It was up to the Sukhoi-27s and radar-equipped Shenyang J-8 fighters now—but it was soon apparent that they were mostly out of the fight as well—the jamming was intruding on their attack radars. The J-8 s older radars were easily jammed; the Su-27’s modern pulse-Doppler radars and advanced counter jamming functions worked better. “Enemy planes, heading westbound! ” the Su-27 pilots shouted on the attack frequency—but that did no good, because all of the VHF and UHF frequencies were jammed. No warnings and no formation orders could be sent or received. Two electronic-warfare EA-6B Prowlers from the USS George Washington, and two more EA-6Bs from the USS Carl Vinson had set up an effective electromagnetic net around the island of Formosa, denying the Chinese air force the use of any radio or radar frequencies except those in use by the U.S. Navy attack planes bearing down on the Chinese air armada.
The first target was the Ilyushin-76 radar plane—and that task was left to the nine surviving fly able Taiwanese F-16s, which had launched out of Kai-Shan just after sunset, along with Jon Masters’s DC-10 tanker- transport. Four Su-27s guarded the 11-76, but in the confusion caused by the EA-6B Prowlers jamming their radios and disrupting their radars, they were no match for the wave of F-16s. All four Su-27s were shot down by the F-16s, against the loss of one F-16—and then each F-16 took a shot at the 11-76 radar plane. At least a dozen AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles plowed into the Chinese radar plane, sending huge burning pieces spinning into the Formosa Strait. The eight Taiwanese F-16s then withdrew from the area and linked up with Jon Masters’s DC-10 tanker-transport orbiting over the Pacific, where they all refueled and headed to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa.
The confusion between the Chinese planes allowed the Navy fighters to get into missile range. A total of twenty-four F-14 Tomcats and twenty F/A-18 Hornets from the two carriers in the Philippine Sea began launching missiles. The Tomcats could open fire from over seventy miles away with their huge AIM-54C Phoenix long-range antiair missiles, while the Hornets attacked from as far as twenty miles away with medium-range AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-120 radar-guided missiles. Nearly half of the Su-27s and J-8 fighters covering the attack force were destroyed before the Navy fighters closed in within range of their short-range AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking antiair missiles, and another eight Su-27s and J-8s fell to AIM-9 missile attacks. The surviving Chinese fighters fled before the American fighters got a chance to close within cannon range. The Chinese fighter-bombers that had not dropped their weapons simply punched off the bombs and fuel tanks wherever they were and turned westward to get away from the unseen predators closing in on them.
But the Chinese bombers retreating from the area were just being herded into another trap—ten four-ship formations of U.S. Air Force F- 15 C Eagle fighters from the Eighteenth Wing at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa and the Third Wing from Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska, all loaded with six AIM-120 AMRAAMs and two AIM-9 Sidewinders apiece. The F-15s spread out over the Formosa Strait and simply waited for the Chinese aircraft to fly right into their laps before opening fire. Twenty-three F-15 pilots claimed kills that night, and three more claimed multiple kills. Any Chinese HQ-2 surface-to-air missile sites that tried to lock onto the F-15s over the Strait were destroyed by U.S. Navy A-6E Intruders launching AGM-88 High speed Anti-Radiation Missiles.
The attack lasted just minutes; as fast as it had begun, it was over. The radios were clear, and attack radars were as effective as they ever were. But in that few minutes, the damage was horrifying: the 11-76 radar plane, eleven H-6 bombers, four Su-27s, eighteen J-8 fighters, and forty- one Q-5 fighter-bombers had been shot down, with no losses to American aircraft. Each and every Navy and Air Force plane made it back to its carrier or base, then began rearming and setting up for local-area air defense in case the Chinese tried a counterattack.
The Chinese fighters and bombers lucky enough to escape the American hit-and-run attack from the darkness soon found other problems. Twelve B-1B Lancer bombers from Ellsworth and Dyess Air Force Bases had been sent over eastern China, loaded with eight AGM-86C cruise missiles with non-nuclear high-explosive warheads, and eight AGM-177 Wolverine antiair defense cruise missiles, to attack air bases and air defense sites throughout southeast China. The military landing strips at Fuzhou, Ningbo, Hangzhou, Jingdezhen, Nanchang, and even Shanghai were cratered by cruise missiles, and the Chinese approach and ground- control radars and some air defense missile and artillery emplacements had been destroyed by the Wolverine missiles. All of the fighters scheduled to land at these bases had to be diverted . . .
