LOG SUMMARY

08:00:00 8,000 meters over the Strait of Taiwan

4 J10s              Vs        4 F16Vs

4 J11s

4 J20s

08:03:30 End of engagement tally.

LOSSES

4 J10s              Vs        3 F16Vs

4 J11s

1 J20s

END LOG

Ching Chaun Kang Air Base, ROCAF 1^ST Tactical Fighter Wing

[I Stand with Major Tang Shih-Win in the control tower of the Ching Chaun Kang Air Base. All the wreckage of destroyed planes and craters in the run ways removed and new F35 jets sit at the ready on the air field below.]

It started just like the other ‘Straits Crisis’; The People’ Republic of China Politburo was unhappy with the election results here in Taiwan, and months of saber rattling ensued. Unlike 54, 58 and 96, when the artillery shells and rockets landed on military installations on the Island of Kinmen or out in the Straits, this time the missiles came right into the cities, airports and airbases.

[Kinmen Island was an outer island under Taiwanese control since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, only a few miles off the Chinese main land on the far side from Taiwan on the other side of the strait.]

 The elections last January had been the last straw for the hard line ‘One China’ faction in the Politburo. It was then July and six months of raising tensions had been all the warning we needed.  With the president of the PRC consolidating power and needing something to distract his new ‘middle class’ from its first real recession since its new market policy of 1979, our intelligence community were especially on edge. With good reason.  The last three ‘crises’ fizzled because the PRC knew military confrontation with the ROC and its backing by the USA would be a losing proposition for them. Now in the early 21^st century with Red China’s yellow star on the ascent and the American eagle’s strength appearing to be waning the PRC saw an opening. Maybe their last opening because of the independence movement gaining such a majority in Taiwan despite the PRC’s best efforts to undermine it.

“How did your generals know to move your planes to the smaller air fields only minutes before the Red Chinese cruise missiles and rockets came in?” I asked.

As I said earlier, we were paying attention. We were paying attention to the PLA and PLAA build up on the other side of the strait. Like the PLA we have hackers too.

We actually had several hours warning. The PLA’s Special Operations Unit, the ‘Southern Sword’ started coming across on the ferries to Kinmen Island dressed as civilians the night before.

“The ferries were still running from the mainland?”

Oh yes. Kinmen Island has over the last few decades with the PRC’s ‘New Market’ policy, become tightly economically entwined in the main land province of Fujian. If they shut down the trade with the main land every time the two governments had a squabble, half the island’s 120 thousand people would go bankrupt. Also the majority of the population consider themselves Chinese, not Taiwanese. With their close proximity to Xiamen city I can say I blame them. Still they always voted down any referendums to separate from the RoC government of Taiwan and join the PRC. I guess it’s a case of what you Americans like to say ‘having your cake and eating it too?’

            Anyway, just cause the PLA troops had an easy time getting on the Island and had plenty of collaborators, didn’t mean that they went completely unnoticed. They moved on the Taiwanese barracks just after midnight. The two thousand or so Taiwanese troops there were also under alert and didn’t go down without a fight, even if it was a short one. We moved quickly to move our F16V “Fighting falcon”, Mirage 2000 and F1D “Brave Hawk” fighter jets, their support material and personnel to various smaller, but capable air strips around Taiwan, so when the missiles started falling our loses on the ground were minimal.

“And in the air?”

It was much worse. The PLA hailed rockets and missiles down on us well past dawn. Then a little after 8am just as they stopped, the PRC Air Force; the PLAAF fighter craft arrived. Over 800 Fighter Air Craft, close to 97% of the modern PRC Air Force jet fighters are committed. Taiwan had only about 250, American made F16Vs, French Mirage 2000s and our own AIDC F1Ds.  We we’re up against J11s, 12s, 16s and their new J20s. At three to one odds, it was a very rough first day of the war. We had to pick and choose our fights very carefully. One advantage we had was being the defender, we knew the terrain we were flying over. We protected key installations and army positions. We knew that if we could just hold out that help would come.

“You’re speaking of the Free Island Coalition and the American mutual defense pact”

Yes, I knew the Americans would honor the pact as they did in the last three crises, but I was shocked that the first country to come to our aid wasn’t the Americans, or even the Japanese, who as you know hate the Chinese almost as much as the Chinese hate them. No it was the Vietnamese.

Vietnam declared its support for Taiwan and dropped all diplomatic ties to PRC within an hour of the first cruise missile hit on Taipei. They had paratroopers and their small navy in the Paracel Islands by noon. That really through the Main land Chinese off balance. It wasn’t enough to stop the PLA from landing troops on our west coast, but it cut down on the number of sorties they were flying that afternoon on the first day. That critical first day. Grabbing the Paracel islands from right under the Chinese Red Dragon’s nose may have just been enough to have saved us.

“You saw the first landings?”

From a distance. As I said before, we were covering key positions along with mobile SAM HMVVES. We were able to challenge the PLAAF air superiority over a lot of Taiwan but not all for it. There was a fairly large naval battle in the straits as well. We had invested a large amount of money and men into new littoral missile boats. Quite effective against larger vessels and transports, but as it turned out, without air superiority over the straits, they were easy pickings for the PLAAF Planes and the PLAN ships. The navy wisely sent all the larger vessels north under the AA umbrella we had up near Taipei.

