Only two ships aft of the leading ships would survive, the destroyer Taizhou, and to his great relief, the Eagle God. The 48 HQ-10’s the ship had managed to reload had been just enough of a defense to save its life. The engineers had saved the ship. Now he saw many other targets still coming, but realized they were hitting nothing, sailing harmlessly over his ships, mere decoys meant to draw his fire.
The attack was soon over, a beautiful dance in the sky, perfectly coordinated throughout the entire mission. It was all Captain Holmes was going to throw at his enemy, but it had thinned his ranks considerably that hour, sinking three frigates and a destroyer.
Of the 17 ships that had left Karachi on the night of the 20th of January under Admiral Sun Wei’s command, only eight were still afloat, and one more had reached the safety of an Indian port. So his fleet had been cut in half, and he had lost too many good men and women in the long and desperate race south.
Yet the main body was still alive. The Flying Dragon and Eagle God would reach Colombo safely now, along with two good Type 052D class destroyers, two Seafire Class destroyers, and two more upgraded Type 051D class ships. It was the better half of his command, but he would not sleep well for many days now, the faces of the men he had lost haunting him.
In Beijing, while the losses were heavy, the Admiral was lauded for his daring courage. Now those eight ships would refuel and rearm, and they would send fighters to replace all they had lost in the effort to cover that grueling redeployment. Admiral Shen Jinlong,[9] Commander in Chief of the Navy, flew directly to Colombo to meet with Sun Wei, a medal in hand. But the gritty fighting Admiral refused to accept it.
“I want no such medal on my chest,” he said. “It would serve only to remind me of my many failures—the many ships and sailors I lost in the Indian Ocean adventure.”
“Regrettable, but the fortunes of war, Admiral.”
“Yes, the bad fortunes this war has brought to us all. You know me well, Admiral, but realize that the cost of this war gets ever higher, and for what? Those useless islands in the Ryukyus?”
“Okinawa is far from useless, Sun Wei, as you well know.”
“Perhaps, but was it worth all this? We have lost our positions in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, all of Africa, and now the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean!”
“Not just yet,” said Shen Jinlong. “You are here in Colombo, and we have two new destroyers here to help offset your losses, both Type 052D’s. They were at Bangkok, and I sent them here some days ago.”
“Good foresight,” said Sun Wei, “but now what am I to do here? We have just come over 1200 sea miles, through fire and steel, under constant attack, and seen much that I would wish to forget. Yet in fighting this withdrawal, I learned some very valuable lessons.”
“Tell me,” said the fleet Commander.
“Very well… First, while the YJ-18 was a superb weapon against the British, I had only one occasion where I could get in range to use it against the Americans, and even that could have been prevented by them if they wished. They all just sailed off into the blue. The missile is too demanding, and needs precise downrange targeting data. While it has good range, the Americans always stay beyond 300 miles, and none of our ships has the speed to catch them. So Admiral, if we are to have any offense at sea at all, then it must come from the YJ-100. Please tell me our war supplies on that weapon are still holding up.”
“For the moment. Beijing has ordered three more factories to produce that missile round the clock. You should find adequate stocks here, flown in over many days by the Air Force—enough to give you some punch.”
“Good, but I must tell you, it is seldom enough. Lesson two—we do not have the offensive strength to overcome the defense of an American Carrier Strike group. The hope we placed in the Dong Feng-21D has not proven fruitful. Their Standard Missile-3 is simply too capable. And the combined defense of their SM-6, augmented by fighters on CAP, sees most of our missile strikes defeated as far away as 80 miles from the carrier. Not once did I ever get a missile inside 20 miles. That shows you how weak we are offensively relative to the Americans, who strike us with a dizzying array of different weapons on their carriers. And what do we strike back with from our carriers?”
It was an uncomfortable moment, but the two men knew it was the truth, and it had to be spoken. Yet the news Sun Wei wanted to deliver was not all bad, and now he spoke of changes that must be made to fleet weapons loadouts.
“The lasers,” he began. “We left Karachi with work incomplete on the installation of those modules, but in desperate need when our ship ran out of SAM’s, I ordered those turret assemblies and power couplings made ready. The engineers and service crews are the real heroes. Give them the medals. In six hours they managed to reload our HQ-10 mounts and get the lasers operational on the Flying Dragon. They are lethal! I saw them strike down whole groups of enemy cruise missiles three and four at a time, and with twice the range of our HQ-10. Without them, I believe that ship would have also been sunk, but with them, we survived. So Admiral, you must get them onto every ship with enough power generation capability to use them. This is what the Americans might call a game changer.”
“Indeed,” said Shen Jinlong. “Then I will do all I can to do exactly what you suggest. What more?”
“The Type 055 is a wonderful ship, but it need not be configured for either ASW or even naval strike missions now. Give it a token defensive missile load of eight YJ-18’s, and then use every other cell on the ship for the HQ-9’s. In effect, they must be reconfigured to become heavy fleet air defense ships, and each one must have at least two operational laser turrets and two deck mounted HQ-10 systems instead of one. The remaining Type 052D’s can yield their YJ-18s and send them to the Type-055’s. Then they should all be rearmed with the YJ-100’s to provide our offensive punch.”
“I see… Then you advise we must strengthen our defense.”
“Of course! I found myself regretting that I brought any offensive missiles with me at all. If I had an HQ-9B for each one of them, I might have saved a four more ships.”
“Very well,” said the Fleet Commander. “I will take all this to heart, and we will make the necessary changes you advise. I must say that Admiral Wu Jinlong suffered from these same shortcomings—an inability to reach and hurt his enemy, while the fleet was continually attacked by the enemy carriers. Operation Sea Eagle and the entire strike east plan he devised was a complete failure. The Americans are now preparing to land troops on Mindanao, and we have had to withdraw to the South China Sea again.”
“Most unfortunate,” said Sun Wei. “Yes, we need an offense. We must begin to hurt the enemy, or this war is surely lost. In fact, any sane man would see that it has already been lost. We have seen over ten years’ worth of ship production sunk, while the enemy’s losses are not even worth mentioning. If this does not change, and immediately, then you know the outcome as well as I do, Admiral. I will fight, as honor demands it, but a man must have the means. What was it Confucius said? Never give a sword to a man who does not know how to dance. Well Admiral, I think I have finally learned how to dance… but I have no sword….”
Chapter 30
That was a most disheartening characterization of the present situation faced by China in this war. Before this conflict, there were think tanks and would-be Admirals all claiming the day of the big deck aircraft carrier was over, and that these massive, expensive ships were becoming too vulnerable. They had begun to spout new warfighting theories with names like “Distributed Lethality,” to devise a strategy that would make their operations less dependent on that single ship. They had started to think about drones and unmanned ships and subs.
9
Not to be confused with Admiral Wu Jinlong. Both Admirals simply share the same given name, Jinlong, which means “Golden Dragon.”