Captain Yi Jang was still in a state of bewilderment. It was a little after 0300 in the morning, and his garrison’s whole world was being rocked by multiple explosions. As another missile or bomb hit nearby, bits of dirt sprinkled down on the men who had made it into the bunker. He scanned the room; it looked like roughly half of his soldiers had made it to the bunker that connected them to their tunnel complex.
As he moved to the command center, one of the officers there rushed up to him. “Sir, the Americans are coming,” he announced.
Captain Yi handed the young officer a message from their higher command, ordering them to engage the American ships. The officer rushed off to put some plans into motion.
The smell of cordite and dirt hung in the air. Another explosion rocked the command center, sending reverberations through their chests. The soldiers nearby were all looking at him, and seemed to be asking for guidance and assurance. He could see the looks of fear and excitement on their faces at the realization that war was upon them. Yi knew he had a duty to his men and his country and was determined to do his job.
“Man your positions!” he yelled. “Prepare the missiles for launch!”
A couple of years prior, the Chinese had helped the KPA (Korean People’s Army) build a series of ship defense systems on the island. Ch’o-do Island was small, but it had several hills where a series of reinforced bunkers had been built to house the missiles and protect them from this very type of attack. Inside the underground shelters, they had created several launching points for their anti-ship missiles.
Yi smiled at the idea that he and his men could actually make an impact in this war. The Chinese had provided them with their newest ground-launched, anti-ship missiles, the C-802. NATO called them CSS-N-8 “Saccade,” and they were nasty missiles, capable of reaching speeds of 1,112 kilometers per hour within seconds, and would skim across the surface of the water at no more than 10 meters. It’s 165 kg time-delayed semi-armor-piercing high-explosive warhead could cause all sorts of problems for a ship, particularly if it punctured the ship at the waterline. Captain Yi looked forward to using them.
As his men moved from their bunkers to the series of tunnels that would take them to their missile sites, a young lieutenant waved for him to look at his monitor. The young officer’s screen showed nearly four dozen surface contacts, less than fifty kilometers from their position, and well within range of their missiles.
As his missile crews began to report in, Captain Yi realized that only three of the launching points were operational; the others had been destroyed during the bombardment. Thinking for a minute, Yi Jang determined, “Once we launch our first three missiles, we will probably only have enough time to get maybe one more volley off before the Americans find out where the missiles are coming from and destroy the launching stations. We had better make those missiles count.”
He looked more closely at the ships on the monitor. “Can we determine what type of ships we are seeing?” he asked.
The lieutenant brought up the camera feed and zoomed in as best he could. “It looks like this ship here is a troop transport of some sort. We could launch our missiles at that ship,” he suggested.
Captain Yi simply nodded. It looked like a good target. They programed the targeting data into the missiles and prepared them to fire. Once the missiles had fired, the rail launcher would pull back inside the bunker and the crews would work feverously to reload another missile onto the rail and get it ready to launch again. Even under the best conditions, it had still taken them three minutes to reload the rail launcher during training exercises.
Once the data had been programed into the missiles, they were immediately fired off. As the missiles leapt from their launchers, they quickly got up to speed, skimming the surface of the water as they streaked towards their targets. It would take less than a minute for the missiles to intercept the ships.
As the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer sailed to within thirty kilometers of Ch’o-do Island, the Captain of the USS Howard began to get nervous. They were screening for the Marine transport ships, which were still moving to get in range of their amphibious assault crafts, and his ship had already fired off half of their Tomahawk and Harpoon cruise missiles in the first fifteen minutes of the war. The KPA artillery had tried to zero in on their positions a few times, but it was hard to hit a ship that could accelerate to 30+ knots and zig and zag.
While the captain was sipping on his coffee, the mundane noise of the CIC was suddenly broken. “Vampires, vampires, vampires!” yelled a petty officer who was manning one of the radar stations.
Three missiles originating from Ch’o-do island suddenly materialized and began to accelerate quickly towards their flotilla. One of the weapons officers ordered the ships missile defense systems to engage the incoming threats. The ship began to fire off their SM-2 missile interceptors in quick succession.
Then, suddenly, several dozen more land based missiles appeared from the Namp'o City area, not far from Pyongyang. The USS Howard’s integrated defense systems went into overdrive, spitting out SM-2s as fast as it could.
In minutes, the sky was filled with missile interceptors as the destroyer escorts and the four Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers did their best to defend the fleet from the incoming threats. The battle was now in the hands of the Aegis Combat System and the extensive training of the crews that were manning it.
No Time to Iron
General Kuang called the emergency meeting of the CMC as soon as Vice Admiral Ning informed him that one of their submarines had been attacked and sunk by the Americans in the Yellow Sea. The Americans had managed to pre-empt the North Koreans invasion of the South by one day, throwing China’s timetable off; however, this attack by the Americans on one of their subs may have just given them the pretext for the next phase of their operation.
President Xi walked into the command bunker, feeling a bit disheveled. His hair had not been combed, and his shirt was badly wrinkled. He had been sound asleep when he had been rudely awakened from a lovely dream by one of his aides. The unlucky man had told him, “There was an incident involving one of China’s submarines and the US Navy carrier group. Your presence is needed in the bunker.”
Once his feet hit the floor, President Xi quickly threw on some pants and a button-down shirt. He skipped the tie and jacket; no need to be too formal at this hour of the day. When he arrived at the command bunker fifteen minutes later, he saw several of the other members just as tired and unkempt as he was.
“What happened?” he asked his Minister of Defense as everyone began to take their seats. A military aide began to pour everyone some hot tea as the meeting began.
Vice Admiral Ning spoke up first. “Sir, one of our Yuan-class attack submarines was sunk by a US Navy submarine roughly 90 minutes ago. The submarine had recently completed some upgrades at the shipyard and was en-route to join our other forces in the East China Sea to observe the American carrier battle groups. While transiting to their observation point, it appears they stumbled onto a North Korean submarine, who confused them for an American submarine and fired on them.”
The eyebrows of the men around him all tweaked in strange positions. It was obvious that they were confused. The admiral held up his hand to signal that there was more to the story.