Untimely Excursions

by Hall, Gerald

  Nigel waited until his fighter was less than twelve hundred meters from the ocean surface before launching his rocket. He then immediately pulled back hard on his control stick to pull out of the dive. He was unable to see that his rocket had just barely missed its target, striking the water next to the enemy warship and causing a huge fountain of water to erupt beside it from the detonation of the rocket’s warhead.

  “That is a bloody hell of a lot of ‘ack-ack’ coming from that damned cruiser. Still, I can’t believe that I missed it.”

  “It’s my turn to have a go at it now, Alpha Three.”

  “Alright. But I’m going to see what I can do to get these buggers to duck their heads down some while you are making your attack, Alpha Four.” Nigel radioed just before turning to race in towards the cruiser from directly in front of her bow.

  Smoke began to trail back from the nose of Nigel’s Dragonfly-J as he began to fire its three 25mm automatic cannons at the cruiser. The high-explosive shells raked the enemy warship bridge and much of its superstructure forward of her rear main gun turrets. A couple of fires could be seen on the cruiser’s deck when Thomas came in from abeam.

  Nigel watched the rocket drop down from Thomas’ fighter. A fraction of a second later, the rocket motor ignited with a brilliant flare, driving the rocket quickly forward as the Dragonfly-J pulled away to avoid enemy antiaircraft fire.

  Nigel heard a triumphant cheer over his radio headphones as Nigel’s rocket scored a direct hit on the cruiser. White steam could be seen pouring out from a point amidships, indicating a probably hit in one of the warship’s boiler rooms. Nigel didn’t want to think about the dozens of sailors who were dying as a result of that one rocket though.

  He and his wingman pulled up and away from the still furious antiaircraft fire coming from the damaged enemy warship. One by one, the rest of the fighter-bombers made their attacks. The fire from the cruiser was still quite dangerous as two aircraft took hits and were forced to withdraw. But the others continued to bore in to make their attack runs.

  Like Nigel, several of the attacking aircraft also made strafing runs in an attempt to suppress the amount of defensive fire coming from the cruiser. But in the end, the Chinese cruiser could not stop the attacks. After three direct hits and four near misses by the heavy air-launched rockets, the Chinese cruiser was now heavily on fire and rapidly slowing to a stop. The near misses had also apparently caused enough damage below the waterline to cause the stricken warship to begin to list to port.

  The sinking cruiser was still belching heavy clouds of smoke from the gaping holes in her hull while her crew began to abandon ship when six much smaller warships suddenly sped towards the captive merchantman from the west.

  “Where the hell did those come from, Sir? They look like big torpedo boats. There’s something different about them though.” Alpha Four asked.

  “I don’t know. I also don’t understand why they didn’t send those boats first rather than having that big cruiser go in ahead. I would have had held the cruiser back and used her as the big stick in case our people decided to intervene.”

  “Maybe these boats are their ‘big stick’, Sir.”

  “What do you mean?” Alpha One responded.

  “Take a closer look at them.”

  The boats were considerably larger than even the big German wartime E-boats at just over forty meters in length. They appeared to have medium-caliber automatic cannons fore and aft that they had already started firing at the incoming strike aircraft. But the ominous elements on each of these small warships were a pair of large angled containers mounted on either side of their superstructure. They looked identical to the containers mounted on the midships’ deck near where the cruiser’s torpedo tubes used to be.

  “Those look exactly like the same containers that were on that cruiser to replace its big torpedo tubes.”

  “We need to let our carrier know about this. Seahawk One, did you monitor?”

  “Roger.” The flying boat’s observer responded before he turned toward the Cavalier’s radio operator, a few meters away.

  “Roy, please switch me over to Australia’s flight command frequency. I need to talk to her captain right away.”

  The Cavalier’s radio operator changed frequencies on one of his radio sets immediately. Then he briefly talked to someone on the Australian aircraft carrier before switching the radio over to the observer’s headphones.

  “OK, Sir. I’ve got Australia’s captain piped in to you now.”

  The Cavalier’s observer gave his radio operator a quick thumb’s up before beginning to give his report to the carrier.

  “Sir, this is Lieutenant Commander Brian Locksley. I’m the observer and intelligence analyst aboard the Cavalier orbiting that pirate cruiser. I’m afraid that the situation has changed considerably in the past couple of minutes.”

  “Tell us what you are seeing out there, Commander.” Captain Walker ordered.

  “Sir, these are no ordinary pirates. They have to possess major support from another country to get that cruiser back in working order. You need a lot of funding and technical assistance for that.

  But we are also seeing several fast attack craft that have gotten involved in this battle. Those didn’t just appear out of thin air either.”

  “That is very interesting information, Commander.”

  “Well, Sir. The guns on those boats are also pretty interesting as well, not that I am all that happy about them shooting at us.” The observer aboard the Cavalier remarked in a matter of fact tone in spite of seeing several large tracer rounds from those same automatic cannons sail past his flying boat.

  “What makes you say that?” The Australian carrier’s commander asked.

  “I saw enough outbound antiaircraft fire from onboard our carrier Melbourne during the war to recognize those weapons being fired by those boats. Those are either Bofors or the Japanese copy of them, just like what that cruiser is carrying.

