' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song) (51 page)

Despite the interception of the transports from Phanrang the surprise had been nearly total.

With the cessation of the air raid and departure of the aircraft back to the USS John C Stennis, a kind of shocked silence fell across the small island and the city just across the narrow channel. Residents looked across the water towards the destruction that had been meted out on Mactan, and then a droning sound from the south west became noticeable. More aircraft were approaching although these were not jet engines they heard but Rolls Royce Tyne and Allison T-56 turboprops.

In contrast to the swiftly diving and darting strike aircraft that had just raided Mactan
and air defence sites on the main island, the newcomers were flying fairly low and slow, three abreast in a long column of twenty seven transport aircraft, the C-130 Hercules of Great Britain’s Royal Air Force and the C-160 Transalls of the French, 61 Escadre de Transport.

From where they were heading, smoke arose from numerous fires, marring an otherwise blue sky as the stream of turbo prop transports lined up, using the smoke to judge wind direction and speed.

Beside the island, in the Mactan Channel was moored the damaged and fire scarred Russian Krivak class frigate
Samara.
She carried the same small tow crew as at the time she had been boarded and seized, after a fight during which her engine controls were smashed by the Russians when the frigate approached the Philippines. Unaware that Russia and China were no longer allied they had allowed a Chinese destroyer alongside. After the Russians had been subdued they had been locked below deck and a small tow party managed the ship as she was towed the rest of the way.

The Russian crew of the
Samara
and the rescued
men of the
Syktyvkar
had been marched off to a POW camp and just the tow party remained aboard now. The frigate had no electrical power for her radars or fire control centre but she did not need power for all of the ships weaponry.  

During the air strikes, the US aircraft saw only a badly damaged warship without power and no discernible threat at that point. The operations briefing had included all the relevant intelligence gathered by the Philippine resistance, and it had stated the vessel was non-operational and awaiting repair. They had better things upon which to expend their ordnance loads.

Chinese ratings now manned the two starboard and two port side 20mm mountings, carrying heavy boxes of ammunition up from the magazine.

Wing Commander Dunn was unaware of the disaster over the South China Sea, communications silence had been maintained until now, at least as regards the Anglo/French aircraft and only one code word had been received
‘Dasher’
, which meant they were to get there as fast as possible and drop their sticks of paratroopers. Something had changed from the original plan, and it could as likely be good news as bad.

“Where are the rest?” a voice said on the intercom. “Where are the Mandaue and Lapu Lapu DZ forces?”

‘Drop Zone Mandaue’ was where the US 2
nd
Brigade was to land, near the bridge approaches on the main island of Cebu.

‘Drop Zone Lapu Lapu’ was the US 1
st
Brigades target, the Mactan side of the bridges, and the Anglo/French airborne brigade were bound for ‘Drop Zone Zero Four’ either side of the longest runway, runway 04, when approached from the west.

The 1
st
Brigade had in fact received warning of enemy aircraft in the area following the destruction of the transport aircraft carrying 2
nd
Brigade, and it had diverted to an even more southerly route but they were hustling to catch up, and were minutes behind but the transports had to slow before commencing a drop.

A pre-drop checklist was completed and this was then followed by a second, for the slowdown. The completion of the second checklist was marked by the flick of a switch.

‘Red On’.

They were now some 40 minutes from the DZ and
the men strapped their equipment container to a leg and stood. The container held the man’s personal weapon in a sleeve along with his bergan and webbing. Some of the containers bore luminous white stickers and these were ‘Must Go’ loads that held radios, mortar, machine gun, anti-tank or medical equipment. In the event of the bearer being killed or wounded he would be divested of the container by whoever was passing for it to be deposited with company headquarters at the rally point.

The air load masters
got the men on their feet and hooked up their ‘Strops’, the static lines. To the relief of all concerned the side doors on the left and right of the fuselage were opened, venting the accumulated perfume of vomit and high octane aviation fuel, th
e
Eau de Pegasus
.

“45 OK!...44 OK!...43 OK!...” A
buddy-buddy check of the man in front by the paratrooper behind was carried out, starting with the last man in each stick and working forwards of course.

With n
othing more to do except to continue standing with backs bent under the weight of their loads and wait for the green light. The howl of the wind through the open doors brought with it the scent of warfare, high explosive and burning petrochemicals.

130mph and at 800 feet the C-130s of
No. 24 Squadron RAF led the Anglo/French stream.

There was some ground fire, small arms and light machine gun fire from the defending
Chinese troops in their trenches on the beaches, a side window shattered as a few rounds scored, but nothing more serious occurred as they passed over the western shore of Mactan and were finally above the DZ.

Wing Commander Dunn reached forwards to activate the green light for the
Loadies to begin despatching the sticks of paratroopers but his hand was suddenly not there anymore, just a bloody stump and cannon shells were exploding in the cockpit, destroying the instrument panel, and killing the co-pilot and flight engineer in a welter of blood, shattered glass and debris. Cannon shells struck all down the left side of the fuselage causing carnage amongst the closely packed men. Three engines were on fire and he could barely see for glass splinters in his eyes, a gale was tearing through the cockpit and he had a hard time keeping the aircraft steady with one hand, but there was no pain, not yet.

“GET THEM OUT!” he was able to shout over the intercom to the Loadies. “GET THEM OUT! GET THEM OUT!”

Most of the paratroopers from B Company, 3 Para, in the stick on the left side were dead or wounded, and the RAF crew were urging out those on the right side as fast as they could, they were still doing so when the aircraft bellied into the ground beside the end of the runway and somersaulted into the sea beyond.

