The troops in the OPs had been briefed that they needed to have line of sight to the fishermen’s buoys with their attached short range HF receivers, but with the fast attack boats churned up the waters, it had set the buoys bobbing wildly so it took over a minute of frantic button pressing before all the charges in the sunken hulks went off, rupturing barrels of Avgas and diesel, releasing their lighter than water contents. They had waited for the hovercraft to enter the bay before depressing a second switch, which detonated the incendiary bombs, affixed to the buoys radio receivers.
Hovercraft are lifted by cushions of air retained within the vessels skirts, which are usually made of rubber or similar, plastic based derivatives. The engines that produce the air cushion also provide propulsion, drawing in air in the case of the Chinese craft, through air scoops set in the hull.
To the pilots of the two craft when they eventually approached, the unobstructed view of the beach was replaced by flame and black oily smoke. Although they had already throttled back to 30 knots, they had plunged into the holocaust before they could sheer off. One pilot had slammed the throttles forward and held his course whilst the other threw the controls to the left, seeking to escape back out to sea. Neither action had saved the craft because starved of air and with the air scoops filters clogging with soot, their engines had at first laboured and then stalled.
Back aboard the big ships, the marines aboard the stricken Xux that were already aboard LC (T)s were stranded below decks. For their craft to be launched, buoyancy tanks in the ship’s hull have to be vented of air, allowing the mothership to settle in the water whereupon stern doors open, flooding the internal dock and the LC (T)s float out. Far from that happening, the Xux was down by the bow and engulfed in flame from the waterline to the top of her mangled superstructure. The bow down attitude raised the stern higher in the water but even had the LC (T)s been able to launch the sea all around the Xux was aflame. Timothy Yukomata’s Airbuses fuel tanks had been filled to capacity.
The remaining ships had continued on their way, abandoning the Xux and all aboard her to their fate as command of the operation passed to the second in command on the older Tinxu. In that ships command centre, reports had been coming in that had painted a bleak picture. Three marines from the heliborne assault were putting into practice their E&E, escape and evasion skills and did not known if any other of the troops on the ground had made it. The runway had been heavily cratered and so reinforcement by fixed wing aircraft was out of the question. The three fast attack craft had been forced to beach in order for the crews to escape the spreading sea of flames by wading ashore; they reported both of the hovercraft had been destroyed with all hands.
A Hokum and three troop carriers had been returning empty and when they were ordered to do a 180 and recover the three marines and stranded seamen they had switched off their radios, the crews being thoroughly rattled by events.
A wise man will never say
“It cannot get any worse than this!” because sod’s law dictates that as soon as the words have left his mouth, it bloody well does.
The new PLAN commander hadn’t said or even though the words but his day had gotten worse within minutes anyway.
In the channel between Cebu and its eastern neighbour Bohol, eleven missile and four anti-submarine patrol craft of the Singapore armed forces escorted eight minesweepers, assault ships and amphibious transport docks. With the political leanings of their neighbours uncertain, they had feared internment if they requested refuelling from them and so were enroute to Cebu to beg fuel for their voyage to Australia. As payment for this service they had intended offering the services of two of Singapore’s Rikon class coastal patrol submarines and crews, which at that time were playing rear guard. An AEW Sea King from one of their Fearless class assault ships had intercepted the PLAN Task Forces transmissions and seen the rising palls of smoke.
For the task force commander to have turned back from his mission would have been to invite a bullet behind the ear, despite the losses they had so far suffered. The task force still had a battalion of marines and the naval gunfire support of the destroyer and frigates. Once the Hokum gunship returned he would refuel it and send it back up to locate and destroy the reported heavy guns. Obviously a drastic rethink would be required in order to snatch success from defeat and he had leant over the chart table, scrutinising the map of the islands and ordering the radars switched on. He needed their eyes to see whatever else the damned Filipinos had lurking in the wings.
To the south of the PLAN ships, five Sea Lynx helicopters under the control of their AEW Sea King had sprinted in at wave top height and loosed off two Penguin anti-shipping missiles apiece before racing back to their motherships to rearm. When the PLAN radars came up the missiles were skimming the waves and only a thousand yards out, the radars painted the incoming vampires and six fast approaching Singaporean missile patrol boats eighteen miles away. Three of the Penguins slammed into the southernmost PLAN frigate; five struck the destroyer whilst the waterlines of the Tinxu and the second frigate were holed by a missile apiece.
Penguin anti-shipping missiles are smaller and lighter than the Harpoon, they lack the destructive power to wreak havoc on a ships superstructure as the bigger missile does, instead it aims for the waterline where the sea will assist it. Small warheads or no, five holes in the port side of the destroyers’ hull at the waterline caused an almost immediate list, as did the strikes on the southernmost frigate. One detrimental effect on those ships fighting abilities was to greatly reduce the range of their radars to port as neither array had self-stabilising gimbals. With their electronic eyes sweeping well above the horizon to starboard, and well below it to port, neither ship could attack the Singaporean vessels or even defend against their missiles until they were within five miles.
Contrary to all expectations the invasion had been repulsed and the invaders routed, the spirit of Rajah Lapu-Lapu would have looked down with pride at what had occurred on the site of his own victory, and so close to its anniversary.
At 1545hrs the Singaporean surface combat ships and their charges came within view of the colonels’ telescope. Trailing behind those ships was a pair of LC (I)s, Landing Craft (Infantry) carrying the survivors from the PLAN vessels which had gone from being formidable warships, to mere ‘hazards to shipping’ bulletins for ships charts updates on coastal waters wrecks.
Emerging into the sunlight, a hire van exited the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and crossed Battery Park, making its way to West Street and then north to Chelsea. The driver and passenger were both white Caucasian’s in their late twenties with mid-west accents, but the driver drove confidently in the big city traffic, a cap tilted down over his forehead and an elbow resting on the sill. Going a short way up Tenth Street the driver stopped the van in traffic whilst the passenger pulled the peak of his baseball cap down, then jogged from the van to another hired van. This second van had been slightly longer than the one he had exited, ensuring the problem free transfer into the space of the shorter vehicle. Motorists behind the van that obstructed their free passage made their feelings felt in the usual New York way by leaning on car horns and yelling out of open windows. The first vans passenger had pulled out of the space and forward just far enough before stopping and running back, to guard the vacated area against opportunist parkers. He’d waved and smiled at the car drivers behind, ignoring their vocal protests whilst the first van had reversed into the space. With apologetic waves the two men hurried back to the second van drove off, circling around to head back the way they had come. One hour later a 500lb bomb inside the parked van exploded whilst a nearby bar and diner’s trade were at the lunchtime peak, killing forty-three and injuring another ninety, of whom many were local residents and passers-by. That target of the bombers was dock workers from the piers beside the Hudson River were having their lunch breaks in the two establishments.