  We have seen something else very strange as well. Both the cruiser and those fast attack craft have these large boxes mounted on them where torpedo tubes have normally been located. I don’t know what the hell are inside of those boxes that they are carrying though. But they certainly worry me.”

  “Describe what these boxes look like.”

  “They have a curved top, a flattened bottom and rear while the front of each of the containers looks like it is slanted forward.”

  “What do you think, Commander Simmons? You are my expert here on foreign-built weapons.” Captain Wilkinson asked.

  “I can’t say for sure, Sir. But my educated guess is that they are carrying some sort of anti-ship guided missile. I remember that Cavill Industries has been building something similar. It’s not a Cavill design, obviously. But it could perhaps be a German or Italian design, maybe even French. We have received reports that the French have been trying to develop guided missiles of their own.”

  “Seahawk One to Australia, we just saw a couple of those containers on that sinking cruiser open up and fire something out of them. Several of those patrol boats have also done the same time. Whatever it was that they had inside of those containers, they are on their way towards you.”

  “Damned! The captain of that cruiser must have decided to take a parting shot at us while they still could. Do we have anything on our radar yet?” Captain Walker immediately asked the First Officer.

  “No, Sir. Those missiles must be flying too low for us to pick them up on our radar.”

  “I think that it is time that you fired off some of those special rockets that the Cavill folks put on our ship during the last refit, Commander…..quickly. We just don’t have enough time to launch interceptor missiles, even if we did pick them up in time.” Australia’s captain instructed.

  “Yes, Sir. I had no idea why they wanted to put rockets on the ship to dispense Window. I guess that they were anticipating that just this sort of thing could happen. Fire the decoy rocket launchers on the foc’sle to
wards starboard as soon as they bear, Mister Seeger.” Commander Simmons ordered.

  A few moments later, a trio of rockets fired off to the right of the aircraft carrier and detonated a couple of hundred meters away. The detonations filled the air with thousands of lightweight aluminum ribbons that slowly floated down towards the ocean surface. Mixed within the clouds of aluminum ribbons were also several large flares suspended from parachutes. A few moments later, Australia’s escorts did the same time with their own newly-installed decoy rockets. Next, the Australian aircraft carrier and her destroyer escorts turned directly away from the Chinese missile boats, presenting their smallest possible radar signature towards the enemy. This left the clouds of metallic chaff as the largest targets for enemy radar operators to lock onto. A few moments after the chaff cloud was deployed, the Australian warships turned once again to confuse the incoming missiles.

  Less than a minute after the chaff rockets were fired, a half-dozen anti-ship guided missiles flew directly through the clouds of aluminum and continued on, well away from their intended targets. A few seconds later, a ripple of explosions echoed through the air as the weapons ran out of fuel and self-destructed. A few fragments of metal bounced off of the sides of a couple of the Australian destroyers, but no one was harmed.

  “That was far too close for my comfort. I think that they were expecting us to send in our larger warships to engage directly before sending in those damned boats.” Captain Walker said after the smoke from the explosions had cleared.

  “You are probably right. They’ve fired half of their missiles at us already based on what our mates aboard that Cavalier have told us. I wonder if they realize yet that the missiles have been decoyed away from our ships?” Commander Simmons asked.

  “I don’t know. But we can’t give them a chance of correcting their error. We need to reload our strike aircraft as quickly as possible so that they can go back in and kill those boats now. We also need to get Australia the hell out of range of those boats’ weapons as well. The last thing that we need is for her to take a hit from one of those damned missiles.”

  “Yes, Sir. I will have our aircraft fire off any last external ordnance at those boats, then have them return for refueling and rearming.” Commander Simmons quickly replied.

  At the same time, Australia’s air strike was continuing to engage the enemy patrol boats with whatever ordnance that the aircraft still had aboard.

  “Seahawk One, this is Alpha Leader. You haven’t seen any sign of any of those Chinese ships firing guided missiles at any of our aircraft, have you?”

  “No, Sir. I guess that the Chinese decided to rely on guns for their antiaircraft defenses instead of missiles. Even so, I will be very glad when those drone recon planes are finally brought into service. I am really tired of getting shot at while unable to do anything about it.” Seahawk One’s pilot replied.

  “That’s good because we just received a recall message from our carrier. They want us to come back so that they can refuel us. They also want to rearm us with weapons that are much more suitable for engaging light craft instead of cruisers.

  I’m sure that you will be fine out here keeping an eye on things. If these pirates had any fighters, they would have already been out here to engage us by now. Good luck, mate. We will be back in a little while.” Commander Cadwell calmly replied before putting his fighter into a sharp turn back towards Australia.

  Onboard the carrier and the rest of the task group, everyone was now on edge after witnessing the explosions from the enemy anti-ship missiles. At the same time, the carrier was turning to face the wind in preparation for landing her returning strike aircraft.

  “How the hell did the Chinese know where Australia was in the first place, Sir?” Commander Simmons asked.

  “I don’t know. Are there any other ships in the area, perhaps even a fishing trawler? Anything could have spotted us and reported our position.” Captain Walker cautiously replied as he watched out through the bridge windows.

