by Andy Farman
On reaching the burnt out area they again removed the natural cam and reversed their ghillie suits for the long crawl back to their own lines.
CHAPTER FIVE
Vũng Tàu airbase, Vietnam
It was unbearably hot in the hangar, the parachutes sat in rows upon its floor, the men removed combat smocks dark with sweat following another mission ‘hold’, and they waited, trying not to let the nerves show.
Word came to en-plane and the men kitted up again and stood in ranks where they received their ‘Green Light Warning’ delivered by an RAF ‘Loadie’, Air Load Master.
“You are about to carry out a parachute descent. Failure to jump when the green light is displayed constitutes disobeying a direct order and disciplinary action will be taken against you. In the event of a green light failure the number one will be despatched by the Air Load Master and the rest of the stick will carry out the descent in normal order. Failure to jump constitutes disobeying a direct order and disciplinary action will be taken against you.”
No sooner had that taken place when they were again stood down, and removed their kit once more.
Most slept, they had been paraded at 0200hrs for a 0330hrs take-off that never happened. Dawn had now come and gone, cloudless blue skies were overhead, so how could a bit of weather be the holdup?
1,144 miles to the east the target was obscured by cloud as ‘a bit of weather’ became Tropical Storm ‘Hola’ and then mutated into Typhoon ‘Hola’. High winds and parachuting do not mix well, especially when deep water is in close proximity.
A further complication was that of the Mao and Kuznetsov carrier combat groups and the accompanying ships carrying China’s 3rd Army’s 3 Corps to Australia. The 1st and 2nd Corps had taken ship on the southern military island of Hainan but 3rd Corps was required to take part in a propaganda show in Beijing, 1400 miles away as the crow flies, in eastern China. Using modern, state of the art equipment borrowed from the garrison, 3rd Corps paraded through the streets to raise the flagging morale of the populace before departing to take Australia by storm (unquote). Having reluctantly returned their borrowed rides the 3rd Corps moved to the nearby port of Tianjín, boarding and sailing over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea. It was expected to head south east from there, into the broad Philippine Sea but metrology showed the building storm and predicted it would skirt the east of the islands along the Philippine Sea. The Chinese fleet turned south west instead, which was a problem because the US 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force with the USS John C Stennis and the USS Constellation battle groups in the Philippines Sea heading north, expecting the Chinese to sail later in the week. The US ships altered course only to find the Chinese seemingly to matching the move. The US force altered course again but the Typhoon proved unpredictable and instead of running north it turned north west across the Philippine archipelago and the Chinese fleet swung back into the Philippine Sea, the two fleets were head to head, 700 miles apart.
Given that Evensong was showing the Chinese that the US carriers were apparently returning to Hawaii after Sydney was destroyed, did this manoeuvring mean that China knew the US fleet was 5000 miles closer now?
The US ships left the Philippines Sea once more, sailing into Leyte Gulf and navigating the narrow Surigao Strait under the cover of night to enter the Bohol Sea. It was familiar territory for one ship of the fleet that had already fired its guns in anger once before in those waters, pennant number BB-61, the elderly but reactivated battleship USS Iowa, which would provide gunfire support for the marines landing at Toledo.
The Gods love to play tricks and toy with the machinations of mortal men; at least that was how Admiral Jackson aboard the USS John C Stennis saw things because the Chinese turned back to the west, heading into the path of the storm, matching their move once again. However, it was not that the Chinese could now see his ships.
Malaysia had made her play at dawn, declaring war on China and bombarding the Chinese paratroopers holding the Spratly islands in preparation for amphibious landings, beating Brunei and Vietnam to the punch.
