navies, sometimes carried a Recon/ASW helo. Depth alone wouldn’t help him, but speed might, and now
When the helo neared the end of the wake, or where the wake had been dissipated by the motion of the sea, the pilot didn’t drop magnetic homing mines, for he was aware that the Hunter/Killer sub would now be well away from its firing position. Normally following such a wake was risky business, for it was believed that the American and British SSN sensors now had the capability to pick up chopper noises if they were near the surface, where sound would travel up to five times faster in water than air, and that in this case the enemy could launch a surface- to-air missile either by torpedo tube or vertical launch tubes forward of the sail. But the pilot dismissed this from his thoughts, for he knew that the sub’s sensors, no matter how sensitive, would be overwhelmed and smothered by the sounds of the frigate breaking up.
The chopper pilot was now radioing his position to Zhanjiang, the headquarters of China’s Southern Fleet, and at the same time, while hovering a hundred feet above the sea’s surface, feeding out his dual magnetometer to sense any magnetic anomaly such as that caused by a ship’s metal and/or microphones. All he got on the dipping mike was the hissing of the sunken frigate’s oil fire still raging amid a slurry of flotsam and debris. The magnetometer showed a fairly consistent reading of seabed magnetics for the area. He reeled in the dual magnetometer/mike unit, which looked like a three-foot piece of pipe suspended from the end of the cable.
As the helo darted forward to continue its dipping, it looked for all the world like a dragonfly hovering one minute then skimming, hovering over another spot, the pilot receiving radio confirmation that two PLA air force Ilyushin-H5 light ASW torpedo bombers with an intensive torpedo/bomb load of 2,205 pounds were approaching the area, escorted by two Shenyang J8s, versions of the Mach 2, MiG-21 upgraded by the purchase of U.S. avionics. The Shenyangs were armed with three NR 30 30mm cannon and air-to-air missiles on wing hard points. They would not save the helo, as for every new dip the helo pilot made trying to locate the Hunter/Killer, the lower he was getting on fuel.
The best he might hope for would be to ditch after giving his last position and maybe get picked up by a PLA navy patrol ship. But unlike the extraordinary lengths that the Americans and British would go to to save a downed pilot, the PLA — navy, air force, or army — would do so only if it constituted no more than a minor alteration in course.
The
The sharks of the South China Sea were no different from any other of their breed — they would not attack unless they were hungry. But blood in the water was an attraction they could not ignore, and Mellin, exhausted from hauling himself onto one of the rubber rafts, saw that the predators were now among the survivors of the Chinese frigate, ripping and gulping, turning the roiling waters crimson.
Mellin and the two oilers in the raft with him lay exhausted. One of the men’s breathing was so strained from his lungs being covered in oil, Mellin could hear the rasping sound he made above the cries of terror as crewman after crewman thrashed in sheer panic, in frantic efforts to reach a raft, anything that would hold them. Mellin could see dozens of dorsal fins cruising about amid the material and human flotsam. Now and then a dorsal fin would suddenly move much faster as another shark in the school made its sudden attack. Not far from the raft he was on, Mellin could see one of the Chinese crewmen in a Mae West, his right arm unable to move because of burns, trying to make for the raft. Mellin reached out to him, but the current and turbulence of the water kept widening the distance between them.
“Oars!” Mellin yelled to the two others in the raft. “Where are the damn oars?” The two Chinese looked at him in bewilderment. There were no paddles. “C’mon,” Mellin yelled, using his right hand to paddle, his head indicating the man in the water. “Paddle! Paddle with your hands! C’mon!”
One of the Chinese unenthusiastically joined Mellin. The other, covered with oil and still wheezing, did nothing. The man in the water — the sailor who had beaten Mellin aboard the ship — kept drifting away toward the frenzied, scream-filled cauldron that was the shark attack. Mellin took off his life jacket and slipped over the oil- greased side of the raft, striking out in a breaststroke toward the badly burned crewman. He grabbed the collar of the man’s Mae West and, turning about, struck out for the raft. When he reached the raft he told the two crewmen aboard it to help him. They didn’t understand English but they knew what he wanted. The one covered in oil did nothing. The other man started to panic, yelling and shaking his head. It was clear that he thought if Mellin tried to drag the burned crewman aboard, the raft would capsize.
“Grab his arms!” Mellin yelled, near exhaustion himself. “Now!”
The man aboard the raft was terrified, shaking his head. “No, no!”
In utter exasperation, Mellin heaved the burned man up against the raft’s gunwale, the man’s weight already tipping the raft as he slid back into the water. Out of the corner of his eye Mellin could see several fins coming his way. With a last Herculean effort he pushed the burned crewman up against the raft. The able-bodied crewman in the raft, out of sheer fright that if he didn’t help, the raft would capsize, hauled the burned crewman as Mellin, still in the water, pushed. Next Mellin tried to haul himself aboard. But he was out of breath, his strength momentarily drained until he felt something pass him and touch a leg. The next thing he knew he was aboard the raft, water pouring off him, the rescued man flat on the bottom of the small craft, his reluctant co-rescuer screaming hysterically at Mellin at the near capsize. Mellin couldn’t have cared less. All he cared about was the next breath.
When he recovered a few moments later, he looked at the guard who was stretched out beside him and moaning in pain. “Should’ve let you sink, you bastard!” The man covered in oil was dead, the remaining Chinese talking excitedly, pointing skyward where he could see two H-5 Ilyushin bombers, and high above them, the glint of two fighters, the jabbering crewman in a reverie of anticipation for now they were sure to be rescued. Several men in other rafts, floating among the limbless dead, were also cheering.
The frigate’s helo had skimmed a few miles west and dipped the magnetometer/sonar, registering a magnetic anomaly. It could be unusually strong metallic deposits on the seabed, or it could be a submarine. The pilot dropped two depth charges, went higher, waited for the sea to erupt into two mushroomed columns of greenish-brown water, didn’t see any signs of a hit and so dropped two floating orange marker flares for the Ilyushin bombers to see. He then headed off toward Yulin, the PLA’s naval base in southern Hainan, dropping a purple parachute flare over the thirty or so crewmen from the sunken ship, some of them waving to him as he glanced anxiously at his fuel gauge.
Sitting up now in the raft, Mellin could see the thin spirals of orange smoke marking the spot where the helo pilot had dropped the depth charges, and he said a prayer for the sub that the Chinese were now searching for. Despite the sub nearly having killed him, it had told Mellin that there was war with China, and now at least he knew where he stood.
The dogfight between the two Shenyangs and the two F-18s of
The Sidewinder missile took off from the American plane, streaking out toward one of the enemy, the other American plane also firing a Sidewinder. Within seconds of one another each missile found its target. There were two orange flashes, one many times the size of the other, as the second Shenyang’s fuel tanks went up.
“Splash one!” came the excited voice of the first American pilot, “Splash two!” following only seconds later.
Aboard the carrier’s combat information center there were shouts of jubilation. “Good kill! Good kill!” the air boss said, echoing one of the pilots’ exultations. “Outstanding!” The pilot of the lead F-18 acknowledged the
