by Dale Brown
“Aircraft in eastern group reported as B-52 aircraft only, ” the radioman replied after several inquiries. “No identification yet on northeast aircraft.” But judging by the speed at which the vertical plot technician was updating their position, Sun could easily guess-B-52 bombers, followed by B-I and F-I I I bombers. The three southern groups were just the first wavethe second package, not as large as the first but even more powerful, were going after the Marines themselves. “Issue an air-defense alert to all vessels and all forces; enemy bombers inbound from the east and northeast, ” Sun ordered. “Have all forces take cover on the beach. Disperse landing craft and assault vessels as much as possible.” Admiral Yin looked as if he had been deflated with a knife. He could only stare at the vertical plot, muttering something to himself that Sun could not hear. “Sir? Do you have further orders?” Sun asked. The Chinese Fleet Admiral could only mutter something unintelligible, stare at a slip of paper he had been given by the communications section, and stare at the board in absolute horror. “Attention! Attention! Air-defense warning! Gunners man your batteries and stand by.” Colonel of Marines Yang Yi Shuxin glanced nervously at the loudspeakers on the “island” superstructure above him, then at the turrets where the ship’s numerous 37-millimeter antiaircraft guns were mounted, but he quickly turned his attention back to the men on his landing craft. No one said a word, but Yang raised his voice easily above the amplified voice and said, “Be silent, all of you. The gunners have their job and you have yours. Stand by.” Yang was leading a troop of forty heavily armed Chinese Marines in the invasion of Davao. They were aboard the aircushion landing craft Dagu, a monstrous sixty-ton vessel that skimmed above the surface of the water on a cushion of air created by six gas-turbine-powered propellers on the bottom of the craft; two turboprop propellers above pushed the craft to over seventy kilometers per hour over land or sea. Dagu carried two small armored personnel carriers, each with 30millimeter machine guns on board; the landing craft itself was armed with two 14.5-millimeter guns manned by four very young-looking soldiers. Unlike other landing craft, Dagu would take her Marines right up onto dry ground instead of into chest-deep water. The amphibious landing ship they were on carried two such air-cushion landing craft, plus four conventional landing craft, along with twenty armored troop-carriers on the tank deck and thirty “deuce-and-a-half’ utility trucks on the main deck, plus a total of four hundred Marines. Other amphibious assault tank-landing ships carried air-cushion landing craft, but they always called on Colonel Yang to lead any assault. Yang’s men would be the first Chinese soldiers to occupy Samar International Airport and lay siege to the city of Davao itself. Other smaller Yuchai or Yunnan-class landing craft had gone ahead to try to draw fire, spot targets for the destroyer’s guns, or dismantle beach defenses. Dagu would lead the main Marine assault on the beach itself. After Yang’s Marines and APCs captured the beach, they would bring the amphibious assault ship into shallow water, deploy the pontoon bridge sections carried on the hull sides, and start rolling the trucks off the forward ramp. Once on the road, the trucks would rush forward and take Samar Airport-and victory. The LST’s two big twin 76.2-millimeter guns began pound ing away on the beach as the amphibious assault ship made a slight turn to bring both guns to bear. “Ready!” Yang shouted, and his men gave an animal-like growl in response. Dagu ‘s helmsman started the engines, and the air-cushion vehicle’s four-meter-tall armor-covered skirt quickly inflated. A horn blared on the aft deck, the stern ramp lowered, and Dagu ‘s helmsman gunned the twin turbojet propellers. The air-cush ion craft leaped out into the darkness, hit the water, and sped toward the beach. What Yang saw when they cleared the amphibious assault ship looked like something out of a child’s nightmare. Ships were on fire everywhere. At least two other tank- and troop-landing ships were burning fiercely, with smoke billowing out of two more. Antiaircraft guns were sweeping the skies in seemingly random patterns. The water that Yang could see was littered with bodies, capsized landing craft, and debris. As he watched, another explosion ripped across the water, the shock wave strong enough to stagger him. He had to remind himself that he could not show fear in front of his men, most of whom he knew were watching him. One of the toughest things for a Marine to do was step off a fast, safe landing craft and hit the beach, and for most of them only the sight of a brave leader would make them do it. They had been dropped into the water over two kilometers offshore, but the air-cushion vehicle ate up the distance quickly-less than thirty seconds to go, and they would be on dry land. The helmsman was taking a zigzag course into shore-he was probably only dodging other destroyed landing craft or pools of burning fuel, but Yang always told his troops that they did that to confound the enemy gunners. Dagu ‘s gunners opened fire several times on the beach, but Yang heard no mortars, bazookas, or heavy