“Crew, stand by for bomb-bay missile launch,” Patrick McLanahan announced. “Quadruple Wolverine missile launch. Radar coming on… radar stand by.” McLanahan took a thirty-second satellite update for the navigation computers, in order to tighten down the accuracy of the system as much as possible prior to launch. Then he checked the accuracy of the nav computers by taking a three-second attack radar fix and then comparing where the aiming crosshairs lay on the stored radar image. When McLanahan moved the crosshairs onto the exact preprogrammed spot, the difference between the radar fix and the nav computers was only fifty-seven feet. He decided to accept the satellite fix.
“Launch point fix in, bomb doors coming open.” He clicked on the voice command switch: “Commit Wolverine attack.”
WARNING, MISSILE attack initiated, the computer replied, and automatically entered a launch hold until the order could be verified.
“Commit Wolverine attack,” McLanahan repeated to verify the order.
LAUNCH COMMIT, warning, bomb doors open, the computer’s female voice responded. The Megafortress’s bomb doors slid inside the fuselage, and the forward rotary launcher in the bomb bay released the first AGM-177 Wolverine cruise missile. In eight-second volleys, three more Wolverine missiles dropped clear of the bomb bay, two total from each of the forward and aft rotary launchers. The missiles glided in a shallow descent as their flight computers sampled the air mass and did a microsecond flight-control check, exercising hundreds of tiny microhydraulic actuators built into the skin, then ignited their turbojet engines, throttled up to full power, and sped off toward their targets. As they began their 500-mile-per-hour flight, they downloaded navigation data from the GPS navigation satellite constellation and adjusted course, following the flight plan transferred to their computers from the Megafortress.
All four Wolverine missiles carried SEAD, or Suppression of Enemy Air Defense, packages in its sensor bay and three internal munitions bays. The missiles’ sensor section contained combination infrared and radar-homing sensors, which would lock onto an enemy radar, then slave an infrared sensor onto the vehicle or building carrying the radar, and send targeting data to the missile’s navigation computer. Two munitions compartments contained a total of eighteen anti-vehicle “skeets,” and one weapon bay contained twelve Sky Masters ADM-151 decoy devices. The Wolverines had a preprogrammed flight plan based on Jon Masters’s NIRTSat satellite data showing where some known garrisoned road- mobile SA-5 surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites, Honggi-2 SAM sites, and heavy antiaircraft artillery sites were located.
When the missiles flew within the estimated lethal range of the mobile SAM sites, the Wolverine missiles ejected a decoy glider. The decoys were tiny gliders with a specially designed shape, and contained tiny transmitters that made each glider appear as big as a full-size fighter— to a Chinese SAM radar operator scanning the skies for enemy aircraft, the decoys made it appear as if an enemy attacker had suddenly appeared out of nowhere right on top of them. When the SAM site operators activated their target-tracking radars to try to shoot down the “attacker,” the seeker head in the Wolverine missile detected the signal and locked onto the location of the emitter, then used that new position plus its satellite navigation system fix to update its flight plan.
The Wolverine cruised over the target location and seeded the area with anti-vehicle skeets. Each skeet had a canister that contained infrared sensors and several copper rods. The canister would spin as it was ejected from the Wolverine missile. When the infrared sensors detected a vehicle-size target below, it would detonate a small explosive charge that would instantly melt the copper rod and shoot it at the target. The highspeed slug of molten copper was powerful enough to penetrate the thin steel of heavy trucks or light tanks. Each skeet could fire several slugs at once in all directions, sometimes shooting several slugs into one vehicle.
The Wolverine missile would fly its preprogrammed flight plan, cruising over the area, dropping decoys, and then dropping skeets over any SAM sites detected. Each Wolverine missile had the capability of destroying dozens of targets on its flight, so with four Wolverine cruise missiles operating in a thirty-by-thirty-mile target box, almost a thousand targets were instantly at risk. The skeets worked their devastating magic with gruesome efficiency. Not only were surface-to-air missile sites at risk, but any hot vehicles within a hundred yards of the skeets were likely targets — troop carriers, transports, supply trucks, even small buildings, anything with a warm core. Once a copper slug burned through the outer layer of its target, it had cooled sufficiently so that the second hard surface it hit caused the slug to break apart instead of burning through. For most targets, this meant that the copper slug first penetrated inside a passenger or crew compartment of a vehicle, ricocheted off a second hard surface, then instantly turned into thousands of bits of bulletlike projectiles that bounced around inside, shredding anything in its path.
The results of the Wolverine missile’s deadly flight was evident to the crew of the Megafortress as they approached the Chinese coastline. Off in the darkened distance, they could see numerous patches of bright red flashes as the skeets went off, followed seconds later by bright yellow or white flashes as a truck, tank, or other vehicle was hit and destroyed. Many times they saw spectacular secondary explosions, as a skeet activated over a missile or antiaircraft artillery site, causing missiles to explode or entire ammunition magazines to cook off. After each Wolverine missile’s deadly cargo was expended, the missile would do a kamikaze crash into the next SAM site it detected.
The net result: by the time the Megafortress was “feet dry” over the Chinese coast, more than fifty mobile antiaircraft weapon sites had been destroyed or put out of commission in the area, another three hundred vehicles of all shapes and sizes had been hit — plus over a thousand soldiers and sailors had been killed or injured.
But the Megafortress wasn’t the heavy hitter in this attack. Following the EB-52 and coming in from several directions at once was a twelve- plane attack formation of Taiwanese F-16 Fighting Falcons. The Republic of China’s F-16s — all but four of their surviving fleet of sixteen — had lagged several minutes behind the EB-52, waiting until the long-range Ilyushin-76 radar plane and the ground-based air defenses had been destroyed before making their move. Spread out over forty miles in six flights of two, the F-16s dashed in at 300 feet above the Formosa Strait, the waves acting as their only terrain-masking feature. But although the air defense sites along the coast had detected the F-16s a full six minutes before they attacked, they could do nothing about it — because the Wolverine missiles were knocking out the missile-control and targettracking radars long before the Chinese defenders could launch a counterattack.
The EB-52’s Wolverine cruise missiles had destroyed the air defense units and many of the larger vehicles arrayed around Quemoy Bay preparing to invade Taiwan’s Quemoy Island — the F-16 Fighting Falcons’ mission was to destroy or disrupt the estimated three hundred thousand troops getting ready to cross the bay and retake Quemoy for mainland China. Each F-16 carried six 800-pound CBU-59 APAM (AntiPersonnel, Anti-Materiel) cluster bomb units, which scattered 670 one- pound bomblets over a football field-size area. When the CBU-59 releases were computer-sequenced, laying the dispersal footprints end- to-end, the swath of destruction for each F-16 equaled over 350,000 square feet, the size of a suburban shopping mall. Some of the bomblets were fuzed to detonate on impact; others used tiny trip wires that would cause the bomblet to explode if disturbed or if a vehicle passed nearby. All unexploded bomblets would self-detonate after a period of time, anywhere from five minutes to twenty-four hours after being sown. One baseball-size bomblet could destroy a small vehicle, damage a large wheeled vehicle — or kill anyone standing within thirty feet.