Yet the Admiral watched, somewhat nervously, as his missiles fired, seeing his defensive strength ebbing away with each SAM he flung into the hazy sky. How many Vampires were out there this time? It might take two SAM’s to ensure a kill, though his HQ-9’s got many hits with just one missile. That said, he had used half of those missiles to kill the first 120 vampires that had already attacked. Now these infernal Tomahawks were going to drain away the better part of his remaining strength. It was all happening as he feared it would. His enemy was going to have more missiles to throw at him than he could hope to kill….
The worst of the attack appeared to be over, and now the stragglers on odd attack vectors were coming in ones and twos. He was also watching the progress of the YJ-18 attack, seeing that the Independence group, which was 150 miles west of the Sherman, had still been able to cover that ship with its superb Standard Missile-6. In spite of that, he took some heart when he saw his missiles begin their high-speed sprint, no longer easy targets for the American SAM’s. Two hits later, DDG Sherman was a smoking wreck on the sea, and sinking fast. The killer YJ-18 had struck again, and the Admiral had his blood. That was the first US surface ship to be sunk by the Chinese Navy in the war, though three other ships had been damaged and were in various stages of repair.
Now he looked his situation over, the grim realization settling on him that he was running low on SAM’s. His main group now reported only 69 HQ-9’s remaining, and 35 medium range HQ-16’s. He had 70 YJ-100’s left, and two prime targets out there in range, the Independence and the New Jersey. Which could hurt him the most? He knew he had not been hit with the full air wing off that carrier, but how soon would they strike again? As for the American battleship, it had an enormous missile battery, and could carry up to 100 strike missiles in addition to scores of SAM’s. In the end, he deemed the carrier the more valuable target, and now he would expend all his remaining YJ-100’s in a desperate effort to kill that ship.
“Dragonfire!” he shouted the order. “Everything on the American carrier!”
“Mother, this is Bertha. Hot potatoes heading your way, over.”
The E-2D Hawkeye had seen the missile fire from the Chinese main body, and flashed the warning. Captain Holmes looked at the screen, so he gave the order for Independence to turn to port and come to 212 degrees southwest.
“Let’s get six F-35’s up on BARCAP, and then increase to all ahead flank,” he finished.
They watched those six fighters roar off the deck and climb away from the strike group. Captain Holmes looked on his ready board and noted he still had six Avengers armed, four with GBU-53, and two with Slammers. He noted the incoming Vampires, now being tracked by the Hawkeye, and decided to hold his cards in hand for the moment.
The BARCAP, got five kills, then thought to return to the carrier when they went Shotgun, before the Captain found out they were inbound and ordered them to stay in the fight until they went Winchester. They had 12 AAMRAM’s left, and took them back to the Vampires knowing they would hear from Holmes when they got back to the carrier. They could almost hear the Captain now: ‘You don’t go Shotgun and break off in a situation like this. You hang in there until you’ve got nothing left to fight with.’
The chastened F-35 pilots were at high altitude, but they overflew the Vampires on the way back out, then turned around and swooped down on them like birds of prey. Seconds later they rammed their last twelve missile right up the ass end of a long train of YJ-100’s. They got more kills, but it still left 47 Vampires inbound on the Independence, about 50 miles out.
Some tense minutes passed, and the Captain folded his arms, waiting for his screening units to engage. They were having trouble getting enough reflectivity off the YJ-100, but cruiser Shiloh finally opened up with ESSM’s. Antietam was next to fire, and then the destroyers Sheridan and Hancock. For the next few minutes, missiles seemed to be flying everywhere, but it was a SAM feast. The combined weight of the defense was still just too strong for those 47 Vampires to penetrate, and they would all be stopped.
With that attack, Admiral Sun Wei had literally shot his wad, at least for any attack he might make beyond 300 miles in range. The Chinese were still leading 1-0 into the middle innings here, but the US was now coming up to bat. When the smoke cleared, Captain Holmes took a deep breath, because he knew every last damn missile the Chinese had just fired had the name Independence written on it—but they had failed.
