by Dale Brown
had occurred!
But from here on, China's true designs would become evi-
dent-there would be no more feigned innocence, no more
pointing fingers at the Nationalists and the Americans for their
aggressive acts. Although some of what had occurred could be
explained away as acts of self-defense, it would be much hard-
er to cry "Foul!" in the future if he gave the order that Ad-
miral Sun Ji Guoming was seeking.
want reports on American, Japanese, Korean, and
ASEAN member reactions to the attacks on Juidongshan and
Xiamen," President Jiang ordered his staff. "I want a media
statement prepared, explaining that our activities were purely
defensive in nature and provoked by the Nationalists' aggres-
sion. I want reports from our ground forces commanders near
Xiamen, asking about the readiness of our forces. I want an
intelligence report on the Nationalists' troop situation on Que-
moy and Matsu Dao." Jiang turned to the radio: "Admiral
Sun, I have ordered reports from Xiamen and from our em-
bassies and information offices in the Pacific to get reaction
on the attacks. I will issue my orders when these reports are
transmitted to me and I have had a chance to evaluate them."
FATAL TER RAI N 321
"With all due respect, Comrade President, you cannot
wait-you must give the order now, or abandon the invasion
Plans," Admiral Sun replied. "This decision must be made
immediately. Our bombers must strike while the rebels are
confused and stunned by the aftermath of the attack on Xia-
men, and before they disperse their aircraft or hide them in
reinforced underground storage facilities. We can cripple the
rebels' air forces in one night if we strike right now, comrade
We must not hesitate. Our bombers are airborne and can only
remain in this orbit, below the Nationalists' long-range radar
coverage, for a few minutes longer before our fuel status will
render us non-mission effective. We can midair refuel the H-6
bombers, but the other bombers must return to base to refuel,
which will upset our strike timing and prevent success. I need
an order right now, sir."
The overcrowded, stuffy, noisy, smelly underground bunker
suddenly became as quiet as a grave, as if everyone could
somehow hear the conversation between their Paramount
Leader and the enigmatic, almost legendary navy admiral who
had turned their tranquil, blissfully isolated lives upside down
these past few weeks. They all knew that the coriflict between
the People's Republic of China and the rebel Nationalists on
Formosa was about to move to a whole new level-and they
were glad to be sixty feet underground right now, too.
ABOARD AN H-7 GANGFANG BOMBER, OVER THE
WUYI MOUNTAINS, EASTERN CHINA
MOMENTS LATER
Sun Ji Guoming was a career navy man, but he had to admit
that the power and the speed of the heavy bomber was some-
thing to behold, something that could easily make a sailor trade
in his slickers and sea bag for a flight suit.
Admiral Sun was strapped into the instructor pilot's seat of
an H-7 Gangfang H-7 supersonic bomber, one of six ex-Soviet
Tupolev-26 "Backfire" bombers the Chinese People's Liber-
ation Army Air Force purchased from Russia in 1993. Sun
was leading an attack formation of thirty Xian H-6 bombers,
Chinese-built copies of the Soviet Tupolev-16 bomber, which
322 DALE BROWN
launched from Wuhan People's Liberation Army Air Force
Base, three hundred miles west of Shanghai, about an hour
before sunset. Along with the bombers were six HT-6 Xian
tankers, which were H-6 bombers configured to act as aerial
refueling tankers.
Once reaching the air refueling orbit areas, each bomber
took on a token on-load of fuel, around thirty thousand pounds
each. The HT-6 tanker unreeled a long, six-inch-diameter hose
with a large ffiree-foot-diarneter basketlike drogue at the end
from each wingtip, and the H-6 bombers engaged the drogue
with a probe protruding from their wingtips. Even with an
observer guiding the two planes to the contact position from
observation blisters near the tail of the HT-6s, Admiral Sun
was astounded by the precision of the bomber pilots, able to
stick the six-inch probe into the drogue in the semidarkness
and then stay in formation long enough to successfully transfer
the fuel, even in a turn-it took almost ten minutes, with the
two planes flying less than thirty feet apart at over three hun-
dred miles an hour, to transfer a relatively small amount of
fuel. Sun's H-7 bomber used a long refueling probe that ex-
tended far ahead of the nose, so they did not need an ob-
server-they simply flew right up into the basket and plugged
in. How the pilot could maneuver a 250,000-pound aircraft
inflight to within three feet of a moving point in space was
amazing.
After refueling, the gaggle of bombers broke up into three
cells of ten planes and proceeded to orbit points on the west
side of the Wuyi Mountains, about two hundred miles from
the Formosa Strait, staying at 5,000 feet to keep below the top
of the Wuyi range. The reason: Le Shan, or Happy Mountain.
