' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song) (38 page)

The sound of the gunfire being exchanged between the Australians and the Chinese masked the sound of their own approach, taking the Chinese troopers by surprise. Two escaped by diving from the bridge and into the Moruya River but the remaining six fell to the Leopards coaxial and pintle mounted machine guns.

The senior surviving infantry officer and the troop commander dismounted to inspect the demolition charges as A Troop and the surviving A Company men crossed the river. A Chinese trooper hung suspended beneath the bridge by a safety harness. He looked to be dead but neither man was feeling particularly charitable or particularly willing to approach in case he was only playing dead. These men had caused a level of death and disruption seemingly out of proportion to their small numbers. Mr Edwards gave the signal to his loader, who was now manning the Alpha tanks pintle mount and the trooper received a short burst.

“If he wasn’t dead before, he is now.”

Approximately a quarter of the charges had been removed and all the wires cut, however the cables had not been removed as they had been at the previous bridge and stripping insulation in order to reconnect the wires by twisting them together did the trick for a forty metre section of bridge. Not enough to permanently deny them the use of the bridge but enough to require the service of a bridging unit.

“Sir!”

The infantrymen had searched the dead and come up trumps with a map.

Very disquietingly, all of their positions were marked upon the Chinese map, but so too was a chinagraph circle, the significance of which was immediately apparent.

“Sneaky fuckers... but why didn’t we think of that, too?”

The Chinese planners had spotted the flaw in the Australian defences centred on the few roads through the forests.

Two things linked all the communities in New South Wales, no matter how far from the coast or how high up a mountain, the all-weather tarmac roads, and power lines. 125m wide swathes had been cut through the forests to accommodate the tall steel pylons. Like Roman roads they tended to take the shortest route between two points and the inclines these pylons marched up could be pretty fierce, but it had not rained for some time, the ground was baked hard in the sun and the hills were negotiable by the Chinese Type 98 and 96 as well as the older Type 88 MBTs. The circled area was on one such cleared avenue that led all the along the coast to the Kings Highway, the Canberra road, behind Bateman’s Bay where the bulk of the brigade was. 

They remounted without further delay and headed north, the small force of five Leopard 1 MBTs, two ASLAV recce vehicles and three platoons of infantry. Mr Edwards reported his findings and a suggestion that was accepted after just a few minutes.

Bateman’s Bay was under heavy bombardment, the supposed precursor to an attempted landing upon Long Beach on the north of the bay and Corrigan’s Beach opposite it on the south side. But Bateman’s Bay was now just a diversion apparently, much to the chagrin of the commander of the Australian 1
st
Brigade. It is one thing to be outnumbered and out fought, but it is another thing entirely to be outsmarted by an enemy, especially when you have the home advantage.

Port Kembla was receiving comparatively light bombardment around the port area when compared to the weight of fire on the town itself, and the beaches of course.

D Company of 1
st
/19
th
Royal New South Wales Regiment joined them with forty men and its mortar section but in all, half a squadron of Leopard 1 MBTs, two thirds of an infantry battalion and a battery of 105 Howitzers had been lost. The enemy were ashore and moving for their next objective.

At Moruya they had accounted for more of the enemy than they had lost themselves but the figures did not add up.
Australia’s armed forces had been run down until they were only capable of short term international interventions.

The Tasman Sea.

0425hrs.

The invasion fleet had split into two divisions and turned east, in towards land once night had fallen. The Australian and allied navies and air force had launched a major strike at the northern group containing the carriers. HMAS
Sydney
and HMAS
Darwin
had been sunk, along with RSS
Vengeance,
ROCS
Tzu I
and the USS
Stethem
. Nine other allied surface warships were damaged, three seriously, in the Battle of the Tasman Sea, with the newly recommissioned
Spruance
class destroyer USS
Conolly
being beached at Cape Howe.

The sheer weight of surface to surface anti-ship missiles and laser guided naval gunfire had overwhelmed the far smaller allied force.

In the invasion fleets core only the aviation support vessel
G’doa
had been destroyed, hit twice by air launched AGM-84 Harpoon missiles intended for the carrier
Mao
. Two LSTs had been damaged, one seriously. The Russian assault ship
Lubyanka
had been hit by one of USS
Stethem’s
BGM-109 Tomahawks but the missile had passed through the hangar without detonating.  Four of the outer screen had been lost and a further four damaged.

In the air battle, eleven of the
Mao’s
air wing and twelve of
Admiral Kuznetsov’s
had been lost in the air battle but replacements stationed at the former Benito Ebuen Air Base on the Philippine island of Mactan were already enroute.

The Pearce Wing had sortied out of RAAF Williamtown and three small provincial airports north of Newcastle, NSW, in a coordinated attack upon the invasion fleet. Their wing attacked from the south and the combined RAAF Williamstown, Amberley and Richmond squadrons came in from the north.

The theory had been to divide the enemy air defences, drawing off the carrier wings so they could not interfere with
the naval engagement, and penetrate the warship screen to get at the carriers, troop transports and LSTs from the seaward side. The unfortunate matter of the enemy having more than enough surface to air ordnance to go around meant that only the second aim met with any real success.

The carrier aircraft waited for the air defence warships to put the allied aircraft in a defensive stance before attacking, but superior training and experience won over. Most of the allied losses in the air came as the air battle drifted into the engagement range of no fewer than seven enemy warships. Despite their own aircraft being endangered someone had ordered the warships to resume launching air defence missiles, and two enemy aircrew had died at the hands of their comrades, but twelve allied aircraft were destroyed also. The aircraft from RAAF Pearce no longer qualified numerically for the term ‘Wing’.

