Disclaimer: I don't own either of the Code Geass, Gundam Seed or Star wars franchises. This story is not written with commercial purpose in mind. I make no money from it. It is not for sale or rent.
Chapter 6: The First World War
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Part 9
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9 May 2009 A.T.B.
Gawain Naval base
Cam Ranh Bay
Fire and oily black smoke engulfed part of the base. Men and machines scrambled to fight the man made disaster, while the few remaining fighters of the CAP screamed above in impotent fury. This was perhaps the heaviest blow the Britannian military took since the Pacific War and no matter how tragic, there was at least two people at Gawain who had mixed feelings about it.
Lydia Lombardi knew that what just happened while she and her cameraman were stuck at one of the bunkers was a tragedy. However, her mind couldn't get past how large an opportunity being the only reporter in the area would give her!
"Make sure to record everything!" She shouted to her cameraman and waved towards a row of burning hangars right across the airfield to the left. Only one of the five buildings looked intact while the others were obviously hit by something powerful that cracked their reinforced structures like eggshells. The burning remains of a large plane burned merrily nearby and despite its mangled wreck, Lydia was sure it wasn't a Britannian one.
That was good, great even.
"Make sure you catch both the hangars and that plane!" The reporter pointed. She took a moment to straighten her crumpled clothes, plastered a properly shocked expression on her face – that at least came easy after living through the Chinese air raid and looked straight at the camera before giving its operator a thumbs up.
"This is Lydia Lombardi at Gawain Naval Base in Indochina!" She raised her voice to be more easily understood over the drone of aircraft engines and various sirens that still wailed in places across the large base. "Early tonight a massive Chinese air attack struck the base for devastating results!" She waved dramatically at the burning wreckage behind her. "Just hours earlier, the majority of our air-force stationed here left for a classified mission of their own. There is a rampant speculation if our forces would be successful or if they were intercepted by the enemy before the Chinese struck here... More concerning, earlier tonight we received confirmation that our forces in Indochina are in the process of evacuating and abandoning the area!" Lydia had no trouble whatsoever demonstrating her righteous indignation at the very idea! The Britannian forces didn't retreat nor did they surrender ground! Doing so suspiciously smelled to what happened to the original homeland and was a big taboo among the military. "The officers in charge here are yet to give us an official statement and explanation to that stunning turn of events..." She continued to summarize what she had found out so far. Lydia only hoped that the censors at home wouldn't gut her work too bad, because this was stuff that made careers!
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A few hours of recording fire-fighting, rescue efforts and questioning anyone willing to spent a moment or two in front of the camera followed before the roar of multiple jet engines came from the north east. There were no more alarms and no one scrambled for the bunkers, which meant that those were friendly. Lydia grinned like a shark. Now she was going to figure out where those people went while their base got plastered by the enemy! Unless they did something of note she was going to make sure they got raked over the coals back home!
The reporters hurried towards the airfields so they could record the incoming planes.
"Is it just me or are there a lot fewer than left?" Bruno, the cameraman, asked.
"There are, aren't they?" Lydia asked thoughtfully.
It was time for another shot with the fighters and bombers coming home as a background! With some runaways bombed by the Chinese and in the process of being repaired, a limited number of places were available for returning planes, which only served Lydia's purpose. Dozens of fighters and bombers had to come in for landing just behind it, which made for some great shot lit up by both fires and the base's lights.
"Behind me you can see our brave pilots return from their classified mission. It is obvious they have suffered casualties, however we sincerely hope they did succeed and thus avenged the treacherous Chinese attack that struck Gawain earlier tonight!"
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9 May 2009 A.T.B.
Gawain Naval base
Cam Ranh Bay
As soon as we approached the base, it became painfully obvious where the Chinese land-based air-power went. The whole place got plastered by the look of it. It was a very good thing that we were in the process of abandoning the place, that and the fact that my 501st and its most advanced gear was already en route to the Philippines with as powerful an escort as the fleet could afford to give our transports.
"Odin's balls!" Maya spat once it became clear exactly how bad the base got hit – hangars, fuel dumps, the vehicle park as well as part of the docks were hit bad. We finally managed to reach the base on short range radio – long range comms got knocked out too, a fact that made our return trip rather tense – we already knew that the base got hit, just not how bad.
There were a lot of fires outside Gawain too – from crashed planes, both ours and Chinese as well as struck radar and AA emplacements.
"Maya, you're temporally in charge of our remaining air-force in the area. I want every plane refuelled and rearmed for a naval strike and air-superiority. Get our bombers what TV-guided ship-killers are left." I looked through the canopy at distant fires where bulk of the munitions were safely stored. Those dumps were hit too, though the lack of secondary explosions told me that despite the fires, there were no penetrating hits. However, for the time being the ammo was unreachable, which left what little was stored for easier access in the remaining hangars.