The 82nd Airborne Divisions 1st Brigade and the combined British and French airborne brigade were at Vũng Tàu on the coast of Vietnam, whilst the 82nd’s 2nd Brigade were waiting at Phanrang 150 miles further east, 8000 men, the maximum that could be carried to the target in a single lift, given the available aircraft. Stood just inside the hangar, carefully in the shade were Lt Col’s Jim Popham of the US 111th Airborne Infantry, Ben McWilliams of Britain’s ‘3 Para’ and Anton Meudon of the French Foreign Legion’s 2 REP, all recent veterans of the war in Europe. They chatted quietly about their experiences as they waited for the order to don their parachutes and board the aircraft.
Morning became afternoon but by the time the temperature eased off the shadows had stretched far. The tropics do not have long, gradual evenings, they have an off-button not a dimmer switch, and as the night replaced day the troops headed back to their billets. Perhaps tomorrow would be the day?
PLAN Zheng, Visayan Sea, north of Panay Island, Philippines.
Same time.
Refuelled and running on the surface, in trail a mile behind a replacement support vessel, the light tanker Sentinel Sea, Aiguo Li’s new orders seemed to him to be keeping him where he could be shot at without any opportunity to rack up a tonnage score as other skippers were doing .
The loss of the borrowed North Korean covert submarine support vessel Jeonseung had been more of a blow to operations in Australian waters than the sinking of Zheng’s sister ship, Zing Shènglì. Consequently Li was now ordered to play bodyguard to the Sentinel Sea.
The tanker contained a hold for diverse use in plying its trade around the Pacific Rim, carrying cargo as well as fuel. It had been in Hong King when the war started and being New Zealand flagged she was impounded. Modern communications, and navigational equipment, plus an upgrade in her derrick were all that had been required to fit her out for a new line of work.
There was a sea running, the wind whipping the white capped wave tops into a haze of water particles and the rain hammered down until caught near the surface by the wind produced by Typhoon Hola and bent horizontal. It stung the face of the captain and the lookouts that had a week before been happy to make it from Western Australia to the Java Sea, over an area that was proving to be a graveyard for Chinese shipping and warships. Now that they were returning there were fewer smiles. The war was not going well for China.
The wind increased in fury and drowned out the sound of the diesels growling as they charged the submarines batteries. More than a few glances were cast the captain’s way, willing him to submerge the Zheng and continue charging the batteries using the snorkel, but Aiguo was in a masochistic mood and preferred his misery to be total.
South of the Zheng and Sentinel Sea, Admiral Jackson was at last certain that the Chinese aircraft carriers and troop ships had been diverted away from Australia and were heading west, to reinforce the Spratly Islands, and so the US Fleet in the Bohol Sea turned north. USS John C Stennis now had the wind at her stern, as did the USS Essex and the amphibious assault ships bound for Cebu, but no longer having the wind on their beam was little comfort for the troops of the US 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force, those who weren’t already dry retching would puke up the last of their supper long before midnight.
Admiral Jackson was not a member of that small group known as ‘The Choir’, he knew nothing of a secret project called ‘Church’ and Evensong, Vespers and Matins were prayer times for nuns and the clergy, weren’t they? He was however not one to look a gift horse in the mouth when he was suddenly presented with the position, course and speed of all enemy vessels in the region, including a small tanker and submarine heading for the north end of the Tañon Strait.
Day 1: Operation Vespers (Airborne element)
0500hrs the following morning.
A soldier opposite Lt Col Popham vomited, decorating Jim’s jump boots but after wiping the back of his mouth with his sleeve the pale and wan par
atrooper mouthed an apology to his commanding officer, and promptly threw up again. The typhoon had passed through the islands during the night but the airborne stream had entered its wake, the storms unsettled residue. Already full ‘Hurlers’ the waxed air sickness bags were in plentiful evidence and the air stank with the perfume of digestive juices and semi-digested food, that as ever included tomato skins and carrots even if the sufferer did not recall eating any.
The airlift of the brigades was a complicated ballet as the transports carrying the men to war were not all the same type of aircraft.
