stranded survivors still aboard the crippled Weifang. He decided to pull his men out and classify the operation as a “raid.” The Japanese counter operation would become a grievous act of escalation in tomorrow’s news cycle, but for now his wisest course was to follow the precepts of Sun Tsu as he considered the odds: ‘ When ten to the enemy's one, surround him. When five times his strength, attack him. If double his strength, divide him. If equally matched, you may engage him with some good plan. If weaker numerically, be capable of withdrawing. And if in all respects unequal, be capable of eluding him.’
The question now was whether Lanzhou was even to be capable of eluding the advancing enemy. Missiles had already found the Weifang, and he knew his ship was next in line of sight on the enemy radar screens. He decided that he would immediately send his three helos to pick up the men on the islands, and then send the Shouyang to aid the foundering crew of Weifang. I might just be throwing another fish in the hot oil, he thought, but he could not abandon those men.
He decided to fire a disruptive covering barrage at the enemy and then withdraw to effect a rendezvous with the second flotilla centered on Haikou. In reprisal for the loss of Weifang, the Japanese coast guard cutter Howo would be scuttled, their crew taken in prize. It was not the victory he had hoped for, but it would be enough to save face in the heat of the moment, and possibly save lives as well.
He gave the order to activate his YJ-82 Eagle Strike system and fire a full barrage or eight missiles at the oncoming enemy task force, hoping to force them to go defensive long enough to pull his men off and beat a hasty retreat. Then, when he had rendezvoused with the second flotilla, and had adequate air cover, he would see how the Japanese Marines enjoyed the Spartan accommodations at Hotel Diaoyudou that night. The battle was not ending in his mind, only evolving, but the way in which it evolved next would not be to his liking.
Chapter 15
The Silent Eagles were coming, a full squadron off Naha airfield, Okinawa. The F-15SE fighters had been upgraded with new stealth features, including radar absorbing materials and new internal weapons bays. Against the X-Band radars typically used in air-to-air conflict, the F-15s would leave a forward radar signature no bigger than a baseball might. It wasn’t as stealthy as the JF-35s, which might be golf balls in the sky, or the deadly F-22 Raptors which would appear no bigger than a marble, but it would do in a pinch. The days of tiled stealth were long gone. Now the fifth generation fighters were made out of bismaleimide (BMI) and composite epoxy and carbon fiber materials. The Silent Eagles would be more than enough to decide the day in their favor, or so the Japanese hoped. This was the only squadron of this plane type they had.
Today they were each carrying the new JSM anti-ship missiles, two per plane, and there were six aloft for this strike mission. Captain Wang Fu Jing saw them coming on radar, then lost them, then with assistance from his KJ-2000 AEW plane he found them again in time to launch his defensive missile barrage, but not before the Eagles had also fired.
Now the sky was filled with the thin tracers of sleek, deadly missiles on every side. The H-16 SAMs were like a pack of barracuda falling in with a school of tuna. The Lanzhou had managed to get twelve missiles up, with more firing from its forward VLS cells, and they had found and killed four of the incoming SSMs. Three more would die as they swooped down to begin their final approach, but the remaining five would get through his hastily deployed defensive barrage, and challenge his flotilla’s 30mm Gatling Guns. They got two as the missiles made their final run, and the last three found the Chinese ships in a most compromising position.
Shouyang was abaft of the already damaged Weifang, and took a hit forward on the main deck, which ignited the missile cells there and caused a tremendous explosion. Weifang was showered with additional shrapnel just as a second missile came in and struck her aft quarter. The second explosion was enough to wreck the ship for good. The last missile found Lanzhou, rising at the last minute in a popup maneuver and falling on the deck amidships. Captain Wang Fu Jing felt the ship shudder under the impact of the missile, saw the bright orange fires and knew he had taken a serious hit. The 7000 plus ton vessel was sturdy enough to weather the blow, but there was no way he could continue to linger in these waters. He immediately radioed the airfields at Fuzhou, berating the air force commander there for lack of air cover.