  “There are at least half a dozen civilian vessels near here right now. Hell. That is actually fewer than is normally the case when you think about it, Sir.”

  “I’d wager that one of them has a big radio set that it is using to report on our ships’ location too, mate.”

  “I’m sure that you would win that bet, Sir.” Simmons said as the first of Australia’s jet fighters began its landing approach.

  “Let’s get those aircraft below and rearmed as quickly as possible. They’ve got to finish off those boats and clear the way for our troop helicopters. After that happens, I want our friends in the Cavalier to scout around us to see who might be spying on our location for those pirates. I want to have a nice ‘chat’ with them after we locate and chase them down.” Captain Walker quickly said.

  It took another fifteen minutes before all of the Dragonfly-J’s were recovered and taken below for rearming. At the same time, a second squadron of similar warplanes were being prepared to launch a second airstrike. Five minutes after the last of the earlier strike had landed, the first element of the second airstrike was in the process of being catapulted into the air.

  These Dragonfly-J’s, led by Lieutenant Commander Lee Watersford, were each armed with four air-to-ground rocket pods instead of the semi-armor piercing bombs carried by the earlier strike. These rocket pods carried seven 7cm unguided rockets each. The pods themselves were mounted in pairs on each wing hardpoint while the centerline hardpoint carried a large fuel drop tank. Together with the fighter-bombers’ cannon, the rockets would be ideal for striking the pirate fast attack boats.

  Within fifteen minutes, all twelve aircraft were airborne and speeding towards the threatened Australian transport ship. Upon seeing the incoming Australian warplanes, the pirate fast attack boats attempted to flee. One by one, they were hunted down and shattered by concentrated salvoes of rocket fire.

  “Australia, this is Bravo Leader. We have neutralized the enemy threat now. You can send in the Marines now to secure the ship and rescue the crew.” Commander Waterford radioed back to the carrier ten minutes after the first rocket was fired by his pilots.

  Less than a minute later, four CH-3 tandem-rotor helicopters lifted off from Australia’s flight deck, loaded with Royal Australian Marines that had been brought in from every ship in the task group. The helicopters had been brought on deck and loaded up even before the last of Bravo’s warplanes had been launched from the carrier. The helicopters were also armed with a machine gun on each side in a pintle mount.

  The fighter-bombers remained orbiting around the transport, ready to fire upon any pirates still there. When the troop helicopters arrived, they carefully approached to reduce the chance of taking fire from enemy snipers or machine gunners hidden on the besieged transport.

  There was no place to directly land on the transport because of the various masts and cargo derricks on the deck. So the Marines were forced to fast-rope down from their hovering helicopters over the bow and stern of the transport. Fortunately, there was no apparent resistance during this vulnerable time.

  Once assembled on deck, the Marines moved smartly to secure the bridge and engine room. After that, they searched throughout the ship until they found the crew locked inside one of the compartments below decks.

  Major Carl Mason, the commander of the Marine assault force called back to Australia using the transport’s radio.

  “Australia, this is Rescue Leader. We have secured the ship.”

  “Good job! Any casualties?” Captain Walker immediately asked.

  “None among my people. It appears that the pirates evacuated the ship right after our flyboys knocked out their cruiser. The pirates did kill the captain and first officer of the transport as the bastards were taking the ship, unfortunately.” Major Mason grimly reported.

  “I copy. Do the remaining crew have anyone still who can command the ship and con her to a safe port?”

  “Yes, Sir. The Second Officer is still alive and in good condition
. He says that he can handle the job.”

  “Roger. Let him know that we are going to detach a destroyer to provide him escort to Hong Kong. I guess that you will return to the task force aboard that destroyer once they are done shepherding that transport to safety. Australia out.” Captain Walker said before turning to Commander Simmons.

  “What in the hell were these bastards up to? They had to know that we were not going to let them get away with seizing one of our cargo transports. They also had to know that we would not let them get away with murdering our people.” Australia’s captain bitterly noted.

  “I don’t know, Sir. But I’m sure that we are going to find out, one way or another.”

  Chapter Thirty-One:

  The White House

  Washington, DC

  October 14, 1957

  President Stevenson sat in the main briefing room with his cabinet secretaries that morning as each presented his daily briefing or had his department briefer do so. There was a litany of problems, both domestic and overseas that were occurring and had to be addressed by the American President.

  “Sir, the Chinese civil war is continuing to be a significant problem. The Nationalist Chinese Army under Chang Kai Shek managed to finally crush the Communist forces under Mao Zse Tung a few years after the end of the Pacific War. But the fighting sapped the strength of the National Army so badly that over half a dozen local warlords decided to carve out their own little fiefdoms.

  That led to even more fighting until the various warlords consolidated their holdings into two major factions, one centered in southern China and the other controlling the northern half. There have been attacks by the two main Chinese factions on several of their neighbors including Korea, French Indochina, Japan and even eastern Russia. The Australian Navy has also been involved in several confrontations on the high seas with vessels believed to be of Chinese origin.” Secretary of State Dean Acheson explained.