gunfire coming from there. “No resistance from the beach!” he yelled to his men. The Marines around him growled happily in reply. “Drive and conquer! Split into threes, divide, and run for cover! Watch for engineers ahead of you.” Minesweeping engineers who had gone ahead of them had fluorescent orange tapes on their arms and backs to distinguish them from… A huge explosion erupted behind them, lighting up the horizon so brightly that Yang could easily see the treeline. “Eyes front!” Yang shouted as his men ducked, then began to try to turn around in the close confines to see what had been hit. “Get ready!” Yang did not look either, although judging by the secondary explosions, their amphibious assault ship had been hit. He could faintly hear the roar ofheavyjet planes overhead, and Dagu ‘s gunners even swung their puny machine guns futilely in the sky after the engine sounds. That did nothing but highlight their positions. “Guns front! Reload! Cover the landing!” Yang shouted. The gunners and their loaders were too scared to listen-they were either watching the destruction of their mother ship or scanning the dark skies above for enemy bombers. “APCs, start engines!” The heavy diesel engines on the armored personnel carriers roared to life, and gunners in the top turrets chambered rounds. Seconds later, the air-cushion landing craft hit the shore, the turbojet engines surged to full power, the craft raced up onto the beach, and the forward part of the air-cushion skirt began to deflate for offioading. The gunners finally began to rake the treeline with gunfire. “Ready!” Yang shouted, and the adrenaline-pumped men growled once again. The forward lip of the air-cushion vehicle hit the ground and the ramp swung down. Yang leaped up onto the ramp, ran down it onto the beach, then waved at his men, pointing toward the treeline not thirty meters away. “Marines! Go! Go! G-” His last word was drowned out by a massive cloud of fire and a head-pounding explosion-Yang felt as if all the air had been sucked out of his lungs and replaced by sheets of pure fire. Several Marines scampering down the ramp were blown off their feet and onto the beach as a shock wave larger than any Yang could ever recall rolled over them. His night vision was completely wiped out by a blinding burst of light, and his eardrums felt as if they had burst-no, his whole head felt as if it had burst… Four F- III G fighter-bombers screamed into the area nearly at supersonic speed, right into the midst of the lines of landing craft trying to land their forces on the beaches south of Davao. They did not carry Harpoon missiles or bombs. Instead, each carried four 2, 000-pound BLU-96 HADES FAE, or fuel-air explosives, canisters. Each HADES canister contained three hundred gallons of explosive fuel-oil, and the canisters were toss-released about a thousand feet over a group of eight landing craft. About eight hundred feet above the water, the canisters popped open, and the fuel oil began to disperse in large white clouds of vapor. Seconds later, when the vapor cloud was about five hundred feet above the landing craft and had expanded to one hundred feet in diameter, tiny sodium detonators in the vapor clouds fired off. The resulting explosion was greater than the force of a twenty-thousand-pound high-explosive bomb, creating a mushroom cloud of fire that stretched across the water for nearly half a mile and a shock wave that churned the water into a boiling froth for two miles in all directions, deafening or knocking soldiers uncons
cious and setting the landing craft underneath the explosions immediately afire. Two of the HADES canisters sailed over the beach, amidst several platoons of Chinese Marine engineers, and the incredible force of the explosion was just as devastating on land. The closest HADES canister went off three miles away, but to Yang and his Marines it felt as if they were in the middle of an erupting volcano. Yang found himself dazed but unhurt, flat on his stomach, his rifle thrown several meters away. He lowcrawled to his rifle, picked it up, then rose cautiously to his knees. “Marines! Forward! APCs! Move out!” Thankfully, the first APC began to lumber off the air-cushion landing craft; the second showed no signs of moving. “Get those APCs off the landing craft! Move it! Move it!” Slowly, his men got to their feet, stumbling toward the APCs to take cover behind them as they got their senses back. As Yang urged his men to get off the landing craft, he was able to scan out toward the straits toward his amphibious landing ship-and what he saw horrified him. The entire interior of the ship seemed to be on fire. Pieces of the pontoon bridges were hanging off the sides, all afire, and in the glare of the fires he could see men flinging themselves overboard into the burning-oil-covered gulf. A spectacular explosion sent a column of flames a hundred meters into the night sky as the fires finally found the twenty-five million decaliters of diesel fuel still in the LST’s storage tanks. A few of his men stopped to look at the dying ship, and Yang grabbed them and shoved them forward. “Move it! Secure that treeline! Search that house! Move it The gunners aboard Dagu began firing into the sky again, and Yang could hear the sounds of fast and heavy jets getting closer. “Get off the