Men of War (2013) (19 page)

Following
third in line was the older DDH
Hyuga
, a true helicopter
carrier commissioned in 2009 and drawing near the end of her useful life now
that the four Class 22 ships had been built to take over their role. Yet
Captain Yoshida was glad the ship was still active and in his wake, for she
carried another eleven Seahawks, with a second platoon of Naval Marines, should
they be necessary.

One
more ship completed Yoshida’s flotilla that day, SS
Soryu
, the quiet
Blue
Dragon
already well out in front of his task group, riding the ocean
currents at a 300 foot depth. It had slipped out of its moorings at
Myakojima
sub base on a small island outpost 225 kilometers
southeast of the Senkaku Islands group. The boat carried Type-89 torpedoes and
the deadly UGM-84
Harpoons
which could also be fired from her six 21
inch torpedo tubes.

Information
was now being received an analyzed from a lone P-3C early warning plane near
the disputed islands. The Chinese still had warships there holding the cutter
PS-206
Howo
hostage, and more ships were
reported approaching the islands. What would this come to today, he wondered?
Yoshido
had been ordered to put his Marines on those
Islands, remove the Chinese flag and the troops that brought it there, and
oppose any and all Chinese naval units attempting to interfere with this
operation. If he needed more force than he now commanded,
Kadena
and Naha airfields were a scant 450 kilometers to the northeast, just a few
minutes cruising time for an F-15
Eagle
or an F-22
Raptor
. The
nearest Chinese Air assets would be at
Shuimen
,
Longtian
or Fuzhou airfields, an equal distance to the
west—but they were not
Eagles
or
Raptors
. Yoshida liked his cards
this morning.

The
roar of the first JF-35 split the air as it took off, the second plane
maneuvering smartly to the ready line and waved off right on its heels. His top
cover would be up at angels thirty in minutes. He would then spot and launch a
third plane for any contingency that might present itself, his first
shotai
of three planes aloft and ready for battle. A
strange thought came to Yoshida as he watched the  operation. This could
be the very first launch of carrier based aircraft in the third world war! A
moment of bumbling misrecognition had prompted the
Dragon Pearl
to fire
those torpedoes at
Oyoko
, and now it had
begun. As the three planes climbed into the bright sky overhead Yoshida
imagined how Admiral Nagumo must have felt as he watch the first three Zeros
climb into the pre-dawn sky off the northern Philippine Islands at the outset
of World War Two.

It
was always so clean and simple in the beginning, he thought. All the uniforms
were fresh and white, the well starched collars laden with pips of gold and
silver, and no stain of blood or the darkened burn of flash and powder. It
started with flags and honor, and national pride, and music, and it always
ended in the same old thing—death and destruction.

It
would not be long before he would see the true face of war with his very own
eyes, and it would not be pretty.

Chapter 14

Aboard
the
Lanzhou
, Captain Wang Fu Jing was the fortunate king of the
Diaoyutai Islands for the moment. A small detachment of five naval marines had
landed by swift boat, a helo perched overhead for additional cover, and the men
stormed up the rocky shore, where a series of stony outcroppings looked like
stairs climbing up to the shark fin outcrop of rock that made up the bulk of
the island. There they found a statue of Matsu, the Chinese Goddess of the Sea
brought by a Taiwanese fishing vessel in 2013 to protect the fishermen who
worked these waters, for Diaoyutai meant the ‘fishing island’ in Chinese. The
first attempt to land the statue had been driven off by a water cannon from a
Japanese coast guard cutter, the second won through later that year.

Taiwan
also laid its claim to the disputed islands, though it had wisely remained at
the edge of the growing dispute between China and Japan. But now the rising
clamor of war was again in the air, as China renewed its claim that Taiwan was
also one of its long disputed Islands, and long overdue for its return to mainland
control. The Taiwanese never really believed the Chinese would press their
claim in earnest, but the recent military buildup they had watched was making
men nervous in military headquarters and political situation rooms all over the
globe.

