Men of War (2013)

by John Schettler

  “How is it they remain intact?” asked Karpov.

  “I’m not sure, but perhaps the fact that they were with us on the ship protected them. But not people—they change things—they are the living, breathing history as it happens. Time had to find a way to settle her accounts, and now I think we will find those men never existed. The only place any record of their lives now exists is right here on this ship.” Fedorov pointed to his head. “Right in our heads. We knew them, sailed and fought with them, but like those books I found missing, in this world they were never published…”

  “My God,” said Karpov. “Forget the nuclear warheads, that’s just a matter of chest thumping and protocol. How in the world are we going to explain this to Kapustin?”

  Part V

  Rising Sun

  “He who chooses the beginning of the road

  chooses also the place that it leads to.”

  —Henry Emerson Fosdick

  Chapter13

  The PLAN (People’s Liberation Army & Navy) was no longer a local self defense force, and its navy was not confined to littoral coastal waters as in the past. When the 21st century got underway in earnest the Chinese Navy began to deploy more blue water capable forces in virtually every major ship category. The surface fleet, known as the shuimianjianting budui, had grown enormously, with new classes in guided missile destroyers and submarines, new carrier and helicopter carrier designs, and equally important, a capability for underway replenishment that allowed the navy to project power beyond the coastal waters of China for the first time since the 15th Century.

  The missions assigned to the navy grew with it. It was now tasked with responsibilities to find and engage enemy surface action groups, participate in anti-submarine warfare, transport and guarantee the landing of troops on enemy shores, spoil the enemy's objective of attacking China’s coastal cities and ports, and carry out reconnaissance on the seas with regular patrols. Active ASW warfare and anti-mine sweeping were a part of this task.

  That said, the Chinese were still new at the game, and on September 15th, 2021, a small task force of was at sea off Diaoyutai or Senkaku Island to the Japanese, showing the flag over the oil rich sea floor beneath the deserted rocks. It was a continuation of the long war of words between Japan and China over the territory, and this time it was also something more. The islands were located about 125 miles northeast of Taipei, Taiwan, and in a perfect position to place a screening force for operations that might be aimed at that larger objective. If the Japanese came, they would come out of Okinawa and Japan proper to the northeast, and so Diaoyutai was right astride the sea lanes they would use.

  The squadron assigned to the mission was therefore given ample resources. It was centered on one of their new Type 052C Destroyers, dubbed the Lanzhou, the lead ship in its class. With a stealthy design, this 7000 ton ship was often referred to as the China’s Aegis, with its fixed panel AESA phased array radar, and “it” was a very capable ship. The Chinese considered their ships material objects, and did not personify them with either masculine or feminine traits.

  The ship mounted 48 vertically launched HQ-9 surface to air missiles on its forward a deck in eight cold launch cells of six missiles each. They could range out to 200 kilometers at Mach 4, providing a strong defensive anti-air umbrella over the squadron. It was in many ways similar to the Russian S-300s aboard Kirov, and almost as capable. The Lanzhou also carried eight C-805/7 anti ship missiles in two 4-cell launchers. It was known as the YJ-82 Eagle Strike system, a lethal sea skimmer on its terminal approach that was touted to have a 98% hit probability. Six torpedo tubes and a new 130mm single barreled deck gun that was a knock off of the old Russian 130mm gun finished off the destroyer’s main weapons suite, but she also had a pair of 30mm close in defense guns and one Harbin Z-9C helicopter for additional ASW defense.

  Cruising to either side of the Lanzhou were two type 054A frigates at a little over 4000 tons. The Shouyang and Weifang, both built in 2012. They carried a multi-purpose 32 cell VLS system that could use either SAMs or ASW rockets, and also mounted two 4-cell C-803 anti-ship missiles and six 324 mm torpedoes. Each ship also brought a Z-9C helicopter to the fight.