Aboard the
Samara,
the sustained fire of her 20mm cannons hammered at the Hercules transports, flying slowly and from their right to left without jinking, committed to the low altitude and slow speed necessary to deliver paratroopers and pallets to the DZ. The morning sun caught the shiny brass of the empty casings as they were ejected, at a cyclic rate of 500 rounds a minute the empty shell casings struck the metal deck and bounced with a metallic ring, the spent cases rattling and multiplying. The loaders had hands pressed to their ears such was the noise. A blue grey haze of cordite hung over the mountings as they tracked the aircraft, ignoring the paratroopers that were exiting and instead seeking to destroy the transports, before swinging back for a fresh target.

No.
47 Squadron followed, a slightly longer interval between the squadron formations and both guns picked up Michelle Braithwaite’s aircraft, tracking it for a moment before opening fire.

Fragments flew off the C-130’s nose, the cockpit windows shattered and both the port outer and inner Allison turboprops
first streamed black smoke before bursting into flame.

The Chinese gunners and their loaders manning the frigates 20mm mountings on the starboard side vanished in a mist of red. Pulverised tissue and the fragments of exploding 25mm cannon shells resulted from a pair of US Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier’s strafing runs over the moored warship. They raked
its gun mountings, the AV-8Bs Gatling-type Equaliser cannon expending ammunition at a phenomenal cyclic rate of 2000 rounds per minute. Just two of the briefest of touches on the gun button ended the fire from the frigates starboard side. The cannons were damaged by the high explosive rounds and the gunners and loaders dead, but the surviving ratings were already unshipping the port side 20mm auto cannons.

The piles of bloodied empty casings rattled under foot and the dead were dragged away to make room. The damaged guns splashed into the muddy water of the channel as the ratings set-to in mounting the replacements. The enemy is the enemy, but that does not make him any less brave or determined than those he is fighting.

Passing over the frigate the USMC Harriers stayed at just 200 feet and banked right to egress the area, flying low over Cebu City, avoiding a sky suddenly full of paratroopers from 3
rd
Battalion Parachute Regiment, and pallet loads, the 105mm light guns of 7 Parachute Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery, and ammunition. There was more on the way with the USAF C-17s approaching in the wake of the British and French drops.

  Sandy Cummings, RN, flew the lead AV-8B, flying over the city beyond the channel before bending back around until again flying above the waters of the Mactan Channel, re-attacking the Krivak. His wingman sheered away, targeting an armed barge that was engaging the Harriers with 7.62 machine guns. The barge disappeared in a welter of spray and splintered wood as the Marine Corps aviator walked his rounds across it.

Selecting two Mk-82 250lb retarded bombs Sandy pickled them off, the weapons ballutes deploying behind them, slowing the weapons plunge and allowing the low flying Harrier to attack and egress safely. Both weapons penetrated the frigates superstructure and completed the destruction of the
Samara
that the Pearce Wing had begun weeks before in the Indian Ocean.

Squadron Leader Braithwaite held the aircraft steady for the paratroopers to exit. Her co-pilot feathered the damaged engines and pulled the fire handles on the port side engines, shutting off the fuel flow and returning his hands to lightly hold the controls, ready to take control if the aircraft captain were to be killed or injured. Flames from both damaged engines flickered and died. Thick black smoke pillared aloft from a crashed and burning RAF Hercules that lay on the eastern shore of the island. The tail plane of another protruded from the waters offshore, bodies floating face down beside it. The departing aircraft from No. 24 Squadron included damaged aircraft with wounded aboard. They had dropped their loads and now began the long flight back to Vietnam. Michelle did not follow; her aeroplane was not going to make it. She called up the next senior in No. 47 Squadron and relinquished control. Her flight engineer was seriously wounded and screaming in pain but they were now over water again and could not put down. Opening the throttles of the starboard engines she applied pressure on the rudder to compensate for the yaw caused by the lop-sided power source before adjusting the rudder trim wheel. She turned towards the main island, intending to gain height for the Loadies to bail out before she made an emergency landing. No one answered on the intercom and there seemed to be no open area she could use for this. She was struggling to regain altitude lost in the turn and advanced the throttles on the starboard engines some more, adjusting the trim wheel further still. The mass eviction of Mactan’s residents by the Chinese troops had swollen the already significant shanty towns of squatters, there was nowhere close by so she headed over the city. Her side windows had been shattered by the ground fire but the screen held, cracked but still there.

“Check Barnet.” she shouted to her co-pilot over the winds noise. Flying Officer Greg Barnet, the flight engineer, had fallen silent, the screaming tailing off suddenly.

Tracer flicked by and through the large rent in the side of the cockpit she caught a glimpse of a narrow road with open topped military trucks full of Chinese troops and a tank with a crewman firing on them with a heavy machine gun, although with more vigour than accuracy.

A dirty tail of smoke followed the aircraft from its
slowly wind milling port engines, rents in the wings and fuselage from the cannon shell strikes were clearly visible to the faces turned upwards to watch the damaged transport as it flew low overhead, women crossed themselves and a priest in the street produced his crucifix and offering a blessing for those the machine contained, making the sign of the cross as it headed south west, parallel to the shore.

“Greg’s dead, probably blood loss…I’ll check the back.” the co-pilot informed Michelle.

When he returned he had a shock for her.

“We’ve still got a full load. The port side loadmaster and the first five of the stick are dead so that side couldn’t jump in time, and a cannon shell severed the starboard s
trop cable so they couldn’t jump either.” The main parachutes the men wore required a rigid anchor to clip on their static lines to. As the jumper goes out of the door the canopy is pulled out of the parachute pack on his or her back.