The operations officer stepped back to the radar controller’s console and studied the display. Unfortunately, it was not a sophisticated display like what the American E-2 or E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System plane had—the targets appeared as raw radar data blips with simple numeric electronic identification tags attached, with no altitude readouts; speed, bearing, and distance were computed by centering a cursor over the target using mechanical X- and Y-axis cranks and reading the information off the meters. As the formation got closer to the mainland, however, the blips started to break into pieces—now there were at least four blips, which meant anywhere from four to sixteen attackers.
“Comm, report enemy aircraft contact to Eastern Fleet headquarters,” the ops officer ordered.
“Yes, sir,” the communications officer responded. They had no satellite communications link; all long-range communications had to be done by shortwave, so it took a lot of time. Finally: “Eastern Fleet headquarters acknowledges contact and replies, ‘continue patrol as ordered.’ End of message.”
“Very well,” the operations officer said.
There was a slight pause, during which the ops officer could see several heads turn in his direction in some confusion. Finally, the senior controller asked, “Sir, would you like us to vector in air defense units on the attackers? We have units of the 112th Air Army, two flights of J-8 fighters, four planes per flight, within intercept range.” There was a very long, uncomfortable pause. The senior controller repeated, “Sir, the rebel attackers will be over our airspace in less than five minutes. What are your orders?”
“Have one flight of J-8s stay behind to guard this aircraft,” the ops officer finally responded. “You may send any available J-6 fighter units to intercept.”
“But the J-6s are not certified for night intercepts.”
“That is why they haveyoz/ to guide them,” the ops officer responded. “The J-8s stay with us. Send any J-6s you feel have the nerve to fight the Nationalists.”
“Yes, sir,” the controller replied. He assigned the task of guarding the 11-76 to one of his best intercept officers, then ordered another controller to call up two flights of J-6 fighters from Fuzhou to intercept the attackers. “Sir, we count at least four flights of attackers,” the senior controller reported. “If the rebels follow their standard attack plan, that means at least sixteen hostiles. Shall we call for more defenders?”
“Negative,” the ops officer replied. “You will protect this radar plane with all air assets available to you. Do not let any rebel fighters near this plane.”
“But, sir, if this is a complete attack formation—uh, sir, sixteen bombers would cripple Juidongshan.”
“You have your orders, senior controller,” the operations officer said. “Not one enemy fighter gets within fifty miles of this plane, or I will have your stars. See to it.” The senior controller had no choice but to comply.
Without a threat from Chinese air defense fighters, the Taiwanese attack went off without a hitch. It was a full strike package, with all sixteen Republic of China Air Force F-16s equipped with Falcon Eye imaging infrared targeting and attack sensors and loaded with attack munitions. First to go in were four F-16s carrying four CBU-87 cluster bombs each, targeting the Chinese CSS-N-2 Silkworm coastal anti-ship missile installations and air defense missile and artillery sites—these were easy prey for the cluster bombs. The Mk 7 cluster bomb dispensers carried a variety of anti-personnel, anti-armor, and anti-vehicle bomblets, scattering destruction over a very wide area of the naval base with good precision and devastating results.
While the first wave of F-16s pulled off to assume a combat air patrol over the target area, using their wingtip-mounted Sidewinder missiles and internal 20-millimeter cannon, the second wave of eight F-16s moved in with four Mk 84 high-drag general-purpose bombs, targeting the submarine maintenance pens, headquarters buildings, fuel storage, and communications facilities. Coming in at low altitude—some pilots shoved their prized F-16 Fighting Falcons right down to two hundred feet, almost grazing the tops of antennas and trees—the attacks were very effective. Some pilots even spotted several ES3B-class diesel-electric attack subs at the piers and secured beside sub tenders and attacked them with great success, using their 20-millimeter cannons in strafing mode. With freedom to roam the skies and the base’s air defenses all but neutralized, any F-16 that missed a target could circle around and come in again, so every assigned target was hit, along with a few important targets of opportunity.
