by Ian Slater
“Fish incoming!” called one of the radar operators. “Bearing—” The operator stopped.
Brentwood swung around, saw the problem — there were so many, a single bearing wouldn’t help. “Hard left ninety!” he ordered, reducing the sector of the torpedo attack to a quarter instead of a half circle and hoping to outrun the incoming torpedoes now coming at him from abaft the starboard beam but also putting the Blaine broadside to the extreme left half of the semicircle; the lead boat, a Nanuchka, closest to him, he now engaged with another two Harpoon missiles. The blip that was the Nanuchka amid the dancing fuzz of chaff and other clutter suddenly grew very bright on the screen, then disappeared.
“Hard right, ninety degrees!” he shouted, anticipating a cheer or two from the CIC crew, but now everyone was silent, only the hum of the electronics and that tattoolike din outside faintly audible above the radio crackle of the two helicopters, one pilot yelling at the other, “Two o’clock, two o’clock!” and they actually heard the sound of a missile passing one of the helos. In quick succession another three torpedo boats blossomed on the screens and disappeared, taken out by the helos, but now they could hear the scream of the electronics warfare officer aboard one of the choppers as he was hit by machine-gun fire. Seconds later they heard the bang of the helicopter hitting the water, followed by the rattle of machine-gun fire— the attack boats raking the Blaine’s starboard side.
“Fish incoming starboard quarter!”
Brentwood knew he could do nothing, the torpedo-tracking radar and digital sonar now malfunctioning, and knew that either hard right or hard left would expose his stern to the torpedoes racing toward him at over fifty miles an hour. Two torpedoes went past, whitish-gray streaks in the fog, the startled starboard lookout informing the bridge a second later.
A machine-gun burst hit the Blaine’s stack, puncturing it but doing no more damage as the ship’s Gatling gun swung sharply, continuing to fire, causing another missile to explode within a few hundred yards of the ship, but now the Blaine’s Phalanx radar was in danger of “fuzzing up” from overload. The sonar operator, ignoring all else, carefully monitored the sea bottom, alert for the telltale ping of mines, while his colleague on the 225-mile-range air-search radar informed the tactical action officer that the radar’s dish, between the bridge and the satellite communications dome, was out. Brentwood knew that of all the battle group ships on forward screen for the carrier Salt Lake City, the Blaine, like her sister ship the USS Des Moines, forty miles to the east and closing to assist the guided missile frigate, had never been designed to go it alone in such outnumbered circumstances. The frigate’s weapon system had been designed primarily for medium-range escort duty, for what the Pentagon had designated a “low-threat” environment. And the Sea of Japan had been just that — until the NKA had crossed the DMZ.
“Sir!” the surface radar operator began, but then checked his excitement. “Enemy disengaging.”
No one in the CIC or anywhere else on the ship eased off, knowing it could be a sucker ploy. But the operator proved right; after losing six patrol boats and only damaging the American warship, though they had downed one of its helicopters, the NKA naval force, it seemed, had had enough. Still, Brentwood kept everyone at their stations, despite their fatigue and the stench of perspiration thick in the air. Even as the enemy was retreating, he ordered another four Harpoons “onto the rails,” and in the bowels of the ship the loader pressed the button for the automatic feed, quipping, half in relief, half in celebration, “ Four pack to go.” Brentwood made an immediate note to enter into the ship’s log, together with the tape that, like a civilian aircraft’s black box, was set to start recording the moment a U.S. Navy vessel went on “Action Station Alert,” how astonishingly ineffective the Nanuchkas’ missiles had been. Now it seemed all the peacetime speculation was over. The suspicion among the experts that quantity rather than quality was the central theme of the NKA’s, that is, the Russians’, strategy seemed confirmed.
“Inbound missile, inbound missile!” All the lookout saw in the fog was a blue sphere of light the size of a basketball, the sixteen-hundred-pound Exocet skimmer coming in amid the radar clutter, hitting the Blaine amidships on the starboard side, ripping open the three-quarter-inch armor plating like a fist through glass.
