by James Philip
The atmosphere was electric.
“President Nixon’s name remains on the ballot paper for the forthcoming General Election, now little more than a month away; as does my name. President Nixon will not campaign, or accept the office of President if he is re-elected. For my part, I will honour the commitment I have made to stand for high office and in the next few days I will name my running mate. In the meantime, I will be working every minute of every hour of every day to ensure the unbroken continuance of the good governance of the United States, intent on defending all we hold dear to the absolute best of my ability. In this hour of trial, all that I ask of my fellow Americans is, please pray for me.”
Later, it was agreed that Nelson Rockefeller may have planned to say more. However, he thought better of it.
“God bless America!”
And then he was turning away, hardly acknowledging the tentative applause, or registering the handful of plaintive cries of support.
TV commentators and newspaper editors jumped on the painfully obvious omissions from the short, artlessly abbreviated address.
Richard Nixon had skedaddled for the hills.
And Rockefeller had made no bones about it.
Tricky Dicky had left the country in the lurch; it was an act of cynical betrayal.
Yes, Nelson Rockefeller had clearly planned to say more.
There had been no mention of pardons.
Had that final act of contempt for the American people stuck in the new President’s craw?
Chapter 59
Sunday 29th September, 1964
USS Enterprise (CVN-65), 60 miles ENE of the Paracel Islands
Task Force 136 was steaming close to the edge of its allocated two thousand square mile ‘operational box’ of the South China Sea, which at its western boundary, came within less than forty nautical miles of the nearest reef of the isolated, sparsely inhabited Paracel Islands.
Deep in the giant nuclear-powered aircraft carrier’s armoured carapace the lights in her Combat Information Centre seemed to glow bright, and the traces on the big glass tactical boards moved with snail-like deliberation. Sometimes, it was easy to forget that the displays painted the battlefield out to one-hundred-and-fifty to two hundred miles in every direction, and that while jet aircraft scrolled across the screens at ten to fifteen miles-per-minute, even the fastest ships only crawled.
Rear Admiral Elmo ‘Bud’ Zumwalt took his seat and pushed back his cap, studying the developing tactical situation. The Task Force was too far from any of the Chinese Communists’ surviving air bases for there to be any kind of credible air threat; all the airborne contacts on the board were friendly, and bar a couple of them the Big E’s own birds. Far to the north-east two Vought F-8 Crusaders off the Coral Sea (CV-43) were cutting across the absolute edge of Task Force 136’s battle scape.
However, Zumwalt’s main interest was elsewhere.
The People’s Republic of China and their Korean allies had ambushed one Carrier Strike Force, sunk – or as good as sunk – the Ranger and other ships, killed thousands of Americans in the Tsushima Strait; and now the bastards were trying to set another trap. Topsides, it would be fully dark by now and the seas were rising; nothing the Big E could not handle although even down here within the bowels of the great beast of a carrier, Zumwalt could feel the motion of the ship as she zigzagged through the long chop. Out here there were abyssal depths beneath the keels of his ships, not the tidal race or the shoals closer inshore of parts of the Tsushima Strait. Here the seas were long, and the gale starting to blow nothing in comparison to that which had fallen upon Task Force 134 in those treacherous waters off the Japanese Home Islands.
The final piece of the jigsaw had been handed to Zumwalt forty-eight hours ago. A U-2, overflying the area two days ago, had brought back photographs of the enemy missile boats reported by the South Vietnamese garrison of Pattle Island on the western edge of the Paracels.
This time, there would be no ambush.
No surprise attack in the middle of a storm of near Biblical proportions. No swarm of ship-killing missiles rocketing towards his ships on unstoppable terminal trajectories. No, out here in the open seas he could see his enemy coming from afar; and fight the sort of battle he wanted to fight. This time the terms of engagement had already been written; now all that was left was to execute battle.