The third wave of F-16 fighters never crossed the shoreline, but their attacks were just as successful. These attackers carried four Mk 55 bottom mines per plane, scattering them in precise patterns near the submarine pens and in nearby Dongshan Harbor, covering most of the sea approaches to the naval base. The Mk 55 mine moored itself to the bottom of the harbor and waited. When it detected a large magnetic presence, such as a ship or submarine, it would detach itself from the bottom and start for the surface, then explode when it sensed itself near its target.
As the Nationalist fighters started their withdrawal, twelve J-6 fighters from Fuzhou Army Air Base to the north moved into attack formation and tried to jump them. The fight was over in a matter of seconds. Without even dropping their external fuel tanks, the Taiwanese F-16 fighter-bombers were able to maneuver clear of the Chinese fighters’ lethal cone of fire, and in an instant the hunted would become the hunters. The Chinese PL-2 air-to-air missiles could only lock onto a target from the rear, where it had a clear look at the “hot dot” of a fighter’s jet exhaust, which meant every move a Chinese pilot was going to make was already known by every Taiwanese pilot. It was a simple exercise to wait for a Chinese pilot to commit to a rear attack, then jump him from above or from the side, where the American-made Sidewinder missiles were still effective. In less than two minutes, nine Chinese J-6 fighters had been shot down; the other three merely launched missiles at the slightest detection indication—they didn’t even know if it was friend or foe— then did a fast one-eighty and bugged out.
The senior controller aboard the 11-76 radar plane watched the attack on his radar screen in sheer horror. Juidongshan Naval Base had just been attacked by rebel Nationalist fighter-bombers, and they had just sat back and watched without doing a thing! In a fit of rage, he whipped off his headphones and dashed over to the operations officer’s console in the front curtained-off section of the cabin. A young marine guard tried to block the officer’s path, but the controller pushed him aside. “What in blazes do you think you are doing?” the senior controller shouted angrily. “Juidongshan has been hit hard by the Nationalists, and you sit here doing nothing!”
“I am following orders, Captain,” the operations officer replied calmly. He paused, then waved for the marine guard to step into the rear cabin, out of earshot. “The Nationalists’ attack was expected.”
“Expected? What do you mean?”
“Our subs were evacuated hours ago,” the ops officer said. “Only a few decoy ships remained, enough to whet the rebel bomber’s appetites and waste their bombs. Base personnel were sent into air raid shelters. The only ones still aboveground on that base are TV reporters.”
“TV reporters? We allowed our base to be bombed simply for a propaganda ploy? What is going on here?”
“That is none of your concern, nor mine,” the operations officer responded. “It is all part of some strange plan coming from Beijing. Return to your post and continue monitoring for other attacks in our sector. This is supposedly part of a large attack plan by the Nationalists, so we can expect more attacks tonight.”
The next wave of Taiwanese fighter-bomber attacks occurred just minutes after the senior controller returned to his console. “Attention, attention, enemy fighters detected, crossing into restricted airspace seven- zero miles east of Xiamen Air Base, heading west,” one of his controllers reported. “Two large formations, estimating sixteen to thirty enemy aircraft.”
The senior controller gasped inwardly as he
called up the radar plot on his display. If it was two cells of sixteen aircraft attacking Xiamen, this meant that the Nationalists had committed their entire fleet of F-16 Fighting Falcons to this attack. “Comm, notify Fuzhou, scramble every plane they have,” the senior controller ordered. Fie knew Fuzhou had almost one hundred fighters based there, perhaps one-third of them armed, fueled, and on ready five alert, with another ten or twenty capable of launching and escaping before the rebel fighters arrived overhead; that force might be able to hold off the rebels until the remaining force could be launched or moved and the base personnel evacuated. Unlike Juidongshan, the senior controller knew that Xiamen had not been evacuated. “Get me a report on how many fighters can launch. I want—”
“Nothing,” said a voice behind him. It was the operations officer himself, standing over his shoulder. “No fighters will launch from Fuzhou. Vector the three surviving fighters from the Juidongshan engagement to Shantou, get them on the ground as soon as possible.”
“What?”
“Do it,” the ops officer snapped. “No more arguments from you— lives depend on it. Move ”
Land-based radars at Xiamen confirmed what the 11-76 crew feared—it was an all-out assault, with more than thirty F-16 fighter- bombers in eight formations coming in at different altitudes and from different directions. No fighters challenged them.
