Scorpion in the Sea (60 page)

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Authors: P.T. Deutermann

BOOK: Scorpion in the Sea
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The Submarine Al Akrab, 1649
The sonar Chief signalled for the Captain’s attention.
“Sir: the pursuit torpedoes are running hot, straight and normal, down doppler, no bearing drift. But, Sir: the destroyer is much closer; by ping stealing I estimate the range at around 8000 meters.”
The sonar chief held his earphones hard against his left ear, his better ear, while punching buttons rapidly on the sonar computer console with his right hand. The Captain bared his teeth.
“Attack director,” he ordered. “Enter 8000 meter estimated range on channel two. Course west, speed fifteen! Make ready tubes one and two for wire guidance on channel two. We—”
“Torpedo inbound! Torpedo inbound!” yelled the sonar Chief. “Electric, bearing 085! Up doppler, in search mode!”
“Right full rudder! All ahead full!” yelled the Captain. The helmsman punched out the order to engineering, and the submarine jumped ahead, and then leaned way over to port as the rudders took effect.
“Fire decoys aft! Fire both at once!”
The sonar operator armed the decoy tubes and punched out the firing orders. One hundred feet aft, two metal filled canisters were ejected into the sea and exploded almost at once, filling the water with a dense ball of air bubbles that
grew into a maelstrom of broadband noise covering the search frequencies of the approaching torpedo, the boiling turbulence created by hundreds of pellets of gas-producing chemicals. The submarine turned off the approach axis of the homing torpedo, leaving the decoys to suck in the oncoming torpedo’s sonar.
“Captain! Recommend we change depth to 100 meters—at this speed we are too close to the bottom,” called the Musaid.
“No! Stay where we are; rudders amidships, slow to ten knots! Depth saves us, Musaid. He is not in contact. That was a reflex shot in response to the pursuit torpedoes. Maintain depth. Come all the way back to the east as soon as the speed comes down to ten knots.”
The torpedo was still too far away to be audible in the control room, but everyone stood rigid in silence listening for it. The sonar operator could hear it clearly, as revealed by the expression on his face, but the Captain had switched the speaker off, mindful of the panic the last time. Finally, after a tense minute, one of the officers spoke up.
“I hear it!” he said in a soft voice.
Everyone listened, and then they could all hear it, the sound like someone was outside, walking toward them with an electric drill going. The Al Akrab had circled rapidly all the way around, across the path of the approaching destroyer, and was now turning back east.
The whining noise was not getting louder. The Captain listened carefully. The decoys had it. Boiling away only fifty feet off the bottom, they would suck it down to the bottom. They waited, and there came the rewarding sound of the small, shaped charge warhead on the Mark 46 banging into the mud of the bottom. There were audible sighs of relief, and the Captain turned back to the attack director.
“Now,” he growled. “Status of our torpedoes!”
“All are still running, Sir.”
“Very well. Now: we must kill this destroyer. Attack director, as soon as we are steady on 090, we will fire. Make—”
But once again the submarine was hammered by the
blast of a depth charge, followed by a second and then a third. Even at 8000 yards distance, the 500 pound depth bombs punched out a hefty pulse of hydrodynamic pressure into the sea, physically shaking the submarine. For one, heart-squeezing moment, her bow plunged downward, throwing everyone in the control room to the deck except for those strapped into their console chairs. Then there were three more explosions, even more violent than the first three. It was the sonar chiefs turn to arch back in his chair, screaming as he held his ears, the earphones dangling by his chair. The submarine had settled into a down angle.
The Musaid reached over the planesman’s shoulders and hauled back on the after planes in a frantic effort to keep her off the bottom. The bow jerked up and the Captain sprawled between the sonar console and the attack director, trying frantically to get back up, but was thrown down again when the submarine’s bow caromed off the mud bottom at a shallow angle and shuddered to bare steerageway.
Realizing what had happened, the Captain shouted an order to the Musaid.
“All engines stop! Blow after ballast! Instantly! Blow it! Blow it!”
There was rumble of compressed air aft as the after ballast tank was purged of seawater. This had the effect of making the stern more buoyant, and ensuring that the vulnerable propellers and the rudder stayed off the bottom even as the bow bumped softly along the mud bottom.