“Are you okay back there, Candy?”

They had lost a further aircraft from the flight, so the odds were not in their favour with regard to surviving a further two missions.

“That was pretty scary, like a hundred times more than the last time.” her RIO replied, but she had done a damn good job in Nikki’s opinion.

They had battle damage; a bite had been taken out of their port vertical stabiliser by debris. Lt Cmdr. Pelham’s ninth victim had almost taken the Tomcat with it when a burst from the Vulcan cannon had exploded the SU-27 that had itself destroyed
Smackdown
Zero Three.  With depleted defence stores and multiple surface to air missiles tracking them they had disengaged and evaded. Once well clear, 01 and 04 used landing lights to look each other over for any other damage. 04 was okay visually but 01 also had damage from cannon fire in the trailing edge of the starboard wing.

Smackdown
flight were supposed to land at Illawarra Regional Airport to refuel and rearm but the area was under attack so
Magpie
gave them a steer to HMAS Albatross, nine miles inland, south of the town of Nowra.

After thirty minutes a contact appeared on radar at their three o-clock and
Magpie
identified the aircraft as
Belly Dancer
Zero One, now the last of the famed Australian F-111C ‘Pigs’, and it was not only damaged but it had declared wounded on board.

Belly Dancer
Zero Two was gone, and that aircraft had last been seen heading toward the carriers and their screen at wavetop height. Zero One had attacked the
Mao
at the same time but her Harpoons had either been destroyed by flank defences or had struck the Chinese carriers auxiliary, the
G’doa.
There had been no transmissions, no warning, and no clue as to the second F-111C’s fate. Whatever had happened, it had been sudden.

Nikki called up the F-111C, with a knot of dread in her stomach. Despite her best intentions she had developed feelings for the Australian pilot. The Pearce Wing aircrews, particularly the former Nimitz aviators and the crews of the two F-111Cs socialised together, but Nikki stuck to soft drinks, not trusting herself around him if the tequila was flowing. Lt (jg) LaRue, on the other hand had no such inhibitions where the opposite sex was concerned, especially as she had decided that any day could well be her last. The crew of ‘Belly Dancer Zero Two’ Pilot Officer Jack Smith and Flight Lieutenant Russell Doe had both pursued young Candice.

“
Belly Dancer
this is
Smackdown
, how is it going over there?”

“G’mornin…it’s been better.”
The Mick Dundee persona without any attempt at VP was not a good sign. They were in trouble.

“Smackdown
is joining from your nine o-clock.”

“Rog’”

“Put some light on the subject and we’ll do a visual inspection.”

They closed in until the F-111C’s landing lights came on.

“Jesus Christ…!” Candy uttered over the intercom. Even the landing lights were intermittently flickering on and off due to the damage. The electronics were shorting out somewhere in the battered and holed airframe.

The F-111C was in bad shape with numerous hits by cannon fire, and it was flying on just the port engine, and that engine was trailing smoke. A vapour trail was also evident in the lights. The aircraft was losing fuel and height, and from the handling of the aircraft the avionics were damaged, the pilot wounded, or both.

“How are you and Macca doing?”

“Macca is drifting in and out. Its blood loss and shock but I’ve managed to trick his
G-suit, so that should help.” The main purpose of aircrew G-suits is to squeeze the legs tightly via inflatable air bladders during high speed manoeuvres.  Gravitational forces will force blood down to the wearer’s feet otherwise, therefore the suits help keep a supply of blood to the brain and prevent blackouts. By inflating the suit’s legs for wounded crew, it keeps blood near the core organs where it is needed and not in the legs where it is not as vital to survival.

In order to check the starboard side Nikki passed over and ahead so as not to risk igniting the leaking fuel. There had been a fire in the damaged starboard engine and part of the fuselage was missing, exposing the shutdown Pratt & Whitney turbofan. From experience, Nikki guessed that the fuel leak was as result of a second attack; otherwise the aircraft would be in charred little pieces at the bottom of the sea.

“’
Dancer
, we won’t cross your six as you are losing fuel and it appears to be coming from your starboard side…” she went on to catalogue all the damage she could see.

“Thirty four miles to Albatross,
Dancer
, at your current rate of decent you’ll be about in the weeds by then. I recommend you eject the capsule once we are feet-dry.”

“Negative on that as Macca needs medical assistance, and there is an intermittent red light on the ejection system.” The F-111 cockpit was in effect a survival capsule that in theory would parachute the crew down safely and remain sealed for water landings. Before she could respond, the AWAC cut in.

“Belly Dancer, Magpie Zero Two?”

“Go, Magpie.”

“Albatross is closed due to damaged aircraft and trapped crew on both runways, copy?”
Had the aircrew not still been in the aircraft in question, the wrecks would have been bulldozed clear to re-open the runways.

“Dancer, copies.”

“Jervis Bay is your only alternative, and it is a designated emergency field with arrester gear on ‘Two Six’. I recommend a straight in approach from the east.”
The controller aboard the AWAC continued.
“They are alerted and setting up for you.”

It was further to fly but there was nothing more to say, and they carried out a course correction that put the civilian aerodrome on the nose at twenty miles out.

“The good news is that Jervis Bay’s got a bar in its flying club and its open all hours, unofficially of course.”
The controller added.
“I hope you can have a drink on me, Dancer.”

Despite his best efforts, Gerry couldn’t maintain height and they were at just five hundred feet now. They had to cross the high cliffs of Cape St George and then the nature reserve’s woodland which extended to within a half mile of the threshold.