As the E-2 updated the data link and kept a running commentary, Earl Gallaher saw she was in best position to engage. Without their own Aegis track, the DDG, nevertheless, fired a salvo of over ten SM-6s on the linked tracks, missiles the E-2 “grabbed” and guided using integrated fire control. One after another the fiery boosters lifted the interceptors into the air over the ship, shrouding it in gray smoke. Cape St. George got in the action, too, and fired salvos of missiles from her fore and aft VLS tubes, missiles the E-2 also grabbed as they sped north. But there was more.
The H-6 element, with a four-ship of naval Su-30s from Banyon Island and a small fighter escort of J-10 Vigorous Dragon fighters from Stingray, had avoided Weed’s fragmented strike formations and swung north to come in from over the tip of Mindanao. Minutes after Bai’s group shot and ran, the J-10s fired their Eagle Strikes on ESM target bearing info fed to them and to the bombers from the surveillance aircraft in the northern Sulu. With the tipper info provided, this Chinese cruise missile “spread” of another eight missiles was concentrated within 40 degrees, and, one minute later the six bombers let loose with thirty-two new YJ-12 ship-killers weighing over 1,000 pounds. The strike fighters then added eight more Eagle Strikes.
“We’ve got another gangbang! Vampires inbound three-five-zero!” cried the alarmed Operations Specialist aboard Earl Gallaher. Over 52 cruise missiles of different speeds and capabilities were converging on the American task force in the middle of the Celebes, and Operations Specialists aboard the Aegis ships and Hancock had never seen anything like it. The task-saturated controllers guided the missiles launched from a CAP of Super Hornets north of the carrier on to the four J-10s sweeping in front of the bombers. Two of the Rhinos got AMRAAMs off on the Su-30s, but the bombers were out of range. The cruiser and the destroyers would have to engage the inbound missiles with their own birds.
To confuse the missiles, the Americans employed countermeasures to flood their sensors with contacts. To the enemy radars, Hancock became dozens of Hancocks, all running in different directions and speeds. The missile ships energized their own spoofing transmitters to throw off the cruise missiles, some of which were accelerating in their terminal end games as volley after volley of VLS-launched missiles shot high into the air to defend.
Bai’s spread of Eagle Strikes was the first to arrive, and missiles from the “stealth” destroyer Michael S. Speicher engaged and downed two. The ship then focused west on two other missiles twenty miles distant. Cape St. George easily claimed one, and Earl Gallaher engaged the other with a SM-6 that missed but then downed it with her 20mm CIWS in an engagement that was too close for comfort. But there were more, bigger and faster, and the overwhelmed American Operations Specialists struggled to hold what little SA they had. All the American ships were at flank speed, missiles bursting from cells as their five-inch guns boomed with ear-splitting thunder that shook the frames. The mournful chain saw sound of the 20mm then filled the crew with terror.
Earl Gallaher was the northern-most American combatant, and as many Chinese missiles went off on phantom targets, one missile guided on a target that really was a warship fighting for its life.
The missile was one of the big YJ-12s, supersonic now, and moving in three axes as it skimmed the waves. Earl Gallaher’s captain was in combat, and shouted orders to the helm to bring all his guns to bear on the speeding and jinking cruise missile that was bent on killing him. A lifetime ago, the guidance system had been a human brain piloting a 300-knot Japanese kamikaze into the stack of a destroyer as frantic gunners threw up a wall of lead in a desperate attempt to save themselves and their ship. Now, a computer, with none of the human emotions of a pilot, guided a supersonic craft that could do things in three dimensions and at speeds those defenders a lifetime ago could not have imagined.
All aboard felt the deck heel to starboard as the DDG turned into her pursuer, and hundreds of eyes not engaged in fighting Earl Gallaher looked at each other in fear amid engine room pumps and aviation maintenance work benches as they heard, “Brace for shock!” over the 1MC followed by the terrifying sounds of the CIWS, the Bushmasters, and even the fifties. Another deafening hammer blow as the forward five-inch mount fired was the last sound many aboard the ship heard.
The missile entered the DDG under the aft stack. The devastating blast tore off superstructure to the waterline in a swath of destruction that rolled the turning ship onto her side. Over forty inside died instantly, and scores were thrown into the overheads as Earl Gallaher staggered from the killing blow. With cries for help echoing off the darkened bulkheads, the ship wallowed out of the turn, engines dead, torn almost to the keel.
Blower Leaf was on Hancock’s port bridge when he saw the DDG to the north, shrouded in gray cordite smoke, erupt in flame as a column of black billowed upward. She was only ten miles away, and he scanned the horizon for any wisps of fire from more killing missiles. In CIC, the Tactical Action Officer was giving orders and maneuvering Hancock to bring her defensive weapons to bear as Cape St. George and Speicher continued to fight the swarm around them with all they had.
“Vampire inbound! Brace for shock!”
Through human reflex as much as training, Blower’s bridge watch team got down into defensive crouches and waited as orders were shouted to the helm. The twenty-something kids were scared and confused, yet in control, due to their training and their trust in Hancock and each other. Thousands inside the carrier could only wait and pray, and in flag plot Wilson and The Big Unit did the same. “Hang the fuck on!” Johnson said as they, too, felt Hancock turn.
On the bridge, Blower picked it up, a yellow dot, moving like a laser spot across the sky, faster than his eyes could track it. One moment it was there. Then, it was gone! Then, above and to the right. Then, down and left, darting as if an unpredictable hummingbird.
The missile was coming for them and Hancock, like Earl Gallaher, maneuvered hard to escape. The aft 20mm mount roared to life, spitting a wall of bullets in the hope that one would clip the hypersonic warhead boring in on them. A Sea Sparrow burst from its launcher aft and, as soon as it did, pivoted horizontal and shot toward the jinking light. It missed.
Blower saw that, unless the 20mm got lucky right now, he was going to take a hit. “Dammit,” he muttered, and then shouted, “Hit the deck!”
Blower felt a thud aft, accompanied by the sharp crack of an explosion. Looking across his flight deck, he saw white and black smoke, and, an instant later, a flash that dropped him to his knees.
The missile was an Eagle Strike, and it tore into Hancock below the Sea Sparrow launcher sponson adjacent to the LSO platform. A secondary thunderclap occurred when the missiles in the magazine cooked off, and the explosion buckled the port side flight deck near the fantail. Blast fragments riddled the LSO platform, pelted a Rhino parked next to it, severed one of the Elevator 4 cables, and caused alignment damage to the number one arresting gear. Pilots and maintenance personnel in Ready Rooms 6, 7, and 8 were thrown about from the shock, and the aircrew in all three squadrons suffered injuries. Hancock counted fifteen dead and forty injured from the strike. The LSO platform was destroyed, with both El 4 and the one wire out of action. The damage to the carrier was serious, and there were casualties, but she could still fight.