landing craft!” he yelled. “Run toward the trees! Run!” But it was too late. Two minutes after the F-I I Is delivered their canisters of fire, the next strike package began its ingress from the northeast: four B-52s that had survived the battle with the destroyer Dalian continued their attacks with Harpoon missiles and CAPTOR mines; their escort EB-52C Megafortress had been shot down by a JS-7 fighter over Mindanao as it tried to turn away from the target area. The four B-52s claimed kills on two amphibious assault ships and seeded the straits with over a dozen CAPTOR mines that began to seek out and destroy the surviving vessels that tried to escape across the straits to Samal Island. Then, sixty seconds after the last B-52 came off the target, the last and the heaviest-armed warplanes in the entire battle began their assault; six B- I B bombers swooped in from the north at treetop level. They were never detected until it was far, far too late. Colonel Yang could see the bright globes of red and orange walk down the beach toward him, stitching a path of destruction fifty meters wide and hundreds of meters long. There was no place to run-the bomblets from the aerial-mine canisters covered the entire beach. He could only raise his rifle and fire at the hissing sound as the sleek American bomber, highlighted for a brief moment against the glare of the burning tank-landing ship, streaked overhead. Yang turned his back to the approaching chemical meat-grinder of bomblets and continued to fire at the bomber until he was cut down by the devastating explosions and clouds of shrapnel. Never had Major Pete Fletcher, the B-IB’s 050 (Offensive Systems Officer), taken such an incredible array of weapons into battle before-in fact, never had he even heard of so many different kinds of weapons carried into battle. His B-IB Excalibur bomber, Blade Two-Five, had carried eight SLAM missiles on the external hardpoints-those had already been expended on the larger Chinese vessels in the Philippine Sea that survived the B-52s’ initial onslaught; eight Mk 65 QUICKSTRIKE mines in the aft bomb bay, which were shallow-water high-explosive antiship mines that were to be dropped in Dadaotan Straits and Bangoy Harbor itself, twenty-four GATOR mines in the middle bomb bay, which were to be released on the beach-each bomb would disperse hundreds of small softball-sized mines along a wide area that could destroy small vehicles or kill large numbers of troops who tried to move through the area after the raid; and finally they carried eight BLU-96 HADES FAE canisters in the forward bomb bay, which were designated against the landing craft and Marines ashore north of Samar International Airport. All of the remaining weapons were to be dropped within a distance of only twenty miles, on three separate two-mile-long tracks-and while flying at treetop level at nearly six miles per minute, it left almost no time to think about procedures. He had taken a fix in between fighter attacks while going coast-in, and the navigation system was tight and ready to go. If he had time, Fletcher would try to take another radar fix going into the target area, but he doubted that would happen. The bombing computer would have to take care of everything. “Coming up on initial point… ready, ready, now, ” Fletcher called out. “Heading is good. Thirty seconds to release. Multiple GATOR release on heading one-eight-one, then right turn to heading two-one-six for a multiple QUICKSTRIKE mine release, then right turn to heading two-six-eight for a multiple HADES release. Stand by… fifteen seconds.” The fires that were already burning in Dadaotan Straits and Bangoy Harbor were spectacular-there had to be at least a dozen large troopships burning, with spots of fires dotting the entire bay. “My God, it looks like the end of the fucking world, ” the copilot muttered on interphone. “Five seconds… stand by to turn…” But the huge fires that made it so easy for the B- I crew to see the target area also made it easy for the Chinese troops to see the incoming bomber. A row of tracers from a few of the surviving amphibious assault ships arced into the sky, the un dulating lines of shells sweeping the sky in seemingly random patterns-and suddenly several of those lines swept across the nose of the B-I bomber. The impact of the 57-millimeter shells from one of the tanklanding ships felt like hammer blows from Thor himself. The cabin pressure immediately dumped, replaced a millisecond later with a thunderous roar of the windblast hammering in through the cockpit windows. Airspeed seemed to drop to zero, and the crew experienced a feeling of weightlessness as the B- I started to drift and fall across the sky. Fletcher reacted instantly. While struggling to keep himself upright in his seat as much as possible, he selected all remaining stores stations, opened the bomb doors, and hit the “Emergency Armed Release” button once again. “All weapons away! Weapons away!” he shouted. “Right turn to escape, Doug!” He called to the pilot, Captain Doug Wendt. “Right turn! Head west!” All of the mines and BLU-96 canisters made a normal release-except one. One of the racks in the forward bomb bay was hit by gunfire, the rack jammed, then released, and the canister was flung against the aft bomb-bay bulkhead and detonated. Fire and