“All back together two thirds! Secure the blow!” ordered the Captain.
He was upright now, his eyes blazing in the gloom of the emergency lighting, his arms rigid against the periscope well as he tried to keep himself upright at the unnatural down angle. At first he had thought the destroyer had run into the spread of torpedoes intended for the carrier. Then he realized that his enemy had countermined the torpedoes with depth charges.
His face turned white with fury. The rumbling noise ceased as the diving officer slammed the air valves shut.
The Al Akrab hung suspended, her bow pushed down into the silty mud of the bottom, her stern thirty feet off the bottom, the entire boat pitched down at a twenty degree down angle. He could hear men yelling and things crashing down off shelves in the forward part of the ship. Then the propellers took effect, and her bow came unstuck. With a great lurch she came off the bottom, but her bow remained pitched down as the screws backed her toward the surface, aided by the abnormal buoyancy in the after ballast tank.
“All stop. All ahead together, one third. Musaid, get her level!”
The old chief had jammed his stool between the two terrified planesmen, and directed them urgently as they fought to get the boat under control. The diving officer partially flooded the after ballast tank again, and she finally came level. As the confusion in the control room died down, they heard the destroyer’s sonar again, without the speaker, this time in directional ping. The Captain listened carefully. The American was in contact!
“All stations, report damage to Control!” he ordered.
The compartments reported in. Engineering reported no damage to main propulsion other than two leaking pipes, but they were investigating two chlorine alarms from after battery. Forward torpedo reported that the outer doors on tubes one and two were not responding to control signals.
“Attack director!”
The Captain’s voice was frantic, close to screaming.
“Prepare to fire tubes one and two. Prepare—”
“Sir! I cannot. The outer doors were open. The tubes are surely filled with mud. We cannot—”
“Yes! Yes! We will! We must! This cursed American must die. He has cost me the carrier. I must kill him. Then we shall pursue the carrier! Do as I say!
Report your solution!”
The weapons officer was aghast. If the tubes were choked with mud, the torpedoes might not leave the tubes. But once the firing key was closed, they would start. Once started, the screws turned. Russian torpedoes armed themselves by counting screw revolutions. After the first few
thousand turns, the warheads, including their magnetic detectors, would energize, under the assumption that the torpedo was well clear of the submarine. If the torpedoes were still inside the submarine’s tubes when the magnetic detectors energized, they would sense the boat’s own magnetic field and blow the front of the submarine off.
“Sir, I cannot!” screeched the weapons officer. “The torpedoes will arm in the tubes if they do not launch. We must not do his!”
“Report your solution!”
The others in the control room were frozen in fear. The weapons officer hesitated for a fraction of a second, swallowed hard. and then looked down at his console. The sonar was still sending in bearing data, locked onto the Goldsborough’s sonar. He needed a range.
“I have no range data. Course and speed are unreliable. No solution!” he shouted.
The Captain scanned the sonar console himself; the sonar Chief had joined his mate on the deck, ears useless after the multiple underwater blasts. He would have to provide an estimate.
“Estimated range 7000 meters. Enter! Now!”
The weapons officer reluctantly punched in the data.
“Course and speed data unreliable,” he repeated.
“Course is west-270; speed is fifteen! Enter!”
The green solution light came up. The weapons officer shook his head, pushing back from the console.
“Sir, we must not—” he began.
The Captain jumped over to the weapons console, lifted the plastic protectors over the glowing lights for tubes one and two, and pushed one, then two. To everyone’s horror, there was only a half-hearted thump from the bow, not the full discharge reaction. A red icon flashed onto the control screen over tube one, and then over both tubes. The icon showed a torpedo in the tube, with its propulsion end red hot. The white-faced weapons officer sat frozen in his chair, staring at the icons.
“Recharge and fire them again, Effendi,” shouted the Musaid. When the Captain, himself momentarily frozen in
shock, just stood there, the Musaid jumped over to the weapons console, shoved the paralyzed weapons officer aside, and punched the button for the torpedo compartment intercom.
“Forward torpedo room: cross connect HP air to tubes one and two; fire both tubes as soon as the pressure reaches one thousand pounds.
