Another petty officer manning one of communications terminals added to the growing noise level, shouting above everyone else, “Captain! We just received a FLASH message from NORAD. They just detected multiple ballistic missile launches emanating from China.”
The Admiral turned his head towards the petty officer, and before the captain had a chance, he asked, “Do we know what type of missiles those are?”
The room suddenly grew a little quieter as everyone waited for the petty officer to respond. “Yes, Sir. NORAD says they appear to be the Dong-Feng anti-ship ballistic missile.”
Everyone sat their stunned for a second, trying to figure out what to do next. These missiles were practically impossible to hit once they began their terminal attack. They could reach speeds of Mach 25 and dive straight down on their target as opposed to flying in an arching trajectory.
“They’ll have to be intercepted by a missile since the CIWS can’t turn vertical,” he realized.
One of the targeting officers picked up the phone receiver next to his terminal. He listened to the information being relayed to him and then hung up. He turned to face the Admiral and Captain, explaining, “Sir, I just received a message from the missile defense group in South Korea. The THAADs are starting to engage the ballistic missiles now.”
“Thank God we have the THAADs. I hope they can take them out before they hit any of our carriers,” thought Admiral Lomas.
“Have the ships in the fleet start to take evasive maneuvers once those ballistic missiles are less than five minutes away from impact. We need to make it as hard as possible for them to zero in on us,” the Admiral told one of the action officers, who rushed off to send the message out to the ship commanders.
The next ten minutes went by agonizingly slow as they watched the fleets SM-2s begin to intercept the incoming missiles. The number of threats was starting to thin out; only 197 of the original 470 missiles remained. Now it was time for the carriers’ airwings to start their attacks. The Hornets swooped in and began to fire off their barrage of AIM-9X Sidewinders. The heat-seeker missiles immediately went after the Chinese missiles, which were now maneuvering themselves to evade the new threat; the challenge was these new YJ-12 were incredibly fast, reaching speeds of more than Mach 3. The Sidewinders essentially had one chance to hit an enemy missile before they ran out of speed.
As the enemy missiles closed to within fifteen miles of the battlegroup, it was now time for the 5-inch guns and other close-in support systems to take over. By this time, the missiles had been thinned down again from 197 to 63, which was unfortunately far too many for the CIWS to destroy. The fleet was going to take some hits.
In minutes, the fleet’s CIWS began to spit out thousands of rounds, creating a wall of lead as the missiles began to zero in on nearly every ship in the fleet, including the Carl Vinson. While this was taking place, the THAADs had successfully intercepted 12 of the 18 anti-ship ballistic missiles; the SM-3s took out two more. That left four of them still heading towards the fleet, most likely towards the Carl Vinson and the Ronald Reagan.
The crew manning the CIC heard the familiar yet terrifying sound of fabric being torn; the carrier’s CIWS came to life as it spat out thousands of rounds to destroy the incoming missiles.
Suddenly, four nearly simultaneous explosions shook the ship violently. Alarm bells began to go off in the CIC, indicating the ship had taken damage in a number of areas. Then, two more blasts could be heard and felt; they had been hit again.
“Damage report now!” yelled the Captain to one of his officers manning the engineering monitors.
“Sir, it looks like we took one hit at the waterline on the port side. Crews are working to seal off the damaged corridors and decks. We took two more hits in the hanger deck, and one hit near the rear elevator. One of those last two impacts nailed the superstructure and the front elevator… it looks like the bridge is a total loss,” the damage control officer said in a shaky voice. The reality set in that many of their friends and colleagues who were working on the bridge several floors above them had just been killed.
“What is the status of those incoming ballistic missiles?” the Captain asked next.
“They are almost to us. Not sure if they are targeting us or not,” responded one of the radar operators. The crew nearby was nervous as they waited to see if the next missiles would hit them or not.
Admiral Lomas called out to one of the radar operators who was monitoring the incoming missiles, “How many missiles hit the battlegroup, and did we lose anyone?”
“Sir, it appears the battlegroup took around 63 missile hits. The fleet tracking system shows every ship in the fleet has been hit by at least one missile. It looks like three of the destroyers have been sunk, along with one of the Ticonderoga cruisers. The Reagan took six hits, but still appears to be functioning, and the Blueridge took four hits. She’s on fire, but they believe they can bring it under control.”
Everything was happening so fast, yet it felt like they were seeing everything in slow motion. Hundreds of sailors had just been killed or injured and there was little the Admiral could do to stop it. It saddened and angered him all at the same time.
“This must have been what Admiral Munch felt like when his carrier was sinking,” he thought.
As the crew of the Carl Vinson worked feverishly to get the damage and fires under control, they heard a thunderous boom. One of the ballistic missiles had plowed into the center of the USS Blueridge, the 7th Fleet Command and Control ship. Crew members who were on the upper decks and had the ability to see the Blueridge saw a massive fireball expand upwards and outwards from the explosion. Then, the ship started to split in half as the hull broke apart from the numerous hits it had sustained. Within minutes, the vessel would slip beneath the waves with hundreds of crew members still aboard.
While the men and women were observing the destruction of the Blueridge, a roar came in from above. All of a sudden, the Carl Vinson shook violently, throwing most of the crew to the ground. One of the ballistic missiles had just landed near the front part of the carrier deck, just behind the catapults, throwing shrapnel across the deck and killing or seriously injuring several members of the deck crew with the flying shards of metal. The missile’s semi-armor piercing warhead, coupled with the kinetic energy of traveling at Mach 25, drove the missile through eight decks of the ship before it finally exploded its 1,100-pound warhead. Less than a second after the first ballistic missile hit the ship, a second one plowed into the Carl Vinson, hitting the rear half of the flight deck further back.
Captain Richards was thrown to the floor along with nearly every sailor who was not seated in the CIC when the ballistic missiles hit. The lights in the CIC briefly flickered out as sparks began to shoot out from several cable sections that had split open. A couple of large TV monitors crashed to the ground from the sudden jolt, adding their own crashing sound and additional sparks. A small fire started as some of the papers near one of the exposed wires lit up like the kindling it was. The CIC started to fill with smoke as fires began to spread.