mao
was a Zhi-8 heavy
shipboard helicopter, carrying a dipping sonar array for searching for
submarines.

 
          
The
five helicopters flew a precise course eastward in a tight formation. The crowd
of civilians watched in fascination as the formation hovered less than five
miles away. The large helicopter hovered close to the surface of the South
China Sea and reeled out its sonar transducer at the end of a cable; it let it
dangle in the ocean for several seconds before reeling it back in, flying
several hundred yards away, then hovering and dunking again. After the second
dunk, one Ka-25 helicopter zipped south a few hundred yards, and the crowd of
onlookers could see the splashes as it released both its torpedoes.

 
          
Not
every detail of the attack could be seen from the decks of the
Mao,
but as if they were hosting some
kind of sporting event, a radio operator was giving a running commentary on the
chase: “Search One has detected an unknown target, bearing one-niner-zero...
Attack Two, transition south five hundred meters and stand by... Search One,
target one bearing two-eight-three, Attack Two, do you copy . . . ? Attack Two
copies new target fix, stand by for weapons release . . . torpedoes away,
torpedoes away, all units be advised, remain clear ... torpedoes running, both
torpedoes running . . . torpedoes going active, all units, new target bearing,
mark, target data transmitting ...” Moments later, the crowd screamed and
shouted in surprise when two terrific explosions and huge geysers of water
erupted from the ocean near where the helicopter had dropped its deadly load.

 
          
The
attacks continued for nearly an hour, until all of the torpedoes had been
exhausted. In the meantime, the carrier
Mao
had lifted anchor and had begun maneuvering toward where the helicopters were
operating. The carrier was creeping toward them at minimum steerageway power
until they received the news—the enemy submarine had been hit, and it was on
its way up to the surface. Several minutes later, the crowd of civilians still
on board the
Mao
was treated to an
unusual sight: a crippled and smoking submarine bobbing on the surface. It was
announced to all that it was a Dutch-designed Zwaardvis-class attack submarine,
with a crew of 67 and a combat load of 28 wire-guided U.S.-made Mk 37
torpedoes.

 
          
It
was also announced that the submarine was identified as the
Hai Hu
—an attack submarine owned and
operated by the rebel Nationalist government on the
island
of
Formosa
.

OVER PEI-KAN-T’ANG
ISLAND
,
90 MILES NORTHWEST OF
TAIPEI
,
TAIWAN

THURSDAY, 19 JUNE 1997
,
0807 HOURS LOCAL (
WEDNESDAY,
18 JUNE, 2007
HOURS ET)

 
          
It
was without a doubt one of the most beautiful, yet one of the most dangerous
outposts in all the world, Chung-Kuo KungChuan (Republic of China Air Force)
C-130T transport pilot Captain Shen Hung-Ta thought. Once they got below the
clouds, the islands looked so warm and inviting from the air—one might easily
forget the dangers hidden nearby.

 
          
Air
Force Captain Shen was just twenty miles out from Matsu Air Base, the
northernmost military base belonging to the Republic of China. Matsu Air Base
was on Pei-Kan-Tang Tao, one of a cluster of eight islands lying just ten miles
off the coast of mainland China. Just forty miles to the west was the city of
Fu-Chou, a city of one million residents, plus its air force, army, and naval
coastal defense bases with another six to twelve thousand troops. The Matsu
Islands had a grand total of fifteen thousand Taiwanese troops stationed here,
mostly in underground bunkers and air and coastal defense sites—and that number
probably included a few goats, Shen thought.

 
          
Whatever
it was, the number didn’t matter. Matsu was officially a Taiwanese “coastal
defense” outpost, with Taiwanese-made Hsiung Feng (Male Bee) anti-ship cruise
missiles and U.S.-made Improved-HAWK antiaircraft missiles stationed there,
along with one special forces group and a light infantry division.
Unofficially, Taiwan had several sophisticated intelligence-gathering listening
posts in the Matsu Islands, along with special communications systems, the
National Security Bureau of Taiwan could tap into China’s telephone, telegraph,
and telex network from the Matsu Islands, and a string of undersea sensors in
the East China Sea were monitored from Matsu so Taiwan could remotely monitor
the movement of Chinese ships north of Taiwan.
Matsu
also stationed a few S-2T Tracker submarine
hunters there on occasion to search for Chinese and North Korean submarines
cruising the
Formosa
Strait
and
East China Sea
, and the main long-range radar array atop
Matsu
Mountain
monitored the movement of Chinese ships and
aircraft between the South and East Fleet headquarters.