. . . except there were no military fields within range to send them. The number of planes destroyed or damaged simply by running out of fuel or attempting to make a forced landing at a civil airstrip or highway quickly exceeded the number of planes shot down by American fighters.
But the B-lBs’ mission was not to deny landing strips to Chinese fighters low on fuel, but to open a gaping hole in China’s multilayered air defense and surveillance radar network to allow yet another attacker to slip in unnoticed—six B-2A Spirit stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base. The B-2 bombers went feet-dry over several points along the Chinese coastline from Shanghai to Qingdao, taking separate low- level attack routes inbound to their targets—the intercontinental ballistic missile bases in north-central China.
The twelve Dong Feng-5 missile silos and twenty Dong Feng-3 launch sites, with two DF-3 missiles assigned per site, were spread out over 10,000 square miles in two Chinese provinces, and heavily defended by HQ-2 surface-to-air missile sites and antiaircraft artillery sites—but the B-2s swarmed over the missile fields near Yinchuan in Inner Mongolia province and, one by one, attacked.
Each B-2A carried sixteen AGM-84E Standoff Land Attack Missile (SLAM) guided weapons on two internal rotary launchers. Each SLAM was a Harpoon turbojet-powered anti-ship cruise missile fitted with an imaging infrared television sensor in the nose and a GPS satellite navigation guidance system. The coordinates of the targets were all loaded into the missile’s memory by the B-2’s attack computer; each B-2 bomber merely had to fly to a predetermined launch point and release the missiles. Once released from low altitude—300 and 500 feet above ground— and as far as fifty miles from the target, the missiles would get a final navigation update by its GPS receiver and guide itself to the target, skimming less than a hundred feet above the ground at 250 miles an hour. The missile was even programmed with turnpoints so they would not reveal the location of the B-2 launch aircraft. Once the missiles were launched, the B-2 bombers turned eastbound and began the treacherous 1,500-mile trek back across hostile airspace to their first post-strike refueling anchor.
Sixty seconds prior to impact, the AGM-84E SLAMs began to transmit images of their assigned target area—but they did not transmit the pictures back to the B-2s that launched them. Instead, the images were picked up by a lone aircraft flying over the Chinese ICBM missile fields at 20,000 feet.
The EB-52 Megafortress had launched from Kai-Shan with the remaining nine flyable Taiwanese F-16s and Jon Masters’s DC-10 just after sunset. The Megafortress was armed with every drop of fuel and every remaining weapon it could possibly carry: two Wolverine cruise missiles and two Striker rocket bombs on the forward bomb-bay rotary launcher; six CBU-59 cluster bomb units on the aft bomb bay; and one AIM-120 Scorpion air-to-air missile and four AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles on each wing weapon pod. After an aerial refueling, the EB-52 flew north over the East China Sea and waited for the B-l and B-2 bombers to arrive from the United States. Once the B-l bombers laid down the cruise missile barrage along the Chinese coastline, the B-2 and the Megafortress cruised in toward the Chinese ICBM fields. With the attention of the entire Chinese air defense system focused on the Formosa Strait, it was a simple exercise for the six B-2s and the lone EB-52 to penetrate disrupted Chinese airspace and head for their assigned targets.
The EB-52 arrived in the Chinese ICBM field several minutes before the B-2 Spirit stealth bombers got to their launch points. Flying i
n the defensive systems officer s seat, Wendy McLanahan started the attack by launching the Wolverine missiles over the ICBM missile fields. The two Wolverines used their decoys and radar seekers to hunt down any antiaircraft radars, then attacked them with antiarmor skeets.
“The Wolverines are working,” Brad Elliott said. “I can see the place starting to light up.” Several antiaircraft artillery sites opened fire, some very close by but locked onto the decoy gliders, not the Megafortress. Streams of heavy antiaircraft artillery tracers arced into the sky—followed a few moments later by a bright flash on the ground and secondary explosions rippling across the expanse of darkness.
