Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (89 page)

 
          
“But
what if the Americans do stage a counteroffensive?” Jiang asked. “Perhaps we
should be watchful, gather our forces, and prepare to repel an American attack.
We can deter the Americans by sheer force of numbers. Surely they will not try
a nuclear attack if we ask to begin peace negotiations now. ”

 
          
“And
then where will the rebels be? Rebuilding their forces, getting more assistance
from the Americans, and conducting more hit-and-run air attacks on our forces,”
Chin said. “No. We should attack the rebel mountain complex immediately. If Sun
will not do it, I have many more competent generals who will.”

OVER
TAIWAN
,
REPUBLIC OF
CHINA

SUNDAY, 29 JUNE 1997
,
0319 HOURS LOCAL (
SATURDAY,
28 JUNE, 1419
HOURS ET)

           
The attack began with a heavy
missile bombardment with conventionally armed Dong Feng-9 and -11 missiles from
the mainland. Their accuracy was not great, but it didn’t need to be—because
more than three hundred missiles launched from sixteen different locations,
with warheads ranging from 500 pounds to more than 1,700 pounds of high
explosive, peppered the area around Kai-Shan for over an hour. Every square
inch of a twenty-five-square-mile area around Kai-Shan was blasted away. Along with
the effect of the nearby nuclear explosions at Hualien, the area resembled the
surface of the moon in very short order.

 
          
The
second phase of the attack was by a completely new weapon system:
China
’s Type-031 attack submarine. In the day
preceding the attack, the Type-031 sub, named the
Yudao,
had left its port at
Shanghai
and had cruised without incident right up
to the mouth of the
Mei
River
, less than five miles from the cave
entrance to the Kai-Shan airfield complex, and waited. At the preplanned time,
the
Yudao
surfaced, took a final
targeting fix using its Golf-band targeting radar—aiming at a tiny radar
reflector placed near the cave entrance by the Chinese commandos—and began
firing Yinji-6 “Hawk Attack” guided missiles at the cave. The first four
Yinji-6 missiles blasted open the movable armored doors to the cave entrance,
finally exposing the interior of the complex to attack. Two of the remaining
four Yinji-6 missiles flew inside the cave itself, creating spectacular gushes
of fire and exploding rock from within.

 
          
The
third phase of the attack was the most impressive, and was certainly the
largest Asian aerial attack force since
Japan
’s naval air forces in World War II. Led by
thirty H-6 bombers, watched by an Ilyushin-76 radar plane, and guarded by ten
Sukhoi-27 and thirty Xian J-8 air- superiority interceptors, an attack force of
two hundred Nanchang Q-5 fighter-bombers, each carrying two 1,000-pound bombs
plus a long- range fuel tank, swept over the island of Formosa to begin the
attack on Kai-Shan.

 
          
The
H-6 bombers went first. From ten miles out, they launched huge Hai-Ying-4
missiles at the complex. These missiles merely flew straight to a set of
coordinates, and were meant to knock down or destroy any rock outcroppings that
might still be obstructing the cave entrance. Although the HY-4 missiles were
not designed for land attack and some did not perform well in this hastily
planned role, the destruction they caused left the attack path wide open for
the waves of Q-5 bombers to follow.

 
          
As
if they were doing a standard traffic pattern entry to land on Kai- Shan’s
underground runway, the Q-5 fighter-bombers flew eastbound over the Chung Yang
Mountains at 1,000 feet above ground until they were about ten miles offshore,
then turned southbound for three miles, then north westbound, descending to 500
feet and lining up on the cave entrance. The planned procedure was a “toss”
delivery, where the pilots would pull up sharply about two miles in front of
the cave, then pickle off the bombs, which would fly on a ballistic path right
into the cave. There could be no delay on the pull-up—the
Chung
Yang
Mountains
rose from 500 feet to nearly 10,000 feet
within five miles, so there was only a six-second margin of error. The best
bombardiers from all over
China
were picked for this important mission.

 
          
The
first flight of ten Q-5 bombers started their runs, and the plan was working
better than anticipated. The lead bombers announced that pilots could fly a
hundred feet higher to get a flatter toss into the cave, because parts of the
ceiling of the cave had collapsed and they couldn’t arc the bombs in quite as
high anymore. As the first flight of Q-5 bombers cleared the target area, the
second flight started their turn inbound on the attack course . . .

 
          
.
. . just in time to hear the warning screams over the command frequency:
“Warning, warning, all aircraft...” and then the loud, incessant hiss of
static. Pilots all over the sky over
Taiwan
were switching to alternate frequencies,
but all they found there, after a few seconds of trying to speak, was more
static. The 11-76 Candid radar plane orbiting over
Formosa
might as well have been back on the ground,
because no one could hear or talk with its all-important radar controllers.

 
          
It
was up to the Sukhoi-27s and radar-equipped Shenyang J-8 fighters now—but it
was soon apparent that they were mostly out of the fight as well—the jamming
was intruding on their attack radars. The J-8 s older radars were easily
jammed; the Su-27’s modern pulse-Doppler radars and advanced counter jamming
functions worked better. “Enemy planes, heading westbound! ” the Su-27 pilots
shouted on the attack frequency—but that did no good, because all of the VHF
and UHF frequencies were jammed. No warnings and no formation orders could be
sent or received. Two electronic-warfare EA-6B Prowlers from the USS
George Washington,
and two more EA-6Bs
from the USS
Carl Vinson
had set up
an effective electromagnetic net around the
island
of
Formosa
, denying the Chinese air force the use of any
radio or radar frequencies except those in use by the U.S. Navy attack planes
bearing down on the Chinese air armada.

