Normally a submarine commander would head away from the attack datum or area of battle. But Ming 353 went deep to 45 metres. Adopting the tactics of outdated warfare, the submarine headed towards the area of turmoil where the USS Peleliu was on fire, listing, and beginning to sink. The American helicopter pilots knew that the attacker was hiding among the debris of the sinking ship. The Ming crew could hear detonations on board and the crushing of the bulkheads under pressure. But the captain judged that Americans would never fire into sea where their compatriots were dying.
Water burst into the main decks, which were designed as huge aircraft hangars with no bulkhead divisions to seal one area off from another. The water moved back and forth in what seamen know as the free-surface effect. It sloshed in a swell from one side to the other, making the vessel more and more unstable. Unwittingly, firefighting teams added to the problems by pouring high-pressure water on fires which had broken out below decks. Pilots of three CH53-Echo helicopters managed to get airborne, cramming fifty passengers into each aircraft. Five lifeboats and two of the larger landing craft were launched. The USS Peleliu took twenty-five minutes to capsize and sink. In that short time, 585 people managed to get off the vessel. But the rest, 1,960 American servicemen, including the United States Navy captain in command and the Marine Expeditionary Unit colonel, died.
The Chinese orders were to sink only the USS Peleliu, after which the PLA believed America would pull out of South-East Asia. Ironically, the last previous major American warship to be destroyed in battle was the fleet ocean tug USS Sarsi, blown up by a mine in August 1952 during the Korean War. In that conflict, China was also the enemy.
The White House Press Room, Washington, DC
Local time: 1015 Tuesday 20 February 2001
GMT: 1515 Tuesday 20 February 2001
The President's press secretary mounted the podium.
`The President will be coming down here shortly to make a statement about the sinking of the USS Peleliu. I am going to tell you now so there's no misunderstanding about ground rules: the President will not be taking any questions, you hear? Good.'
Just as his press secretary was concluding his remarks Bradlay appeared. He was wearing a dark suit and a black tie. Lack of sleep showed in the dark circles under his eyes.
`At ten o'clock Washington time, the USS Peleliu on humanitarian service in the international waters of the South China Sea was attacked by a Chinese submarine and sunk. We do not have precise figures as yet but I am advised there are unlikely to be many survivors from the ship's nearly 2,000 strong complement of men and Marines. The actions of the Chinese in perpetrating this deed are contemptible. Our prayers and thoughts are with the families of the men and women who served on the Peleliu. Their sacrifice will not have been in vain. It will be avenged. I have instructed my staff to prepare a necessary response to this outrage. I will be talking with our allies in the hours ahead and I plan to address the nation tomorrow morning with a definitive statement of our plans. Thank you and God bless.'
As Bradlay collected his paper and began to walk towards the exit the assembled reporters began to call out questions in the hope that he would respond.
`Mr President, are we going to strike back?'
`Have you placed our nuclear forces on alert?'
`What can we do--'
At the last he wheeled around, to the astonishment of his aides, and said: `I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going right back to where they sank our ship. We are going to recover our dead. And we are not going to let anything stand in our way.' And with that he was off through the entrance preserved for administration officials.
London, England
Local time: 1530 Tuesday 20 February 2001
Markets react to news like a barometer to pressure. The fall of the Dow Jones was as swift as the news of the USS Peleliu was terrible. Within minutes the index was 235.14 lower at 7,602.86. The dollar shot up. An indication of just how stressed markets became that day is given by the behaviour of currencies. The dollar is quoted in terms of yen, say, with one bank offering to buy at 144.45 yen and sell at 145.55. In big currencies like the yen the spread is always tight. On that Tuesday afternoon, the spreads widened a whole yen.
This was of little consequence to Damian Phillips. He had been called by his London office as soon as the news of the Peleliu's sinking hit the trading screens in London. He had the event he was looking for. Now was the time to cover the short yen positions his dealers had built up in the previous month. There was an avalanche of yen for sale. Japan was seen as the big loser out of war between the US and China war that looked to be imminent. The yen had fallen to 152.55 to the dollar and was finding little stability even at those levels. The Bank of England, on behalf of the Bank of Japan, was buying yen for dollars, but to little avail. The Japanese currency had depreciated more than 20 per cent in two days. First China, which had sold little yen in the previous two days, was sitting on paper profits of billion. As the currency fell against the dollar First China's `yen shorts' were reversed.
In the dealing room of the Bank of International Commerce in London it was pandemonium. Dealers were screaming down telephones, some three at once. Patiently, however, Mark Fuller, chief dealer dollar/yen, was contemplating the arrival of all his Christmases at once. Fuller, thirty-two, was the classic London foreign exchange dealer. He had started his life in the City as a delivery boy and graduated to the bank's settlements department. His talent for numbers had been spotted by National Westminster Bank, where he worked for eight years. He had never looked back. He drove a Morgan (green) and lived in Chelmsford in Essex. He had been a seller of the yen all week. No one wanted to hold it. No one, that is, until First China told him to buy all the yen he could up to billion. Fuller had never had an order like it before. He knew First China. For the past month it had been active in the dollar/yen market, especially in the short positions it had accumulated. He watched the screen before him. It showed all the banks making prices in dollar/yen. And, in the jargon of the market, he `hit' them. In three hours he had bought all the yen First China wanted. What he did not fact could not ow was that at an average of .80 General Zhao of Multitechnologies had just made the best part of $210 million.