"Understood, sir. What are you going to do?"
"Figure out who is still alive down there, do my best to straighten that mess and plan another naval strike some time in the afternoon. We're going to soften the second Chinese CBG for Third Fleet or go after the Japanese off the Philippines before re-basing most of our air-power there. We'll leave just enough fighters here to keep the sky contested until the evacuation is complete."
That and I needed time to process what happened tonight, speak with Stein if he was still alive and plan the next strike better. I made some assumptions and that got a lot of good people killed for no good reason – I should have targeted the Chinese escorts first instead of throwing everything towards the carrier. As the battle demonstrated, fighters and tactical bombers were at significant disadvantage against naval ships – they had to fly through at least three missile salvoes on average before being able to shoot back with radar-guided ship-killers. While the navy had a lot of IR and TV guided ones, the same wasn't true for the air-force, at least not in the Pacific. There were only TV guided and radar-guided air launched ship-killers and the former suffered in bad weather and were practically useless at night. With the weather being generally nasty the last few days, that didn't leave us many options. I only this afternoon we might get a break. Of course, there was the little issue that according to Stein the currently available TV guided munitions weren't particularly reliable at the best of times, which left Third Fleet seeking a relatively close range decisive engagement – there was a reason why everyone still had battleships and battle cruisers as a part of every notable naval task force, including CBGs. Simply put, a carrier air-wing or two usually lacked the capability to kill an enemy CBG even at the best of times. However, they could either soften it up for a decisive engagement or engage after the fleets met and mop up the enemy once it got through the cauldron of direct naval combat. That and the carrier wings were useful as scouts, AWACS escorts, ASW and merchant hunting.
That was something that should have rung large alarm bells in my head, however thanks to Veil's memories and my inexperience in all things naval I missed the glaringly obvious alarm signs – while important, carriers simply weren't the decisive weapon of modern naval combat, because for about half a decade now jamming and ECM had air-power neutered.
Damn it, what else did I miss or dismissed because I thought I knew better!?
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Part 10
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9 May 2009 A.T.B.
Admiral's office
Command bunker
Gawain Naval base
Cam Ranh Bay
Admiral Stein, his XO and a few members of their staff sat in Victor's office and stared at the retreating back of the insane Prince, who gave a succinct report on how the naval strike went and headed for the head; Victor was pretty sure li Britannia did it simply to give him and his officers a short while to digest what he told them.
"I can't believe it actually worked." Makensen shook his head. "I spoke with a couple of the pilots before coming here – they confirm they sunk multiple Chinese capital ships, including a carrier."
"It was still a damn fool idea!" Stein snapped.
"Two of the Chinese modern air-defence cruisers, at least one of their new frigates in the same role, a battleship, a battle cruiser, the carrier, multiple other frigates and destroyers." The officer in charge of Intelligence – Captain Karl Arnold, whistled. Compared to Victor's old friend Lev, the younger Captain, who sat next to Makensen looked like a dwarf. He wasn't really that short – though it looked that way next to the mountain of a man. Arnold made for his... challenged statute with broad shoulders and thick muscles that made him look like he could bench-press a Jeep. His blue, usually cold eyes, had a distant look in them as he spoke about the claimed sunk ships. Karl snapped out of his happy place and focused on the task at hand. "I still have no idea how the Prince got the location of the Chinese, however if the rest of his data is good, we should be able to get an air-strike at the other CBG before Third Fleet reaches them. If we can soften them, they will either run for it or if keep on coming we'll get a decent odds of victory."
Before the opening engagements with the Chinese, many would have called such talk defeatist. There were multiple cliques and schools in thought within the Britannian military, and according to one of the more prominent ones – which incidentally was made up by nobles who never came close to anything even remotely related with a peer opponent, Britannia had the most advanced weapons and best troops on the face of the planet. If someone listened to that group, General Brightman should have driven to the Federation border practically unopposed by the hordes of ill equipped Burmese troops and probably been able to drive to Beijing after running over more hordes, this time made by ill educated and motivated Chinamen.
While there were few belonging to that school in the Pacific – they tended to congregate on the homeland or the most prestigious and safe commands, there used to be an innate sense of superiority among the Britannian soldiers – enlisted personnel and officers alike. The Chinese capabilities, especially as far as electronic warfare went, came as a rude awakening. They were about equal to what the Empire possessed, which was a bad, bad news for every Britannian in the region – the cream of the air-force and navy were stationed in the Atlantic glaring at the Euros. That was a bad news, especially for the Air Force. While Britannia did have air-launched IR homing ship-killers, practically none of them were positioned in the Pacific. No one in the region was supposed to have EW capabilities equal to Britannia, which meant long air-strikes upon the enemy navies in the area should have been possible with good old fashioned radar-guided munitions.
