GWOT Coastal Action

Global War of Terror - US Navy 'Press Release' Entries

Ringside Seat | Raid 17 | Hangar Bay | Direct Commission | Intercept | Coastal Action

We continue our sprint for the China coast. More aircraft are flown in, replacements for all the ones we have lost. Fighters, multi-role aircraft (read: bombers), even an AWACS.

As soon as they land, they are serviced, armed and sent out to fight.

We have more and more air cover now. We are establishing an air bridge, tanker aircraft providing in flight refueling and some aircraft refueling at bases all over the Pacific. Japan refused permission - we are operating out of Okinawa anyway. Scuttlebutt has it that the Japanese ambassador was invited to discuss the problem with San Francisco.

Taiwan is in the fight. For over sixty years the Nationalists have been waiting. This is their time; they're going back. The Taiwanese invasion of China has begun, and we are supporting it. This carrier, this crew.

Both sides are learning the hard way a lot about nuclear war. China doesn't have a logistics situation - it is a nightmare wasteland of shattered cities, wrecked interchanges and rail yards, and fallout patterns. But they are still in the fight, and they don't have to haul every gallon of gasoline and round of ammunition thousands of miles over the ocean first.

We do. The task of the US Navy is to keep the flow going. The task of the remnants of the Chinese Red Navy is to slow it down or stop it. That's not going to happen.

Los Angeles survived what San Francisco did not. They would have done better to nuke the Oakland docks - over a third of our wartime shipping is flowing out through that port. The Armed Forces Network tells us that demolition crews had to cut the one surviving cable of the four that had supported the Golden Gate Bridge. The roadway had dangled sideways, blocking the ship channel. Now only the orange towers remained.

We have nuked every port we did not plan to use. But the port we do plan to use is now being fought over. In the opening days of the War, both the US and Taiwan dropped small special operations teams - US Navy Seals, Marine Recon and Taiwanese Marines - and utterly fucked it up.

Those teams were not supported. In antiseptic military terms, they died on the vine. In the real world, they were hunted down and destroyed.

Now two divisions of Taiwanese Marines and a division of American Marines are about to perform an amphibious assault.

The Chinese of course have tried to nuke the ships and landing craft assembling just offshore. We of course have prevented that by aggressively nuking anything resembling a missile, a dock or an artillery piece.

My tasks are changing. The psychological casualties have been returned to service or evacuated. Helicopters cross-deck constantly from other ships in the fleet - sailors to repair damage, aviators and mechanics to keep aircraft flying. Marines are piling up, coming over in drabs and dribbles and berthing in any available space.

My task - which requires an officer - is to find and allocate that space, and to help with the endless stream of electronic logistics requests required to feed and arm them. I am at a desk with a computer sixteen hours a day, interspersed with brief visits to trouble spots.

The latest such visit is to the anchor room. A platoon of Marines has been quartered here. The safety officer - incredibly overworked - has just informed their Lieutenant that touching the switches on the walls could cause the death of his unit. He is understandably upset.

"Is there anyplace else to put us?"

"No," I reply briskly. "I have Marines in the holds, in the hallways, the laundry, the corridors. The only other available spaces are the special weapons storage - I have Marines in the conventional magazines already - and the reactor compartments. Both combat conditions and the weather prevent putting anyone on deck or in the hangar bays. This space is perfectly safe _as long as no one touches the switches_."

I am the superior officer he has appealed to. He grumbles and accepts the inevitable.

I am working on a berthing plan for the steam side - non radioactive - of the reactor compartments. It's a security violation but they're Marines. It's dangerous but they're Marines.

I see on the logistics plan that we are receiving three more platoons of Marines tomorrow.

The 1MC shouts, "All hands, all hands, surface action starboard, surface action starboard." Then the WHOOP of General Quarters and the litany.

Surface action starboard? What the hell?

I run up two decks to the nearest porthole, then recall that my battle station is still in Sickbay. As I am rushing aft, I hear the godfart of the CIWS - Close In Weapons System, a Gatling gun, engaging a target.

I am still a part time war correspondent, so I can get away with lollygagging and divert my rush towards the starboard rail.

I don't have a chance to see anything. Someone grabs me, another officer, wearing headphones. Someone from Aviation Group, an antisubmarine warfare helicopter pilot.

"We need a boarding party! Now! Get Marines!"

"How many?"

"All of them!"

I know where all the Marines are berthed. I also know the fragmentary station bill we have started to work out. The most battle ready unit is midships in the TV studio and the gym.

"Sergeant! Boarding party! Helicopter! No fragos, no time, mount up! I need two squads! Follow me to the flight deck!"

I'm an officer, it's an order. They do.

The flight deck is pandemonium. A burning F/A-18 is being put out with dry chemical extinguishers. Another F/A-18 is being launched off a port catapult. A Navy helicopter is lifting with a machine gun manned and ready. Two more Navy helicopters are landed but in ground effect; their crew chiefs wave at me and the Marines.

I am not even wearing a helmet. I am wearing khakis. Technically I should not be on the flight deck at all, but since the fire I have gone nowhere without hearing protection, which I hastily jam on. The interphones have an audio jack, but I primarily wear them for what's left of my hearing.

In the rush of Marines, I end up somehow in the center as they board the Sea King heavy helicopter. I hang on for dear life, the helicopter lurches under us, and I am suddenly in rather massive violation of United States Naval Law.

I have left the ship without the permission of the Commanding Officer.