Zumwalt gazed, briefly lost in thought, at the symbols for the two SSNs covering his western flanks: the Haddo (SSN-604) and the Thresher (SSN-593), both as close in to the eastern Paracels as they dared, lurking like four-thousand ton steel sharks and even now, gliding into hunting range. He had left his auxiliaries - fleet oilers, ammunition and supply ships behind at Subic Bay – to give the enemy’s spies in the Philippines the impression TF-136 was going to sea for relatively short-lived exercises. To support this, the Big E had only partially re-stocked her magazines, and taken on board only minimal supplies of fresh food to replenish her stores. This apart, he had ordered her escorts to top off their bunkers. That would have raised few eyebrows because bad weather was coming through, and fuel was better ballast than sea water, which would have necessitated tank cleaning when the fleet got back to harbour.
Not that refuelling was a problem for either the Enterprise or her guardship, the similarly nuclear-powered nine-thousand ton guided missile cruiser USS Bainbridge (CGN-25), which presently was holding position two miles off the flagship’s port bow quarter. To starboard, lagging a little abaft and three thousand yards out, the heavy cruiser Saint Paul (CA-73) held station.
The Saint Paul had swapped places with the battlewagon USS New Jersey, which had been re-assigned to Task Force 132 as the Coral Sea’s ‘minder’, a month ago. The battleship had been hit by a thousand pound bomb and sustained minor splinter damage from a couple of near misses when she had led TF-136’s gunline inshore to bombard targets on Hainan Island last month. The bomb had not penetrated her main deck armour but nevertheless, she had been detached to Sasebo for repairs and to send ashore her twenty-one dead.
The Saint Paul was a modernised Baltimore class ship, in more than one sense an 8-inch gunned scaled-down version of the Navy’s last four, Iowa class battlewagons.
In addition to the two big close escorts, there were always destroyers ranging nearby tasked with close in point defence, or on stern or bow guard during flying operations. Further out, from five to thirty miles there were eleven more ships, eight of them assigned specific air and surface defence roles in the coming mission, the other three units were deployed on anti-submarine evolutions.
Without the slower, vulnerable oilers and transports in company, the commander of TF-136 planned to deploy the all firepower that would otherwise have been held back to protect them, against the enemy that night.
It would be overkill but nobody was counting the cost anymore in this war.
Zumwalt focused on the Paracel Islands.
The Chinese and the French overlords of Vietnam had both claimed sovereignty over the Paracels before the Second War. To the Chinese the archipelago was Xisha, and to the Vietnamese, after the French had gone, Hoàng Sa. The archipelago itself, about a hundred-and-thirty low coral islands, reefs and treacherous ship-wrecking banks just beneath the surface, with only the two significant groupings, the Amphitrite and the Crescent, situated respectively to the north east and the west, straggled across a large swath of the South China Sea, roughly equidistant from the nearest coastlines of the People’s Republic of China and Vietnam.
The South Vietnamese had taken possession of Pattle Island in the Crescent Group in the mid-1950s; and it had been a member of the three-man US Marine Corps observer detachment based on the island, who had first reported by radio the suspected sighting of two Osa class Soviet-built missile boats. In the subsequent U-2 images there were at least eight – possibly more - such vessels present, camouflaged to make them merge into the coral from the air. About thirty minutes ago, the first of the ship-killers, sisters of the boats that had caused such ma
yhem in the Tsushima Strait, had begun to cautiously emerge from the clutter of the islands.
They were moving very slowly at present, presumably mimicking the behaviour of fishing boats which often sought shelter amidst the islands, the closest was presently a little less than twenty-five nautical miles from the nearest screening destroyer, the modernized Gearing class destroyer USS Agerholm (DD-826), which had been ordered to hold the range constant for the time being.
Zumwalt was pretty damned sure that the Chinese, or the Koreans, possibly both, knew TF-136 was at sea and probably within striking distance of the Paracels. He had always assumed that the Chinese had submarines operating in the South China Sea, passively watching, pickets tasked to report US Navy movements in and out of Subic Bay, operating under orders to do their damnedest not to get discovered, and sunk. The Chinese had a few old Soviet diesel-electric boats incorporating some of the technologies reverse-engineered from the then, advanced German U-boats the Red Army had captured at the end of the Second War.