The Taiwanese Le Shan air defense system was one of the
most sophisticated in the world. Radar infon-nation from three
long-range radar arrays based in the Chungyang Mountains of 4
central Taiwan, along with radar data from radar planes, ships,
civilian air-traffic-control radar systems, and even some fighter
radars, were combined in the Happy Mountain underground
air defense center located south of Taipei. One hundred mili-
tary controllers scanned over a million and a half cubic miles
of airspace, from the surface to 60,000 feet, and directed al-
most one hundred American-made F-5E Tiger 11 air defense
fighters, ten Taiwanese-made Ching Kuo fighters, more than
fifty Hawk air defense missile sites, twenty Tien Kung I and
F
ATAL T ER RAI N 323
II surface-to-air missile sites, fifty Chaparral short-range anti-
aircraft missile sites, and more than two hundred antiaircraft
artillery sites located throughout the Republic of China's is-
lands. Le Shan's mountaintop radars could see deep into main-
land China, and its air defense weapons were first-class. The
Tien Kung 11 antiaircraft missile system, based on the Amer-
ican Patriot antiaircraft system, had a kill range so great that
the missile battery located at Makung on the Pescadores Island
thirty miles west of Formosa could shoot down Chinese air-
craft launching from three major coastal bases in eastern China
shortly after takeoff!
After the order was received from Beijing, Admiral Sun
ordered the bombers to start moving eastward out of their stag-
ing orbits and begin their attack runs, and he radioed for the
first phase of the attack to begin. More than three hundred
fighters, mostly J-6 fighters led by radar-equipped J-7 or J-8
/>
fighters, lifted off from Shantou and Fuzhou Air Bases and
streamed eastward-launching two or three planes at a time,
it took nearly twenty minutes for each base to launch its full
complement of planes. In that time, the H-6 bombers accel-
erated to attack speed of 360 miles per hour, streaming over
the Wuyi Mountains in three different tracks. One hundred
Chinese fighters therefore became the "spearhead" for each
ten-plane bomber formation, with the three spears headed right
for the heart of Taiwan. With the fighters three to five minutes
ahead of the bombers, the six large formations rendezvoused
over the coastline and move en masse toward Taiwan.
The first target was the Pescadores Islands, about three-
fourths of the way across the Formosa Strait. The first Chinese
attack formation, directed by a Ilyushin-76 Candid radar plane,
occupied the high- and mid-CAPs, or Combat Air Patrols, and
were met by five formations of four F-5E Tiger fighters at
their same altitude. Although the Taiwanese F-5s were out-
numbered five to one, the Chinese 11-76 radar planes could
give only an accurate range and bearing to the Taiwanese
fighters, not altitude, so an accurate fix on the Taiwanese fight-
ers' position was hard to establish. Also, because the fonna-
tions of Chinese fighters was so large and they were
inexperienced in night intercepts, it was difficult for the Chi-
nese fighters to maneuver in position to attack. The Taiwanese
fighters were able to use their speed and maneuverability to
get in an ideal counterattack position, and the fight was on.
324 DALE BROWN
The massive formations of Chinese fighter planes fired their
Pen-Lung-2 air-to-air missiles at extreme range, whether they
had a radar or heat-seeking lock-on or not. The sky was soon
filled with Chinese air-to-air missiles screaming toward the
Taiwanese defenders, but most were simply unguided projec-
tiles, more distractions than threats. One by one, the Chinese
attackers fired, closed range, fired more missiles, then turned
and headed back to the mainland just before reaching optimum
AIM-9 Sidewinder missile range. When the Taiwanese fighters
pursued the retreating Chinese fighters, the Chinese fighters
occupying the mid-CAP started a climb, hoping to get behind
the Taiwanese fighters and into the PL-2's lethal cone, but this
attack was broken up by Taiwanese fighters coming in lower
and chasing the newcomers away.
There were some brief "dogfights," with Chinese and Tai-
wanese fighters turning and dodging one another trying to get
into attack position, but the Taiwanese pilots and their superior
air defense radar system had the upper hand. Seventeen Chi-
nese fighters were shot down, versus one Taiwanese F-5E. The
Taiwanese defenders easily pursued the Chinese fighters across
the Formosa Strait nearly all the way back to the Asian coast-
line, picking off J-6 and J-7 fighters one by one, then darting
away before getting in range of Chinese long-range air defense
sites that dotted the coast.
But while the Chinese fighters engaged and diverted the
bulk of the Taiwanese fighter force, the first formation of ten
Man H-6 bombers was able to stream in just a few dozen feet
above the dark waters of the Formosa Strait in toward the
Pescadores Islands. The air defense radar controllers were con-
centrating on the huge numbers of fighters and gave all their
attention to them, and so they didn't see the bombers until it
was too late. Taiwanese Tien Kung 11 surface-to-air missile
sites at Makung and Paisha in the Pescadores attacked the
incoming bombers at over forty miles, but the H-6 bombers
attacked first.