            The PLA marines landed on the lowlands of our west coast in Changhua and Yunlin counties. Lots of open farm land and board beaches made their landings there quiet easy. We knew this was a likely places for PLA landings and had defenses in place.

Unfortunately many were compromised by another of the PLA’s Special Operations Units, the ‘Fei-Long’ or ‘Flying Dragons’. The PLA landed over hundred thousand troops by night fall. Still my squadron and I had hope. We knew we would not be alone for long.

“What was it like in the air that first day?”

I know that you have friends in both the USAF and the USN that are pilots, so you know what their training was like. Our air force was based on yours and follows your training policies. I wouldn’t try to describe the howl of air as it shrieks by the canopy during takeoff. The heavy, labored paralysis of gravity forces or “G” loading down on your heart, lungs, neck and arms as your body becomes many times heavier as your “G-suit” slowly tries to push the blood up from your feet and legs into your brain. Then once you’re up, thousands of meters in the air, there is that whispering fear that any good pilot will tell you that makes it presence know with the realization that you can be attacked literally from anywhere as you ride encased in a plastic and metal tube with wings along with thousands of kilos of explosive jet fuel and weapons at speeds close to or even faster than the speed of sound.

            We were also expecting to see the new PLAAF J20s.

[The Major pauses for and points out the window at the New Taiwanese F35s parked on the field.]

It took your country roughly 25 years and billions of US Dollars to make that “5^th Generation Stealth Fighter plane” a reality. The PRC was able to produce their version, which looks nearly identical in just eight years. I assume you have a good idea how they did this?

[It’s common knowledge now that the PRC intelligence services stole most of it.]

Most of it. The majority of what they didn’t steal was forced from the companies doing business with them for the honor of doing trade there. What little was left over they were able to piece together themselves. Creative innovation was never a communist strong point, especially so in the PRC.  Technology is important and since they had no respect for “intellectual property”, like good communists they claimed it for themselves.

 We had only our F16Vs, Mirage 2000s and F1Ds which are all considered 4^th generator jet fighters by the international Air Power Development Centre. The PLAAF J20s along with your F22s and F35s are 5^th generation due to their enhanced electronics and stealth abilities.

            Yet as important as technology is, it’s the men, and now women that fly and fight the aircraft. At least until they figure out how to make these robot drones un hackable, which hasn’t happened yet, they are going to be the ones that pilot and fight in the skies. Good pilots can overcome technological disadvantages of their machines. Poor or inexperienced pilots will not take full advantage of the full abilities of their machines no matter what generation in technology it is. An excellent pilot in an older mediocre machine can be deadlier than the most advanced machine with a pilot that only has a mediocre pilot.

“So you credit your victory on your pilots were better than the PLAAF?”

Well, for myself and many of the pilots that are still here that answer is yes. As I stated earlier we had other advantages that played to our favor. Let me get back to your original question about the first day. Let me tell you about the first sortie, because there were many, but the first one stands out.

I wasn’t in the air long when our formation made contact with the enemy. We were organized into flights, that’s groups of aircraft, of four F16V fighter jets each.  I was formation leader, we acquired the targets from ground radar. It was confirmed by AEW aircraft and relayed to us. It was a flight of four J11s,  4^th generation air superiority jets based on the Russian Su-27. They were moving in to allow J10 strike aircraft to hit positions on the hills below us. Our “Falcons” carried 8 missiles, four short range Sky Sword 1 and 4 medium range Sky Sword 2 missiles.  We engaged at range firing two of our Sky Sword 2s at each J11s .

            Air combat is all about “acquiring a target.” You can’t shoot what you can’t see. Sight though is a relative term. We saw the Four J11s first because of the sensors of our ground and air based radars. We launched missiles at them at Sixty kilometers which is beyond visual range. They noticed us latter and launched their own Medium ranged missiles. We deployed our counter measures and started a climb to avoid theirs. Half of our missiles hit their targets, which I had expected. What I didn’t expect was another sixteen missiles coming in from nowhere.

            The PLAAF had a flight of four J20s following their J11s in.  We lost contact with the other flight. They were latter confirmed as destroyed. My wingman and I  tried to support each other while the last of our counter measures, flare like devices were dropped to prevent hits by short range heat seekers.

The PLAAF J20s had moved into close range and we were now engaged in a dogfight for our lives. Four J20 stealth fighters verse two F16V Falcons. Their cannons opened up on us from behind, or as you Americans like to say, your “6”. We both commenced a maneuver known as a barrel roll.  It’s a maneuver that attempts to slow the defending plane down some that the attacking plane will shot ahead and then the defender will become the attacker. Unfortunately these pilots were better than the ones in the J11s and the counters with their own rolls which forced both sets of planes into a series of continuous rolls known as a “rolling scissors”. This is an undesirable place to be caught for both the attacker and the defender because it requires a great deal of thrust, and thus fuel, without which the planes will both end up flying into the ground. The winner is usually the pilot that can make the tighter turns. The first one to disengage usually losses. Having two following you into a Rolling Scisssors is usually a death sentence.

 We got really low and the plane behind me broke off first. I only had him in my sights for a second or two but it was enough. I’m not sure if I even hit him, but he lost control and landed that new J20 into a hill side.  The second J20 broke off after seeing this wingman crash. My wingman wasn’t as lucky, but was lucky enough to eject to safety and fly another day, as did I.