  The fourth member of the task force was not on the surface. The Li Zhu was a 7000 ton submarine in the 095 class with a modified hull that provided greater acoustic stealth and flank linear array sonar. It was named for a legendary pearl that grew under the chin of a powerful black dragon, a jewel from the sea. In spite of the improvements made to the boat’s design it was still noisy compared to the more stealthy Russian and American submarine designs. Even the old Russian Akula and Oscar class subs were quieter, though this boat was one of the stealthiest China now possessed. Undersea noise was never a friend of any submarine, and it would betray the Li Zhu that night. Revealing her position to the capable electronic ears of the Japanese task force approaching from the northeast.

  The sub was out in front of the Chinese flotilla, cruising some twenty miles in the vanguard. The boat’s captain, Kai Fan, had been slowly stalking the Japanese flotilla, moving quietly into a position where he could block their approach to the islands. His sonar operators had identified what they believe to be two Abukuma class destroyer escorts, and they were correct. These were the Oyoko and Sendai out of Sasebo, about 2500 tons each, older ships built between 1988 and 1991, but still capable for the roles they were designed to play. They were not as stealthy as the newer Chinese surface ships following the Dragon Pearl into battle that night, but they were well armed with 8 harpoons, octuple ASROC launchers in the older deck mounted “Matchbox” design, six torpedoes, and a 76mm deck gun.

  Behind them came the more formidable presence of the guided missile destroyer Kirishima, a 9500 ton vessel every bit as capable as an American Aegis Class cruiser. It was already well aware of the presence of the Dragon Pearl beneath the sea, and had a helicopter up off its aft fantail deck to refine the enemy boat’s location. The ship’s captain, Kenji Namura had taken the precautionary step of activating his RUM-139C VLS ASROC system, which could fire a lightweight sub-killing homing torpedo out to 25,000 meters, his modern day ‘Long Lance,’ but he would not yet announce his displeasure by going to active sonar.

  For years the two sides had quarreled over the islands, with incidents where one side or another would paint a target with active fire control radar systems, or overfly a ship with a flight of fast strike jets. Namura had more support available, including Naval Marines at nearby bases. He would soon need them, for tonight China would send men from the their surface action group, and they would land by helicopter on the Island of Peace to plant the flag of the People’s Republic there. A meaningless gesture of defiance, it would set the stage for far a more serious confrontation between China and Japan that was even now beginning to spin slowly out of control.

  What submarine Captain Kai Fan did not know, or hear that night, was the overhead deployment of Kirishima’s helicopter. It already had buoys in the water and was feeding good location data back to the Japanese flotilla as she slowly closed the range with her two smaller destroyer escorts. Kai Fan was nervously watching the range close to under 22,000 meters when his sonar man heard what he believed was the splash of a deck fired torpedo entering the water. It was actually another guided motorized sonobuoy, but the inexperienced sonar man interpreted the sound of its search pattern wrongly, and it had grave consequences. In modern war at sea, where computers aim and guide weapons to unseen targets, seconds become an eternity. He announced torpedo in the water, which prompted an immediate reaction from Captain Kai Fan. He already had his forward tubes primed and ready, and he fired a spread of four torpedoes.

  When the sonar men shouted out their torpedo warnings on the three Japanese ships they were in deadly earnest. Kenji Namura was aghast when he realized his flotilla would very likely be hit by this flagrant attack, and he immediately gave the order to fire back. His MCH-Merlin 101 helo quickly had a Stingray torpedo in the water from above, and Kirishima ad
ded two VLS ASROCS to the soup as the ships and subs now both deployed their countermeasures and jamming suites to try and defend against the incoming ordinance.

  Two of the Chinese torpedoes were fooled, the others found Oyoko and split her port side hull open in a violent explosion that would end that ship’s brief career forever. She would give her name to the sea that night, and sink within the hour.

  As for the Li Zhu, the boat would become a pearl of great price that would soon fall to the bottom of an angry sea. The sonar man would pay his share, the boat’s Captain Kai Fan would also sign the bill, but the world itself was set to pay the greatest price of all when the Dragon Pearl was hit and sunk on that September night off the Island of Peace.