China
now had ships at sea to the northeast near the Diaoyutai Islands, and to the
southwest out of Shantou harbor. Both surface action groups were small, but
they were nonetheless positioned right astride the most obvious sea lanes any
outside force would have to use if it wished to approach Taiwan.

Wang
Fu Jing’s Marines were now ashore on the southernmost Island of
Nanxiaodao
, setting up a small encampment and surveillance
station there beneath a tall black outcrop of stone that sat like a great rocky
Buddha in serene silence. A few sea terns perched indifferently on the nearby
rocks, mixing peacefully with gulls and an occasional pelican. It was said that
birds of a feather flocked together, but these had at least reached some
unspoken accord to share the rocky shore with one another, where the men in
uniforms and metal ships and planes could not.

The
remainder of Wang Fu Jing’s squad was on the main island of
Diaoyudao
,
or
Uotsuri
Jima to the Japanese, clearly visible in
the distance. It was the only island in the little archipelago really worthy of
the name, about four kilometers long, a green emerald jewel in an otherwise
barren crown of stone. There were just eleven men here. Their small military
footprint was more symbolic than anything else, but it was enough for the
moment and China now controlled the Diaoyutai Islands.

The
troops quickly ranged along the shore, finding and tearing down any vestige of
Japanese occupation. There was not much to find. A group of right wing
activists had managed to plant a few rising sun flags weeks ago, and a small
white tower that looked like a miniature oil derrick. Beneath it they had
gathered stones and rocks scattered on the shore and piled them up into a
makeshift wall, a stubborn symbolic fortress that the Chinese soon tore down
along with the flags.

There
was very little else to speak of on the islands…the birds, the rocks, the
scattered vegetation. Later, when the dispute was decided, men would come with
survey ships, drilling rigs and other gear, and plans to erect more steel
framed oil platforms that might dwarf the smaller islands in the group. That
was the essence of it all. The islands really had very little to do with it.

At
the moment, however, other men were on the way in two flights of
Seahawk
helicopters launching from the
Akagi
. Two F-35
Lightings
would
lead the way in with a third on high top cover and a second
shotai
of three more ready on short notice. The helos were coming in low on the water
to minimize and hide their radar cross section as much as possible, but 150
kilometers to the west the Chinese had a KJ-2000 Airborne Early Warning plane
up, with third generation technology that even allowed it to find and track the
Japanese F-35s—or so it was claimed. The helos were seen on approach, and a
warning relayed to Wang Fu Jing aboard the
Lanzhou
. Now it remained to
be seen whether China would treat the coming incursion as just another
standoff, a show of force by the other side to pacify national sentiment back
home, or if it would be treated as an imminent threat to his assets and troops
already deployed in the region.

His
orders were also very clear and in certain conflict with those of his
adversary: occupy the Diaoyutai Islands, establish a signals and observation
post there, remove all accouterments and personnel of any foreign national,
oppose or detain any force attempting to violate the territorial waters of the
People’s Republic of China.

Modern
air/sea warfare was not what it once was. The concept of intercepting an enemy
at sea and closing the range to fight a gun battle or even launch an air strike
was long ago obsolete. The first battle opponents would fight was one of
knowing exactly where the opponent was and what assets he brought to the fight
so they could be properly targeted and “neutralized.” It was now a world where
techniques like low observable operations, information fusion, situational
awareness, high speed data networking, electronic countermeasures, and an
arcane calculus juggling variables of stealth, range, payload, survivability and
kill factors all combined to produce the same intended common denominator
Yoshida had been musing over—death and destruction. Planes were not made of
canvass and steel any longer, or even aluminum, but now became artful contoured
compositions of carbon nanotube reinforced epoxy. However they were made, their
intention was simple in the end—find and kill the enemy before they did the
same to you.