Oil markets took fright as well. The spot price of Brent Crude — the bell-weather price for over 70 per cent of the world's trade in oil — arched higher and broke through the $40 a barrel barrier. In the futures market, the 160,000 April contracts which First China owned rose higher. First China's oil trader sold into this rally as much of the position he could. By the end of trading he had managed to sell a further 80,000 contracts at a profit to his client of more than $600 million.
The Ogasawara Islands, Japan
Local time: 0400 Wednesday 21 February 2001
GMT: 1900 Tuesday 20 February 2001
The underground control centre of Defence Research Facility 317 had the well-lit antiseptic look of a hospital and the decor to match. A Fujitsu supercomputer was in a room of its own, slightly over-pressurized so that when its door was opened the flow of air was out of, rather than into, the room. In the main control area there were four banks of computers and screens all manned by technicians. On the far wall was a large electronic map of the western Pacific. In addition to the geography of the area, it also identified the position of the Japanese navy, as well as the navies of China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. A digital display was counting the minutes and seconds backwards towards zero.
Defence Research Facility 317 was located on Chichijima, the main island in the Ogasawara group. The islands' original settlers were a polyglot bunch of Americans, English, Welsh, and Polynesians led by Nathaniel Savory of Massachusetts. They arrived on Chichijima in 1830. It was not until 1873 that Japan claimed sovereignty over the islands; the settlers wisely acknowledged their new status immediately by swearing allegiance to the Empire of Japan. Even in 2001 many of the `old islanders' had distinctly European and Polynesian features. It was during the Second World
War, however, that the islands' strategic significance was exploited. Chichijima was a major staging area for Japan's invasion of the Marianas, Solomons, Philippines, and points south. Its huge radio facility atop Mount Yoake gave orders to Japan's entire Pacific fleet. One of the islands in the group, Iwo Jima, was the site of some of the most bloody combat the Americans encountered in the spring of 1945 as they edged towards the Japanese mainland. It was not until 1968 that the Ogasawaras were returned to Japan. They were much as Japan had left them. The mountains were honeycombed with tunnels that led to copper-lined suites of rooms. Although they were put under the titular administration of the Ministry of Finance, the Japanese navy — then called the Maritime Self-Defence Force reoccupied the islands. In the 1990s the air force built an airport on Anijima, just across from Chichijima. It was capable of taking the latest fighters and military transport aircraft.
The Japanese are a thrifty race. They waste little. Painstakingly they restored the tunnels and rooms. The copper was removed and recycled and in its place was put steel, lead, and concrete. Accommodation for more than 150 permanent scientists (and up to 60 visitors) was fashioned inside the rock. Electric power and state-of-the-art satellite communications were installed. By 2000 the facility was fully operational and its purpose as a nuclear weapons research facility a closely held secret. The research station deep in the mountains of Chichijima was, however, the most important part of a much larger enterprise. 50 kilometres to the east a tiny, never before inhabited speck in the Pacific had been prepared to receive Japan's first nuclear test. A hole some 120 metres deep had been drilled and a 50 kiloton device lowered to its bottom. To create an explosion equal to 50,000 tons of TNT is quite easy, if you have the materials. The `active' ingredients for Japan's first nuclear test weighed barely 5 kilograms. A 50 kiloton bomb required a few kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium. The bomb had been assembled on Okinawa a week before the Chinese attack on Vietnam and its seizure of the South China Sea. It had been flown in utmost secrecy to Chichijima on Monday. Engineers worked throughout the night to lower the bomb to the bottom of the well.
The digital display counted back towards zero.
FIVE
The Ogasawara Islands, Japan
Local time: 0430 Wednesday 21 February 2001
GMT: 1930 Tuesday 20 February 2001
There was an air of quiet control in the room. No movement was wasted. Everyone was concentrating on the task at hand: a successful detonation and a comprehensive monitoring of the result . . . 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 . . .
In an underground nuclear explosion, the force is initially contained within the surrounding rock. The energy, unable to spread out as it would in the atmosphere, soon vaporizes the rock, creating a large hole. The pressure within this cavity rises to millions of atmospheres. The vapours expand in all directions, pulverizing rock further and further away from the point of detonation. Within 80 nanoseconds (80 thousand millionths of a second) the temperature at the bottom of the Ogasawara well was 130,000,000 degrees centigrade and the pressure 100,000,000 atmospheres. The Japanese had detonated the device far enough underground for most of the shock wave created by the explosion to be contained within the Earth's crust. Part of the wave, however, always breaks through the surface, where a tell-tale subsidence crater is visible; as it travels upwards it creates a chimney, whose floor is the explosion cavity, littered with pulverized rock. The rest of the wave travels through the ground that contained the explosion, taking many forms: a series of alternating compressions, a `shear wave' which oscillates up and down, and a series of waves through the earth that resemble the waves of the ocean. Whichever form they take, however, the waves travel a vast distance, carrying an echo of the explosive event all the way around the world. It was this shock wave that special seismographs at Lop Nor in China and observation stations in Australia, Russia, and America detected soon after detonation. It was the first test of a nuclear weapon since 1996, when an international ban was agreed by the nuclear powers. Without warning to any of its allies, Japan had entered the nuclear club.
