“Because I do not think I could have squeezed into your command center there, sir,” Sun responded. Jiang couldn’t help but look around himself again and cursed the cowardice and failure of discipline that filled this bunker up like this. “Besides, sir, not every flag officer of the People’s Liberation Army can be in an underground shelter — someone must lead our troops to victory. I therefore decided to lead the bombing raid on the rebels myself.”
“This is insubordination at the highest level!” military chief of staff General Chin Po Zihong thundered. “He has insulted every man in this room! Admiral Sun must be stripped of his rank and imprisoned immediately for this! ”
President Jiang looked around the impossibly overcrowded bunker and was embarrassed and shamed. He could not censure a commander who was out flying with his troops, ready to take on the high-tech, well- trained Nationalist air force. “I think it would be difficult for any of us to arrest Comrade Sun, since he is free and is struggling on behalf of the People’s Republic of China, while we are in this concrete sardine can! ” Jiang said in a loud voice. “We are safe, and we dare accuse Comrade Admiral Sun of insubordination while he risks his life to be seen by his fellow soldiers?” Chin fell silent. Jiang returned to the receiver: “Comrade Sun, can you report on the status of the operation?”
“Yes, sir,” Sun responded. “As expected, the Nationalists attacked Juidongshan with conventional bombs and air-dropped mines. The base was moderately damaged, but we suffered no casualties. Four of our J-6 air defense fighters were shot down, with four presumed casualties. The Nationalist attack on Xiamen was stopped completely, with an estimated thirty-two Nationalist F-16 fighters obliterated. No estimates on Nationalist casualties on Quemoy Dao, but observed aboveground damage was extensive. No damage, no casualties at Xiamen. All of our invasion forces are intact and awaiting your orders for the second phase of our attack.”
President Jiang hesitated. This was easily the most monumental decision of his life. Up until now, he had almost completely escaped criticism for the People’s Liberation Army’s activities in the Formosa Strait or South China Sea region since these conflicts had begun about a month ago. He had been roundly criticized for bringing the former Russian, former Iranian aircraft carrier into the western Pacific; he had been criticized for amassing an attack fleet against Quemoy; he had been criticized for his policies against allowing more home rule of Hong Kong. But ever since Admiral Sun had begun his unconventional-warfare campaign against Taiwan, very little criticism had been directed against him — it had all been directed against the United States and against the rebels on Formosa, even though Admiral Sun and the People’s Liberation Army under his command had precipitated everything that had occurred!
But from here on, China’s true designs would become evident— there would be no more feigned innocence, no more pointing fingers at the Nationalists and the Americans for their aggressive acts. Although some of what had occurred could be explained away as acts of selfdefense, it would be much harder to cry “Foul! ” in the future if he gave the order that Admiral Sun Ji Guoming was seeking.
“I want reports on American, Japanese, Korean, and ASEAN member reactions to the attacks on Juidongshan and Xiamen,” President Jiang ordered his staff. “I want a media statement prepared, explaining that our activities were purely defensive in nature and provoked by the Nationalists’ aggression. I want reports from our ground forces commanders near Xiamen, asking about the readiness of our forces. I want an intelligence report on the Nationalists’ troop situation on Quemoy and Matsu Dao.” Jiang turned to the radio: “Admiral Sun, I have ordered reports from Xiamen and from our embassies and information offices in the Pacific to get reaction on the attacks. I will issue my orders when these reports are transmitted to me and I have had a chance to evaluate them.”
