Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 06 (63 page)

 
          
The
lead bomber in each ten-plane formation carried two Hai-Yang- 3 cruise missiles
on external fuselage hardpoints. The HY-3 was a massive 6,600-pound missile
powered by a rocket engine. Once programmed with the target coordinates and
navigation and flight information dumped into the missile s onboard computers,
the missiles were released. Seconds after launch, a solid-fuel rocket engine
propelled the missile past the speed of sound; then a ramjet engine deployed
from the missile and automatically ignited. The HY-3 missile climbed to 40,000
feet and accelerated to almost four times the speed of sound in just a few
seconds. At over 2,000 miles per hour, the missile covered sixty miles in less
than twelve seconds . . .

 
          
...
and each HY-3 missile carried a small low-yield nuclear warhead.

 
          
The
first missile worked perfectly, exploding five miles over
Penghu
Island
, the main island in the
Pescadores
Island
archipelago, and creating a bright nuclear
flash that blinded dozens of unwary, unprotected Taiwanese pilots and flattened
most aboveground structures on
Penghu
Island
. The nuclear burst also released an
electromagnetic wave that disrupted communications and damaged unprotected
electronic circuits for almost a hundred miles in all directions. The second
HY-3 missile had been programmed the same as the first to be used as a backup,
so it was merely destroyed by the blast of its brother.

 
          
Three
of the follow-on Chinese H-6 bombers were damaged by the nuclear blast and had
to turn back for home, but seven of its wingmen survived the shock wave,
intense flash, and electromagnetic pulse and raced in to their target. The lead
bomber that had carried the HY-3 missiles carried 12,000 pounds of gravity
weapons in its bomb bay; the others who had not been carrying cruise missiles
held 19,000 pounds of bombs. The fires on
Penghu
and
Yuweng
Islands
, the two main fortified islands in the
Pescadores
, made initial target location easy, and the
H-6’s bombardiers picked out the crucial military targets with ease. The lead
bomber began the attack with four 2,000-pound high-explosive bombs, cratering
the naval yard, headquarters buildings, radar sites, and fixed coastal air and
ship defense sites. Two of the follow-on bombers also used large high-explosive
bombs, while the rest followed with eighteen 1,000- pound cluster bombs, which
scattered thousands of antipersonnel bomblets and anti-vehicle mines throughout
the islands.

 
          
With
the outer air defense structure collapsed, the attack on the Taiwanese home
island
of
Formosa
itself could begin. The northern attack
group launched nuclear-armed Hai-Ying-3 missiles at the Republic of Chinas air
force base at Hsinchu, just forty miles southwest of the Taiwanese capital of
Taipei, and at the air force base at Taichung; the southern strike package
launched nuclear HY-3 missiles at the air force base at Tainan and another
missile at the Taiwanese naval facility at Tsoying, just a few miles north of
the large industrial city of Kaohsiung. All of the attacks were devastating.
Even after suffering heavy losses when the bombers flew close to surviving air defense
sites, more than two-thirds of the Chinese H-6 bombers survived and
successfully attacked their targets with bombs and cluster munitions.

 
          
The
Chinese bomber pilots were not nearly as well-trained as their Western
counterparts, and they flew even fewer hours than American crews even in an age
of deep cutbacks in flying time, so their bombing accuracy was poor—less than
50 percent of their bombs hit their assigned targets. But the high-altitude
nuclear airbursts had done most of the devastation already—four Taiwanese
military bases destroyed or substantially damaged; one small, two medium, and
one large city were ravaged. Most of the Taiwanese fighters that had launched
to chase down the Chinese J-6 and J-7 fighters suddenly found themselves without
a base to return home to; some did not have the fuel to return to alternate
landing sites, and their pilots were forced to eject over uninhabited areas of
the Taiwanese countryside as their fuel-starved planes flamed out.

 
          
Admiral
Sun followed the H-6 strike package in his H-7 Gangfang bomber, arriving over
his orbit point northwest of the
Pescadores
just as the second and third H-6 bombers started their attacks. Wearing his
gold- lined goggles to avoid any flashblindness damage by the nuclear bursts on
the horizon, Admiral Sun Ji Guoming surveyed the results of his sneak attack.
He could see every nuclear explosion clearly: a bright ball of light like a
mini-sun illuminated every cloud in the sky, lighting up the
island
of
Formosa
and making it appear like a huge photograph
lying on the surface of the ocean. Every detail of the tall eastern mountains,
every river valley, every aberration of the vast western coastal plains could
be seen for a brief instant in spectacular, frightening relief before being swallowed
up by the darkness again. Although not nearly as big as their nuclear cousins,
the big non-nuclear high-explosive bomb attacks looked like large, bright red
and yellow flashbulbs, followed by the glow of ground fires; and the cluster
bomb attacks on Taichung and Tainan could be seen as a line of tiny pinpoint
flashes of light that streaked across the darkness far below.

 
          
“Radar
reports rebel fighters launching from
Taipei
, Admiral,” the copilot aboard Suns H-7
bomber reported. “One or two at a time, disorganized flights.”