Instantly! Or we all die!”
Once again the submarine lurched downward as one of the planesmen overcompensated, and the Musaid clawed his way back to the diving station. The Captain stared at the red icons, holding his breath, the tactical picture above totally forgotten. Finally there came a pair of thumps, these sounding normal, and the icons blinked out. The ring of the destroyer’s sonar grew louder. The Captain grabbed the shaken weapons officer by the shirt collar, and shoved him back in front of the console.
“Guidance, you idiot. Operate the guidance! Kill the destroyer before he is upon us!”
The weapons officer grabbed the joystick that sent rudder angle and dive angle orders through a thin, tungsten wire that should have been unreeling from the torpedoes’ propeller hubs as they roared through the water in the direction of the Goldsborough. Then he realized that the torpedoes had been fired on a bearing of 087, but that the sonar was holding the destroyer’s sonar now at 095. He jammed the joystick to the right. Nothing happened on the readout. He looked over at the feedback panel. The lights showed nothing but digital eights. Horrified, he realized what had happened. The initial attempt to fire the torpedoes had jarred them forward in the tube, and the wire had probably begun to deploy, but with the spinning screws right there, it had been cut into a million pieces. He tried to report, but could not get the words out. The Captain was shouting at him.
“Status! Why are those bearings different?!”
“Sir: the wires—I have no control over the torpedoes. They are straight runners! We should have set a pattern, but—”
“May Allah curse you to the pit!” screamed the Captain.
The destroyer was in contact, and he was out of torpedoes. There was no time to reload.
“Left full rudder, flank speed!” he shouted. “Make your depth 100 meters! Course west!”
He would have to maneuver quickly to get away from the approaching destroyer; they could not stand a depth charging close aboard. And then he remembered the mine.
USS Goldsborough, 1701
“Sonar contact, bearing 265, range 5500 yards, echo quality sharp, classify as possible submarine!”
“Yeah, Linc!” exclaimed the Captain. “XO, come right to 265, prepare for depth charge attack. How many we have left, anyway?”
“Sir, we have four depth charges left. And Captain, that helo is airborne and coming to our control on button five.”
“Very well.”
The antisubmarine air controller, hearing the report of an inbound helo, slapped on his headset, punched up the frequency, and began to call the incoming helicopter.
The weapons officer was tugging on the Captain’s sleeve.
“Sir, recommend an urgent attack down the bearing with a 46; it’s a doubtful shot, but we might bag his ass.”
“No. The last one went right for the bottom. I want to run over him and put one of these 500 pounders right between his ears. Tell sonar to be alert for hydrophone effects.”
“Sonar, aye, and Captain, this contact is stationary. It may be a decoy. There’s a lot of clutter on the scope around the contact, but we can still see him in there.”
“Keep on him; we’re running in on the plot. Get your depth charges ready.”
“Sonar, aye. Wait one! Hydrophone effects! Hydrophone effects. One, possibly two torpedoes inbound, bearing 260!”
“Combat, aye, bridge, come left emergency to 240, speed twenty knots!”
“Aye, Cap’n,” came the Exec’s voice back over the intercom. “We’ve got the rudder over, but we’re stuck at about fourteen knots until they get vacuum back on number two; number two shaft is locked, and number one is making turns for twenty right now. She’s coming around.”
“Hydrophone effects, bearing 261, doppler up, amplitude increasing, make it a pair!”
Mike grabbed the 1MC microphone as Goldsborough came around to the southwest, grudgingly with that one screw locked.
“All hands, torpedoes inbound, starboard side. We’re maneuvering, but brace for impact, brace for impact!”
“Hydrophone effects, bearing 262—they’re drawing right, Captain!”
Every man in CIC stared at the plot while their brains feverishly broadcast the same message—draw right, draw right!
“Combat. Bridge, Cap’n, we see ’em! Big fucking wakes coming up the starboard bow! If they’re not pattern runners, we’re gonna be clear, they’re right on the bow, and there they go, two wakes, down the starboard side.”
Mike could hear the sounds of cheering out on the bridge. He keyed the 1MC again.
