“All ships in range,” said Admiral Sun Wei, “fire YJ-18’s!”
His brave J-20 pilots had delivered the goods.
The Chinese fleet was coming in three waves of four ships each, the first two waves being all destroyers, the last having two frigates and two older destroyers. The first wave, led by Nanchang, had no less than 100 YJ-18’s to throw, and it targeted virtually every ship in the British fleet with four to eight missiles, 52 in that salvo.
Seeing this was his supreme moment for action, Admiral Sun Wei was going in hard. His second wave had 64 YJ-18’s, and they put out enough to increase the total attack to 100 missiles. Wave 3 ships were held in reserve.
The word came loud and hot from the forward radar picket. “Backstand, Whalerider. Bigstorm… Gorilla, Gorilla. Inbound now! Over.”
Bigstorm was improvisation on the pilot’s part, but the code Gorilla was milspeak for a large, undetermined hostile force. Wells knew exactly what it must be, and raised a finger to Captain Kemp.
“Go get them, Pete,” he said, his eyes hard and determined.
“Right sir!”
That sent down the order for all ready flights to launch in defense of the fleet, and Whalerider would be calling the tune to coordinate the interception.
“Sundog 6, come right to 270 and descend to Angels 30. Cleared hot. Skybolt, come right to 260, hold present altitude and engage. Seabat, Saber, come on up and join the party—Angels 36, and standby.”
There were now two dozen F-35’s up off those carriers, and they were carrying 96 Meteors in their weapons bays. Two of them would get that last J-20, effectively blinding the Chinese fleet again, but their missiles had already been programmed, and they were on the way in.
The fighters could see them coming on radar, and moved to engage. They sent their Meteors out hunting, seeing the explosions down low on the sea as they began to get hits, but the kill ratio was far less than hoped for. Sundog and Skybolt were only able to get 14 kills, still leaving 86 Vampires for Saber and Seabat flights in the second line of defense. They would do just a little better, getting 26 kills as the cruise missile storm closed to within 100 miles of the fleet. The fighter defense had knocked down 40% of the incoming vampires, but that still left 60 missiles out there looking for targets.
All the Royal Navy ships now turned on their radars, and as it happened, it was the American built ESSM that had been a special buy for Prince of Wales that locked on first and fired, when the Vampires were about 20 miles out. Admiral Wells was watching on radar, seeing a group of seven missiles accelerate for their high speed run, and jog left, away from the fleet. They had lost their targets, and seemed off on an aimless hunt for steel on the sea.
The remainder tracked on in, their target data now being updated by that KJ-200, which had finally gotten in range. The battle opened in earnest, the speed demons raging in, the British destroyers throwing everything they had at them. At 16:15, four Vampires came lancing in towards the heart of the fleet. York was able to get two of them with Sea Darts, and an ESSM off Prince of Wales got a third, but the last was too quick, streaking right past the bow of York, and finding the frigate Lancaster, which was cruising just a little over a mile off the starboard bow of Prince of Wales. There were groans when the frigate blew up, all of its useless Sea Ceptors just sitting there in the VLS cells, never able to fire.
For the next three hot minutes, the defense held, the missiles finding and killing the Sizzlers as they broke the horizon. Where there had once been blue sky, the sea was now hazed over with a grey-white cloud of smoke, which erupted with yellow flashes as the missiles found their targets. Broadsword was in the thick of things and getting many kills, the one new Type 31 frigate on hand, also built with the ESSM.
It was a white knuckled affair as Wells watched the Vampires raging in like Zulus against those four brave destroyers holding their thin red line, but this was not to be a debacle the likes of Isandlwana. The defense was holding, getting one kill after another, though it came to guns and chaff on more than one occasion. The last three ready fighters on Prince of Wales screamed off the deck, hoping to get their Meteors into the fight. They roared out to get after the final four missiles, killing two just as they were starting their high speed run. The last two came right at Daring, but the destroyer still had Asters, and swatted them down.
As the thunder of those last two explosions faded, Wells breathed a sigh of relief. Yes, he had lost another bloody frigate, but he had just enough of a defense left to hold the line, and now those 40 missiles that had been killed by the F-35’s before the YJ-18’s entered their final mad dash truly mattered.
“Tell the fighters to get that bloody AEW plane out there,” he ordered. “Boats away for search and rescue on Lancaster. Captain Kemp, what have we got left that can reach the Chinese?”
“Just twelve Sea Hawks, sir, and twenty SSM’s in the Argos Fire.”
“Let them fly. Let’s see if we can put them on the defensive, and buy some time to get fighters rearmed. How many planes are ready?”
“Only three, sir. The rest will turn over in a couple hours.”
“Very well. I’ll want a report from all destroyers on SAM counts.”
That was the crucial factor now in the mind of Admiral Wells—defense. How could he stop the bleeding, the loss of one ship after another? It would not take long to get that SAM update, and the news was grim. Daring had 15 Aster-30’s remaining, and Dragon only four. Broadsword had eight ESSM’s left. The two Type 42 destroyers still had plenty of Sea Darts, but being rail launched missiles, they could not volley fire like a VLS capable ship. That was a thin shield, particularly given the alert at 16:30 that the enemy had launched a second strike. Wells learned that only Argos Fire had any substantial defensive capability left. In modifying the ship, Fairchild & Company had doubled down on the VLS bays, so it still had 77 Asters available.
Commander Dean got the order to take Argos Fire west of the main fleet, and form a single ship screen. The carriers had but four fighters ready, but they would launch. These measures had to be enough, thought Wells. We simply cannot suffer any further losses here, and after this engagement, I must think on how to get this fleet to a safe harbor.
At 16:45, a lone F-35 had been given direct orders to ignore the incoming Vampires and forage ahead on military speed to get the Chinese KJ-200. It raced west, easily finding the AEW plane, and put two Meteors on it to end its brief watch. It was a very significant blow, because small circles of uncertainty now appeared around the last reported positions of all the British ships. The second enemy strike still had 42 missiles inbound, but now they had lost their long range radar picket, and the missiles would only fly towards the last reported position of their targets until they got close enough to use their own short range sensors.
When Wells learned the AEW plane had been killed, he clenched his fist, hoping he might have finally blinded the Chinese Fleet. Were there any more J-20’s about? If so, none had been detected in the last twenty minutes.
The air alert sounded. The first Vampires began to break the horizon. The last of the F-35’s exhausted their missiles to take down as many as they could. It was now 37 Vampires against whatever was left in those VLS cells, and much would ride on the Argos Fire, along with that ghost of a chance that the enemy may have lost their target fix. As the Vampires tracked in, many were north of the fleet, but some were close enough to turn and retarget. The SAM’s were leaping off every deck that had them, but the defense was just not good enough to stop a pair of leakers from getting past the destroyers. They found the frigate Birmingham, and Prince of Wales, their tails bright with fire as they attacked.