Men of War (2013) (21 page)

The
agile
Silent Eagles
had swooped in and galled their prey, taking down
eight of the twelve J-10s in less than five minutes. Now the last deadly duel
was fought as the two sides actually closed well within visual range, (WVR),
and began to dogfight. Here the experience and skill of the Japanese pilots,
and the amazingly capable plane they were flying proved decisive.

“Fox
Four! Guns, guns, guns!”
The 20mm
Vulcan
Gatling cannon was equipped
with just 510 rounds in a normal load-out, but they were enough to take down
two more before the last two J-10s bugged out, heading west at full throttle to
look for their big brothers in the
Shenyang
J-11s

Called
the
SinoFlanker
by some Western analysts because it
was a plane based on the Russian
Sukhoi
SU-27
Flanker
,
the J-11 was an able challenger to the
Eagles
and
Fighting Falcons
it had been built to oppose. It had Russian avionics, radars and engines, but
many indigenous improvements as well. It was bringing a better missile too, the
PL-12 that could match the
Silent Eagles
in range at 100 kilometers.

But
the
Eagles
were not alone.

As
the J-11’s roared in from the west, unseen lightning fell from the skies above
when the three carrier launched JF-35Bs suddenly appeared on the screens of the
startled Chinese pilots. The F-35s in relied on front-quarter Low Observabilty
to gain the all important advantage of ‘first look - first shot - first kill’
beyond visual range. Missiles were away and the
Lightnings
struck the
J-11’s hard, with each plane claiming a quick kill.

Then
the scene became a wild dance of inexperienced pilots wheeling super high
performance aircraft about in a dizzying display of flying. One of the Japanese
pilots lost his concentration, too jubilant after his guns had ripped a J-10 to
pieces, and his
Eagle
was damaged by a near miss from a P-12
fragmentation warhead explosion. He dove, struggled for control and eventually
managed to get his plane down low and head east for Naha. The last three were
caught up in the chaos of the swirling aerial maneuvers, and soon joined the
J-10s bugging out and heading west for friendly shores. It had been the first
real combat mission flown by any of the pilots involved, and the small
accumulation of advantages possessed by the Japanese planes and pilots had
proved more than decisive. Yet the  Chinese would learn quickly, and the
next time their J-10s sortied that would have better missiles.

Aboard
the
Akagi
, Captain Yoshida had been listening to the frantic calls of
the pilots as they engaged the enemy planes. When it was over he heard the
report.
“Enemy breaking off. We have fourteen kills! Fuel low, returning to
base.”

The
men on the bridge of
Akagi
cheered, though the word
bonzai
was not uttered by a single man. When he heard them Captain Yoshida, raised his
voice in a sharp rebuke. “We do not cheer the death of our enemy, nor would we
have them do the same when our brothers have fallen in battle.”

He
considered the situation, realizing that he now would quickly need to launch
his second
shotai
of JF-35s, and soon the
bridge was all business again, the flight boss on the radio giving the order to
launch. Yoshida came to the radar operator’s station and pointed.

“Is
that the KJ-2000?”

“Yes,
sir. It had been orbiting at 40,000 feet for the last hour.”

“Send
it home. Vector in a J-35 from the second
shotai
.”

Yoshida
wanted to scratch out the enemy’s eyes, blinding him to the battle space and
insuring that he could now move his task force to the Senkaku archipelago with
impunity, but he was too late. The Chinese had seen and fixed his position long
ago and had a deadly surprise in store for the Japanese that day.

The
radar operator shouted out the alarm. “Sir, I have a high speed, high altitude
missile inbound!”

The
battle was evolving yet again. The Chinese had sent their second string
fighters to the fray, fixing the attention of their enemy on the air duel above
the islands, but high in space a watching American spy satellite suddenly
flashed a warning to Pacific Command in Honolulu, Hawaii indicating ballistic
missiles had been launched. While the brave ships had been dueling on the sea,
and the planes locked in their deadly dance in the skies, Chinese archers had
fired a volley of
DongFeng
-15C short range ballistic missiles, and their
bigger brothers, the lethal DF-21s. Named for the east wind that was a
harbinger of good favor, this wind would bring a rain of fire and anger on the
unwary enemy.