“Where are you? Where is my air support? I have one ship sinking, another hit, men in the water, a fire amidships, and a fistful of enemy aircraft on our radar screens!”
He was furious that he had to contend with both land based and seaborne enemy fighters, with nary a whisper of opposition in the skies over the contested islands. At last he heard from his KJ-2000 where it circled far to the west, unknowingly right above the submerged wreckage of the old WWII Japanese battleship Kongo, which had been sunk there by the US submarine Sealion II on 16 November, 1944. The air force was coming though they would not bring their A-game that day.
Two squadrons of Chendu J-10AH multirole naval fighters were up and coming in on afterburners as they raced to the scene, though their haste was only making them more visible on radar. They were very capable planes, with good avionics and excellent speed and maneuverability, but this was their first sortie in anger and they were not quite prepared for the heat of combat. Behind them was another group of six Shenyang J-11B “SinoFlankers” with more experienced pilots, eighteen planes in all.
When the Japanese task force picked them up on radar, they immediately began vectoring in every plane they already had aloft. The three JF-35Bs climbed high while the six Silent Eagles out of Naha, surged in at 30,000 feet. Even with the KJ-2000 assisting, the J-10s were having difficulty acquiring the Japanese planes. They finally got returns on the oncoming Eagles, but as both forces approached the islands, the Japanese pilots had already shouted out the NATO brevity code “Fox Three” and fired their AIM-12 °C AMRAAMs. The weapon was designed to engage targets well beyond visual range, (BVR), a fire and forget missile that could actively home in on its target. They had fired just inside their maximum range of 105 kilometers, outranging the PL-11 missiles on the Chinese J-10s by thirty kilometers. That small interval of thirty kilometers amounted to no more than a twenty second advantage, as both sides were closing on one another at a whisker over Mach 2. Yet those twenty seconds before the Chinese J-10s could fire was the difference between life or death. The missiles were twice as fast as the planes at Mach 4, and the sky was soon alight with countermeasures and kills.
The first wave of Chinese planes had managed to get their own missiles away, but only seconds later they were in it up to their eyeballs. The J-10’s fared badly, losing five planes to outright hits, and seeing two more damaged by near proximity explosions. Their own barrage of PL-11s failed to find even one Silent Eagle, as the Japanese had peeled off after firing to stay at the extreme edge of the PL-11’s firing envelope. The narrow advantage that made all the difference was a little stealth, better radar, and those thirty kilometers.
As their initial missile barrage disordered the enemy, the Japanese pilots had turned again to close and switched to their shorter ranged AIM-9X Sidewinders, shouting “Fox Two” to signal the use of an infrared guided missile. It was a slower missile at just Mach 2.5, but very maneuverable and could range out to 35 kilometers. They would claim the two wounded J-10s, and one more plane as it banked in a violent turn, its countermeasure sputtering to life in a vain shower of phosphor fire as it attempted to spoof the missile that had acquired it. But the Sidewinders had been fine tuned to recognize the difference between such flares and a plane’s tail pipe, and it was not deceived.
The agile Silent Eagles had swooped in and galled their prey, taking down eight of the twelve J-10s in less than five minutes. Now the last deadly duel was fought as the two sides actually closed well within visual range, (WVR), and began to dogfight. Here the experience and skill of the Japanese pilots, and the amazingly capable plane they were flying proved decisive.
“Fox Four! Guns, guns, guns!” The 20mm Vulcan Gatling cannon was equipped with just 510 rounds in a normal load-out, but they were enough to take down two more before the last two J-10s bugged out, heading west at full throttle to look for their big brothers in the Shenyang J-11s
Called the SinoFlanker by some Western analysts because it was a plane based on the Russian Sukhoi SU- 27 Flanker, the J-11 was an able challenger to the Eagles and Fighting Falcons it had been built to oppose. It had Russian avionics, radars and engines, but many indigenous improvements as well. It was bringing a better missile too, the PL-12 that could match the Silent Eagles in range at 100 kilometers.
But the Eagles were not alone.
As the J-11’s roared in from the west, unseen lightning fell from the skies above when the three carrier