The crew chief plugs my audio jack into the aircraft as we roar forward at maximum speed.

"Sir! Freighter bearing 110 degrees range 14 miles! Refugees and soldiers mixed on the freighter's deck! We need to board!"

That's nuts. But not quite as crazy as the F/A-18 fighter jet which starts to line up a strafing run on the freighter, then breaks off.

As I watch, a missile lights off the freighter deck - more than a MANPAD or man portable anti-air missile, but less than a trailer-sized antishipping missile. It heads straight for the carrier. We bank suddenly hard port and I have to hang on with both hands.

"Marines!" the crew chief shouts through the interphones and hoping those who aren't plugged in can hear him - not very likely - or read lips. "Fantail drop! Fantail drop!"

We aren't rigged for ropes and an assault landing. So we're going to land a helicopter on a ship we don't control - insane! - and the Marines are going to climb over the skids to the stern of the target vessel. Presumably shooting.

As we approach, we see that the first helicopter is parallel to the freighter, pointing its machine gun, and firing in short staccato bursts.

The gunmen - for they are in no uniforms - are firing back with rifles and light machine guns. They are mixed in with women and children. Clearly as human shields.

The sight enrages the Marines.

"Let's get it on!" roars one, I can only understand what he's saying because he's dripping spittle less than three feet from me, and I know Marines.

"Brace!" the crew chief shouts.

An enormous rattling boom rocks us sideways and back.

The F/A 18 fighter jet pilot, unwilling to fire 20mm cannon at a mixed crowd containing women and children, has gone to afterburner a mere fifty feet above the freighter's superstructure and hammered it - and us - with a wave of pure enraged sound.

We sweep around to the freighter's stern.

A team of three gunmen is hauling around something on a tripod to point at us.

Two of the Marines have their rifles pointing out the door, and start shooting.

We swoop in closer and suddenly the team of gunmen is swept away - and into pieces - by weapons fire from the side.

I hear another roar, only slightly quieter than the afterburner, and see that a Harrier 'jump jet' - an AV-8B of the United States Marine Corps - is in its hover mode only a few hundred feet away from us, at an angle. Instead of shooting across the ship the way a strafing run would have to do, the Marine pilot is shooting sideways with a careful short burst. It's still a burst from a 20mm cannon, which are notoriously uncaring as to who might be in the way of a shell.

Our skids hit the deck and the Marines attack.

They are shooting quick, controlled bursts at anyone with a weapon.

The crew chief unplugs the audio jack and pushes me off the helicopter, which lifts immediately.

I am now standing on the deck of an enemy ship. In a gun battle. Unarmed. I'm not even carrying a pistol.

I see a wounded gunman on the deck. I kick him in the head and take his rifle. He draw the bolt back, round in chamber. I look at his body for reloads. He is reaching for something when I shoot him twice in the chest. The new wounds kill him.

I try to think tactically. I have no communications. I don't have a satphone, or radio, or even a Marine radio headset. The Marines are fighting - actually, killing - and digging their way into the mixed crowd of refugees and gunmen ahead.

I spread my arms akimbo, waving frantically to get the attention of the Harrier pilot.

He stops and points his death machine at me.

I pump my fist several times in the air and point at the ship's superstructure, the bridge and command deck. Then I pump my fist several times again.

He banks, lines up on it, and starts firing cannon shells into the freighter's bridge.

He doesn't have to take my orders. We're both officers. But I am starting to have a plan.

"Marines! American Marines! Drop your weapons!" I shout. The Marines take up the cry. No one understands, but when a gunman who drops his rifle is not shot, others start to get the idea.

A gunman armed with a pistol starts to shoot one of his own men. The unusual motion catches my eye, I tap a Marine's shoulder and point. The gunman-officer and Marine fire at the same time. Both of their targets die simultaneously.

Two of the Marines reach a tripod mounted medium machine gun - the one that had been about to be pointed at us a lifetime ago - and slew it around.

"Lie down! Hands up! Down!"

There is no one to translate, but the Marines start pushing women and children and unarmed men and harmless wounded down. Anyone with a weapon however is shot.

Two bursts from the captured machine gun and the deck is ours.

Now for the hard part.

A ship - any ship - is a twisty mess of passages and spaces and pipes.

A second helicopter drops off a fresh load of Marines on the rear deck.

We are going in. Going below. Taking command of the ship, wiping out any resistance.

I reach down and take a bandolier of magazines from a dead gunman. I change magazines

Then I give the oldest command in the history of warfare.

"Follow me!"

They are Marines.

They do.

###

Sailors rush up as the helicopter lands back on the carrier.

"IMMEDIATE!" I shout as I put one's hands on a stretcher. I start to drag a second Marine off the chopper, a stretcher-bearer recognizable by his aid bag and two sailors help, and I shout "IMMEDIATE!"

The two are, pardon the expression, immediately taken - running - to the nearest battle dressing station. The other casualties are less serious; I let others deal with them. I go to the nearest ship's interphone and punch for CIC.

"We boarded the freighter. We have control of the decks and superstructure. We don't have the holds, the engine room or the steerage. Estimate three hundred surviving enemy gunmen mixed in with several hundred refugees."

"Who is this?"

I tell him.

"Say again?"

I do.

"Go back over there. Take a radioman this time. Take command of the vessel. Make for the port. It'll be ours by the time you get there."

There is only one legal answer.

"Aye aye, sir."