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as the leading element of the security guards that had formed a protective
shield around him reached the elevator.
He was wrong.
Just as the first of those men entered the elevator, and as Li himself was
stepping across the threshold, there was tremendously bright flash behind him.
Li only registered the surreal contrast between the bright light that was
reflected on the inside wall of the elevator and his shadow which was cast on
that same wall. It was the last conscious fact that registered on his mortal
mind as his body, and the bodies of the five men around him, were tossed like
so much tissue paper into that same elevator wall by the overpressure from the
blast.The blast resulting from the impact of a United States ALCM that
occurred only fifty feet behind them.
Li Ping, President of the People s Republic of China's Parliament, member of
the Politburo for the communist party of the People s Republic of China and
close confidant and unofficial spokesman forJien
Zenim, the President of the People s Republic was killed instantly. He would
not resume the press briefing that morning.
When it finally did resume, the press conference would be anything but
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The American attack on Beijing was a significant success, both from a
political and a propaganda standpoint, and to a lesser extent, from a military
standpoint as well. Many critical anti-aircraft defense installations were
destroyed by the attack. A significant exception to this was the complex of
very high value KS-2+ missile batteries right aroundTianjin . CaptainHuZiyang
, who had been instrumental in the near downing of an American HS-7 aircraft a
year earlier in the same vicinity, had been promoted to a position over all
KS-2+ batteries in theTianjin area. Upon recognizing the nature of the massive
American raid, and its targeting of Chinese anti-air assets, he had ordered
all KS-2+ operation inTianjin shut down and thereby saved many of the missile
batteries.
But CaptainHu was one of a very few who exhibited such goodjudgement . So,
beyond the destruction of many other anti-aircraft defense installations, the
American B1-B raid also inflicted significant damage to critical
infrastructure in and aroundTianjin and Beijing, andto many of the critical
shipyard facilities in
Tianjin dedicated to the military conversion of Chinese container ships. In
addition, the Politburo facilities and Presidential offices in Beijing were
completely destroyed. But, perhaps most important of all, with the death of Li
Ping, a significant political and diplomatic strategist for the Chinese, a
strong ally ofJien Zenim was silenced.
Much of the attack in Beijing was captured on video by the cameras of the
press. In one dramatic sequence, a photographer from Italy captured the hits
on the Politburo facilities that resulted in LiPing s death. US Tomahawk
missiles were clearly seen impacting first one wing, and then a few seconds
later the adjoining wing where the PLA security team had escorted Li Ping. The
tremendous explosions of both weapons caused both wings to collapse into
smoldering ruins. Although the Chinese government and military attempted to
censor all of the video, some of it inevitably made it out and was shown to
the world, including the sequence of the collapse of the two wings of the
Politburo facilities. But despite the tremendous amount of anti-aircraft fire
that was directed into the air over Beijing, not one video showed any damage
to any American aircraft. It was apparent that no American aircraft outside of
the cruise missiles ever appeared over Beijing orTianjin . All of the air
combat associated with the aircraft that participated in the raid had occurred
hundreds of miles away. In that combat, the Chinese lost sixty-five of their
fighter aircraft and the Americans lost three F-14D , five F/A-18F s and four
B-1B bombers as the Americans successfully lured the Chinese into range of
their longer range missiles, and for the most part successfully protected the
retreating bombers.
As successful as the massive B1-B raid had been, Operation Yellow Jacket had
only served as a diversion to what was deemed the more important American
military operation that day, Operation
Sudden Thunder . That operation dedicated fully one half of America s twenty
B-2 stealth bomber force to a deep strike within China, coming over the North
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