As
such, if one side in the looming fight crossed that thin line between the
posing of a credible threat and the actual commitment to war on his opponent,
they would have a decisive advantage. In these early hours of maneuver and
deployment, the shadows of war crept onto the stage, a dangerous kabuki theater
threatening to ignite the entire region in flame. While restraint was perhaps
the sole saving grace holding the world from the precipice of another major
conflict, it was also a damning liability in modern combat, where minutes
became seconds, and seconds nanoseconds measuring the razor thin gap between
victory and defeat.

Now
Captain Wang Fu Jing danced on the edge of that razor, trying to comprehend the
true mindset of his opponent that morning. As the sun rose in blazoning gold
over the wide Pacific, he had pushed his first pawns forward to occupy the
islands. Now came the stalwart advance of nine
Seahawk
helicopters,
followed by a deadly knight with a
shotai
of
three JF-35
Lightning
fighters in the blue skies above.

He
knew what was coming, and reasoned that these helicopters could carry no more
than a full platoon of naval infantry, but it would be enough to best the
single squad of sixteen men he had deployed from his lone Z-9 helicopter. The
two helos on his escorting frigates had been assigned to ASW roles and were
also up that morning, with buoys deployed and dipping sonar ready to seek out
enemy submarines.

If
he allowed these men to approach and land their troops, what would they do?
Would they merely confront his men in a glorified staring contest, or would
they dare attack? In that event he knew his men would resist, and then it would
come down to simple numbers, and he would lose. Once the Japanese had regained
control of the islands, these very same helicopters would soon be hovering over
the frigate
Shouyang
where it held the Japanese coast guard cutter
Howo
hostage in the shadow of the main island. By
allowing the enemy to land he would also be handing the decision to engage in
combat to the Lieutenants and Sergeants on the islands. Somehow that did not
suit his temperament that morning. He was Captain, and
he
would decide.
His second frigate
Weifang
, was out in front screening his flagship and
ready with a 32 cell VLS system bristling with Hongqi-16B SAMs.

He
bit his lip, considered the unacceptable alternative of seeing his marines
killed or captured, the
Howo
freed, his ships
forced to sail about the islands in frustrated anger and watch the Japanese
flag rising there again, and he decided to even the odds.

* * *

Weifang
bared its teeth at 09:20 hours. The ship was named for the windy city of colorful
kites in China, yet it was not flying kites that morning. Instead the ‘Red
Flags’ were up, two cells of six H-16 SAMs each snapped up from the forward
deck and bit into the cool morning air, intent on finding and killing prey.
They accelerated rapidly to Mach 4.0 in a high arc, radars searching for
targets coming low and slow over the sea, but the
Seahawks
were at the
extreme low end of their engagement envelope. The missiles yearned for
unambiguous open sky where they could soar as high as 82,000 feet. When
declined to low altitude targets their effectiveness left something to be
desired against anything under thirty feet, and the helos were coming in right
on the deck.

The
Japanese flight of nine
Seahawks
then bloomed with an array of countermeasures.
Jammers, radar decoys, and radar cross section modification technologies all
came into play, along with the old standby, a barrage of metalized glass fibers
called chaff to create a visual smoke screen of sorts where electronic eyes
were concerned. Nine of the first twelve missiles were fooled or spoofed, three
were not, and that meant that nine
Seahawks
quickly became seven
Seahawks
,
with one of those damaged but still able to fly
.

Ten
kilometers out the surviving choppers suddenly stopped, hovered in a breathless
moment of vulnerability, using the tiny island outcrop of
Okiniokita-Iwa
as a screen. The Japanese Marines quickly deployed lightweight inflatable swift
boats, and then Marines slid down the ropes with well rehearsed precision, six
to eight men to a boat. They huddled low, and the motors sputtered to life as
they began flopping in toward the big Island of Peace. The Seahawks veered off,
knowing their life span against successive volleys of SAMs would not allow them
much more time, but
Weifang
suddenly had other worries.