Freddie Kruger barked orders at the remainder of his element when he heard the shouted warnings from the wild weasel flight that the valley mouth was locked up with AAA. None of the lead element now answered his calls and he accepted that the worst had happened. At the end of the valley was a steep re-entrant and he now planned to fly up before turning south in a curving 180 to the right, that would bring them over the port from the north. The two surviving Sukhoi’s ignored calls from the warships to intercept the aircraft approaching from the sea, they knew the backdoor was open and intended checking that no-one else was using it before wandering farther abroad. Their lookdown radars caught Kruger’s four F/A-18Fs close to the earth with mountains both sides and loaded down with ordnance; none of the Hornets made it out of the valley.
The approaching Tomcats and Hornets radars began picking up the tracks of ships, and they pickled off HARMs to neutralise the air defence radars and switched on their PAVE TAC systems as they began looking for the carriers. At about the same time, the warship radars burnt through the jamming and ships ripple fired SA-10 Grumbles, Klinok and Hongqi-7 missiles in reply. At 30 miles out the first thirty Harpoons were launched, nineteen survived to pass the outer line of pickets where they went active, seeking the largest radar returns. Behind them a further forty Harpoons dropped from hard point’s, two continued to fall as their motors failed and hit the sea in showers of spray. Five Russian and PLAN warships were struck by HARMs, degrading the air defence cover by twenty percent. Of the first wave of nineteen Harpoons to penetrate the outer picket screen, four were dummied by chaff clouds but causing damage to ships when their 220lb warheads went off, whilst eight fell to point defence systems. The remaining seven found targets even as the second wave passed the outer pickets. Three USN aircraft fell to supersonic SA-10s before all offensive stores were expended and they could turn for home, but a further four fell into the ocean before they could get out of range.
Ashore, the senior operator of the ground station picked up a phone, he spoke rapidly into the receiver, giving the Americans last course and bearing before they disappeared from his screens. Aboard the container ships the crews found themselves in the middle of a very hot war and their captains called for full speed to clear the area. Harpoons struck two destroyers and two fleet replenishment ships, despite the clouds of chaff they threw up. Unlike the warships the merchantmen had no chaff dispensers, added to which they were far larger than any other ship outside the bay. The Pullidin Osk was carrying second-hand cars, plastic kitchen utensils and tinned foodstuffs in containers from Murmansk; she had already rolled over in flames when the last two Harpoons slammed into her. Of her companions, one was down by the bow; the foredeck already awash and her sterncastle had completely disappeared, blasted apart by two successive Harpoons. The third ship had avoided being hit by of the American missiles, as she had been in the lee of a PLAN replenishment ship, passing within 500m of the fleet auxiliary and seeking to get clear of the combat zone. The three Harpoons that struck the replenishment ship set off the munitions and 30,000 gallons of high-octane aviation fuel it carried, in a colossal explosion that rolled the merchantman onto her starboard beam and drenched her in fire. In the bay, Captain Hong allowed himself to breathe again now that the air raid was over. No Harpoon had come within three miles of hitting either carrier.
The odd mix of aircraft, that constituted the CAP protecting the three British and nine US ships, was above the storm at 32,000’.
Sixty miles to the landward of the ships, an E-2 Hawkeye had energised its radar once the air group broke radio silence to report it was returning. After half an hour its radar had painted over two aircraft.
Sat off the Hawkeye’s port wing the pair of Sea Harriers dropped toward the clouds and split, one going for each target. Two F-14 Tomcats moved from their position over the fleet to replace them, leaving the last pair as the TAOs reserve.
Papa Zero Two steered due east as Sandy Cummings completed the business of ensuring that the single AIM-54 Phoenix he carried was receiving the Hawkeye’s data stream. The big missile dropped away before accelerating and going near ballistic, its terminal flight to the probing A-50 would be almost vertical. To the north, Sub Lt ‘Donny’ Osmond kept hold of his missiles as he entered the murk below the cloud to stalk the slow moving track ahead of him, guided in by the Hawkeye’s data link. At 400m he selected guns and flipped his own radar to active, locking up the Border Guard An-72 and sawing its port wing off at a point 2’ from the fuselage, with a single burst from his rotary Vulcan cannon. He was ninety miles closer to the land than the Hawkeye, and as the Russian maritime patrol aircraft tumbled towards the sea he picked up a mass of radar tracks and they were all headed his way.
Having received the last course and bearing from the Ust’-Kamchatsk radar operator, the regional air commander decided to take a chance that the Americans would not change course once clear of enemy radar. The John F Kennedy’s CAG had gambled that the Russians would assume just that, but he was wrong.
Alerting the Hawkeye and the remaining CAP, Donny mentally kissed his ass goodbye and reefed the Sea Harrier around to face the oncoming Russians.
Being subsonic, Nikki Pelham overhauled the Sea Harrier flown by Sandy Cummings, her Tomcat and her wingmans passed him before he was in firing range to loose off his AMRAAMs. They all saw the radar track of Papa Zero Two disappear from the screens but so too had a pair of the fast approaching enemy.
Admiral Dalton was on the bridge when the first of the returning strike aircraft entered the pattern. He was the son of a sailor man, as were his father and grandfather before him, the only difference was that he was the first of the Dalton’s to have joined as a commissioned officer. The heaving ocean was causing the flight deck to roll and pitch, reminding the Admiral of tropical storms during his own flying days. On one such night, returning from a strike in the Ia Drang valley, he recalled holding his breath as his F-4s undercarriage slammed onto the deck as the bow began its uproll with a vengeance. His nosewheel tyre had burst and the main undercarriage collapsed, fracturing a fuel line and the fighter-bomber had been engulfed in flames before it even stopped sliding along the deck. Firemen in silver suits pulled him and his unconscious RIO from the wreck. Lt (jg) Dalton had puked his guts up on to the wet deck, which made a hat trick, because his bladder and bowels had let go before he had been rescued. A salty old Petty officer had stood beside him as he completed his embarrassment, chewing on a wad of tobacco and watching the foam being played over the bent and blistered airframe. Spitting out a brown stream of tobacco juice the Petty Officer had at last spoken.
“Could’ve been worse.” Dalton had wiped his mouth and looked up at the man.
“You mean I could have been killed?” The Petty Officer kept on looking at the fire fighting activity, never once looking at the shaken young aviator.
“Nope… ” the ‘sir’ being noticeably absent, “… could’ve been me in that thing, and that really would have upset your mother” Dalton’s father had not been a man to show emotion.