Admiral Yin looked as if he had been deflated with a knife. He could only stare at the vertical plot, muttering something to himself that Sun could not hear. “Sir? Do you have further orders?” Sun asked. The Chinese Fleet Admiral could only mutter something unintelligible, stare at a slip of paper he had been given by the communications section, and stare at the board in absolute horror.
“Attention! Attention! Air-defense warning! Gunners man your batteries and stand by.”
Colonel of Marines Yang Yi Shuxin glanced nervously at the loudspeakers on the “island” superstructure above him, then at the turrets where the ship’s numerous 37-millimeter antiaircraft guns were mounted, but he quickly turned his attention back to the men on his landing craft. No one said a word, but Yang raised his voice easily above the amplified voice and said, “Be silent, all of you. The gunners have their job and you have yours. Stand by.”
Yang was leading a troop of forty heavily armed Chinese Marines in the invasion of Davao. They were aboard the air-cushion landing craft Dagu, a monstrous sixty-ton vessel that skimmed above the surface of the water on a cushion of air created by six gas-turbine-powered propellers on the bottom of the craft; two turboprop propellers above pushed the craft to over seventy kilometers per hour over land or sea. Dagu carried two small armored personnel carriers, each with 30-millimeter machine guns on board; the landing craft itself was armed with two 14.5-millimeter guns manned by four very young-looking soldiers. Unlike other landing craft, Dagu would take her Marines right up onto dry ground instead of into chest-deep water.
The amphibious landing ship they were on carried two such air-cushion landing craft, plus four conventional landing craft, along with twenty armored troop-carriers on the tank deck and thirty “deuce-and-a-half ’ utility trucks on the main deck, plus a total of four hundred Marines. Other amphibious assault tank-landing ships carried air-cushion landing craft, but they always called on Colonel Yang to lead any assault. Yang’s men would be the first Chinese soldiers to occupy Samar International Airport and lay siege to the city of Davao itself.
Other smaller Yuchai or Yunnan-class landing craft had gone ahead to try to draw fire, spot targets for the destroyer’s guns, or dismantle beach defenses. Dagu would lead the main Marine assault on the beach itself. After Yang’s Marines and APCs captured the beach, they would bring the amphibious assault ship into shallow water, deploy the pontoon bridge sections carried on the hull sides, and start rolling the trucks off the forward ramp. Once on the road, the trucks would rush forward and take Samar Airport — and victory.
The LST’s two big twin 76.2-millimeter guns began pounding away on the beach as the amphibious assault ship made a slight turn to bring both guns to bear. “Ready!” Yang shouted, and his men gave an animal-like growl in response. Dagu's helmsman started the engines, and the air-cushion vehicle’s four-meter-tall armor-covered skirt quickly inflated. A horn blared on the aft deck, the stern ramp lowered, and Dagu's helmsman gunned the twin turbojet propellers. The air-cushion craft leaped out into the darkness, hit the water, and sped toward the beach.
What Yang saw when they cleared the amphibious assault ship looked like something out of a child’s nightmare.
Ships were on fire everywhere. At least two other tank- and troop-landing ships were burning fiercely, with smoke billowing out of two more. Antiaircraft guns were sweeping the skies in seemingly random patterns. The water that Yang could see was littered with bodies, capsized landing craft, and debris. As he watched, another explosion ripped across the water, the shock wave strong enough to stagger him.
He had to remind himself that he could not show fear in front of his men, most of whom he knew were watching him. One of the toughest things for a Marine to do was step off a fast, safe landing craft and hit the beach, and for most of them only the sight of a brave leader would make them do it.
They had been dropped into the water over two kilometers offshore, but the air-cushion vehicle ate up the distance quickly — less than thirty seconds to go, and they would be on dry land. The helmsman was taking a zigzag course into shore — he was probably only dodging other destroyed landing craft or pools of burning fuel, but Yang always told his troops that they did that to confound the enemy gunners. Dagu's gunners opened fire several times on the beach, but Yang heard no mortars, bazookas, or heavy gunfire coming from there.
“No resistance from the beach!” he yelled to his men. The Marines around him growled happily in reply. “Drive and conquer! Split into threes, divide, and run for cover! Watch for engineers ahead of you.” Minesweeping engineers who had gone ahead of them had fluorescent orange tapes on their arms and backs to distinguish them from…
A huge explosion erupted behind them, lighting up the horizon so brightly that Yang could easily see the treeline. “Eyes front!” Yang shouted as his men ducked, then began to try to turn around in the close confines to see what had been hit. “Get ready!” Yang did not look either, although judging by the secondary explosions, their amphibious assault ship had been hit. He could faintly hear the roar of heavy jet planes overhead, and Dagu’s gunners even swung their puny machine guns futilely in the sky after the engine sounds. That did nothing but highlight their positions. “Guns front! Reload! Cover the landing!” Yang shouted. The gunners and their loaders were too scared to listen — they were either watching the destruction of their mother ship or scanning the dark skies above for enemy bombers. “APCs, start engines!” The heavy diesel engines on the armored personnel carriers roared to life, and gunners in the top turrets chambered rounds.
Seconds later, the air-cushion landing craft hit the shore, the turbojet engines surged to full power, the craft raced up onto the beach, and the forward part of the air-cushion skirt began to deflate for offloading. The gunners finally began to rake the treeline with gunfire. “Ready!” Yang shouted, and the adrenaline-pumped men growled once again. The forward lip of the air-cushion vehicle hit the ground and the ramp swung down. Yang leaped up onto the ramp, ran down it onto the beach, then waved at his men, pointing toward the treeline not thirty meters away. “Marines! Go! Go! G—”
His last word was drowned out by a massive cloud of fire and a head-pounding explosion — Yang felt as if all the air had been sucked out of his lungs and replaced by sheets of pure fire. Several Marines scampering down the ramp were blown off their feet and onto the beach as a shock wave larger than any Yang could ever recall rolled over them. His night vision was completely wiped out by a blinding burst of light, and his eardrums felt as if they had burst — no, his whole head felt as if it had burst…
Four F-111G fighter-bombers screamed into the area nearly at supersonic speed, right into the midst of the lines of landing craft trying to land their forces on the beaches south of Davao. They did not carry Harpoon missiles or bombs. Instead, each carried four 2,000-pound BLU-96 HADES FAE, or fuel-air explosives, canisters. Each HADES canister contained three hundred gallons of explosive fuel-oil, and the canisters were toss-released about a thousand feet over a group of eight landing craft. About eight hundred feet above the water, the canisters popped open, and the fuel oil began to disperse in large white clouds of vapor. Seconds later, when the vapor cloud was about five hundred feet above the landing craft and had expanded to one hundred feet in diameter, tiny sodium detonators in the vapor clouds fired off.