* * *
Six miles south of Uijongbu, Lieutenant Clemens saw the line of sixty-four green PT-76s halt. Through his binoculars he could see the enemy tank commander emerge, wearing the Russian-style leather helmet, looking a little like a World War II pilot, big bumps over the earpieces.
“C’mon,” said Clemens, “c’mon. God, make him…” Then Clemens saw the NKA commander thump the cupola, and the tank, its gravelly roar giving off a thick, bluish exhaust, moved forward again, leading the column.
When the lead PT-76 was well within the one-thousand-meter range, Clemens gave the order to fire. The M-1’s gunner pushed the ranging button, activating the split-second computerization, then squeezed the trigger. There was the thud of the recoil, but the M-1 hardly moved because of the superb suspension of the seven-road wheels sprung on each side on torsion bars. The HESH, or high-explosive squash head, round did its job, hitting the PT-76’s sloped glacis plate with such force that it blew off scabs of red-hot steel inside the PT-76, creating a lethal shrapnel. Within seconds the PT-76 slewed to a stop, three figures, all on fire, tumbling out of it, the driver trapped in his hull seat beyond the turret. Soon the whole tank was engulfed by fire, the molten scabs of white-hot shrapnel igniting the tank’s oil reservoir, creating a thick, billowing cloud of black smoke. To Clemens’ dismay the smoke was widening and flowing back over the column in as effective a smoke screen as he’d ever seen laid, many of the PT-76s now adding to it by popping off clusters of smoke grenades left and right of the road. Within minutes the entire tank column was enveloped, hidden from the view of the two American tank platoons, in all six tanks, that were situated in strategic firing positions under camouflage nets either side of the road behind a rise that was now only nine hundred meters in front of the NKA armor. But Clemens and two other M-1s fired at the second and third PT-76s, the HESH rounds stopping them, too, dead in their tracks, littering and blocking the road with their burning wreckage. But though the Americans had stopped them, the PT-76s immediately behind the gutted hulls kept returning fire.
Within fifteen seconds Clemens’s M-1 as well as the other five tanks that had also fired into the column and so revealed their positions to the NKA were also under mortar fire from NKA tank support infantry situated in the flooded paddies and from the shoulders of the road. Clemens’s M-1 was retreating down a shallow depression to its next selected firing position on a hillock two hundred yards farther back, still on relatively higher, dry ground above the road. The aim of the return fire from the up-gunned PT-76s’ 105-millimeter cannons, shooting solid APDS — armor-piercing rounds with discarding sabot — was poor, and even when struck, the tank easily deflected two rounds, the M-1’s turret armor so sloped as to deny a “flat-on” impact. Still, the fact that the rounds were coming close told Clemens that the five American M-1s were being sighted through the thick pall of smoke by either laser or thermal imaging, reflecting the NKA’s, that is, the Russians’, military strategy of equipping tanks, even the older models like the PT-76s, with nighttime ranging capability. It was another indication of Soviet military thinking, their belief that their best chance in any battle with the West was a quick win, which meant keeping your crews fighting twenty-four hours a day before the United States had time to rally the political will to reinforce their troops or others in the Western alliance.
The sound inside the M-1 as it geared down, breaking its speed as it approached the tall bamboo, was like some enormous earth mover. But to the few ragtag platoons of supporting U.S.-ROK infantry outside, the M-1 sounded remarkably quiet, not much noisier than a growling pickup as the fifty-four-ton tank moved at over thirty miles per hour across a corrugated stretch of ground, its gun stead
y and maintaining its six rounds of accurate fire per minute even as it geared up, heading at full speed, over forty miles per hour, toward the heavy stand of bamboo overlooking a curve on the Uijongbu-Seoul road.