“Very cool,” Nancy Cheshire remarked, as more missile and tripleA sites were hit. “The Wolverines are working great.”
“You spoke too soon,” Wendy said. “Eve lost contact with both Wolverines. Both of them got shot down.”
“I’ve got missile video starting to come in,” Patrick McLanahan announced. As each SLAM got within range, a window would open up on his supercockpit display, and he could watch as the missile approached the target. A wide white rectangle in the center of the video indicated the missiles preprogrammed target area. As the SLAM got closer, Patrick could make out more and more detail of the exact target spot, and he resized the target rectangle until it enclosed only the spot he wanted to hit. A small white dot represented the missiles impact point, and Patrick resized the rectangle so the dot could stay inside the rectangle without too many gross flight-control corrections.
“Pve got fighter radar activity at three o’clock, range unknown,” Wendy announced. “We’re running out of time.”
Patrick could hear the tension in her voice. He had been against having her on this mission at all—her wounds from the last time she had flown on an EB-52 Megafortress had only recently healed, not to mention the danger to the child she carried. But Wendy had been the first to demand that she go along, and hers was the loudest voice arguing against her husband. No one else knew the Megafortress’s defensive suite and weapons better than Wendy Tork McLanahan. Patrick might be able to operate the systems by himself if the bomber was not under attack, but if it ever became an item of interest and came under active attack, it would take one crew member’s full attention to defend the Megafortress. If there was going to be any chance of success on this raid, Wendy had to go along.
“Got a range now, three o’clock, forty miles and closing,” Wendy reported. “I’ve got multiple bandits—four, maybe six. One of them looks like a Su-27. Signal threshold is low, but they’ve got several sweeps on us. They could get a lock on us in three to four minutes.”
Two SLAM missiles would be targeted against the DF-5 silos—the first SLAM would crack open the silo, and the second would dive inside and destroy the missile. The first 1,400-pound Standoff Land Attack Missile would execute a pop-up maneuver a few seconds before impact, then dive directly down onto the silo cover to crack open the silo; the second SLAM would follow a few seconds later, execute the same pop-up and dive maneuver, and destroy the missile inside. The DF-3 missiles were stored on erector trailers inside storage sheds near each launch site, and it was a simple task to target each storage shed and destroy the missile inside.
The SLAM launches had been coordinated so that the Megafortress could fly eastbound out of the target area and he would be within effective datalink range of each SLAM, working west to east. As soon as one SLAM would hit, another window popped open, and Patrick would start steering another SLAM in to its target. Some SLAMs did not transmit their TV images, so it was unknown if they ever hit their targets, but each SLAM was guided by a precise inertial navigation system updated by GPS satellite navigation signals, accurate to at least ten feet in altitude and position, so even without a TV datalink they were very accurate weapons. Out of seventy-two SLAMs successfully launched from the B-2s, fifty-one reached their assigned targets and transmitted a good enough TV picture so Patrick could assess the damage and call the target destroyed or knocked out of commission.
“But we got three DF-3 and two DF-5 sites where we don’t know if they got hit,” Patrick announced to his crew.
“Perfect—we got two Strikers and six CBUs left,” Brad Elliott said. “Let’s go back there and finish the job.”
“Two o’clock, thirty-two miles and closing,” Wendy announced. She then looked over at her husband and saw him intently watching her. “I agree,” she said. “Let’s go get ’em.”
“The odds are that the SLAMs got the last missile sites,” Patrick said. “They’ve been running great, all of them.”
“But we can’t be sure, can we?” Nancy Cheshire asked.
“We can wait and get a satellite downlink from Jon’s NIRTSats,” Elliott said. “Those can tell us if they got hit. How long until we get a picture?”
“We won’t—we didn’t get a new constellation up in time,” Patrick said. “The best info we’ll get is from our synthetic aperture radar or from a Striker video link.”
“Then let’s do it,” Wendy said. Patrick turned toward her, and she saw something that she’d rarely seen before—the fear in his eyes. “Patrick, we’ve got to go back,” Wendy said on interphone. “We don’t have a choice. We didn’t come all this way to leave any targets left.” Patrick knew she was right. They had risked everything to fly deep into the heart of the People’s Republic of China and attack these important targets—as long as they had weapons left, they had to use them.
