To the east, the task force’s combat air patrol was losing aircraft faster than replacements arrived. As the Indian aircraft whittled away at what remained of the task force’s combat air patrol, Sites spotted another wave of thirty aircraft inbound from the Indian carriers. He studied the red icons; the numbers didn’t add up.
The task force’s F/A-18s had splashed over thirty of India’s seventy aircraft, yet the Common Operational Picture still showed seventy aloft. Sites finally realized what the Indians were doing. Although the American task force was beyond range of India’s land-based tactical fighters, naval aircraft could land on the three Indian carriers and refuel. The Indians were ferrying additional aircraft aboard their carriers, replacing their losses, something the American aircraft carriers couldn’t do in their current location. As American airpower attrited and Indian forces were replenished, the battle would tilt rapidly in favor of India.
It was time to vacate the area. The task force’s first objective had been accomplished, destroying the Russian surface Navy. The carriers could retreat and conduct repairs, then reengage with additional ASW assets to deal with the Russian submarines. Sites examined the Common Operational Picture on his display, searching for an exit route. Russian submarines were pressing the task force’s northern and western sectors, with the Indian Navy to the east. That left the south, although there was no guarantee the Indian Navy’s submarines weren’t closing in from that direction. However, there were several American submarines on the back side of the task force, guarding against a Russian or Indian end-around.
As Sites’s eyes shifted to the narrow escape route to the south, yellow surface ship icons appeared on his display. Confusion worked across his face, and when the icons turned red, beads of cold sweat formed on his brow. A new enemy strike group had arrived, cutting off the retreat path for the American task force. As he wondered what ships they were, his Common Operational Picture tagged the contact in the center of the enemy formation as CNS Liaoning, the formidable Chinese aircraft carrier and sister ship of Kuznetsov, sold to China after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Son of a bitch!
Sites slammed his fist onto his console. He’d been told the Chinese had agreed to remain neutral. Now, with the outcome of the battle tilting away from the United States, China’s entry into the conflict was the nail in the coffin.
Red icons appeared beside the Russian-built carrier as its fighters launched. Ten, twenty, thirty… Liaoning’s crew was proficient, rapidly launching its air wing. When there were thirty aircraft aloft, they began their journey, moving swiftly north toward the American task force.
Sites’s shoulders sagged as he monitored the Chinese air wing’s journey. As the aircraft approached the task force’s air defense perimeter, provided by the cruisers and destroyers to the south, the Chinese fighters shifted their flight path, vectoring to the northeast. It looked as if the Chinese fighters were going to join the Indian aircraft and wipe out the remaining American combat air patrol, then penetrate the task force in the weakened sector to the east, where Indian aircraft had heavily damaged or knocked six of the surface combatants off-line.
Sites’s eyes went to the blue icons representing the damaged surface combatants. The Ticonderoga cruiser Vicksburg was still down, and another destroyer had dropped off the air warfare grid. That left two damaged destroyers in the area. They’d be overwhelmed.
As the Chinese aircraft continued toward what remained of the task force’s combat air patrol, four more F/A-18s — two from Truman and two from Reagan, were racing out to support.
Too little, too late.
When the thirty Chinese fighters closed to within missile range of the American and Indian melee, their icons switched from red to yellow. As Sites studied his display in confusion, their color changed to blue, as did the icons representing the Chinese ships to the south. The unit designation of the aircraft carrier also updated, and a wave of relief swept over Sites.
The aircraft carrier to the south wasn’t Liaoning.
It was USS Roosevelt!
86
USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Captain Dolores Gonzalez monitored the Common Operational Picture on her console in CDC, wondering what her counterparts on the other four American carriers had endured. Bush and Eisenhower had been damaged severely enough to terminate flight operations, and it looked as if Truman and Reagan were limping along. The sky above the American task force was mostly clear, aside from the air battle to the east and several dozen Super Hornets circling above Truman and Reagan—about three squadrons — waiting to refuel and rearm.
Gonzalez knew the pilots aloft were exhausted by now, while Roosevelt’s were fresh, chomping at the bit since they’d left Pearl Harbor under the cover of darkness. Several weeks ago, with the aircraft carrier’s Island superstructure reduced to twisted and molten metal by a Russian Shipwreck missile, Roosevelt had arrived at Pearl Harbor for repairs. The initial damage assessment estimated it would take six months to return the carrier to service, but Captain Debra Driza, commander of the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, had challenged her workforce, invoking USS Yorktown as inspiration.
USS Yorktown (CV-5), operating in the Pacific in May 1942, had participated in the Battle of the Coral Sea as the Allies tried to thwart Japan’s expansion across the Pacific. During the hectic battle, as dusk settled over the Pacific, six Japanese pilots incredibly mistook Yorktown for one of their own carriers and attempted to land, their mistake pointed out by Yorktown’s anti-aircraft gunners. Other Japanese pilots properly identified Yorktown, and the carrier was hit with a bomb that penetrated the Flight Deck and exploded belowdecks, causing extensive damage that experts estimated would take three months to repair.
When Allied intelligence decoded a Japanese message a few days later, learning of a major operation aimed at gaining a foothold at the northwestern tip of the Hawaiian Island chain, Admiral Chester Nimitz gathered his comparatively meager naval forces, rushing them toward Midway Island. With four Japanese heavy aircraft carriers approaching and having only Task Force 16—USS Enterprise and USS Hornet—at his disposal, Nimitz directed Yorktown be made ready to sail alongside Task Force 16. Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard workers labored around the clock, and three days later, Yorktown set sail with her sister carriers.
Captain Driza’s challenge had been met, and USS Roosevelt set sail a day behind Eisenhower and Bush as they passed Hawaii, westbound for the Indian Ocean. Roosevelt’s Island superstructure was still a molten mass of steel and her hangar bays scorched black from the fires that had raged inside. But her flight systems — catapults, arresting wires, and elevators — were operational. Shipyard tiger teams had remained aboard Roosevelt, continuing repairs as the carrier sailed across the Pacific, with the ship navigated from Secondary Control, located beneath the Flight Deck, instead of the mangled Bridge.