“Incoming missile!” shouted the gunner, Clemens dropping down the hatch, which was seated and secure in a second. It was not a round from any of the PT-76s, which were now breaking left and right of the blocked road as the five American tanks opened up from the bamboo and surrounding hills, but a relatively slow, Russian-made antitank “Spiral,” coming in at 560 meters a second, less than half the speed of a tank round. It struck the M-1’s turret, exploding against the two-hundred-millimeter-thick sloped armor, failing to penetrate, the shock wave quickly dissipating throughout the composite, or layered, SPC armor. But it caused a ringing that, even through the crew’s protective earphones, was so intense that along with all the other internal noise of the fifteen-hundred-horsepower gas turbine, controlling gun elevation and depression, the constant hum of the computers and the steady blowing of the air conditioner, the fume sleeve halfway down the barrel evicting noxious gases from the exploded powder, none of the tank’s crew could hear anything on the radio for at least ten seconds. And so they didn’t hear the warning transmitted from the other two tanks in Clemens’s platoon. A second antitank missile, wire-guided, had been fired at them from ten o’clock, from a fringe of smoke fifteen hundred meters away in the paddy off the left-hand side of the road. The Russian-made Sagger, moving at under five hundred meters a second, came through the black and white smokescreen rolling over the paddies, hitting the right track of Clemens’s M-1 as it was nearing the bamboo thicket. There was a muffled explosion, more sound shock, and then a clanking sound, like chains unraveling from a snow tire.
“Damn!” shouted Clemens’s gunner as the tank crashed into the bamboo thicket, the top of which rose a good six feet above the hillock immediately to the right of them, blocking them from the NKA tanks’ view and placing them in a perfect position for defilade fire, providing the driver could manage to turn the fifty-four tons using only the intact left track and what was left of the right.
“Can you do it, Johnny?” shouted Clemens.
“It’ll take the right track off, Lieutenant.”
“Do it!”
The M-1 shuddered right, then the driver, in his forward hull semireclining position, used all the skill he had been taught at Fort Hood, coaxing, talking to the twenty-five-foot-long, eight-foot-high tank, as a cavalry man of old might have cajoled his wounded battle horse, to climb that few feet more up the reverse incline of the bamboo hill to the defilade position. In the lowest gear the tank gave a throaty roar, inching forward on the slippery cane of the bamboo almost to the summit of the hill. Here, given the light rain that was now falling and the smoke, the tank was barely visible, and here its gun, the product of the best engineering in the world, could lay down fire with minimum silhouette. The enemy could return effective fire only if the M-1 could not withdraw before the NKA range finders picked it up. With the right track off, Clemens knew he couldn’t fire and withdraw with any speed and so asked his wingmen, the other two tanks in his platoon, to “overwatch” him, to feed his tank information about any advancing NKA infantry with antitank weapons or PT-76s looking for a lucky shot from the paddies.
On one hand Clemens felt trapped because it would take several hours at least to fix the unraveled track, if they could do it at all in the field. And yet he was in a perfect position with a wide down angle of fire across the paddies now stretching fifteen hundred to five thousand meters in front of him. He was waiting for the smoke to clear. One of the other two tanks he’d requested help from didn’t answer. Whether it was hit hard and out of action or whether its radio had packed it in, Clemens didn’t know. In any case, the other tank gave Clemens the happy information that Cahill had released a full batallion of M-1s, thirty-five tanks in all, which were now rolling up Unification Highway. Within twenty minutes they’d be in the area, engaging the remaining sixty lighter-armed and lighter PT-76 tanks now presumably scuttling across the paddies either side of the road under cover of the smoke, trying to find whatever defensive positions they could. In the interim, Clemens decided to save what was left of his original fifty-five rounds until the smoke curtain cleared.
“How many shots we got left, Luke?”
“Forty-two.”
“What we got on the menu?”
“Ribs, lobster.”
“Never mind the shit — what’ve we got?”
“Shoes, twenty, HE, ten, and twelve HESH.”
It told Clemens he had twenty rounds of solid-shot armor-piercing, ten high-explosive shells, and twelve high-explosives with squash heads.