Once he had dealt with the seaborne STYX menace, Zumwalt would order a bug hunt to eradicate the Chinese submersible spies lurking around the Philippines. Today, he needed them to help spring the ambush which was going to allow him to wipe out whatever the enemy had left to throw at him in this, southern South China Sea theatre of operations.
The only thing Zumwalt was nervous about was leaving the Agerholm ‘out there’ on a limb. He would not have done it unless he needed a bait – sweeping the Paracels with her radars and making as much radio noise as was plausible, just near enough to the archipelago to tempt the enemy out at a time of his, and not their choosing. He was painfully aware that it was a very fine line between offering a sacrificial lamb to fate, and actually taking a closely calculated risk. Two extra chaff launchers had been installed on the old destroyer’s stern and the CAP was close enough to buzz the leading Chinese missile boats at three minutes notice, and if the worst came to it jam their fire control radars, and at a pinch, chase down individual low-flying missiles. Zumwalt’s worries entirely revolved around a scenario in which all the enemy missile boats opened fire on the Agerholm at once. If that happened there was nothing anybody could do to help her.
The commander of TF-136 had flirted with the idea of taking out the Osa class boats in the reconnaissance photographs in daylight; but he was worried some of the enemy vessels would get away. There were too many islets to hide behind, or to merge with. Aircraft would have to get down low to see what they were shooting at and there would be a lot of reflection off the sea: basically, there was no guarantee they would hit better than half of the targets. Another idea had been for the Saint Paul to close the range and with a couple of the Big E’s Sea Kings ‘spotting’, and with a dozen F-4 Phantoms flying top cover, and a squadron of A-4 Skyhawks going in a zero feet, obliterate anything and everything that moved with bombs, cannons and 8-inch high explosive shells. This again, seemed likely to only destroy a proportion of the enemy flotilla, in the confusion and fog of battle several of the Osas might get away, and Bud Zumwalt was greedy.
It was a reasonable tactical assumption that the missile boats hiding in the Paracels, having crept out there in twos or threes, or singly over the last month represented a significant proportion of the PRC’s remaining surface fleet. Wipe these boats off the order of battle and it would make a big difference to the future conduct of operations; inshore bombardment missions would be less problematic and the carriers could also steam, safely, much closer to the enemy coast, reducing flight times to targets inland enabling an accelerated frequency of ongoing operations. So, he badly wanted to kill every single one of those boats.
It was just a pity that this involved leaving the Agerholm out there on her own. In recognition of the risk, normally crewed by over three-hundred-and-forty men, the destroyer had off-loaded over a hundred-and-fifty men before leaving Subic Bay. The majority of the men still on board had volunteered, standing double watches to fill the gaps left by missing personnel.
At the first sign of trouble the Agerholm was to present her stern to the oncoming threat and light off in the opposite direction at flank speed, discharging chaff to confuse any incoming missile’s guidance systems.
Back in May 1962, the Agerholm had been the first US Navy ship to fire a live SUBROC, a nuclear armed anti-submarine rocket. Tonight, she might be famous for another reason.
“That’s ten bogies!” It was reported.
Zumwalt sighed.
“The Captain may sound battle stations.”
The bells began to sound throughout the carrier. Most men were already in their positions, the ship already being at the highest state of Air Defence Alert. Now the last watertight doors were slamming shut, dogs clipping home.
“Signal CA-73 to assume guard station on the flagship. CGN-25 is free to manoeuvre as necessary to bring her fire control systems to bear on the enemy.”
The Saint Paul would take up post off the flagships port beam, a big, tough lump of steel physically interposed between the likely angle of attack and the Big E.
Meanwhile, the Bainbridge, with her cutting edge sensor suite and her two twin Terrier launchers shooting the latest RIM-2E missiles with semi-active radar-homing enabling them to knock down low-flying targets, was free to search for unobstructed, unobstructed sensor lines of sight to execute optimal firing solutions against any air target which came within range.
All other units in TF-136 had orders to do the same.
