Zhanjiang Naval Base, China
AT 0830, ON A CLOUDLESS blue morning in the South China Sea, the latest, most modern of China’s three aircraft carriers slipped her moorings and steamed out of Zhanjiang naval base on the southern coast of the People’s Republic, bound for the Taiwan Strait.
The 80,000-tonne Fujian had only recently completed her sea trials but now she carried a full complement of forty-two fourth-generation Shenyang J-15 ‘Flying Shark’ fighter aircraft, ready to be launched by electromagnetic catapult, a system employed by only the most advanced US and Chinese carriers. Larger than any ship in the Royal Navy or the French Navy, Fujian had a capacity crew of 2020 sailors and nearly a thousand air crew. Most of the ship’s company had been told they were departing on an exercise, ready to carry out important naval manoeuvres in the defence of the motherland. Only the most senior officers onboard had been fully briefed on her classified mission.
Aircraft carriers do not sail alone or they would be sitting ducks for incoming enemy missiles and attack submarines. When Fujian left port that morning she was escorted and protected by a fleet of guided missile destroyers, frigates and – ominously for the Western intelligence analysts who were already studying the satellite images – no fewer than six amphibious landing ships.
Invisible from space once they deployed to the open ocean, Fujian was also being shadowed beneath the surface by a pair of Yuan-class stealth submarines, with their dramatically reduced active sonar signature.
As the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet Carrier Strike Group 5 steamed in the opposite direction, heading south-west across the East China Sea, the People’s Liberation Army Navy was now moving to a more active phase. It was preparing to meet the US Carrier Strike Group head-on.