“All hands, the torpedoes have cleared, the torpedoes have cleared. We’re going in for an attack of our own, and we have a helicopter now to help out!”
He bent back over the plotting table. The operations officer was calling the course changes now, as Goldsborough limped in at fourteen knots in the direction of the submarine.
“Captain, Sonar,” called Linc over the intercom. “We’re not closing this guy—he’s kicked it in the ass. We’re showing down doppler, and a course that’s westerly. Request eighteen knots.”
“Can’t give it to you, Linc, the snipes have a problem; we’re maxed out right now until they get vacuum back on number two. When the helo gets overhead, we’ll put active
buoys down; that should make him change course and maybe we can get closer.”
“Captain, recommend we shoot a torpedo down that bearing; he might turn to avoid it, and we’ll get closer.”
Mike thought about that for a moment. It was better than sitting back here and taking a chance on stern tube torpedoes from the submarine. They had been extremely lucky the last time.
“OK, weps, let one go, on the current bearing of the contact; set it for 150 feet, maybe it will see the submarine before it sees the bottom this time.”
“Weapons, aye, firing one MK 46 to starboard, on bearing 264, snake search, initial search depth 150 feet; torpedo away!”
The whoosh of the air flask was audible above the din of voices as the plotting team kept the picture going on the NC2.
“Evaluator, the helo is marking on top the contact, and is dropping active pingers on a line from 090 to 270, spacing 500 yards. He has no weapons.”
“Evaluator, aye, inform him we have a weapon in the water, headed down bearing 265 from us.”
The controller hurriedly passed this word to the helicopter, who promptly climbed out to 500 feet from his buoy dropping low pass, while Goldsborough drove in behind her torpedo.
Mike stared down at the plot, standing shoulder to shoulder with his tactical team around the plotting table. Everyone stank of sweat and fear, their eyes white with adrenaline. The contact data flowed up from sonar control, and the plotters acknowledged, making their marks on the trace paper.
Mike stared hard at the plot, thinking furiously. What do you do now? Think! Guy’s running away from you, you’ve got a torpedo chasing his ass, he’s got stern tubes. He’s fired two at you. He fired four at the carrier—we got three and a fourth kept going. Which means he’s empty forward. But what’s he got in his tail tubes. Four more? And we’re
right behind him? He looked at the plot. They were headed west.
“Come right to 300,” he ordered. “Quickly!”
The operations officer relayed the order, and then looked at the Captain, a question forming on his lips.
“Stern tubes, Ops. Like chasing a guy who’s carrying his rifle over his shoulder—pointed right at you. We’ll lose ground, but zig zag across his bearing every two, three minutes. Try to keep it random. I don’t want to give him a sitting duck solution. And have radio get another OpRep out: tell ’em we are in contact, two more torpedoes fired at us, and give a position in case this all turns to shit!”
“Aye, Sir.”
The operations officer relayed the order to the bridge to execute a broad zig zag, and then called radio central.
“Status of our torpedo!”
“Sir, our fish is still running, but the range is extreme. Still in search mode. No acquisition.”
Mike continued to watch the plot. The torpedo would probably do what the last one did, look down, acquire the ocean floor, and zoom down to go bang in the mud. The submarine was getting away to the west, slowly opening the range, but he could not keep that up. To the west was shallow water, and two Spruance destroyers.
“Ops, once you get your amplifying OpRep out, find out where those Spruances are, and whether or not they can vector their heloes out here now. And get our helo back in front of the contact, dropping active buoys. I need to herd his ass back east, so we can have a go with depth charges.
“Ops, aye.”
The Exec’s voice sounded over the bitchbox.
“Combat, bridge, the carrier wants to know what’s going on.”
“Tell him we are in contact and trading torpedoes with this guy. Tell him to go east some more, stay out of range.”
“Bridge, aye.”
“Combat, sonar, torpedo at end of run. No acquisition.”
“Fire another one, Sir?” asked the weapons officer. “Keep him busy?”
Mike thought fast. Goldsborough’s torpedoes were useless in this shallow water. Good maybe for psychological warfare, but not much else. Why hadn’t the guy taken another shot? He had four stern tubes. Had they damaged him?
“Sir, the contact is changing course,” announced the red plotter.

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