“Alright,” he said. “It’s Miller Time. These guys won’t have much else to throw at us, and so now we start picking them apart. We’ll coordinate with New Jersey, and go to the Tomahawks again. Let’s bleed the suckers dry.”
The sun began to set that day, a big orange ball over the quiet seas, and with it Sun Wei knew the darkness would not bring him any comfort. His offensive power was largely gone, though his screen signaled they had a firing solution with YJ-18’s on the US destroyer Buckner, cruising with the New Jersey. He authorized them to fire, knowing he would never get close to the carrier to do it any harm. At that hour he was still 730 miles from Colombo, running at 30 knots, and it was going to be a long, hard night on the bridge.
After the screening units fired, he ordered those ships to vector in on his position, knowing he would need their HQ-16’s soon. They had not yet been targeted, and reported a SAM inventory on that weapon at 190 missiles. That would go a good way towards bolstering his defense, but those ships had been chasing the American carrier, and were now 75 miles to the southwest. They were to make an immediate rendezvous.
That night, the 24 H-6 Bombers that had operated from Hyderabad took off a little before 18:00, and started the long flight north to Hotan Airbase on the southern rim of the Taklamakan Desert. The War Gods were leaving. They would land at Hotan, refuel, and then take to the skies yet again, bound for Lhasa in Tibet, and from there they would await orders, possibly to redeploy to Yangon in southern Burma, a base where China had negotiated rights in trade for her older fighter jets. The plan now was to use the long range of J-20’s based at Yangon, with J-31’s off Taifeng operating from the Gulf of Thailand, and it was hoped those assets could secure the western entrance to the Malacca Strait.
Admiral Sun Wei was stoic, regretting all that was lost with this withdrawal order. Now it will be up to Pakistan, and any air force units we left behind, to see to the Gulf of Oman. This is a disgraceful retreat, he thought, but yet, I could see no way to prevail against those two American Carriers. Here we struggle to escape from just one carrier, and may not yet live to reach Colombo. If we can at least get close before our SAM defense is depleted, we may get air cover from Sri Lanka. And of course this is why we must tip-toe past Mumbai, and do nothing to antagonize India at this point. Their Air Force is the last thing we need turning on us as we continue south.
Just after 18:00, the alarms jangled again, and the Admiral rushed to the tactical display to see more enemy missiles heading his way. More Tomahawks, he thought. How many? We may have the HQ-9’s to stop them now, but then what?
That proved to be true, for it seemed a small package of only about 36 enemy missiles. Just sent to annoy us, he thought, but looking at his SAM count told the real tale. He had 41 HQ-9’s left when that attack ended.
As if in reprisal, the 16 YJ-18’s that had locked on to DDG Buckner earlier were now closing on the place they expected that target to be. The three ships in the SAG were having trouble targeting the Sizzlers, and it was DDG Sheridan with the Independence who saw and fired on them first, some 80 miles to the east. They would not have much work to do. The target lock could not be held by the Chinese destroyers who sent the Sizzlers here, and so the first eight missiles executed a turn, fired up their rocket motors, and began to sprint… Unfortunately, that turn had taken them away from Buckner, and they were streaking off over an empty sea, totally lost. The next group would do the very same thing, and Captain Hap Turner just stood on the bridge of the New Jersey, grinning from ear to ear. There went 16 valuable missiles, off into the night to become nothing more than junk on the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
The Admiral took the news of that failed attack with stoic resignation. The YJ-18 is a killer, he thought, but only when it knows exactly where to go. Down range ambiguity of even two miles can result in costly failures like this. It was our inability to actually have a real time radar fix on the enemy ships that caused this. Yet I have no AEW assets or even fighters to dash in and get me that information. I can rely only on the latest satellite feeds, which age second by second. If we could have better positioned our submarines before attempting this withdrawal, it might have helped, but they are too slow, and that could have taken days. So I elected to try and surprise the Americans by leaving Karachi last night, and here we are, under constant attack as our SAM’s dwindle away.
I am weary, and in need of sleep, but now I must be strong. If we succeed, it will be spoken of as one of the greatest sea romps since the last great war. Let us write this history our way….