“We go to the MALD decoys on this one,” he said. “Give me four planes with those, a full loadout of eight each. The rest of the Avengers go with JSOW, another flight of five planes. That totals out to 152 weapons in this throw, which looks like our last dance with these guys out here before they reach Colombo. Get the crews busy, and I want this ready to go at 18:00, right around sunset. In the meantime, we go to the Tomahawks, but this time the target is not the enemy fleet. We’ve still got 61 TacToms, and I want a good package delivered to that air base at Colombo to try and preempt any air cover they might throw up. That attack goes in now.” That was the order.
The Tomahawk TacToms had a journey of 500 miles to make to Colombo AFB, and they would be an hour getting there. So as the crews began that arming order, Independence turned south intending to navigate the treacherous Maldives through the gap south of Laamu Atoll. The long archipelago had hundreds of islands that stretched over 300 miles into the Indian Ocean, and there were places where shallows ran to as little as seven feet, which was bad news for deep draft ships like a carrier. They could not go north of the archipelago, as that would bring them well inside the range of any YJ-18’s the Chinese might still have, so it was south to the Laamu Gap.
Since Hap Turner and the New Jersey had last worked over Colombo with their TacToms, the Chinese engineers and Army had been quite busy restoring that field to full operation. Even after losing those six fighters earlier, they still had 20 more J-20’s there, and another dozen at China Bay AFB near Trincomalee. With these two excellent roosts, their old base at Hambantoa was now just a secondary port, and a small base for helicopters. They had also flown in HQ-9A and HQ-16 SAM batteries to protect all these facilities, in addition to mobile radars sites and the better part of an airborne brigade for muscle on the ground.
The island was in no way as secure as Karachi had been in Pakistan, but it was closer to the Malacca Strait and Andaman Sea, waters that China saw as fertile areas for the next round of fighting with the US Navy.
The “Malacca Dilemma” continued to haunt them, in spite of attack they made to chase the Royal Navy from Singapore and neuter the local fleet there. Admiral Thomas Cook still had the Enterprise in the Java Sea, and that meant he could challenge or interdict any move through the straits, a problem the Chinese Naval command was now feverishly working on. At the moment, however, they had to look after the dumplings that were already in the wok. Admiral Sun Wei was coming home, and they had to help him get there any way they could.
At 13:50, those radars spotted the incoming TacToms, and the Air Commandant immediately issued a scramble order. He had a three plane CAP patrol up, and also vectored them in to attack the Vampires at once. The CAP planes expended their PL-15’s to get several kills, then closed to use their short range PL-10’s. As the leading Tomahawk was about 12 miles out over the sea, the first HQ-9’s started to fire from a battery north of the airfield. More J-20’s roared into the sky, banked in a deafening turn, and the leveled off at 12000 feet to get after those Vampires. This time, the Chinese were determined to defend that crucial base.
Twelve more Mighty Dragons lifted from the field like great grey bats, and with each plane carrying four PL-15’s and a pair of PL-10’s. It was the weight and effectiveness of those missiles, combined with the land batteries, that broke the back of the TacTom strike. Only two missiles would get through, destroying one of eleven hangars that had been thankfully emptied minutes earlier when the fighters scrambled.
So the Chinese had some fresh wind in their sails now, intending to fight to preserve that vital base at all costs. The strike defeated, six of the fighters turned out to sea, soaring up to 50,000 feet to take up a high overwatch of their fleet. It had never occurred to Captain Holmes that he would need to send an F-35 fighter escort in to watch over those Tomahawks, and it was a costly mistake that galled him when he got the news that yet another strike mission had gone bust.
At 17:45 the strike leaders had finished their briefings and the planes and pilots were on the flight deck. As Captain Holmes looked at the men mounting their war steeds, he could only feel pride for the fact that he was given command of this ship, this crew, and for this mission.
This is it, he thought. Time to see if we know how to use a sword. We hit them early, and often, and hit them hard. We bled them dry, and then they brought out those lasers and gave us a surprise, just when we were ready to make our kill. It’s a long haul this time out, as they are hugging the coast of India, and we had to stay west of the Maldives, but we’ve still got the range, almost 400 miles to the targets.
“Alright, gentlemen,” he said aloud to the bridge crew. “This is our last dance. Start the music.”
The F-35 escort of 12 planes would go first, followed by the 18 Avengers for the strike, and then another flight of six Panthers for backup, rigged for air-to air. The four planes with MALD did not have far to go, as they could throw their decoys out 500 miles. They would fire immediately, a bearing only attack that would see the decoys arriving about the same time the other planes put their live ordnance on the targets.
The Avenger strike flights would wing their way north first, before spotting an island that would clue them to make their right turn towards the targets. This was taking the strike planes well away from the possibility of being found by enemy fighters, and the F-35 escorts would also be sweeping the skies far off their right flank as they began to make their final approach to the enemy fleet.
As it happened, the six J-20’s that had been out to provide air cover saw the decoys, and went after them. As soon as they did so, the Panthers unleashed a torrent of AAMRAM’s on them, intending to clear the skies of bogies. That got the attention of the J-20’s and the Avengers then had clear skies to get to their release points and fire.
As the strike ordnance released, the GBU’s went first to create that telltale cloud of glide bombs that was so threatening. It would compel all the targets would switch on active radars, and that lit them up and gave the anti-radiation missiles something to home in on.
The Chinese fleet had become a long line of ships, with the frigates somewhat behind the leading group, with a few Seafire Class destroyers. Last in the line, was the wounded Eagle God, a prime target that had been struggling to keep up. That ship was work for twelve JSOW’s, and everything else went after the tail end of the formation. It was the speedy AGM-88E’s that raced in to get the first hits, with four smashing into FFG Hengshui, and another for hitting FFG Xianning.
Now Admiral Sun Wei looked over his shoulder and saw the danger. His lasers had engaged and killed missiles heading his way, but the frigates had fallen too far behind. The simple lapse of not keeping proper stations relative to the leading ships made the them vulnerable, and the light sabers of the Flying Dragon could no longer cover them. The GBU-53’s now came in a massive steel cloud, and most of those ships were SAM depleted.
He was shaken when the bombs started to hit, slamming into the already listing Hengshui, then delivering a pounding of many hits to FFG Weifang. Xianning was struck again with many bombs, and that ship would not survive. FFG Nantong was pummeled and on fire, and the escorting Seafire Class DDG Haiwang was a burning wreck. It was the blow that should have been struck hours ago, before the lasers and rearmed HQ-10’s in the leading ships so changed the equation.