 
          
“Matsu
Approach, Transport One-Five, approaching intersection Bravo . . . now,” Shen
reported as he flew his cargo plane inbound to Matsu North. Each phase of the
approach into Matsu had to be carefully and exactly executed; any deviation
could trigger an air defense alert from Matsu and also from Yixu Air Base in
mainland China. Shen knew that almost one hundred Chinese fighters, mostly
Chinese copies of Russian MiG-17, -19, and -21 interceptors, were based there,
along with HQ-2 surface-to-air missiles and numerous antiaircraft artillery
units. Shen’s approach into Matsu North Air Base put him only thirty miles east
of Yixu Air Base in mainland China, well within radar and antiaircraft missile
range.

 
          
“Transport
One-Five, Matsu Approach, you are cleared to point Charlie.”

 
          
“Cleared
to Charlie, One-Five, wilco,” Shen replied, using the American phrase “wilco”
for “will comply”; American aviation slang was considered acceptable
terminology to all ROC controllers, even in this very sensitive area so close
to the mainland.

 
          
Along
with electronic encoders and precise control of flight time and navigation,
security checkpoints were established all along the approaches to the two
airfields in the Matsu Islands; the checkpoint coordinates were changed with
every inbound flight and issued to the crew prior to departure. Each checkpoint
had to be reached within a quarter- mile and reported plus-or-minus one-tenth
of a mile or the aircraft might be considered hostile. The final checkpoint was
within visual range of ground spotters so positive visual identification could
be made before final landing clearance was issued. Many times, Shen and his
crew had to break off a picture-perfect approach because they forgot to report
over a checkpoint.

 
          
But
such serious errors were fortunately rare, and in general flying so close to
the mainland, so close to the enormous military might of the Peoples Republic
of China, was very routine, almost mundane. The key was in a careful
cross-check. Captain Shen double-checked that the proper tower control
frequency was set—it was. Double-check the ILS (Instrument Landing System)
frequency, get a good Morse code ident—got it. Double-check the inbound course
set—got it. Double-check the NDB (Non-Directional Beacon) frequency set, get a
good ident, then check that the marker beacon lights were working—got it. Gyro
heading indicators checked with the “whiskey” compass—done, both within five
degrees, which was a lot but acceptable. Double-check the ILS with the VOR
(Very-high-frequency Omnidirectional Receiver) on the copilot s side, in case
the glideslope went out—done. If there was any big deviation, the copilot would
call it out and they’d decide as a crew which approach to use. In this weather,
losing the ILS might mean returning back to Taipei because the VOR was never as
accurate as the ILS, but both appeared to be working fine. Shen wished he had a
GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite navigation receiver, but this old
transport wasn’t slated to get one for several weeks.

 
          
Now
the business of shooting a “no shit” instrument approach got under way. For any
pilot, even one with as many hours as Shen, flying totally on instruments,
without one single reference outside the cockpit, was always tension-filled.
The C-130’s autopilot was a simple heading-hold system, not coupled to the ILS,
so Shen was hand-flying it on this approach. It was like playing a video game,
maneuvering the sixty-thousand- pound plane in order to keep two needles on the
HSI (Horizontal Situation Indicator) forming a perfect cross in the center of
the instrument. The needles’ movement got more sensitive as they got closer to
the field, so Shen’s inputs had to be more careful, more delicate. But if he
kept those needles centered perfectly, at just the right airspeed, he would be
lined up perfectly on the runway, in position to execute a landing without any
gross turns or dives.

 
          
“Coming
up on point Charlie,” the copilot announced.

 
          
“Approach
flaps,” Shen ordered, and the copilot put in twenty degrees of flaps, which
slowed the big transport down nicely to just below approach speed, they’d get
back up to approach speed as they started down the glideslope, the invisible
electronic “ramp” that would take them to the runway. Shen now focused all his
attention on the instruments, performing a careful scan of the four primary
flight instruments— the copilot would look after the engine instruments and
other indicators. The HSI in the center of the instrument panel in front of the
pilot was a combination gyro compass, omni bearing indicator, and ILS
indicator, so that was the central instrument to watch; next was the artificial
horizon, back to the HSI, then out to the airspeed indicator, back to the HSI, out
to the altimeter, back to the HSI, out to the vertical velocity indicator, back
to the HSI, then perhaps a quick scan of the engine instruments and a peek out
the cockpit windscreen before starting the scan all over again.