They
were coming for Yoshida’s ships at over Mach 6 terminal velocity, and extremely
difficult target to track and hit. With just seconds to react, he gave the
order to engage with his SM3 Anti Ballistic Missile system, with a blistering
speed of just under Mach 8. Four were fired, but they had seen the incoming
missiles too late, and they would claim only one successful interception. Five
of the six missiles in the first volley would get through to the target zone,
and of these two would fulfill their mission.

The
first exploded high above the task force with an electromagnetic shockwave
warhead designed to knock down the enemy’s electronics. The second was a
straight conventional warhead, 950 kilograms of rip snorting armor piercing
anger coming in at a plunging angle that went clean through the flight deck of
the unlucky ship DDH
Hyuga
, and continued
penetrating until it had blown completely through the bottom hull. The resulting
explosion of mission ready helicopters, aviation fuel, and munitions was
catastrophic.
Hyuga
had been dealt a fatal
blow and the ship would keel over to starboard side, the last of her
Seahawks
sliding into the ocean, and die an agonizing death within minutes.

While
not a true aircraft carrier per se,
Hyuga
was
close enough, the third unit in Carrier Division two, now composed of
Akagi
,
Kaga
and the stricken DDH. No aircraft carrier had been sunk in the world
since the Japanese carrier
Amagi
in Kure harbor
on July 24th,1945. The sting of bad fate now sent
Hyuga
to the bottom of the East China Sea, a painful reprisal in exchange for the
near lifeless hunks of rock Japan had been so keen to secure.

Aboard
Akagi
Captain Yoshida stared aft in shock and dismay, watching the
Hyuga
burn and capsize within minutes. He had more
on his hands now that he had first thought when he mused over the launch of
those first three JF-35s. Just when the battle seemed to be within his grasp,
the missiles had found his task force at sea, a feat that had been considered,
planned for, and yet not believed possible until this very moment. China had
sunk a fast moving ship with a single ballistic missile. He knew that the
systems that had guided this missile to its target were high above in the
airless domain of outer space, with satellite GPS navigation playing a major
part in the success of the attack.

If
this “incident” actually expanded to a general war, something would have to be
done about that, but Japan did not have the means to insure ABM defense that
involved taking out enemy satellites. It would be a task for the Americans,
pledged to defend Japan by treaty since the conclusion of WWII. And if the
Americans come to the fight, he thought, how long before the Russians come?

Yoshida
could not think about that now. The electromagnetic shock warhead had caused
its own measure of additional trouble, though it did not function as intended.
A number of his unshielded systems were affected, but his essential electronics
weathered the pulse and continued to function. Still, it was enough to cause
some disruption to his operations, and the loss of
Hyuga
was a hard blow to ship’s morale.

Yoshida
looked sullenly at his bridge crew now, reinforcing the lesson he had barked
out earlier. “Who now wishes to hear the jubilant song of our enemies?” His
dark eyes found one officer after another. “This is only the beginning,” he
said. “And should war come to our homeland again in earnest, believe me, we
will not find him a welcome guest.”

Yoshida
did not know it at that moment, but that uninvited guest was already knocking
on the back porch of the Japanese homeland. The salvo of deadly missiles that
had blown in on the east wind was just the first fitful stirring of the storm
to come. China had burrowed into the ancient soil of its homeland, digging up
the bones of dynasties past to build an amazing network of over 3,000 miles of
underground tunnels and hardened bunkers. Slow mobile launchers were creeping
through the dark subterranean tunnels, moving to deploy for the main event that
had been planned long ago.