The F-16 pilots knew that the Hong Qian-2 surface-to-air missiles based at Xiamen, just five miles west of the Taiwanese island of Quemoy, had a maximum range of 34 miles and an optimum range of only 20 miles. The HQ-2s were old copies of ex-Russian SA-2 “flying telephone pole” missiles, huge lumbering two-stage missiles designed to attack 1950s— and 1960s-era bombers, missiles with big warheads but with unreliable, slow, and easily jammable radio remote-control command guidance— hardly a match for the swift and nimble F-16s.
The Taiwanese satellite intelligence was excellent, and the F-16’s APG-66 attack radars locked onto the navigation and bombing aim- points with ease; once the radars were locked on and a navigation update taken, the Falcon Eye imaging infrared sensors were activated and slaved to the four possible targets at each target waypoint. At forty miles, little could be seen on Falcon Eye or radar except for larger buildings; most of the F-16s were going hunting for the more vital buildings in the complex—headquarters, air- and coastal-defense weapon sites, communications, barracks, weapon-storage facilities, aboveground fuel storage, and . . .
Threat receivers blared to life seconds after the F-16s sped inside max HQ-2 missile range, as the search and height-finder radars switched to target-tracking and missile-guidance modes and several surface-to-air missiles leapt into the sky from Xiamen. The F-16 pilots activated their electronic countermeasure pods and dropped chaff to decoy the enemy radars. At night, it was easy to spot the HQ-2 missiles as they lifted off their launchers, trailing a long bright yellow plume of fire. All of the HQ-2s went ballistic, powering up to very high altitude, thousands of feet above the F-16s. Their second-stage boosters ignited, powering them up even higher, some 30,000 feet above the Taiwanese attackers, before starting their terminal dive toward the F-16s.
The F-16s’ ECM pods effectively jammed the Chinese target-tracking radars, so the Chinese missile technicians had to continually relock their radars onto another target—but they had no way of knowing that they had locked onto a cloud of radar-decoying chaff until several seconds after lock-on, when they would notice that the target was hanging in the sky at zero airspeed. They had only seconds to reacquire another legitimate target, because the HQ-2 missiles were on their way down toward the rebel F-16s.
The F-16 pilots had detected only perhaps six or eight HQ-2 SAM launches, with one or two missiles targeted on each inbound attack formation. Even if all of them hit an F-16, which was extremely unlikely, the strike package would still be intact. The Chinese defenders might have one more shot at the F-16s if they were lucky, but more likely the F-16s would blow through a second wave and be over the base, and then the fun would start. Another turkey shoot, just like their successful brothers down over Juidongshan. Quemoy Tao, the Taiwanese-controlled islands east of Xiamen, would be safe from attack and finally avenged for the Chinese nuclear attack that had almost destroyed . . .
In the blink of an eye, all thirty-two Taiwanese F-16 fighter-bombers disappeared.
MINISTRY OF DEFENSE UNDERGROUND COMMAND CENTER, BEIJING, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
SUNDAY, 22 JUNE 1997, 0331 HOURS LOCAL (SATURDAY, 21 JUNEt 1431 HOURS ET)
The special emergency underground command center in Beijing had been used only a few times in its forty-year history. The bunker had been used for long periods of time during conflicts between China and the Soviet Union in 1961 and 1979 that threatened to go nuclear; the other time was during the last major Chinese invasion of Taiwan, in 1955, when the United States had threatened to use nuclear weapons to stop the Communists from overrunning Taiwan. Built by engineers from the Soviet Union, the bunker was a perfect, albeit slightly smaller, replica of the Kremlin underground emergency bunker in Moscow, used when there was no time to evacuate the political and Party leadership from the city.
The 8,000-square-foot steel and concrete facility, set six stories under the Chinese Ministry of Defense on forty huge spring shock absorbers to cushion the shock of nearby nuclear explosions, was designed and provisioned to accommodate an operations, support, and security staff of thirty-eight—many of whom were women, the implications obvious— plus fifty high government officials. Now it contained the proper amount of staff and technicians, but perhaps three times the maximum number of government officials. President Jiang Zemin and his closest civilian and military advisors were seated around a simple rectangular table in the center of the bunker. Surrounding them were the other high officials and their aides, then a ring of communications, intelligence, and planning officers at their consoles and workstations that fed the president and his advisors a constant stream of information. Finally, the remainder of the government officials that had threatened, bribed, forced, or cajoled their way inside were jammed into every remaining nook and cranny of the bunker.
