Dragon Fire

Great Cocos Island Naval Base, Myanmar/Burma

Crew from HMS Ocean slipped the Special Boat Squadron’s Very Slender Vessel into the water from the amphibious loading hatch. Luckily the sea was choppy, stirred up by the foreplay of yet another cyclone heading into the Bay of Bengal. The waves would help conceal the VSV from radar operators and the moody dark clouds hid moonlight which could have lit them up in their final approaches to the base.

Sailing at 15 knots due south, the Ocean had taken just under a day to go from Cox’s Bazaar to a point 80 kilometres off Cape Negrais, the most westerly point of the Irrawaddy Delta landfall. The Ocean slowed but didn’t stop to let off the boat. Decoy radio communications were carried out in an easily breakable code, which British naval intelligence had confirmed that both the Chinese and the Indians had the ability to decipher. Messages concentrated on arrangements to sail west to join up with the American carrier group led by the USS Ronald Reagan.

The VSV was like a 16 metre-long, covered canoe, with a 3-metre cross-section so that it could punch its way through the waves swirling off the coast of Burma. This was an all-weather vessel. Whatever the conditions, it could put to sea and the storm approaching 320 kilometres to the south was not a deterrent. The two 750hp engines roared into life, and even in the heavy swell it was soon heading east towards the Burmese coast at almost 60 knots. The special design enabled the 30g impact usually experienced by speed-boat passengers to be reduced to only 3g, meaning that the men would arrive fresh for action and not exhausted by the buffeting of the waves or even suffering from sea-sickness. The eleven commandos were in a sealed section strapped into hydraulically braced seats. The crew was in a separate cockpit, slightly raised from the main cabin.

The Ocean had slowed where it did as a decoy to the Chinese who were monitoring its movements. The most strategic base was at Hanggyi Island where satellites had detected the Chinese Luhu-class destroyer Haikou, and a Jianghu-class frigate, Tianjin, together with at least one surfaced Kilo-class submarine. Interestingly, the far more sophisticated Sovremenny-class frigates had not been sent through the Malacca Straits into the front line of any naval war. They would have been lost to the Indian navy, meaning that the ships in Hanggyi were dispensable.

But Hanggyi was too well defended and too active. Indian and Western intelligence agencies knew pretty much what went on there and if anything went wrong with the mission the men would be on their own, facing certain death or capture and torture.

Their target was the base at Great Cocos Island, 320 kilometres to the south, far more secret, far quieter and only a few kilometres from Indian territory, to which they could make their escape, if necessary. The mission was to blow up a ship if they found one, photograph the base and leave. Once the raid was underway, the Indians would be notified. A single compressed burst code word would be sent to the Ocean, 270 kilometres away, passed onto Operations Headquarters in Northwood in London and then to Delhi. The whole process would take fifteen seconds.

Eight kilometres north of Great Cocos the VSV slowed to 20 knots, lessening the spray it was putting up, and making it easier to hide in the troughs of the waves. The long, thin design of the hull made it almost invisible to radar. The engine was enclosed and the heat contained, making it far more difficult to pick out with thermal-imaging equipment. 450 metres out, the VSV cut her engines, and the commandos went into the water with wet-suits and breathing apparatus. The port was in the Alexandra Channel on the southern side of the island. Working with maps compiled from satellite photographs, the raiding party made landfall halfway down the sharp and rocky eastern coastline. The island was no more than 8 kilometres long and barely 1,500 metres wide. The men had a clear run for the first 275 metres before having to take out the first Chinese watch post, killing the two guards on duty with silenced pistols. They took the tunic off one of the bodies for intelligence to establish the Chinese units deployed. The beginning of the naval port was marked by construction work, wooded land freshly cut back, a crane and earth-moving equipment. They could make out the darkened silhouettes of two ships in the harbour and figures on guard on the decks. More surprising was the hull, the conning tower well aft and an unusually wide, flat section of the top of the hull.

