As the emergency lights flicked on, Captain Richards placed his hands in front of his body and began to lift himself off the floor. He looked over and saw Admiral Lomas sitting in his chair; a dark red blotch began to grow across the front of his uniform. He staggered over to the Admiral and saw a small piece of metal had pierced his stomach, and blood was oozing around the wound.
“At least he’s unconscious,” thought Captain Richards. “He would be in a world of pain if he were awake.”
“Corpsman! I need a corpsman!” the Captain yelled to anyone in the room. A couple of sailors came over to him and saw the condition the admiral was in. He needed medical attention quickly.
“Sir, please step aside,” said a corpsman as he began to examine the admiral. After just a moment, he looked up at the Captain. “We need to get him down to medical. I need some people to help me carry him down.” He pointed to a couple of sailors and then directed them to get one of the medical stretchers.
The sailors carefully moved the Admiral from his chair and placed him on the stretcher, while the corpsman began to set up an IV. A young ensign led the way, yelling for people to make a hole for the admiral. Crew members who had been running throughout the corridor paused to let the stretcher with the admiral through.
Once the Admiral was carried out of the CIC, Captain Richards immediately turned his focus back to the emergency at hand. “Damage report! How badly have we been hit?” he demanded.
Before he got an answer, one of the chief petty officers grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall mount and quickly put out a small fire that had started in the CIC. Then he opened a doorway leading to a hallway, to let the smoke escape the confines of the CIC.
The engineering officer was on the phone receiving an update when she covered the mouthpiece and turned towards the Captain. “Sir, it’s not good. It looks like the missiles punched through roughly eight decks before it exploded. We have fires spreading throughout the ship, and one of the fires is headed directly for the magazine room,” she responded with a grim face.
Another phone rang, this one at Richard’s station. He quickly picked it up. “This is the Captain, go ahead.”
“Sir, this is the lower deck damage control room. I’ve been trying to get through to CIC to give my report. I need to let you know that we are taking on a lot of water. We had several of the lower decks sealed that had been hit from the cruise missiles, but that last missile that hit us busted open several new areas. We are trying to control the flooding right now, but I need your permission to seal off the lower two decks of the ship if we are going to save her,” the officer said, almost pleading for someone to give him orders on what to do.
“How many men are still down in the lower decks, Lieutenant?” demanded the Captain. He wasn’t about to seal them off until he knew all his people were out of there.
“I don’t know Captain. A lot of those decks are flooded. It could be a handful, it could be a couple dozen. If we do not seal them off now though, the water is going to make its way to the decks above them, and if the flooding makes it to deck three, we are toast. That would expose half the ship to flooding, with no way to seal it off,” he replied.
Richards stood there for a second, trying to think. This was a nightmare scenario.
“What if I still have sailors down there, desperately trying to get out?” he worried.
He knew he had to save the ship though. “Seal the lower decks, Lieutenant,” he ordered. “Do what you need to do to save the ship. Keep us apprised of what you are doing.” Then he hung up the phone.
He quickly waved his senior engineering officer over and explained what had just transpired. Seeing that there was nothing left he could do in CIC, Captain Richards left and began to walk to the flight deck to survey the damage and see how he could help. He wanted to see the damage to his carrier and the rest of the battlegroup for himself, and he couldn’t do that while bottled up in the CIC. As he was on his way out, he saw several stretchers coming in from the flight deck. He ran over and helped hold the door open, so another sailor could assist in carrying the wounded sailors to medical. Then he proceeded out onto the flight deck.
What he saw was sickening. There was a huge hole in the center of the flight deck, just behind the catapults, and several demolished aircraft nearby. Turning, he looked aft and saw a second gaping hole with flames and thick black smoke rising from the cauldron of death that had been created by the enemy missile. As the captain surveyed the damage, he saw dozens upon dozens of brave sailors manning fire hoses, trying to put the massive flames out.
There were also bodies everywhere. Some sailors were missing legs or arms. People all over the place were crying out for help, begging for their loved ones as they wailed in agonizing pain. Some of them obviously knew they were in the process of dying. Richards walked over to a young sailor, who was trying to apply pressure on the chest of a fellow seaman who had a terrible gash. He saw the young woman crying as she desperately tried to stop the blood soaking through the bandage she had applied. Then he saw that she had also been injured as well. She had a small gash on her forehead that was bleeding badly, and was cradling one of her arms like she had broken it.
He knelt next to her and pulled out a bandage from an aid bag she had sitting next to her, and began to apply additional pressure on the wound of the man on the ground.
Captain Richards told her, “I’ll take over with him until a corpsman can help. Go ahead and get a bandage on your forehead.”
He yelled out to a couple of corpsmen who had just run out to the flight deck, getting their attention. When they saw it was the captain hailing them, they quickly ran to him. He directed them to take care of the sailor with the chest wound and told the young woman to follow them down to medical and get her arm taken care of.
Then Captain Richards got up and made his way to the edge of the flight deck, so he could survey the rest of the fleet around them. He looked off to the right and saw that the USS Reagan must have been hit by multiple ballistic missiles; nearly the entire flight deck appeared to be in flames and the ship looked to be dead in the water. Everywhere he looked, ships were on fire, billowing thick black smoke into the air. Many of the ships were dead in the water, while others still managed somehow to keep themselves moving.
Captain Richards turned around to examine his own ship. The superstructure where the bridge had once been was now a twisted metal hulk with flames licking around the few undamaged parts.
“We’ve lost the 7th Fleet,” Richards realized. “We’ve lost the Reagan and I may still end up losing the Vinson…”
Following the Chinese attack, the carrier Carl Vinson, along with four destroyers and one cruiser, were able to limp away to the protection of the Japanese Navy. While the Carl Vinson survived, the damage to the flight deck, hangers and superstructure would require months, if not years to repair. The Reagan, along with three Ticonderoga cruisers and fourteen Arleigh Burke destroyers were sunk, along with the Blueridge. The 7th Fleet Commander, along with 13,200 other sailors, lost their lives, and another 7,000 more were injured. This was a crippling blow to the US, and would leave Japan vulnerable to the Chinese Navy until additional naval assets reached Japan.