 
          
“Probably
escaping, not coming after us unless one wants to be a hero looking to try to
ram one of our bombers in the darkness,” Sun commented. He never even
considered that his aircraft might be in danger— with those nuclear explosions
ripping into the arms and legs of the Nationalist dragon, the rebels seemed
completely defeated already. “In any event, our bombers will escape. Where are
the returning flights of rebel fighters heading?”

 
          
“North,
towards
Taipei
,” the copilot responded.

 
          
“Excellent,”
Sun said. The rebel air forces obviously didn’t feel like fighting after
learning that several Chinese bombers had slipped through their fingers and
that their homeland had just been ripped apart by nuclear and high-explosive bombs.
Chiang
Kai-shek
International
Airport
and Sung Shan Air Base near
Taipei
were probably the only large air bases
surviving west of the
Chungyang
Mountains
.

 
          
They
would make easy targets for follow-on strikes. The third wave of Sun’s attack
on
Taiwan
should be launching now—M-9 mobile ballistic missile attacks from
secret presurveyed launch sites in
Jiangxi
and
Zhejiang
Provinces
. The M-9 missile had a range of about three
hundred miles, and Sun had targeted at least six missiles on each of the
surviving major civilian and military airfields in
Taiwan
. The missiles were not as accurate as
bombers, but they did not need to be—the first two missiles targeted against
all but the airfields around Taipei had nuclear warheads, again programmed for
high-altitude airbursts so as to spread out the blast effects of the warheads
and minimize radioactive fallout and residue at ground zero.

 
          
The
volleys of missiles aimed at Chiang Kai-shek International, all non-nuclear,
should ensure that the airport could not be used to launch military strikes
against the mainland. Sun was very careful not to explode any nuclear weapons
over
Taipei
. The Nationalist capital was still the
capital of the
province
of
T’aiwan
, the twenty-third province of the People’s
Republic of
China
, and it would not do to kill any loyal Communist Chinese. He would need
the support of the people to complete his task of reuniting the island with its
mainland motherland.

 
          
In
the meantime, an armada of two hundred Q-5 Nanchang fighters, copies of the Soviet
Mikoyan-Gurevich-19 attack plane, would be arriving from
Guangzhou
,
Nanjing
,
Wuhu
, and Wuhan Air Bases to
Fuzhou
. At daybreak they would conduct non-nuclear
mopping-up strikes against all the Taiwanese military bases, loaded with a
long-range drop tank and two 2,000-pound bombs or cluster munitions. One by
one, they would attack any major surviving targets.

 
          
Sun
wanted more Xian H-6 bombers for these attacks, but he had been allotted only
the H-6s used by the People’s Liberation Army Navy for this raid—the air
force’s H-6s were still held in reserve, committed to long-range nuclear
attacks against targets in Russia, India, and Vietnam. Perhaps after President
Jiang and the Central Military Committee learned of his success over the rebel
Nationalists, Sun thought, it might be possible to convince them to let him
have the rest of the H-6s so he could continue the air offensive against
Taiwan
. With most of the rebel’s long-range air
defense radar system down, the H-6 bombers would stand a better chance against
the surviving Taiwanese air defenses.

 
          
Then,
he thought happily, perhaps the Paramount Leader would allow him the honor of
destroying
China
’s other regional enemies and adversaries. Defeat was unthinkable at
this moment.-

 
          
The
nuclear-armed M-9 ballistic missiles easily reached the military bases on the
east side of the island, hitting Lotung, Hualien, and Taitung. Sun could see
the bright flashes of light far on the horizon as the missiles hit their
targets. The accuracy of the M-9 missile was poor, perhaps one- half to one
mile miss distance after a three-hundred-mile flight—poor by most standards,
but perfectly acceptable with nuclear warheads.

 
          
Sun
never once thought about the devastation he was creating down there. The rebel
Nationalists were bugs to be squashed, nothing more. Sun truly believed that
the vast majority of citizens on the island of Formosa wanted to rejoin their
long-lost friends and families on the mainland, and that the subversive
Nationalist government, supported by the terrorist rebel military, was
preventing reunification by declaring their so- called “independence,” as if
that were possible or even thinkable. Although most would probably prefer the
less intrusive, capitalist society that existed there now, Sun believed that
they would accept a Communist government as long as all the Chinese people were
reunited. Sun was killing only filthy rebels, not fellow Chinese. If it took a
nuclear weapon to reunite his motherland, so be it.

 
          
Sun
Ji Guoming did not delude himself—he knew that it was very unlikely that rocket
or bombing raids alone would destroy even a substantial portion of the rebels’
military force. He knew that the rebels had perfected the art of building vast
underground shelters and hiding huge numbers of troops, equipment, and supplies
within the eastern mountains. Quemoy Dao had turned many of their 1950s- and
1960s-era underground shelters into tourist museums, so it was possible to see
the quality construction of some of these complexes—they were certainly strong
enough to withstand any kind of shelling or bombing, except perhaps for a
direct groundburst hit with a nuclear weapon. Sun had no plans to use nuclear
groundbursts in any attack. If they had any desire at all to occupy the land
they took back from the Nationalists, it was not a good idea to make that
ground radioactive.