“With all due respect, Comrade President, you cannot wait — you must give the order now, or abandon the invasion plans,” Admiral Sun replied. “This decision must be made immediately. Our bombers must strike while the rebels are confused and stunned by the aftermath of the attack on Xiamen, and before they disperse their aircraft or hide them in reinforced underground storage facilities. We can cripple the rebels’ air forces in one night if we strike right now, comrade. We must not hesitate. Our bombers are airborne and can only remain in this orbit, below the Nationalists’ long-range radar coverage, for a few minutes longer before our fuel status will render us non-mission effective. We can midair refuel the H-6 bombers, but the other bombers must return to base to refuel, which will upset our strike timing and prevent success. I need an order right now, sir. ”
The overcrowded, stuffy, noisy, smelly underground bunker suddenly became as quiet as a grave, as if everyone could somehow hear the conversation between their Paramount Leader and the enigmatic, almost legendary navy admiral who had turned their tranquil, blissfully isolated lives upside down these past few weeks. They all knew that the conflict between the People’s Republic of China and the rebel Nationalists on Formosa was about to move to a whole new level — and they were glad to be sixty feet underground right now, too.
Sun Ji Guoming was a career navy man, but he had to admit that the power and the speed of the heavy bomber was something to behold, something that could easily make a sailor trade in his slickers and sea bag for a flight suit.
Admiral Sun was strapped into the instructor pilot’s seat of an H-7 Gangfang H-7 supersonic bomber, one of six ex-Soviet Tupolev-26 “Backfire” bombers the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force purchased from Russia in 1993. Sun was leading an attack formation of thirty Xian H-6 bombers, Chinese-built copies of the Soviet Tupolev-16 bomber, which launched from Wuhan People’s Liberation Army Air Force Base, three hundred miles west of Shanghai, about an hour before sunset. Along with the bombers were six HT-6 Xian tankers, which were H-6 bombers configured to act as aerial refueling tankers.
Once reaching the air refueling orbit areas, each bomber took on a token on-load of fuel, around thirty thousand pounds each. The HT-6 tanker unreeled a long, six-inch-diameter hose with a large three-foot- diameter basketlike drogue at the end from each wingtip, and the H-6 bombers engaged the drogue with a probe protruding from their wingtips. Even with an observer guiding the two planes to the contact position from observation blisters near the tail of the HT-6s, Admiral Sun was astounded by the precision of the bomber pilots, able to stick the six-inch probe into the drogue in the semidarkness and then stay in formation long enough to successfully transfer the fuel, even in a turn — it took almost ten minutes, with the two planes flying less than thirty feet apart at over three hundred miles an hour, to transfer a relatively small amount of fuel. Sun’s H-7 bomber used a long refueling probe that extended far ahead of the nose, so they did not need an observer — they simply flew right up into the basket and plugged in. How the pilot could maneuver a 250,000-pound aircraft inflight to within three feet of a moving point in space was amazing.
After refueling, the gaggle of bombers broke up into three cells of ten planes and proceeded to orbit points on the west side of the Wuyi Mountains, about two hundred miles from the Formosa Strait, staying at 5,000 feet to keep below the top of the Wuyi range. The reason: Le Shan, or Happy Mountain. The Taiwanese Le Shan air defense system was one of the most sophisticated in the world. Radar information from three long-range radar arrays based in the Chungyang Mountains of central Taiwan, along with radar data from radar planes, ships, civilian air- traffic-control radar systems, and even some fighter radars, were combined in the Happy Mountain underground air defense center located south of Taipei. One hundred military controllers scanned over a million and a half cubic miles of airspace, from the surface to 60,000 feet, and directed almost one hundred American-made F-5E Tiger II air defense fighters, ten Taiwanese-made Ching Kuo fighters, more than fifty Hawk air defense missile sites, twenty Tien Kung I and II surface-to-air missile sites, fifty Chaparral short-range antiaircraft missile sites, and more than two hundred antiaircraft artillery sites located throughout the Republic of China’s islands. Le Shan’s mountaintop radars could see deep into mainland China, and its air defense weapons were first-class. The Tien Kung II antiaircraft missile system, based on the American Patriot antiaircraft system, had a kill range so great that the missile battery located at Makung on the Pescadores Island thirty miles west of Formosa could shoot down Chinese aircraft launching from three major coastal bases in eastern China shortly after takeoff!