 
          
The
first target was the Ilyushin-76 radar plane—and that task was left to the nine
surviving fly able Taiwanese F-16s, which had launched out of Kai-Shan just
after sunset, along with Jon Masters’s DC-10 tanker- transport. Four Su-27s
guarded the 11-76, but in the confusion caused by the EA-6B Prowlers jamming
their radios and disrupting their radars, they were no match for the wave of
F-16s. All four Su-27s were shot down by the F-16s, against the loss of one
F-16—and then each F-16 took a shot at the 11-76 radar plane. At least a dozen
AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles plowed into the Chinese radar plane, sending huge
burning pieces spinning into the
Formosa Strait
. The eight Taiwanese F-16s then withdrew from the area and linked up
with Jon Masters’s DC-10 tanker-transport orbiting over the Pacific, where they
all refueled and headed to Kadena Air Base in
Okinawa
.

 
          
The
confusion between the Chinese planes allowed the Navy fighters to get into
missile range. A total of twenty-four F-14 Tomcats and twenty F/A-18 Hornets
from the two carriers in the
Philippine Sea
began launching missiles. The Tomcats could open fire from over seventy
miles away with their huge AIM-54C
Phoenix
long-range antiair missiles, while the
Hornets attacked from as far as twenty miles away with medium-range AIM-7
Sparrow and AIM-120 radar-guided missiles. Nearly half of the Su-27s and J-8
fighters covering the attack force were destroyed before the Navy fighters
closed in within range of their short-range AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking
antiair missiles, and another eight Su-27s and J-8s fell to AIM-9 missile
attacks. The surviving Chinese fighters fled before the American fighters got a
chance to close within cannon range. The Chinese fighter-bombers that had not
dropped their weapons simply punched off the bombs and fuel tanks wherever they
were and turned westward to get away from the unseen predators closing in on them.

 
          
But
the Chinese bombers retreating from the area were just being herded into
another trap—ten four-ship formations of U.S. Air Force F-
15
C Eagle fighters from the Eighteenth Wing at Kadena Air Base on
Okinawa
and the Third Wing from Elmendorf Air Force
Base in
Anchorage
,
Alaska
, all loaded with six AIM-120 AMRAAMs and two AIM-9 Sidewinders apiece.
The F-15s spread out over the
Formosa Strait
and simply waited for the Chinese aircraft to fly right into their laps
before opening fire. Twenty-three F-15 pilots claimed kills that night, and
three more claimed multiple kills. Any Chinese HQ-2 surface-to-air missile
sites that tried to lock onto the F-15s over the Strait were destroyed by U.S.
Navy A-6E Intruders launching AGM-88 High speed Anti-Radiation Missiles.

 
          
The
attack lasted just minutes; as fast as it had begun, it was over. The radios
were clear, and attack radars were as effective as they ever were. But in that
few minutes, the damage was horrifying: the 11-76 radar plane, eleven H-6
bombers, four Su-27s, eighteen J-8 fighters, and forty- one Q-5 fighter-bombers
had been shot down, with no losses to American aircraft. Each and every Navy
and Air Force plane made it back to its carrier or base, then began rearming
and setting up for local-area air defense in case the Chinese tried a
counterattack.

 
          
The
Chinese fighters and bombers lucky enough to escape the American hit-and-run
attack from the darkness soon found other problems. Twelve B-1B Lancer bombers
from Ellsworth and Dyess Air Force Bases had been sent over eastern China,
loaded with eight AGM-86C cruise missiles with non-nuclear high-explosive
warheads, and eight AGM-177 Wolverine antiair defense cruise missiles, to
attack air bases and air defense sites throughout southeast China. The military
landing strips at
Fuzhou
,
Ningbo
,
Hangzhou
,
Jingdezhen
,
Nanchang
, and even
Shanghai
were cratered by cruise missiles, and the
Chinese approach and ground- control radars and some air defense missile and
artillery emplacements had been destroyed by the Wolverine missiles. All of the
fighters scheduled to land at these bases had to be diverted . . .

 
          
.
. . except there were no military fields within range to send them. The number
of planes destroyed or damaged simply by running out of fuel or attempting to
make a forced landing at a civil airstrip or highway quickly exceeded the
number of planes shot down by American fighters.

 
          
But
the B-lBs’ mission was not to deny landing strips to Chinese fighters low on
fuel, but to open a gaping hole in China’s multilayered air defense and
surveillance radar network to allow yet another attacker to slip in
unnoticed—six B-2A Spirit stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base. The B-2
bombers went feet-dry over several points along the Chinese coastline from
Shanghai
to
Qingdao
, taking separate low- level attack routes
inbound to their targets—the intercontinental ballistic missile bases in
north-central
China
.

 
          
The
twelve Dong Feng-5 missile silos and twenty Dong Feng-3 launch sites, with two
DF-3 missiles assigned per site, were spread out over 10,000 square miles in
two Chinese provinces, and heavily defended by HQ-2 surface-to-air missile
sites and antiaircraft artillery sites—but the B-2s swarmed over the missile
fields near Yinchuan in Inner Mongolia province and, one by one, attacked.