Zumwalt had abandoned cruising protocols; while the Saint Paul would protect the flagship, every other ship was free to seek the best possible firing solutions and to shoot at will. If necessary, he would intervene, reconfigure the fleet – a thing he would do only in extremis - otherwise once the shooting started this was a free for all turkey shoot. The object of the exercise was to kill every bogey; this was not a stand-up fair fight, and there would be no quarter given. The enemy had dozens of potentially lethal STYX ship-killers but Zumwalt held all the technological aces and, he hoped, more than enough firepower to make it tell.
Which, right now, was cold comfort.
One could game a battle as much as one wanted; no plan survived first contact with the enemy.
“Twelve… Thirteen bogies!”
Each new missile boat was given a number.
“Fourteen… Fifteen!
Okay, this was getting interesting.
Intelligence had speculated there might be two ‘divisions’ of Osa-type boats, perhaps this flotilla had been hidden away up rivers or creeks until the last few weeks?
Fifteen bogies, each with up to four STYX sub-sonic five-ton – at launch – missiles. If they came on as a rush now, the Haddo and the Thresher’s 19-inch Mark 37 passive homing torpedoes with their three-hundred and thirty pound charges would be left swimming harmlessly in the wake of many of the bogies. Those Osa missile boats could make around thirty-five knots, the best part of forty-miles-an-hour in a flat calm, less in the current seas but a Mark 37 had a maximum speed of only twenty-six knots.
Zumwalt forced himself to sit, calmly, in his command chair.
Enterprise’s captain would fight his ship, likewise the captains of the other ships under his command would fight their ships. He had designed the operation; the battle, and he would only intervene if the construct needed to be radically altered. There was nothing worse than a fleet officer who attempted to micro-manage every aspect of an engagement. The recoil of the Big E’s catapults juddered distantly through the fabric of the whole ship.
“All five Trackers are in the air!”
The Enterprise normally carried eight of the twin-engine Grumman S-2 Tracker anti-submarine aircraft. The five in the air tonight were armed with a single air-launchable 21-inch Mark 41 acoustic homing torpedo.
Zumwalt looked at the plot of his ships, widely dispersed over hundreds of square miles of ocean. He knew his enemy would see only a tiny fraction of the big picture as yet, and it was unlikely that they had identified the Enterp
rise this early in their attack. At Tsushima the Chinese had run in to less than five miles from their nearest target before launching their birds.
The range from the Agerholm to the nearest Bogey had closed to nineteen nautical miles.
“Signal executive to all ships,” Zumwalt decided. “Weapons free. Repeat, weapons free. Fire at will!”
Every ship was waiting for the signal.
Both the SSNs were trailing mile-long radio aerials, listening, ready to strike.
“DD-826 has put her helm over!”
Zumwalt nodded casually.
Agerholm’s skipper was getting out of Dodge at flank speed now the hammer was about to drop. Nobody could tell if the plan was working, it was too soon. If everything was happening like clockwork – which it never did – the Haddo and Thresher would each flush fish from all four of their bow tubes in the next few minutes; and reload as the Agerholm high-tailed it to the east with, as the British called it ‘all the taps wide open!’
More aircraft hurtled off the Big E’s catapults.
Once the first torpedoes hit it would be pandemonium.
He checked the CIC’s windspeed clock. The ship was thundering into the weather at twenty-four knots, the wind was doing the rest. Gusting, putting fifty plus knots across the deck.
If the Big E had put the bulk of her Air Group up earlier, that would have given the game away, hence the delay in sending off the Trackers. Now the CAG was getting his Skyhawks into the air; after them, every available F-4 would follow, assuming the battle was not over by then.
Forget precision bombing; tonight, there would be flares, strafing runs and cluster bombs. Those Osa missile boats would start manoeuvring, jinking about like scalded cats once they knew that they were trapped in open water and hopefully, half of them had just been obliterated in the first minutes of the engagement. That was fine, the Osas had to run straight, get a target lock before they could flush their birds – a STYX’s guidance system was incapable of rescuing a bad launch – and while those boats theoretically had a range of several hundred miles even at maximum speed; they had to have already used a lot of fuel getting to their hiding places in the Paracels…