In
a matter of minutes, China had taken the deadly tactical duel for the islands
to a new level. What began as a potential small unit engagement by a few squads
of Naval Marines, had soon escalated to a wide area air/sea battle, and then to
a strategic strike against the bases that were most essential in supporting
further Japanese operations in the area. The one saving grace had been the fact
that no nuclear weapons had been brought to bear. Both sides were still wearing
gloves in the fight, and the “rules” of combat had been assiduously followed.

China
had been unprepared for the ferocity and determination of the Japanese counter
to their planned occupation of the Diaoyutai islands, and had been beaten in a
fair duel of ships, planes and missiles over the deep blue sea. Yet to beat
them the Japanese had played out their very best assets in the region. The odds
would get much steeper, and the Chinese promised to be a much more formidable
fore
than the brief action had foreshadowed. They boldly
played a trump card that the Japanese had not expected this early in the game,
and to the discerning minds of the military analysts back in Honolulu watching
from their KH-11 satellites high in space, more was afoot than this limited hot
engagement at sea.

The
battle Captain Yoshida would claim as a pyrrhic victory was nothing more than
shadow play on the wall, a mere distraction meant to draw the eye and ear of
the enemy, and lead him astray. That afternoon the first missiles fell on
Okinawa, longer range DongFeng-21s that employed terminally guided maneuvering
re-entry vehicles and brought a rain of incendiary and high explosive warheads
to the Japanese air base at Naha. The US base at
Kadena
was spared for the moment, but it remained on the target list should the
Americans enter the fray any time soon. It was a subtle signal to the
Americans—stay out of it and we will have no quarrel with you. The little
battle that began with troops landing on distant, deserted Pacific islands had
ended with ballistic missiles on Japanese soil in a strange mirroring of the
last great war. But Yoshida’s rebuke to his bridge crew had been truly
prophetic. This was only the beginning.

The
alarm clock bomb was ticking loudly now, and the second hand sweeping ever
closer to a chaos that would soon become all but uncontrollable. Within minutes
of the attack, the ringing of telephones from Beijing to Vladivostok to
Honolulu to Washington DC chimed out their warning on one desk after another.

A
new storm was coming to the Pacific, and the first darkened squalls had flashed
the lightning of war over its restless waters. It would begin there in a
squabble for undiscovered oil, one tiny lit fuse that would soon ignite many
others. The real war would be fought where the crude already ran thick, in the
Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Mexico, and the vast new superfields of Central Asia
in Kazakhstan.

Part VI

Men
Of War

“…The
release of Atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more
urgent the necessity of solving an existing one…He who joyfully marches to
music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a
large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.”

—
Albert
Einstein

Chapter 16

Kamenski
flipped slowly through the book, quietly shaking his head within as he did so.
It was the History of the Japanese Navy in WWII, and he had come here to the
library in Vladivostok to chase an itch he had been scratching for the last
twenty years. He had learned a great deal about a mysterious incident in the
Coral Sea that the history never fully explained. The Japanese had tried to
cover things up, but as the years went by, more and more evidence slowly came
to light. Something has happened, like a ripple of lightning across the
blackened storm clouds of war. Something came out of the Indian ocean and
struck through the heart of the Japanese offensive in 1942 like a steel
javelin.

It
started off the coast of Melville Island, where he had read reports made by
coast watchers that the Japanese had engaged an Allied surface ship running
east away from Darwin. The problem was that there were no allied warships worth
the name in Darwin at the time, and no one seemed to be able to identify what
this ship was. Yet the Japanese had pursued it through the Torres Straits and
into the Coral Sea, expending the considerable power of their entire 5th
Carrier Division to do so, and leaving the battleship
Kirishima
a half
sunken wreck on the coral reefs of the strait. He remembered the text he had
read on the incident, still vague and non-specific:
“Unaccountable losses
sustained by Hara’s Group prevented them from reinforcing Yamashiro’s carriers
at a vital moment, and the Americans were therefore able to deal with each arm
of the Japanese offensive in detail.”