“The remaining aircraft at Ellsworth will deploy after six hours’ crew rest under the same system — bombers go direct with weapons in ferry configuration, fighters RON at Hickam. Our OPLAN specifies eighty percent of the First Air Battle Wing on the ramp at Andersen within twenty-four hours. I think we can do better: I think we can have eighty percent of the Wing flying in combat in twenty-four hours. That is my goal. I know this is our first actual combat deployment, and we’re bound to be inventing procedures as we go along, but this staff has practiced these procedures now for several months, so I think we can do it. Questions?” No reply. “Next meeting in one hour; that should be our last meeting before we start launching planes. I expect the first group to be ready to go by then. Let’s get to it, ladies and gentlemen — move!”
Jarrel watched as the members of the First Air Battle Wing rapidly filed out of the auditorium. He knew the danger these men and women were facing, and he didn’t envy them. His own father had been killed in action in Korea in 1953, and he had flown over five hundred combat sorties as an F-5 and A-7 pilot during two tours in Vietnam. He’d seen a lot of battle, a lot of death.
No, he didn’t envy them at all. But they had a job to do, just as he did. He turned and headed back to his office. “God be with them,” he said to no one but himself.
There was no mistaking its identity or its purpose — few aircraft in the world could fly like this. “Identity confirmed, sir,” the Combat Information Center officer on the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy destroyer
The commander of the
“Speed six-five-zero kilometers per hour, altitude… altitude now twenty-three thousand meters.”
The destroyer captain could do nothing but smile in astonishment. Twenty-three thousand meters — that was almost twice the altitude that any Chinese fighter could safely go, and very close to the upper-altitude limit of the Hong Qian-61 surface-to-air missile system on the Chinese frigates stationed in the Philippine Sea. “No response to our warning broadcasts, I assume,” the captain said.
“None, sir. Continuing west as before, on course for Davao.”
“Then we will make good on our promise,” the captain said eagerly. “Have
“Yes, sir. Destroyer
“Very well. Let us see if we can get ourselves an American spy plane. Range to target?”
“Eighty-three kilometers and closing.”
“Begin engagement procedures at seventy-five kilometers.” The frigates had only the shorter-range HQ-61 SAM system, but four of the five destroyers in the Philippine Sea and eastern Celebes Sea area had the Hong Qian-91 surface- to-air missile, with four times the range of the HQ-61 — and the U-2 was coming within range of
The U-2 was being tracked by another destroyer,
They were going to make their first kill since October first, which, ironically, was Revolution Day. This would serve as a warning to all other American aircraft: stay away from the Philippines.
“Bomb doors coming open, stand by… bomb doors open.”
This had to be the first time in Patrick McLanahan’s recent memory that he was going to open the bomb doors on his B-2 Black Knight stealth bomber — and not attack something. He and Major Henry Cobb had already flown their B-2 nearly two thousand miles, right into the heart of what seemed like half the Chinese Navy, all to carry two bulbous objects that would not go “boom.”