Lockheed C-130 Hercules and Transall C-160s carrying the Anglo/French brigade were the first to depart from Vietnam, and an hour later the big Boeing C-17 Globemasters of the USAF Military Airlift Command took off in a stepped operation that was designed to deliver the last aircraft first, overhauling the turboprop powered transports and drop the US 1st and 2nd Brigades simultaneously, the 1st on the airfield and the 2nd north of the connecting bridges, preventing any interference by the Cebu garrison while the British and French took the airfield and held it.
Months before, the allied planners had considered airfield denial strikes and bombing raids of the supply depots and warehouses, but with so many Filipino’s at hand to repair and rebuild at gunpoint it would requires constant return visits. The shallow waters of the islands would favour the defender and a smart enemy would turn them into a trap for submarines and carriers. Then of course the later work on the airfield, the runway extension and addition of the two shorter runways presented itself as a possible base of operations against mainland China. Operation Dragon Lady was the first effort that was penned. A colossal operation and one that was also involving most of the allied strength in the Pacific region. When first presented to Henry Shaw he had read only the first page of the proposal before taking out a ballpoint pen and adding some artwork, a stick character in ragged shorts sat on a raft built of driftwood that flew a tattered Stars & Stripes from a broomstick mast under the shadow of a mushroom cloud. A prominent letter ‘F’ was circled with a ‘Must do better’ in red ink before he handed it back.
On this day however things were going wrong despite their best efforts but the fleet could not remain undetected for long. A planned dawn airdrop from the east, when the sun would be in the defender eyes, was not going to happen. The storm had taken too long to vacate the area so they would not loop south of Bohol to make that easterly approach. This of course meant that the sun would be in their eyes, the attackers, but it would have risen too high above the horizon to be too much of an impediment to marksmanship as the sun would rise as they were still crossing the South China Sea.
The first aircraft to take off though did not do so from Vietnam but at 0100hrs from RAAF Tindall, a bare bones aerodrome 175 miles SE of Darwin. RAAF Darwin had been the original choice, but it had come under both surface to surface missile attack and naval gunfire on several occasions. The main runway had been severely damaged in the last attack and was no longer viable. With a far lighter fuel load the Globemasters could have used the second, shorter runway, and tanked immediately after taking off but it was simpler to use RAAF Tindall’s single 2,500 metres runway instead.
The C-17s of 99 Squadron RAF could also have made that long haul without refuelling had they been carrying just paratroopers, but their payloads demanded that they have a long drink from the tankers of 33 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, in order to return the same way.
Flights of C-130s arrived from several RAF squadrons, No’s 24, 30, 47 and 70 Squadron to carry 3 Para, 23 Engineer Regiment, the 105mm light guns of 7 Parachute Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery along with food and ammunition. The lead aircraft of No. 47 Squadron was captained by Squadron Leader Braithwaite on her first sortie after being promoted. Wing Commander Stewart Dunn was also flying the formations lead aircraft on his first sortie after promotion.
The Anglo/French formation flew low and in complete communications silence. It crossed the coast of Palawan without incident and without sighting any of the warring factions around the Spratlys. A fortunate happenstance as the USS Constellation’s air wing which was to meet and escort the transport stream did not arrive on time. The carrier was over forty years of age, an old lady, and her steam catapult’s failed. USS John C Stennis’s air wing was CAP for the fleet and about to launch Wild Weasel flak suppression sorties on the target. It was impractical for the two carriers to switch roles. The USS Constellation repaired the catapults but she launched her wing very late.
With full knowledge that the Chinese fleet was to the north of the Spratly Islands the airborne transport stream followed a slightly more southerly course, keeping below the islands, although due to the 2nd Brigade taking off from Phanrang to the east, they were being carried on a slightly more northerly line, slowly converging with the Vũng Tàu stream.
Reports had reached the Chinese flagship Mao that the Royal Brunei Navy had sailed, bound for the southern Spratly Islands and the commander decided to deal with the smaller of the opposition’s ships earlier rather than later. Mao launched an anti-shipping strike even though the range was extreme. Mao’s strike aircraft carried mainly anti-ship and anti-radiation missiles with only a pair of Aphids for self-defence along with 150 rounds for the Su-30s 30mm cannons. They narrowly missed the Transall and Hercules carrying the Anglo/French airborne brigade and did not find any trace at all of the Royal Brunei Navy, but on turning back for their carrier they caught the big C-17s carrying the US 2nd Brigade without a CAP and the slaughter commenced.