Seoul, South Korea
Local time: 0530 Wednesday 21 February 2001
GMT: 2030 Tuesday 20 February 2001
Massive television screens mounted on the sides of buildings throughout the city played news programmes about the killings through the night, interspersed with the first breaking news about Japan's nuclear test, the sinking of the Peleliu, and the escalating fear of war in East Asia. In a carefully balanced diplomatic act, South Korea condemned the Japanese nuclear test, regretted the sinking of the Peleliu , but urged restraint on all sides. In a private exchange it called on China to condemn North Korea's terrorist campaign in the South. American and South Korean troops guarding the Demilitarized Zone were issued with new body armour. Troops at the heavily fortified Fort Boniface some way back from the DMZ were put on the highest alert.
Just before dawn tens of thousands of North Korean students and trade unionists, in a well-organized demonstration, were chanting across the dividing line of the row of huts on the Panmunjon truce village. Waving flags, they demanded immediate unification with the South. North Korean generals gathered on the balcony of a meeting house only metres from the demarcation line. Just over a kilometre away loudspeakers rigged to a 160 metre high flagpole, the tallest in the world, broadcast anti-American propaganda. The slogans hailed the ideals of the Juche philosophy created by the Communist dictator Kim Il-Sung, who was installed by Stalin after the Second World War and ruled until his death in 1994. In 1950 he invaded the South, and with Chinese help produced a military stalemate with the Americans and Allied forces which was still in place today. Juche meant self-reliance and this philosophy had cut North Koreans off from the rest of the world for more than fifty years. They were controlled as no other people had been before and were told they lived in a paradise. Kim became the Great Leader, a godlike figure, many of whose people were so ignorant that they were not aware that a man had landed on the moon. He bequeathed the mantle of leadership to his erratic and spoilt son, Kim Jong-Il, and it was his message which was now bloodying the streets of South Korea. As a microcosm of the facade of North Korea, the village around the flagpole was uninhabited, although lights in the empty apartment buildings automatically turned on and off in an attempt to trick South Korean peasants into believing in the crumbling regime across the line.
A North Korean armoured personnel carrier drove into the DMZ, blatantly breaking the truce agreement which banned all weapons from the area. American and South Korean troops held their fire. 500 kilometres to the south, outside the port of Pusan, a South Korean merchant ship hit a newly laid North Korean mine and sank. The crew were rescued. Police sealed off universities in the main South Korean cities and arrested students suspected of supporting reunification with the North. For years the security forces had claimed that North Korean agents were infiltrating the universities. Today, stunned by events, no one came forward to mount the usual protests.
In an announcement, the South Korean government claimed that China had condemned North Korea, but there was no confirmation of this from Beijing. The details of the exchanges between the two governments only emerged later, when the complex role that China had played became apparent. During the first two days of the conflict, Seoul's Ambassador to Beijing was told only that China considered chaos on the Korean peninsula an internal affair and that it was friends to both countries. Under no circumstances would it interfere.
Two South Korean Tologorae and four Cosmos class mini-submarines which had left their base on Cheju Island, 60 kilometres south of the peninsula, were now in position in three groups in waters off both the east and west North Korean coasts. Each group was escorted by a larger Chang Bogo Type 209/1200 general-purpose attack submarine. The vessels were built in the Daewoo shipyard based on a German design and several of the thirty-three crewmembers had gone to Germany for training. Like their counterparts in the North, the small submarines were used for coastal infiltration, excep
t these had never been in real action before. Now their mission was to destroy the bases for the North Korean mini-submarines at Cha-ho, Ma Yangdo, and Song Jon Tando, on the east coast, and the smaller base of Sagon-ni on the west coast.
At the first crisis cabinet meeting since the attacks began the American-educated South Korean President Kim Hong-Koo asked bluntly whom his colleagues thought China supported: even the South Koreans, steeped in the shadow-puppetry and nuances of East Asian political life, could not read the signals from Beijing.
`Our policy has always been unification by peaceful means and when the time is right,' said the president. `We have never wanted a German model. The humiliation and loss of face for the North is not suited to our East Asian style of politics. The cost would also be prohibitive. It would damage our economic expansion at a time when our manufacturing base is beginning to compete head-on with the Japanese in the global market. Yet it seems the North is intent on wrecking the status quo. I would like to assume that it has not been encouraged by Beijing. If I am right in thinking that Chinese troops and weapons would not be used against us, it would be impossible for them to win. I would also like to assume that whatever their nuclear capability, either the detonation or the delivery system will not work. I would lastly like to assume that there are people working with Kim Jong-Il who have a degree of common sense.'
Dragon Strike -- A Novel of the Coming War with China (Future History Book 1) Page 18
