If they had a crack in their reactor and they could not get it under control, then they might have a containment breach. The ship could quickly become irradiated, or worse, the reactor could meltdown. In either case, they would lose the ship.
“Do what you need to do, but we need to save the ship. Is that understood?!” Admiral Kawano yelled at everyone in the CIC. He got up and walked towards the bridge. He needed to see the situation around them with his own eyes and not on a computer screen.
When he got to the bridge and surveilled the fleet around him, he saw one of the PLAN carriers listing hard to one side; it looked like the ship was going to sink. Emergency rafts could be seen inflating all around the ship. Several of the escort ships were moving closer to help pick up the survivors. Looking to his left, he saw his sister ship starting to sit lower in the water as well. When he inquired about it, one of the officers on the bridge said it appeared they had been hit by one torpedo. He was not sure if the ship would sink, but it looked like it was taking on a lot of water by how much lower in the water it was.
Admiral Kawano knew the fleet was in trouble. They had just lost one of their four carriers and it looked like they may lose two more. The loss of the fighters from those carriers would seriously diminish their ability to launch enough cruise missiles to overwhelm the American fleet.
“Sir, Admiral Xi is on the radio for you,” said one of the communications officers as he handed him a handset.
Admiral Kawano could hear a lot of commotion on the other end of the line as he placed the handset to his ear. “Sir, this is Admiral Kawano, what is your situation?”
“Admiral Kawano, we took two torpedo hits. The first one hit our keel; sixty seconds later, a second torpedo apparently hit the exact same spot and nearly ripped my carrier in half. We are going down. I’m transferring over to the carrier Moa. How bad is your ship hit?”
“We are in a similar situation. I believe we can get the flooding under control, but we have a larger problem. Two of our five drive propeller shafts have been destroyed, but worse, it appears we have a crack in our reactor. The engineering room is not sure if they can seal it just yet,” the Admiral responded.
Admiral Xi didn’t say anything for a moment “Admiral…if you are going to lose your ship, then we will need to turn the fleet around and head back to Hawaii.”
Kawano knew that that was the best military decision to make; he also knew it would likely be the end of his military career. The new JDF/PLA command structure did not tolerate failure, no matter whose fault it was.
Two hours went by, and then it became clear that Admiral Kawano’s supercarrier was not going to survive. The crack in the reactor was larger than they had initially suspected. They were able to shut it down, but it would take months of repair to fix. This was time that they obviously did not have. They were also dead in the water with no power.
With the fleet in the predicament they were in, it was determined that all of the mobile ships would have to pick up the survivors and head back to Hawaii. There they would have to prepare to meet the American fleet, hoping that the assistance of land-based aircraft would help their situation.
Battle for the Skies
Admiral Stonebridge surveyed an interactive map display at the CIC. “Captain Mason, I want our aircraft (including the F41s) ready to engage the enemy aircraft and ships as soon as the battleships get in range of Pearl Harbor and the enemy fleet.”
The surprise attack by the Seawolf two days earlier had thrown the entire enemy plan off. One Chinese carrier had been sunk, and a second Japanese carrier had been disabled. The remaining two carriers and their support ships where loitering around Pearl Harbor and would obviously rely on land-based air support. As the US aircraft began to assemble over the American fleet, the enemy air armada also began to gather, preparing to meet them. The Japanese/Chinese forces would be caught off guard once they realized that the F41s had been brought down from Alaska to participate in this fight.
As the American F35s and F38s began to engage the enemy aircraft, the F41s swooped in to attack the enemy from the rear. Then the two American battleships moved into range to use their railguns and pulse beam lasers, and they joined in the fight. The Battle of Hawaii lasted over two hours with thousands upon thousands of anti-ship missiles and drone-swarms being fired at both sides. The F41s immediately made their presence known and began to shoot down dozens and then hundreds of the enemy anti-ship missiles heading towards the American fleet.
The U.S. Air Force, which had also been developing micro-drone technology, was able to provide some useful advice on how to tell the difference between a micro-drone and an anti-ship missile. Within minutes of the battle starting, the radar operators were indeed able to tell the difference between the micro-drones and actual cruise missiles. This was quickly relayed to the AWACs above the fleet and the targeting computers of the American fleet defenses.
Nearly one-third of the contacts being tracked were micro-drones, which were essentially harmless if they impacted against one of the battleships or supercarriers. Had the radar operators not been able to tell the difference between them, then the likelihood of stopping the enemy missile swarm would have been greatly reduced. Hundreds of lives were going to be saved because of this critical intelligence victory.
By the evening of January 20th, the American Navy once again controlled the waters around the Hawaiian Islands. Now it was time to develop a plan on how to recapture the land on the islands; however, that would have to wait until the West Coast had been fully secured.
Disrupting Traffic
Major Lia Michaels was the squadron commander for the B5 drone squadron that was going to unleash a major cruise missile raid on the Central Asian rail and road network. Her squadron was tasked with launching their payload of X59 scramjet cruise missiles to go after the Chinese, Indian and Russian rail and bridge networks that connected the three countries in some of the most remote parts of Asia. Major Michaels’ first target was the rail line that cut through the mountains along Lake Baikal in Russia. Her squadron was going to be hitting numerous rail bridges and tunnels that ran along the trans-Siberian rail line connecting China and East Russia in order to disrupt the primary route that the Indian reinforcements were going to travel.
After five hours of flying to her launch site, her missiles had locked onto their targets and in quick succession, she fired her bomber’s four missiles. She turned to head back to the base, but then she heard over the radio that several of her bomber pilots were reporting enemy fighters in the area. Two of her pilots said they had been hit before they could launch their missiles. The other seven pilots reported a successful launch of their missiles, though two more of them were hunted down by enemy fighters and destroyed. The bombing mission was an overall success, but her squadron had lost four of their nine aircraft. Fortunately, they were drones, so none of the invaluable pilots had been lost during the mission.
The goal of the raid was to destroy as much of the transportation infrastructure linking Russia and China together as possible. This would greatly hinder the ability of the Axis powers from reinforcing each other and transporting needed manpower and material. It would also reduce the ability of the Indian army to get involved in any meaningful way in the war.