I could arm my F-35’s with SPEARS, enough being left for one more strike, but we still need those planes for fleet defense. They are my only shield now if we are attacked again. If I turn for Diego Garcia, there will be missiles waiting for me there. That’s where the Yanks are heading, and god knows we need them. So that’s where we will need to be, and soon. This Chinese Admiral could turn about and renew his pursuit at any time. Are they really going home?
“Captain,” he said. “The fleet will come about to a heading of 170 northeast. We’re going to Diego Garcia.”
As he watched the big bow of Prince of Wales begin that turn Wells knew he may have just been spared the ignominious fate of commanding the worst disaster in Royal Navy history. Ten ships were lost, and his flagship also bruised. His destroyers were empty, and the SAM’s on his frigates were useless. If the Chinese had hit him with another big salvo….
Yet he was going to escape. I was a near run thing, he thought, yes, a very near run thing, but we’re going to live to fight again.
A Joint US/UK enterprise, Diego Garcia was truly one of the most strategic military bases in the world. A reef atoll, it had a large deep water lagoon that could harbor ships of any size, and in great numbers. The weather was good, as cyclones never formed in this region, and there was also a 4000 meter runway that could handle everything up to the size of a B-52.
When Wells brought in his weary fleet at 06:00 on the 24th of November, he was heartened to know that the Royal Navy kept a permanent task force on station there, consisting of the light carrier Ark Royal, Type 31 frigate Brazen, and two Type-23 frigates, Kenya and one named for its permanent home base, Diego Garcia. Those two ships had gotten the word from Whale Island that they were to receive modifications, a modular system that would give them the American RIM-162 ESSM.
It came from the older Mark 29 launchers, which were deck mounted and wholly self-contained. This precluded the need for complex wiring for targeting radars, and so two eight cell launchers were placed on Diego Garcia and Kenya, giving each frigate 16 ESSM’s in addition to their 32 Sea Ceptors. It wasn’t much, but those missiles could mean the difference between life or death for the ship when targeted by a high speed supersonic missile like the YJ-18. After testing at sea, the system was shown to work well, and so as soon as Wells put into port, he asked the American Commandant if his last two frigates could also be updated with the Mark 29. As it happened, there were several more of those launchers in storage, as the US had removed them from ships in earlier upgrades to their own vessels.
The wisdom of US naval designers was now being proved in the crucible of this war. The LHA Makin Island was also here, with Destroyers Meade and McClelland, and Wells was impressed by the power they could bring to sea. Their Mark 41 VLS cells could be loaded with a wide range of missiles, and these ships were each mounted with 40 Tomahawk MMT’s, 24 of the new US Standard Missile-6, and quad packed ESSM’s numbering 96 missiles.
“Now there’s a destroyer worth the name,” said Wells after touring Meade. “Our Daring class are fine ships, but they were built in a long and welcome stretch of peacetime for us at sea. In that interval, they seemed enough to do the job for us, but these American destroyers are literally twice as powerful. They were built for war, just like those of our adversaries.”
Wells observed that the US LHA carrier had been given both the ESSM as a medium range defense, and then the shorter range RIM-116, good out to ten miles. Having those two circles of defense around it made the ship much more survivable.
“If we can take a leaf from the US designers, we would be making a step in the right direction,” said Wells. “Let’s get Norfolk and Kent refitted with those Mark 29 ESSM launchers as soon as possible. And we must move mountains to get Prince of Wales fully operational, particularly those elevators that took damage when we were hit.
“Yes sir,” said Captain Kemp, a short, sandy haired man. “The engineers are right on that. We’ll get it sorted out. At least it was good to know that Prince of Wales can take a punch.”
“Indeed,” said Wells. “Let’s make it so she doesn’t have to take another. The Americans will be here soon, and that should buck up morale.”
“Yes sir, the Roosevelt group is 450 miles to the east, and with three more of these destroyers, and two of their cruisers. They should arrive in about 18 hours. After that, we’ll have the combined Australian/US support group—27 ships, sir, and ten warships in that group. The rest are hauling war supplies and US Marines.”
“We’re going to need them,” said Wells. “The one thing that will break this whole situation wide open would be for the Iraqis to get scratchy and go over the border into Kuwait. That’s what this whole affair is about. Unfortunately, we’ve failed to open the sea route from Cape Town, but things will change.”
“How do you see it, sir?” asked the Captain.
“Well Pete, When the Yanks get here, we’ll have muscle—real fighting power at sea, and enough to face down anything the Chinese have out here. We’ll move towards Oman, of course, because that’s where that troop convoy had to go, and more. If we don’t at least seize control of the Arabian Sea, then it really doesn’t matter that Cape Town can’t send ships north. So that’s where the fight will be. We may have lost the battle for the Indian Ocean, but something tells me that if we win this next fight for the Arabian Sea, we can reverse the whole lot in our favor.”
“It will rattle their cage if we move towards Oman.”
“That’s an understatement,” said Wells. “I think this Chinese Admiral that just handed us our hat will get order to move north, probably to the Horn of Africa. The Chinese have ships at Djibouti and Aden, and then they have a squadron at Gwadar, Pakistan, and another task force at Sri Lanka. It was a sad day when the Royal Navy left Colombo. Now the Chinese have the place.”
“Hard lessons, sir, but that was decades ago. Who could have foreseen all this? In 1990, the last thing we had on our minds was a showdown with the Chinese Navy out here.”
“True enough,” said the Admiral. “Well, a good slice of this war is going to be fought in this next campaign. If we fail to clear the way to Oman, then Saudi Arabia is completely isolated. We’ll combine with the Yanks to make a good go of things, which is why I wanted us here, and not at Port Louis on Mauritius. And there’s one more thing that might factor into this equation. The Indian Navy.”
Wells folded his arms. “Pakistan has opened Karachi to the Chinese, and I have no doubt they’ll be moving war supplies for this fight there as we speak. India and Pakistan are not friendly, to say the least. I would be very surprised if Washington and London aren’t burning the diplomatic midnight oil to get India into this war on our side. If they manage that, it could make all the difference. They had the strongest Navy in the Indian Ocean region, until the Chinese settled into all these bases. If they come over to our side of this argument, I think we can win this thing.”