The commander kept the periscope up for five seconds to obtain a firing solution. He was 30g on the bow of the target. He put the periscope down. With his acoustic, electronic, and optical information matched, he opened the torpedo doors. He took the periscope up. What he saw, however, made him take it down immediately, wait ten seconds, and raise it again. The Seahawk helicopter crew had identified the periscope of a second submarine. The vessel went deep, but the helicopter crew dropped two Mk46 torpedoes. The explosion of a Romeo submarine being destroyed ripped through the water. This was the moment the commander of Ming 353 asked for his firing solution. He was 850 metres from the target.
He released the first weapon at a bearing of 90g to the target course. This was the middle torpedo of his salvo of three. The swell swept around the periscope, cutting off his view of the target. But he had already worked out the firing pattern. The next was fired 5g ahead of the bearing, the third 5g behind. He completed what is known as the zero gyro-angle shot, creating a spread of weapons to counteract either the target speeding up or turning away.
The Americans had twenty-six seconds to react. In a scrambling panic, they threw out electronic countermeasures. But the low-tech torpedoes, made up of only an engine and warhead, kept their course. The American captain began to turn the USS Peleliu to port to evade the torpedoes, but it was a useless gesture with such a lumbering vessel.
The Ming commander had set the first weapon with a proximity fuse which went off 2 metres below the hull. The explosion blew a hole in the bottom and ruptured systems in a large area of the ship. The second torpedo, with an impact fuse, had a direct hit, stopping the ship's engines. The third weapon passed in front of her bow and detonated.
The crew of a second Seahawk scrambled and took off from the USS Bunker Hill. They dropped a pattern of sonobuoys in the area of the attack and over the next three hours they found and destroyed one other Ming and two more Romeo submarines with torpedoes and depth charges. But Ming 353 and one other escaped. When the crews returned to their base on Hainan Island, they were hailed as heroes. There had been six submarines waiting to strike the USS Peleliu. Military experts debated as to how much the Chinese commanders had been inspired by the German Second World War wolf-pack tactic of stretching up to fifty U-boats in a net across the paths of Allied convoys in the Atlantic. They would often be on the surface and only dive when attacking. Some German commanders actually attacked on the surface, driving their vessels between the lines of the convoy using guns and torpedoes. The key was surprise and daring, similar to the risks taken by the commander of Ming 353. As the Dragonstrike war continued, Allied naval officers referred to the clusters of Chinese submarines as wolf-packs.
Normally a submarine commander would head away from the attack datum or area of battle. But Ming 353 went deep to 45 metres. Adopting the tactics of outdated warfare, the submarine headed towards the area of turmoil where the USS Peleliu was on fire, listing, and beginning to sink. The American helicopter pilots knew that the attacker was hiding among the debris of the sinking ship. The Ming crew could hear detonations on board and the crushing of the bulkheads under pressure. But the captain judged that Americans would never fire into sea where their compatriots were dying.
Water burst into the main decks, which were designed as huge aircraft hangars with no bulkhead divisions to seal one area off from another. The water moved back and forth in what seamen know as the free-surface effect. It sloshed in a swell from one side to the other, making the vessel more and more unstable. Unwittingly, firefighting teams added to the problems by pouring high-pressure water on fires which had broken out below decks. Pilots of three CH53-Echo helicopters managed to get airborne, cramming fifty passengers into each aircraft. Five lifeboats and two of the larger landing craft were launched. The USS Peleliu took twenty-five minutes to capsize and sink. In that short time, 585 people managed to get off the vessel. But the rest, 1,960 American servicemen, including the United States Navy captain in command and the Marine Expeditionary Unit colonel, died.
The Chinese orders were to sink only the USS Peleliu, after which the PLA believed America would pull out of South-East Asia. Ironically, the last previous major American warship to be destroyed in battle was the fleet ocean tug USS Sarsi, blown up by a mine in August 1952 during the Korean War. In that conflict, China was also the enemy.
The President's press secretary mounted the podium.
`The President will be coming down here shortly to make a statement about the sinking of the USS Peleliu. I am going to tell you now so there's no misunderstanding about ground rules: the President will not be taking any questions, you hear? Good.'
Just as his press secretary was concluding his remarks Bradlay appeared. He was wearing a dark suit and a black tie. Lack of sleep showed in the dark circles under his eyes.
`At ten o'clock Washington time, the USS Peleliu on humanitarian service in the international waters of the South China Sea was attacked by a Chinese submarine and sunk. We do not have precise figures as yet but I am advised there are unlikely to be many survivors from the ship's nearly 2,000 strong complement of men and Marines. The actions of the Chinese in perpetrating this deed are contemptible. Our prayers and thoughts are with the families of the men and women who served on the Peleliu. Their sacrifice will not have been in vain. It will be avenged. I have instructed my staff to prepare a necessary response to this outrage. I will be talking with our allies in the hours ahead and I plan to address the nation tomorrow morning with a definitive statement of our plans. Thank you and God bless.'
As Bradlay collected his paper and began to walk towards the exit the assembled reporters began to call out questions in the hope that he would respond.
`Mr President, are we going to strike back?'
`Have you placed our nuclear forces on alert?'
`What can we do—'
At the last he wheeled around, to the astonishment of his aides, and said: `I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going right back to where they sank our ship. We are going to recover our dead. And we are not going to let anything stand in our way.' And with that he was off through the entrance preserved for administration officials.
Markets react to news like a barometer to pressure. The fall of the Dow Jones was as swift as the news of the USS Peleliu was terrible. Within minutes the index was 235.14 lower at 7,602.86. The dollar shot up. An indication of just how stressed markets became that day is given by the behaviour of currencies. The dollar is quoted in terms of yen, say, with one bank offering to buy at 144.45 yen and sell at 145.55. In big currencies like the yen the spread is always tight. On that Tuesday afternoon, the spreads widened a whole yen.