  * * *

  Light helicopter escort carrier Akagi, wasted little time getting out to sea, and she would be in good company. The ship was originally classed as a helicopter destroyer, Class 22DDG to replace an older 1970s legacy destroyer by the same name that had been built around an aircraft hanger capable of housing three helicopters. The new Akagi was something much more, however, now reclassified as a light escort carrier after it had been modified to carry and operate the JF-35B STOVL Lightning fighters, which was tech speak for a short takeoff and vertical landing capable plane. The aircraft had been replacing the aging AV-8B Harrier jump Jets over the last decade, as well as slowly filling out air wings that had once been largely composed of F-18 SuperHornets, though these squadrons were few and far between. By 2021 the bugs had been worked out and it was a reliable and deadly fifth generation strike fighter asset. It had a stealthy, fuselage-mounted 25 mm gun pod and a combat radius of more than 450 nautical miles.

  Akagi was one of four such ships in the Japanese Navy now, based in Sasebo with her sister ship Kaga. They were the largest surface combatants in the present Japanese Navy at a length of 248 meters and 27,000 tons fully loaded. That load today was partly composed of the seven JF-35Bs, nine SG-60J Seahawk helicopters and two Merlin CH-101s. There was room for more, with a maximum capacity of nine aircraft on deck and fourteen in the hangers, but Akagi had received an abrupt invitation to an event in the East China Sea, and it was a come as you are party. Depending on conditions encountered, the JDF could airlift additional assets out to her at sea—if she survived.

  With the light escort destroyer Oyoko already at the bottom of the sea, that question weighed heavily on the mind of Captain Shoji Yoshida. At only 2500 tons, Oyoko was really a frigate class vessel, and went down with two torpedo hits. While Akagi might be more durable in combat with her 27,000 tons, size was no guarantee of safety, a lesson the Japanese knew all too well as they remembered the demise of their proud old fleet carriers in the Second World War. His ancestor ship was nearly twice the displacement of the modern day Akagi.

  So it had finally happened, he thought as he stared over the short forward flight deck, watching the first two F-35s being spotted. The Chinese thought they were finally going to settle the matter. They paid a high price for Oyoko. Kenji Namura aboard Kirishima had collected a heavy toll in reprisal when he took down the Type 095 submarine Li Zhu that had launched the bold attack. Now he wondered just how far the Chinese were prepared to go with this.

  They were already holding another small Japanese Coast Guard cutter hostage in the deadly game, and they had the impudence to actually land a small naval marine contingent on the main Senkaku island of Uotsuri Jima, the old ‘Island of Peace,’ to plant their flag. Seven years ago it had been simple activist protestors who had dared to land on the islands, but this was something altogether different. This was the first real flexing of the vast Chinese military, and it gave Yoshida the shivers to think Japan was now boldly sailing off to confront their great hostile neighbor to the west.

  Huge demonstrations outside the Japanese embassy in Beijing had been raging for months, and now the gold chrysanthemum emblem there was besmirched with eggs splattered on the walls, and the solitary flag of the rising sun waved bravely in a sea of anger in that distant city. Japanese stores and restaurants had been broken into and vandalized, then draped with bright red Chinese flags. The discord had spread to many other cities, spilling over from Shenzhen to the normally more civil Hong Kong where there had been flag burnings. The rising demonstrations had prompted the Chinese government to offer the protestors a bone by committing the further insult of placing the Japanese ambassador in Beijing under house arrest, an unprecedented breach of international protocol—but then again, war was nothing more than an ever escalating failure of manners and civility, neh?

  He shook his head, disheartened. The dispute over these worthless islands had deeper roots in the bad blood between China and Japan dating back to WWII, and now the oil and gas rights there would also play a part. It was starting again—blood for islands in the endless sea, blood for oil and gas. How many of his men would have to pay that price with their lives today, all so that Toyota and Honda could keep their wheels turning? He knew Japan had been foolish to try and purchase the islands outright instead of negotiating some amicable agreement with China. It was not a thought he wished to carry into battle at this moment, however, and so he pushed it aside, deep into an inner compartment of his mind, and focused on the task at hand.

