Battlefield Korea

Pacific Pivot

Rear Admiral James Lomas was spoiling for a fight as the USS Carl Vinson raced towards Okinawa. His good friend, Rear Admiral Munch, had been killed the other day when the remnants of his carrier strike group had been destroyed in the Black Sea. It was bad enough to suffer the defeat of the Bush carrier group-losing his friend and several thousand sailors, many of whom he had served with, only added to the insult.

Unfortunately, his strike group was not being transferred to the Atlantic to fight the Russians. They had been ordered to leave San Diego and head for Okinawa. They were going to link up with the Reagan carrier strike group and bolster the US presence in the Pacific. If things did not turn into unmitigated conflict with the Chinese, then they may head up to the North Pacific and attack the Russian Pacific fleet. A couple of Russian submarines had already been sunk in the Pacific since the start of the war.

Captain Michael Richards, the captain of the Carl Vinson Supercarrier, walked up to the admiral, handing him a report that had just come in from one of their destroyers. “Sir, one of the destroyers is reporting a submarine contact, roughly sixty miles from our current position,” he announced.

Admiral Lomas took the report and digested the information quickly. Sixty miles was still outside their designated protective bubble. “Do we know if its Russian or Chinese?” he asked, hoping to get some better clarity on the threat.

“It appears to be Chinese. A Yuan-class, one of their newest and quietest diesel submarines. I ordered additional anti-submarine warfare (ASW) assets to the area,” the captain said, wanting to assure the Admiral that he was taking every precaution he could.

“Excellent job, Captain. Send a message over to the Reagan and let them know of the contact as well. I want to make sure they are tracking the submarine. The last thing we need is for one of our carriers to get ambushed by a Russian or Chinese submarine,” instructed the admiral.

Admiral Lomas turned to find his operations officer. “Commander Ryan, what is the status of the PLAN fleet in the area?” he asked, wanting to know if the Chinese had any serious naval assets nearby.

Commander Ryan had been the operations officer on the Carl Vinson for two years. Prior to that, he had done a tour at US Pacific Command. Much of his naval career had been spent in the Pacific, so he was well-versed in what the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) was capable of.

“Sir, in our area, they appear to only have a handful of destroyers and roughly a dozen submarines,” Commander Ryan replied. “The majority of their ships, including their three carriers, are south of us off the coast of Vietnam, supporting their ground forces.” As he spoke, Ryan pointed out the locations of the various ships on the digital map board.

The admiral took a moment to zoom in on the different types of PLAN subs for himself. “Hmm…” he thought. “This seems odd.”

“Why do you suppose they have nearly all their advanced submarines up north here with us, as opposed to down south with the bulk of their fleet?” Lomas asked.

“I thought about that earlier today. The best assumption I could come up with is that they know their surface ships would not fare well against ours. It’s their submarines that can cause us some damage. They are most likely keeping their prized subs in our area, in case they feel a need to use them. Frankly Admiral, I do not believe them to be a threat right now. They have stripped most of the land-based aircraft from our area of responsibility and sent them down south to support their ground operations in Vietnam. If they were planning something against our fleet, I don’t think they would have stripped away so much of their land-based air support units along with nearly half of their sub fleet,” Commander Ryan responded. He sounded confident, but the admiral could tell that he was just offering up his best educated guess.

Thinking for a minute and then examining the map further, Admiral Lomas had to agree with that assessment as well. It appeared that the Chinese were going to gobble up some of their neighbors, knowing full well that the Americans were powerless to stop them for the time being, with the Russian war raging on. It angered him to realize how impotent the US had become. There was a time when the US had the ability to fight two major armed conflicts at the same time; those days appeared to be gone.

Admiral Lomas’ strike group continued on to Okinawa, linking up with the Reagan strike group and providing a power deterrent against a Chinese incursion towards Japan and more than enough of a force to keep the North Koreans in check. If they needed to, they could shift further south and support Taiwan, but that would leave South Korea and Japan essentially on their own, and China knew that as well.