Patrick touched his supercockpit display and called up the five surviving targets. The closest one was only ten miles away; the farthest, a DF-5 long-range ICBM site, was nearly forty miles farther west.
“Gimme a left turn heading two-five-seven, center the bug, stand by for bomb-bay Striker launch,” Patrick ordered.
“No.” The words came from none other than Brad Elliott. “We’re not turning back. We’re going to use the gas and the weapons we have left to fight our way out of here.”
“Brad ...”
“I’m overruling you this time, Muck,” Elliott said determinedly. “You may be the mission commander, but I’m the aircraft commander, and I’m responsible for the lives on board this plane. We’re six hundred miles inside China, alone, with only ten defensive missiles and three hours’ worth of gas left. We did our job. Two DF-5s and six DF-3s are not going to threaten anyone.”
“Brad, we can do it,” Wendy said. “We can take out those last sites.” “Forget about it, Wendy,” Elliott said. “Let someone else worry about them. You and Patrick and Nancy have a life that’s more important than blowing up a couple missile sites in the middle of nowhere. Patrick, call up the exit point and pick the best way to get us out of here.” Patrick looked as if a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders— he even smiled. “Okay, Brad,” Patrick said. “We’ve got one DF-5 site that’ll be within range just a couple minutes to the north, and all of the DF-3 sites are east and southeast. We’ll leave the last DF-5 site for some other time.” He entered commands on the supercockpit display, then said, ’’Give me a left turn to zero-three-seven and center up. Bomb-bay Striker launch coming up ... in one hundred seconds.” Elliott responded by turning the Megafortress to the northeast.
“Bandits are at five o’clock, twenty-five miles and closing,” Wendy reported. “I’m targeting the lead Su-27 for one Scorpion launch. Looks like we might have two Su-27s leading a total of eight J-7s or J-8s. The second formation of fighters is moving to eight o’clock, thirty-three miles.”
“They’re going back to defend the western surviving DF-5 site,” Cheshire guessed. “It must still be active.”
“Bomb doors coming open . . . missile away!” Patrick said as he processed a Striker missile launch. Elliott immediately rolled right and centered up on the first DF-3 launch site.
“Bandits got a good look at that missile launch! ” Wendy cried. “Bandits at six o’clock, eighteen miles and closing ... stand by for pylon missile launch . . . radar lock, they got a radar lock . . . no, radar’s down,
they’re closing in to heater range ... missile away, missile away! ” An AIM- 120 Scorpion missile streaked out of the left weapon pod, arced up and over the Megafortress, and plummeted down on its quarry. “Splash one! ” Wendy shouted. “Splash .. .no, the Su-27’s still up! I hit one of the other fighters! The Su-27’s still coming!”
“Good terminal video,” Patrick called out. Sure enough, the Dong Feng-5 missile silo they had just launched on had not been touched by any of the SLAMs. Patrick centered the targeting crosshairs directly on the movable concrete silo cover, and hit it directly in the center. “Got it! ” he shouted.
“Stand by for second pylon launch!” Wendy shouted. “Missile away! ” The last Scorpion missile flew out of the right weapon pod, and this time it did not miss. “Splash two!” she shouted. “Got the -27! The other fighters are breaking formation. ... I’ve got two formations of J-8s now, closest at three o’clock, seven miles and closing. The second formation’s at six o’clock, twelve miles.”
“First DF-3 site twelve o’clock, twenty miles,” Patrick called out.
“I need a turn! ” Wendy shouted.
“Do it!”
“Right forty degrees!” Wendy cried, and Elliott hauled the Megafortress into a tight turn. “I’m jamming their ranging radars! I’ve got a lock! Pylon launch, now” The AIM-9L Sidewinders mounted in the weapons pods were not directly mated to the Megafortress’s attack system—they had to be pointed at a target and allowed to find their own target. But once Wendy had turned the Megafortress at the oncoming Chinese fighters, the Sidewinders quickly detected the fighter’s hot-wing leading edges and sent a missile lock signal. As soon as Wendy got the signal, she punched off one Sidewinder. It homed perfectly on its target and exploded right in the path of the J-8, sending it spiraling to the ground.
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