The first Chinese Z-8 Super Frelon helicopter took off at 0620 with ten Marines on board. Soon eight were in the air heading towards a cluster of Vietnamese-held reefs 70 kilometres to the east. Seven Su-27 Flankers joined them for air support from their base at Lingshui on Hainan Island. They were refuelled 120 kilometres out from three Chinese Il-76 tankers, converted from transport aircraft. Each aircraft could run out three fuel pipes with refuelling drogues on the end, one from each wing and one from the under-fuselage.
The Su-27s were able to stay above the conflict area for at least thirty minutes, and complete the 1,500 kilometre round trip using tanker support. Months earlier, there had been fractious disagreement among the Communist Party leadership as to whether the PLA could launch Operation Dragonstrike without an aircraft carrier to project power throughout the South China Sea. One document leaked from the Central Military Commission argued that 40 aircraft on board a carrier could achieve the combat effectiveness of 200 to 800 land-based fighters. But to obtain, equip, and train crews for carrier operations takes years. Disagreements about the timing of carrier capability ranged from as late as 2015 to as soon as 2005, which would be a Harrier jump-jet operation. But the political leadership in the Communist Party said that even that might be too late. `By then,' said the document, `American hegemony would have taken over our coastal cities as the European powers did in the nineteenth century. The Americans would attempt to split China through whatever means and the motherland would be dismembered again.'
In the mid-nineties the Chinese air force carried out a number of in-flight refuelling tests. They negotiated with Israel for technology, but the deal never went ahead because of pressure on Israel from Washington. Western intelligence believed the Dragonstrike refuelling technology had been bought from the Pakistanis, and the refuelling drogue units made in China. The probes to take the fuel were simply bolted into the refuelling pipes of the fighters and helicopters and the valve nozzles copied from the standard NATO type. It worked, and gave potentially unlimited extra range and flexibility, although the clumsy tankers were vulnerable unless well protected.
The seven Su-27s headed for Vanguard Bank, at the south of the Spratly group and occupied by Vietnamese forces. Because of thick cloud and poor visibility, the pilots at first failed to identify the correct islands. They flew over them once before realizing they had gone too far, giving the Vietnamese a first advantage. Three SA-6 missiles were fired from the ground, but the Chinese pilots dropped clouds of chaff-like metal strips and turned sharply at maximum G. The force generated by this manoeuvre pushed their bodies deep into their cockpits despite their anti-G suits, which squeezed their legs and abdomen in an attempt to prevent the blood pooling in the legs and draining the brain of life-giving oxygen. The SAMs missed. Then four Vietnamese MiG-21 Fishbed fighters entered the conflict from their base in Ho Chi Minh City, destroying two of the Su-27s with air-to-air missiles while they were distracted in trying to evade the SAMs. The surviving Chinese aircraft separated, and with their superior manoeuvrability found two of the Fishbeds. The two Vietnamese pilots dived to 120 metres and pulled up, each with an enemy plane locked on. One Fishbed exploded on the impact of a missile. The second started to lose a wing. The pilot ejected. The plane spiralled into the sea. Then an Su-27 pilot, distracted by the explosion of the Vietnamese plane, was killed in a direct hit on the cockpit by another SA-6.
Down at surface level, the twin 100mm gun on the bow of China's Luhu class destroyer Haribing opened up on the Vietnamese positions. The destroyer was also equipped with French surface-to-surface missiles, Italian torpedoes, and American engines. It was a example of the mixture of systems in China's armed forces, causing problems in training, resupply, and maintenance. For four minutes the 15 kilogram shells pounded the reef while the dogfight continued above it. Then a Vietnamese Shershen class fast attack craft joined the battle, heading towards the Haribing at 45 knots. The Principal Warfare Officer in the combat room first gave the command for a surface-to-air missile to be launched. It destroyed another Su-27. Five seconds later, he fired two 533mm torpedoes at the Haribing. One passed in front of the bow. The second hit. As the Vietnamese warship sped away, the Haribing fired a surface-to-surface missile. A Zhi-9a Haitun helicopter also managed to take off, and caught up with the Vietnamese. Then suddenly it was enveloped in a rain squall, lost visual contact, and had to concentrate on not ditching into the sea. The SSM veered off course, allowing the Vietnamese to escape.
The damage to the Haribing was not critical. The gun was still in action, although the mortar, used for anti-submarine warfare, was unworkable. Another seven Su-27s had now come in from Hainan. The dogfight was over. The eight transport helicopters from Fiery Cross Shoal were clear to land the troops. They came in under fire, but the Vietnamese had already taken heavy casualties. Their resistance had weakened. Chinese troops took only 23 prisoners. They found 106 bodies. The Chinese flag was placed on Vanguard Bank at 0645. Within the hour it had been raised on other Vietnamese outposts nearby.
There was fighting throughout the Spratly Islands that morning, while reef by reef and atoll by atoll China pushed through its territorial claim with military force. Philippine troops put up a lacklustre fight, then surrendered. Malaysia and Brunei had told their troops to hand over their positions without resistance. Apart from Vanguard Bank, the fiercest battle took place around the craggy coastlines of Itu Aba Island, Sand Cay, and Spratly Reef, where Vietnamese and Taiwanese troops joined forces to hold off an invasion force of Chinese Marines. At first, they set up a line of fire at two jetties. Then, keeping that covered, they waited as the Marines tried to land on the small beach on the other side of Sand Cay. They mortared the landing area and destroyed the boats with heavy machine-gun fire. They mortared the back of the beach where the Chinese Marines were running for cover. They turned the beach itself into a killing zone. Most of the Chinese were killed over the next fifteen minutes. The wounded were picked off by snipers, until two Chinese Zhi-9a helicopters came in with covering fire. The Taiwanese and Vietnamese made a controlled retreat, sacrificing a small vanguard group. They escaped in a Taiwanese PCL type offshore patrol craft and a Vietnamese Poluchat class coastal patrol craft. Despite her speed of 20 knots the helicopter crew were able to target the Vietnamese vessel. Those on board the Taiwanese warship survived.
The secure telephone rang on the desk in the Oval Office of the White House. President James Bradlay had been elected only three months earlier in a landslide victory. Charismatic, good-looking, youthful, though not young, a family man who, unlike his immediate predecessor, felt no need to prove his manhood with every pretty stranger he met, Bradlay had seized the opportunity to preach the gospel of renewal after riots had turned many inner cities of America into no-go zones for most of the summer. He had galvanized the electorate when in Chicago he faced down an angry crowd on the Southside, quelling what the authorities feared would be the worst civil unrest in that city since the Democratic Convention of 1968. In his inaugural address, less than a month earlier, he was concerned almost solely with domestic issues, especially the need for a new covenant between black and white. He paid ritual homage to the United Nations, the need for Japan to open its domestic market to foreign trade, and to his administration's desire for a cooperative relationship with China.