Two commandos photographed it using infrared lenses and, as a backup, one camera on long exposure with ordinary low-light film. Others took positions to ensure a safe escape. Four divers slipped into the water. They swam in pairs, attached to each other by a buddy-line, relying on the line to relay signals.

Then the mission was discovered. One of the Malay frogmen had trouble with his set. It’s thought there was a leak of the carbon dioxide chemical in the oxygen rebreather. The Malay, who was swimming with a New Zealander, managed to give the signal of drowsiness, which could end up with a black-out. There was a risk that the blackness of the water, the noises under the surface of ships, propellers, generators, boats passing overhead could lead to an anxiety attack. The New Zealander had to let the Malay get to the surface to breathe fresh air as soon as possible.

He kept his nerve for the few seconds needed to finish the job. Luckily, the ship had a metallic hull, meaning that he could set his magnetic limpet mine on a short fuse. It was later identified through photographs as an old Jianghi-class frigate. Only the registration number 533 was visible on the photographs, listing it as the 1,700 tonne Shaoguan. Once the mine was attached, he pushed up to the surface, helping the Malay as he swam. They came up using the curves of the hull around the area of the propeller for cover. But it was exactly the time that a searchlight flitted across the water, picking up the ripples, then the movement and finally reflecting off the glass of his face mask. It was bad luck, which could have happened to anyone.

When the divers failed to respond to his challenge, a Chinese guard opened fire. The New Zealander fired four shots with his special Heckler and Koch underwater silenced pistol. The commandos on land divided into two groups as planned in the event of interception. The two photographers plus two cover men back-pedalled to the place of landfall. They sent a single burst message to the VSV, which came in on full engines to pick them up. Nothing that the Chinese had in the base could catch them and it would have been useless to put up an aircraft. The VSV waited just 90 metres off-shore for a second message. If it did not receive it within fifteen minutes, it was to head back to the HMS Ocean.

The remaining commandos kept the Chinese troops pinned down with sniper fire, while the divers tried to escape. What happened next was one of the most remarkable stories in Special Forces operations. Two companies of Chinese troops were sent out against the three snipers, while the port was lit up with searchlights. The Malay frogman, still disorientated, was shot dead within seconds. The New Zealander cut the buddy-line and went deep, with the other pair of divers. A single burst message sent to the VSV was relayed on to Ocean, then to Britain’s joint-operations command at Northwood. The British Defence Secretary, David Guinness, personally telephoned Unni Khrishnan, who broke normal protocol by contacting the Commander of the Far Eastern Fleet at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands. A high-speed interceptor boat, capable of 40 knots, headed out from its base at Landfall Island to the territorial boundary just south of Little Cocos Island. Reddy then spoke to Unni Khrishnan who ordered the scrambling of ground-attack aircraft from Port Blair. They were over Little Cocos within minutes, using cannon to spread confusion among the Chinese. What the pilots hadn’t banked on was the effectiveness of the Chinese air-defence system, which shot down two Indian aircraft before being taken out.

At the height of the airstrikes the Shaoguan exploded in a wall of fire. The three surviving divers had cleared the area, surfaced and commandeered an ageing Carpentaria-class river patrol craft, shooting the lone Burmese guard from the water before boarding. The New Zealand diver took over the 20mm heavy machine gun while the other two started the engine. They were spotted as they were gathering speed heading south out of the harbour. The New Zealander opened fire and was killed in the return fire. After that the boat reached its maximum speed of just over 25 knots and had a clear run to Indian territorial waters.

Attempts to intercept the commandos with a Chinese fast patrol boat from Little Cocos Island was cut short by an Indian MiG-27 pilot who blew it out of the water.

Of the three snipers, holding back the Chinese ground troops, one Malay was killed, an Australian escaped and another New Zealander was shot and captured. It was his anonymous face which would later appear on television screens throughout the world as China used him to try and change the course of the war.