“Well,” said Clemens, trying not to sound too satisfied up against the PT-76 tin cans. “That should hold us awhile.”
“I reckon,” said his gunner.
* * *
As General Kim in his headquarters six miles east outside Uijongbu was informed of the M-1 spearhead rapidly approaching, his face remained impassive, even as his infantry commanders worriedly reminded him of the cardinal rule: that while it was permissible for tanks to move without infantry, this was only wise when you were advancing and using the infantry as your eyes and ears, but in this situation, with a long line of American M-1 tanks, the NKA armored column would quickly be thrown on the defensive, the supporting regiments behind the NKA tanks slaughtered by the cannon and machine-gun fire of the formidable M-1s unless they were withdrawn. Radio intercepts, Kim’s officers pointed out, already confirmed that the M-1s, their laser range finders thwarted by neither rain nor smoke, were less than twenty minutes away. And, after the executions at Panmunjom, the migooks would surely show no mercy, and would fight eye to eye with the PT-76s. Kim merely nodded. He was already quite aware that he was about to engage in the first massed tank battle since the days of the Israeli-Arab wars.
One of the infantry commanders, a colonel, Russian-trained and in charge of one of the crack NKA Sapper units, had, as Kim ordered, already gone ahead of the beleaguered PT-76 column and blown a huge hundred-yard gap in the road, in effect creating an enormous tank ditch which no tank, including the M-1, could ford. But this, the colonel pointed out to Kim, could only be expected to delay the Americans for at most a quarter hour. And it would not be long, he told Kim, before the American fleet in the East Sea would be near enough to launch aerial antitank attacks. This was dangerous for any tank, the top of the turret being the least-armored part of the vehicle, but for the relatively light-armored PT-76s, it could mean annihilation.
Kim did not respond.
As Kim left the headquarters tent, walking across the squishy ground to his private quarters, two of his chief staff officers tried to fathom Kim’s intent. “Perhaps he thinks,” proffered a battalion commander, “that once the M-1s engage our tanks, they will be too close. Any aerial bombardment would also destroy any American tanks nearby. I think Kim has something up his sleeve.”
“Why?” asked the colonel.
“He did not seem overly concerned about the M-Is. Didn’t you notice?” asked the battalion commander.
“I noticed. That is what bothers me. He does not fully comprehend this situation.”
“You can’t tell with Kim,” said the colonel. “He is known for not divulging his tactics till the last minute. Fears a security leak. I’ve no doubt he’s studying the situation carefully. He’s up against the American, Cahill. Kim hates him.”
“So do I,” said the other officer. “But hating is not enough. Hate will not stop an M-1.”
“No,” agreed the colonel. “But it will help.”
“How?”
The colonel shrugged. “In-close armored fighting is not something the Americans—”
“You think Americans are no good at this? Don’t you remember Patton?”
“Yes, of course,” said the colonel. “But that was a long time ago.”
“And what happens when Washington sends reinfor
cements?” pressed the infantry commander.
The colonel laughed. “They won’t.”
“If they do?”
“We will have over half the South before they get here. The Americans love to argue. Their democracy,” said the colonel contemptuously, “is all talk. They talk big.”
‘“They have big tanks.”
“They have big egos,” countered the colonel. “Remember Vietnam, my friend. Once their ego is punctured, they become very depressed, the Americans.”
“First,” said the infantry commander, “I’d prefer to see the M-1s punctured.”
“Be patient,” said the colonel.
The infantry commander looked at his watch. “It won’t be long. They will be entering the area within five minutes.”
“Then,” said the colonel, “we don’t have long to wait, Comrade. I think we are about to make history.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
President Mayne didn’t favor the world-famous Oval Office in the west wing except for the most official occasions. Most of his work was done in the smaller, more ordinary study next door, and it was here that Peale’s portrait of George Washington was moved. In those lonely times that only a president knows, when only he could break the deadlock of advisers’ conflicting advice, Mayne would retreat here to mull over the options, the possible consequences, or what Trainor called the “bottom line situation.”