President Jiang scowled as he surveyed his surroundings. They had been in the bunker since midnight, when intelligence had reported that the rebel Nationalist air attack was under way. Eighty persons stuffed into the small enclosure was bad enough—180 was almost intolerable. But it was too late to open the blast doors. The worst part was that the one man he wanted to talk to was not present. This was an outrage! he thought. Sun Ji Guoming was going to suffer for this.
“Excuse me, Comrade President,” the defense minister, Chi Haot- ian, said. “Admiral Sun is on the line via satellite.”
“Where is he? I ordered him to be here before the attack began! ” “Sir . . . comrade, he is airborne, calling from a bomber aircraft over Jiangxi province! ”
“What? Give me that!” Jiang snatched the receiver from Chi. “Admiral Sun, this is the president. I want an explanation, and I want it now!”
“Yes, sir,” Sun Ji Guoming responded. “I am aboard an H-7 Gang- fang bomber. I am using it as my airborne command post to monitor the attack on the rebel Nationalists on Taiwan. We are ready to begin our attack on Makung, Taichung, Hsinchu, Tainan, and Tsoying. I request permission to begin our attacks. Over.”
Jiang was so angry that his words were coming out in confused sputters. “I ordered you to report here, to me, before these attacks began!” he shouted. “Why have you disobeyed me?”
“Because I do not think I could have squeezed into your command center there, sir,” Sun responded. Jiang couldn’t help but look around himself again and cursed the cowardice and failure of discipline that filled this bunker up like this. “Besides, sir, not every flag officer of the People’s Liberation Army can be in an underground shelter—someone must lead our troops to victory. I therefore decided to lead the bombing raid on the rebels myself.”
“This is insubordination at the highest level!” military chief
of staff General Chin Po Zihong thundered. “He has insulted every man in this room! Admiral Sun must be stripped of his rank and imprisoned immediately for this! ”
President Jiang looked around the impossibly overcrowded bunker and was embarrassed and shamed. He could not censure a commander who was out flying with his troops, ready to take on the high-tech, well- trained Nationalist air force. “I think it would be difficult for any of us to arrest Comrade Sun, since he is free and is struggling on behalf of the People’s Republic of China, while we are in this concrete sardine can! ” Jiang said in a loud voice. “We are safe, and we dare accuse Comrade Admiral Sun of insubordination while he risks his life to be seen by his fellow soldiers?” Chin fell silent. Jiang returned to the receiver: “Comrade Sun, can you report on the status of the operation?”
“Yes, sir,” Sun responded. “As expected, the Nationalists attacked Juidongshan with conventional bombs and air-dropped mines. The base was moderately damaged, but we suffered no casualties. Four of our J-6 air defense fighters were shot down, with four presumed casualties. The Nationalist attack on Xiamen was stopped completely, with an estimated thirty-two Nationalist F-16 fighters obliterated. No estimates on Nationalist casualties on Quemoy Dao, but observed aboveground damage was extensive. No damage, no casualties at Xiamen. All of our invasion forces are intact and awaiting your orders for the second phase of our attack.”
President Jiang hesitated. This was easily the most monumental decision of his life. Up until now, he had almost completely escaped criticism for the People’s Liberation Army’s activities in the Formosa Strait or South China Sea region since these conflicts had begun about a month ago. He had been roundly criticized for bringing the former Russian, former Iranian aircraft carrier into the western Pacific; he had been criticized for amassing an attack fleet against Quemoy; he had been criticized for his policies against allowing more home rule of Hong Kong. But ever since Admiral Sun had begun his unconventional-warfare campaign against Taiwan, very little criticism had been directed against him—it had all been directed against the United States and against the rebels on Formosa, even though Admiral Sun and the People’s Liberation Army under his command had precipitated everything that had occurred!
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