  He had seven JF-35s, enough to do what he had been ordered. They could easily cover the swift dash of his Seahawks, each capable of carrying a squad of his own elite naval marines to the argument. Then we will see what to do about that coast guard cutter. First he would get up some air cover. We’re playing one of our aces, he knew, and there were only four in the entire fleet just like a good deck of cards. His sister ship Kaga was still in Sasebo, and the first two ships in the class were both assigned to Yokohama to the north. This ship is one of our very best, he thought, and I must not let my nation and my people down.

  It had already started in the darkness of the East China Sea, and now it would continue, with this proud man in his proud ship, with a proud heritage at stake—and much, much more. Pride, it is said, goeth before the fall, and the abyss that was now yawning open in the Pacific was impenetrably deep. Captain Yoshida was sailing swiftly towards its edge.

  He would to rendezvous with the Kirishima, and he would bring the new destroyer Ashigara along, one notch up on the Kongo Class ships with the new Type-90 SSM and a suite of good SAMs to give him some solid air defense beyond his seven fighters. At 10,000 tons, she was the largest surface combatant in the navy, only a seventh the displacement of the last vessel class to hold that distinction, Yamato. That said, Ashigara would have ripped the superstructure of Yamato apart, piece by piece, just as Kirov had, and the great menacing battleship of old would have never come in range to once fire her guns in anger.

  Following third in line was the older DDH Hyuga, a true helicopter carrier commissioned in 2009 and drawing near the end of her useful life now that the four Class 22 ships had been built to take over their role. Yet Captain Yoshida was glad the ship was still active and in his wake, for she carried another eleven Seahawks, with a second platoon of Naval Marines, should they be necessary.

  One more ship completed Yoshida’s flotilla that day, SS Soryu, the quiet Blue Dragon already well out in front of his task group, riding the ocean currents at a 300 foot depth. It had slipped out of its moorings at Myakojima sub base on a small island outpost 225 kilometers southeast of the Senkaku Islands group. The boat carried Type-89 torpedoes and the deadly UGM-84 Harpoons which could also be fired from her six 21 inch torpedo tubes.

  Information was now being received an analyzed from a lone P-3C early warning plane near the disputed islands. The Chinese still had warships there holding the cutter PS-206 Howo hostage, and more ships were reported approaching the islands. What would this come to today, he wondered? Yoshido had been ordered to put his Marines on those Islands, remove the Chinese flag and the troops that brought it there, and oppose any and all Chinese naval units attempting to interfere with this operation. If he needed more force than he now commanded, Kadena and Naha airf
ields were a scant 450 kilometers to the northeast, just a few minutes cruising time for an F-15 Eagle or an F-22 Raptor. The nearest Chinese Air assets would be at Shuimen, Longtian or Fuzhou airfields, an equal distance to the west—but they were not Eagles or Raptors. Yoshida liked his cards this morning.

  The roar of the first JF-35 split the air as it took off, the second plane maneuvering smartly to the ready line and waved off right on its heels. His top cover would be up at angels thirty in minutes. He would then spot and launch a third plane for any contingency that might present itself, his first shotai of three planes aloft and ready for battle. A strange thought came to Yoshida as he watched the operation. This could be the very first launch of carrier based aircraft in the third world war! A moment of bumbling misrecognition had prompted the Dragon Pearl to fire those torpedoes at Oyoko, and now it had begun. As the three planes climbed into the bright sky overhead Yoshida imagined how Admiral Nagumo must have felt as he watch the first three Zeros climb into the pre-dawn sky off the northern Philippine Islands at the outset of World War Two.

  It was always so clean and simple in the beginning, he thought. All the uniforms were fresh and white, the well starched collars laden with pips of gold and silver, and no stain of blood or the darkened burn of flash and powder. It started with flags and honor, and national pride, and music, and it always ended in the same old thing—death and destruction.

  It would not be long before he would see the true face of war with his very own eyes, and it would not be pretty.