This night proved that assumption wrong and there were whole squadrons of Britannian fighters and bombers missing as proof.
What Victor wouldn't give for a few dozen Reapers – the IR guided air-launched ship-killers! While both Third and Seventh Fleet had the naval variant on board their ships, that was a small comfort for the depleted Gryphon squadrons.
"There were some... discrepancies in what the Prince said and didn't say." Karl's gruff voice focused the Admiral's attention back to the conversation.
"I have to agree. The pilots I spoke with were in kind of a daze. If I didn't know better I would say they were high." Lev added. "However, they were adamant about sinking a battle cruiser, a modern AA cruiser and the carrier – they were part of the escorts covering the three Gryphon squadrons that either blew them out of the water or flew above the sinking ships on the way in. When the camera pods footage is ready we'll know for sure exactly what we struck tonight."
"The first AA frigate – the rest of the Chinese ships should have demonstrated somewhat similar performance, however once the main Gryphon force approached their fleet, the enemy's competence simply disintegrated and the Skyhawk EW efforts can't account for that. You heard the Prince when he briefly described the battle. Our boys and girls didn't face a fraction of missile salvoes they should have on the way in. Frankly, most, if not all, of the planes that went in should have been shot out of the sky." Arnold frowned. "Can we have overestimated the training and competence of the Chinese sailors? It is clear that their hardware is roughly equivalent to our own – especially in the air. We've skirmished enough with them over the past week to figure out that the hard way."
"That's more likely than our people receiving Thor's and Odin's own blessing during the battle as one of the pilots claimed." Lev reluctantly admitted.
"We have a few very pious pilots then." Stein chuckled at the very idea. "Karl, get the pilots debriefed and figure out what's happening with the Chinese navy. If there's something we can exploit, we need to know it yesterday." Or at least in the next thirty six to forty-eight hours before Third Fleet was in range to engage the Chinese. "Go." Victor waved as Captain Arnold and looked at his XO. "Lev, you'll continue to oversee SAR efforts as well as the evacuation. I need to know how long before we can safely access the ammo depots as well as updated progress on setting up the demolition of the base. Can we have everything rigged to blow by the time the last transport leaves?"
"Before the Chinese dumped a few tons of napalm and liquid Sakuradite on the ammo bunkers I would have said yes. Now? I'll get back to you once the fires there are extinguished and we see what's the damage. The good news is that obviously the bunkers themselves aren't compromised – we would have noticed if it was otherwise. However, my engineers tell me that the heat and explosions might have warped the doors and we might have to cut our way in once the area is safe enough. That might take time we simply don't have."
"At least make sure that all critical assets are either evacuated or demolished. If it comes to that, we'll have to use a few air-strikes. That's one thing I agree with the Prince without reservation – we shouldn't leave anything for the Chinese to examine if we can help it. Speaking about the ammo dumps – do we have enough ordnance to rearm the planes?"
"Most of the fighters apparently came back with most if not all of their weapons unused. The Gryphons on the other hand – we had various bombs and the TV-guided missiles ready in the hangars for faster rearming as the Prince ordered. We lost some of that ordnance along with said hangars, however we should have enough remaining at hand for the Gryphons that actually came back – about three and half squadrons all told." Lev answered.
"See to it, Captain. Now, onto li Britannia's 'request', we need to plan an air-raid with the TV-guided ship-killers against the enemy as well as make recommendation who we should go after next – the intact Chinese CBG, what's left from the one we struck tonight or the Japanese off the Philippines? Suggestions?" Stein asked his staff.
"Either the Chinese CBG or the Japs..." The Operations officer suggested.
"Reasoning? Not that I disagree – what's left from the first CBG would be in disarray and busy picking up survivors, including our shot down pilots. While blowing them up might be easier, spending planes and ordinance on them might not be the wisest course of action." Stein fixed the youngest officer with his eyes.
"The Third Fleet elements moving in to intercept the Chinese aren't in ideal condition. Taking out some enemy escorts, even just damaging them and thus degrading their capabilities would go a long way in evening the odds. On the other hand, if we manage to hit the Japs hard enough, the Seventh Fleet task force near the Philippines might be able to take them out and that opens the door for combining our naval forces in the area and going after the second Chinese CBG in force before enemy reinforcements could arrive in force. Either that or defeating the Japs might convince the Chinese to pull back and in that case our evacuation efforts would be secured and we'll be able to reorganize at the Philippines while awaiting further reinforcements..."
"Plausible analysis." If we win that is. While the Japanese navy was small, it was modern – they did have both the funds, infrastructure and naval tradition to ensure that such was the case. There was a reason that all the contingency plans for a war in the Pacific lately called for stalling for time until reinforcements could get to the Philippines. There were also rumours of substantial avionics upgrades across the board for all military forces in the works, though they were months, perhaps a year from seeing them in enough numbers to matter.