Colonel Neil Hughes Brown, 97th Airlift Squadron out of Lewis/McChord AFB near the Rockies, put the nose of his aircraft, ‘Pride of Seattle’, down towards the South China Sea and made it there by luck as much as skill and judgement. The early morning sea fog and drab grey colour scheme was not a perfect patch by any means, but there were plenty of other targets that were easier to see. Eventually near the coast of Palawan the aircraft emerged from the fog bank. There were no other targets to distract the Chinese aviators and he had two Su-30s closing on his tail. He could not outrun or outmanoeuvre them, the Chinese carrier aircraft were shy of air-to-air missiles now but not cannon ammunition. He had two choices really, stay low and ditch in the sea near the shore or turn over the island and gain enough height for the mass of troops in the aircrafts belly to exit the aircraft by parachute. The first option gave him a better chance of surviving than the second, but men would drown, trapped inside the aircraft. He gave his orders and let the two Sukhois closed to gun range just off the shore before dropping the gear and flaps. The drastic loss of speed caught both the Sukhoi pilots by surprise and they overshot. Colonel Brown raised the gear and shoved the throttles through the gate, juggling the controls and avoiding a stall, just barely, as he strove for speed and height. The red light came on in the hold and the jump masters got the troops on their feet and hooked up. They had been lucky the first time and the same trick would not work again, or would it? As the first tracer round flashed by from behind Colonel Hughes banked hard right instead of going into a diving turn, as they enemy pilots expected, suddenly the target was looming large before them, the 169 foot wingspan and broad fuselage like an aerial wall and again they broke to avoid a collision, but not before Neil felt cannon round strikes reverberate through the airframe. The master fire warning sounded as debris, smoke and flame streamed from the port outer engine. There were twenty dead and wounded in the hold and the flight engineer shut down the port outer engine, activating the fire extinguisher.
The nose came down below the horizon and as the wings came level again the line of flight was bisecting the length of the island of Palawan. The jump doors opened, and the green light came on.
The large cargo ramp was of no use in any way, the static lines were hooked up for exits through the side jump doors in the fuselage.
The jumpmasters now had the task of cutting the static lines of the dead, and those they judged too badly wounded to jump unaided and they shouted and gestured for the sti
cks to exit.
When the aircraft attacked next it was not from the stern it was from head-on.
Smoke and flame belched from the shutdown engine but it was not of danger to the paratroopers boiling out of the side doors as rapidly as possible. Excluding the dead and wounded, only ten, plus the jumpmasters, still remained inside the aircraft when the cockpit exploded under the impacts of 30mm cannon rounds.
The ‘Pride of Seattle’ rolled inverted and dived into a mountain called Cleopatra’s Needle, exploding on impact.
Both Sukhoi’s turned for home but their wing members were shouting on the radio that they were being engaged by carrier aircraft, F-14 Tomcats.
Low on fuel and short on ammunition, the Chinese aviators got a taste of the helplessness the C-17 crews and their sticks of paratroopers may have felt.
The Tomcats were themselves a little on the light side where ordnance was concerned when they eventually took station protecting the transports, but Mao was now short a bunch of aircraft too.
China had a problem; their aircraft had been engaged by carrier aircraft far from any carrier they knew of.
It took an hour, an hour of technical debate at the various scientific levels and shouted accusations and denouncements at political ones.
Someone took the decision and pulled the plug on the photo reconnaissance and RORSAT satellites, and the People’s Republic of China was suddenly back at her 1950s stage of satellite intelligence.
Arbuckle Mountains, Oklahoma.
“Oh my good God.” The President said, stricken. “All those men?”