debris from the bomb and the damaged bomb bay flew into the right engine intakes, shelling the starboard engines and causing another terrific explosion. There was a sound like a raging waterfall filling the entire crew compartment, and smoke began to fill the cabin. The B- I seemed to be hanging upside down, twisting left and right and fishtailing around the sky. “Doug? Answer up!” No reply. “George?” Again no reply. Without thinking of what he was doing, Fletcher pulled the parachute release mechanism on his ejection seat, which unclipped him from his seat but kept his parachute on his back. He dropped to the deck and began crawling on his hands and feet toward the clipboard. “Pete!” Lieutenant Colonel Terry Rowenki, the DSO (Defensive Systems Operator), yelled behind him. “What the hell are you doing? Get back here!” Fletcher ignored him. Flat on his stomach, he made his way through the howling windblast to the cockpit. Through the glare of flares outside, he could see that all of the windshields were blown in, and both Wendt and Lleck were slumped over in their seats, unconscious. The autopilot was not on, but the B- I was light and trimmed enough to maintain wings-level even without hands on the control stick. “Terry! Get out! Eject!” Fletcher screamed, but he could not be heard over the windblast. Crawling forward another few feet, he pulled himself up onto the center console, keeping as far below the murderous wind coming through the shattered windows as he could, reached across, and lifted the right-side ejection handle on Doug Wendt’s seat. The large red “Eject” light snapped on in every section of the cabin-it came on automatically whenever the pilot’s ejection handles were raised. Fighting the force of the wind hammering on his entire
body, he reached up and hit the ejection trigger with his left hand. The inertial reel thankfully yanked Doug Wendt’s body upright in his seat a fraction of a second before the overhead escape hatch blew off and the seat roared off into space. But the ejection seat’s rocket motor flared right in Fletcher’s face, and he screamed again as his vision was replaced by angry stars of pure pain. He was on the verge of unconsciousness, and only another explosion from somewhere inside the bomber brought him back to his senses. Struggling through the pain to regain his vision, he finally gave up trying to open his eyes, groped around for Lleck’s ejection handle, found it, and pulled. This time the white-hot fire from the motor seared his chest and stomach, and he slumped to the deck. “Pete! Pete, dammit, wake up!” Someone was calling his name . . . someone . . . Fletcher raised his head. “Pete! This way! Crawl this way! Hurry!” It was Terry Rowenki-the idiot hadn’t ejected yet. Fletcher’s head hit the deck with a dull thud. That was his problem, he thought blissfully as he drifted off toward unconsciousness-the man had a perfectly good ejection seat, now was the time to use it. But sleep wouldn’t come. He soon felt someone pulling his legs. “Pete, dammit, crawl this way . . . you motherfucker, wake up, dammit, wake up…” To humor him, Fletcher pushed against the center cockpit console toward the systems compartment. The odd pitch angles of the deck seemed to help him-the Excalibur’s nose was high in the air, as if they were in a steep climb-and Rowenki’s grasp was extraordinarily strong. He heard another loud sound, more windblast sounds the farther back he moveduntil he realized that it was the big entry hatch. Rowenki had jettisoned the hatch and the entry ladder and was trying to pull Fletcher out! Somehow Rowenki managed to get Fletcher pulled to the hatch and over onto his stomach, head toward the open hatch. “What the fuck did you think you were doing up there?” Rowenki yelled as he continued to wrestle with Fletcher’s ragdoll-like body. “Being a damned hero? You get me killed up here, Fletcher, and I’ll fucking haunt you for a hundred years.” Attaching the emergency rescue rope to the D-ring on Fletcher’s parachute harness, Rowenki used his feet and shoved Fletcher headfirst out the entry hatch. The escape rope yanked taut, spinning Fletcher’s body around but pulling the ripcord D-ring and opening the parachute. One of Fletcher’s legs got tangled in the parachute risers, but it whipped free and the chute safely opened. Rowenki was right behind him, leaping out of the hatch as if he were going to do a cannonball from a high-diving board. He broke his left foot when it hit the aft edge of the hatch, but the pain only served to remind him to pull the D-ring as he sailed toward the lush tropical forests below. The stricken B- 1 continued to sail in a nose-high climbing right turn for several minutes, almost executing a full 180degree turn, until it finally ran out of airspeed, stalled, and crashed to earth near the town of Cadeco. The last aircraft of the first raid of the Air Battle Force had completed its journey. “Sir, report from a J-7 fighter over Samar International Airport, ” the radioman announced. Admiral Yin was on his feet. “Speak!” he shouted, loud enough to startle just about everyone in the room. “Is the airport taken?” The radioman listened for a several moments, his face look ing more ashen and disbelieving every second. He glanced at Yin, then at Sun9 then back toward his equipment. “Well? Speak!”