The lead bomber in each ten-plane formation carried two
Hai-Yang-3 cruise missiles on external fuselage hardpoints.
The HY-3 was a massive 6,600-pound missile powered by a
rocket engine. Once programmed with the target coordinates
and navigation and flight information dumped into the mis-
sile's onboard computers, the missiles were released. Seconds
after launch, a solid-fuel rocket engine propelled the missile
FATAL T ER R AI N 325
past the speed of sound; then a ramjet engine deployed from
the missile and automatically ignited. The HY-3 missile
climbed to 40,000 feet and accelerated to almost four times
the speed of sound in just a few seconds. At over 2,000 miles
per hour, the missile covered sixty miles in less than twelve
seconds ...
... and each HY-3 missile carried a small low-yield nuclear
warhead.
The first missile worked perfectly, exploding five miles over
Penghu Island, the main island in the Pescadores Island ar-
chipelago, and creating a bright nuclear flash that blinded doz-
ens of unwary, unprotected Taiwanese pilots and flattened
most aboveground structures on Penghu Island. The nuclear
burst also released an electromagnetic wave that disrupted
communications and damaged unprotected electronic circuits
for almost a hundred miles in all directions. The second HY-
3 missile had been programmed the same as the first to be
used as a backup, so it was merely destroyed by the blast of
its brother.
Three of the follow-on Chinese H-6 bombers were damaged
by the nuclear blast and had to turn back for home, but seven
of its wingmen survived the shock wave, intense flash, and
electromagnetic pulse and raced in to their target. The lead
bomber that had carried the HY-3 missiles carried 12,000
pounds of gravity weapons in its bomb bay; the others who
had not been carrying cruise missiles held 19,000 pounds of
bombs. The fires on Penghu and Yuweng Islands, the two main
fortified islands in the Pescadores, made initial target location
easy, and the H-6's bombardiers picked out the crucial military
targets with ease. The lead bomber began the attack with four
2,000-pound high-explosive bombs, cratering the naval yard,
headquarters buildings, radar sites, and fixed coastal air and
ship defense sites. Two of the follow-on bombers also used
large high-explosive bombs, while the rest followed with eigh-
teen 1,000-pound cluster bombs, which scattered thousands of
antipersonnel bomblets and anti-vehicle mines throu hout the
islands.
With the outer air defense structure collapsed, the attack on
the Taiwanese home island of Formosa itself could begin. The
northern attack group launched nuclear-armed Hai-Ying-3
missiles at the Republic of China's air force base at Hsinchu,
just forty miles southwest of the Taiwanese capital of Taipei,
326 DALE BROWN
and at the air force base at Taichung; the southern strike pack-
age launched nuclear HY-3 missiles at the air force base at
Tainan and another missile at the Taiwanese naval facility at
Tsoying, just a few miles north of the large industrial city of
Kaohsiung. All of the attacks were devastating. Even after suf-
fering heav
y losses when the bombers flew close to surviving
air defense sites, more than two-thirds of the Chinese H-6
bombers survived and successfully attacked their targets with
bombs and cluster munitions.
The Chinese bomber pilots were not nearly as well-trained
as their Western counterparts, and they flew even fewer hours
than American crews even in an age of deep cutbacks in flying
time, so their bombing accuracy was poor-less than 50 per-
cent of their bombs hit their assigned targets. But the high-
altitude nuclear airbursts had done most of the devastation
already-four Taiwanese military bases destroyed or
substantially damaged; one small, two medium, and one large
city were ravaged. Most of the Taiwanese fighters that had
launched to chase down the Chinese J-6 and J-7 fighters sud-
denly found themselves without a base to return home to; some
did not have the fuel to return to alternate landing sites, and
their pilots were forced to eject over uninhabited areas of the
Taiwanese countryside as their fuel-starved planes flamed out.
Admiral Sun followed the H-6 strike package in his H-7
Gangfang bomber, arriving over his orbit point northwest of
the Pescadores just as the second and third H-6 bombers
started their attacks. Wearing his gold-lined goggles to avoid
any flashblindness damage by the nuclear bursts on the hori-
zon, Admiral Sun Ji Guoming surveyed the results of his sneak
attack. He could see every nuclear explosion clearly: a bright
ball of light like a mini-sun illuminated every cloud in the sky,
lighting up the island of Formosa and making it appear like a
huge photograph lying on the surface of the ocean. Every de-
tail of the tall eastern mountains, every river valley, every
aberration of the vast western coastal plains could be seen for
a brief instant in spectacular, frightening relief before being
swallowed up by the darkness again. Although not nearly as
big as their nuclear cousins, the big non-nuclear high-explosive
bomb attacks looked like large, bright red and yellow flash-
bulbs, followed by the glow of ground fires; and the cluster
