“Depth, one one zero feet, sir.”
“Speed, six knots, sir.”
“Up scope!” Gustavson rotated the hydraulic control ring in the overhead, and the stainless steel pole lifted out of the well. He bent over to catch the optic module as it came out of the well, snapping down the grips as the module appeared.
“Dark, dark, dark,” Gustavson said, training the periscope view upward to see the underside of any hulls that might be close enough to collide with. He rotated himself around in frantically fast circles. “No shapes, no shadows,” he called.
“Eight zero feet, sir.” “Scope’s breaking,” Gustavson said as the periscope became awash in the phosphorescent foam of the sea at night. He continued driving the pole around in rapid circles, one per second. “Scope’s breaking…”
Seven five feet.” ‘Scope’s breaking—” ‘Seven zero feet!” ‘Scope’s clear, low-power surface search,” Gustavson said, puffing from the exertion of spinning around the periscope.
The control room was silent, waiting for Gustavson to cry either “Emergency deep” or its functional equivalent! “Oh, shit!” which would be greeted with the same emergency actions to get the ship down fast, but finally Gustavson announced, “No close contacts.”
Bruce Phillips reached for the red radio handset, the UHF satellite secure-voice tactical frequency named Nestor for some forgotten reason. He glanced at the call sign sheet, raising his eyebrows at his call sign and the Devilfish’s.
“Ricky, this is Lucy,” he said into the red handset.
“Ricky, this is Lucy, over.”
The burst of blooping static immediately followed.
“Lucy, this is Ricky, flash message to follow from Fred. Message reads, coordinate readout, alpha at zero golf, bravo at eight hotel, charlie at two foxtrot, delta at nine mike, echo at six tango, foxtrot at five sierra.” The Royal Navy executive officer, Roger Whatney, hurriedly scribbled the coordinates to the six Rising Sun submarines as fast as they were read off, then typed furiously, entering the data into the BSY-4 fire-control system.
“Immediate release of all packages, break, break, acknowledge, over.”
Phillips snapped his fingers at Whatney to get the data into the plot, and leaned over position two of the fire-control system. Three of the Rising Sun vessels were inside the range circle of the Vortex missiles. The ship was carrying them on the outside of the hull like a bandolier, since they were much too big to carry inside the ship. Plus, the launching mechanism for the old Mod Bravos was an external tube because the older missile could not be launched from a torpedo tube without rupturing the hull.
“Ricky, this is Lucy, tell Fred we are mailing packages.
Lucy out.” “Sir,” Roger Whatney said, “targets one, two, and four are in range.”
Phillips had kept Vortex missile power applied ever since they’d entered the operation area. He’d risked the gyros overheating, but now he was glad he had, because now there would be no waiting.
“Weps, detach muzzle caps tubes ten, one, and nine.
Lock in solutions as follows, target one to tube one, target two to tube ten, target four to tube nine.”
“Locked in. Captain.”
“Very well. Firing point procedures, tube one, target one.”
“Ship ready,” Gustavson called.
“Solution ready,” Whatney said.
“Weapon ready, tube one, target one,” the weapons officer said. “Launch auto-sequence start on tube one, target one. Computer has the countdown—”
“Sonar, Conn, Vortex launch!” Gustavson yelled, warning the sonannen to rip off their headsets or they would burst an eardrum.
“Three, two, one, igni—”
The rest of the weapons officer’s countdown was cut off by the earthshaking roar of the huge Vortex missile solid-rocket fuel igniting and blasting the rocket away from the ship.
“Tube ten, target two, firing point procedures.”
The same litany came again. The crew was a tightly orchestrated team, each with their own say in the sequence, until the computer was handed the task of coordinating the final weapon launch.
Ten seconds after receiving the Nestor radio information, Bruce Phillips had three Vortex missiles attacking three of the Rising Sun-class ships.
He pulled a fresh Havana cigar from his coverall breast pocket. “Now we’re cooking,” he said to no one in particular. He lit it with his USS Greenville lighter.
The cigar came to life, and as he stoked it, the cloud from it grew a yard in diameter.
The first explosion seemed as if it had come from just next door. The second was more distant, the third farther out. After each explosion, a small cheer rose up in the room. Phillips did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm.
His ears rang from the noise of the launches and the explosions. But this once he didn’t care.
The ship had remained at periscope depth, and Phillips grabbed the red phone.
“Ricky, this is Lucy, over.”
“Ricky, over.”
“Three packages in the mail. You got receipts?” Did we hit the bastards?
“Lucy, this is Ricky, affirmative.”
The roar of the crowd drowned out the next announcement on the Nestor.
SS-403 arctic storm
“What in heaven’s name was that?” Chu asked.
“And where did it come from. Navigator?” Lo Sun joined in, his voice tinged with anger. Why hadn’t either the explosions or the loud transients preceding them been detected by Lieutenant Commander Xhiu at the sensor panel?
“Yes, sir, checking now. The display is coming up, loud transients from bearing one one two. I have sonar blueouts on the bearings to the Volcano, Lightning Bolt, and Tsunami, Admiral.”
How quickly the tide could turn, Chu thought bitterly.
He’d just lost three of his ships, and his damned sensor operator was clueless.
“Navigator, feed the bearings to weps. Weps, program Nagasaki’s 24, 23, and 22 for submerged targets ST15, 16, and 17, all at bearing and range of transient starts.”
Xhiu worked his panel frantically. LT Sun leaned over Chu’s shoulder and whispered, “Admiral, why three torpedoes?”
“Might be three ships,” he answered.
“Sir, we only have eighteen fish left. You shoot three, we’re down to fifteen. And if we lost the three ships, our squadron weapon load is lower. Do we really need three weapons?” Chu glared at Lo. “Yes,” he said, and Lo shut his mouth.
“Gas-generator high-impulse launches, highspeed search to the targets,” Chu commanded.
It took six and a half minutes to get the three torpedoes out. Completely unsatisfactory, Chu thought. They were beginning to make mistakes, forgetting to flood tubes, apply torpedo power. The sooner the mission was over, the better. Only now, if he had lost three submarines, and he was fairly sure he had, he might be down a hundred Nagasaki torpedoes.
At least the weapons were away, he thought. Now on to the next nagging problem, and that was, how had three loud weapons been launched from a submarine that he was not able to detect? He plotted the bearing to the transients on the chart pad. Then he made a decision.
He’d drive down the bearing line to the Americans, confirm the kill, then get set up on the convoy.
“Captain, Sonar, we have multiple torpedoes launched by the eastern Rising Sun toward the Piranha.”
Pacino sat up, startled. He found Patton standing outside the attack-center eggshell canopies. “We’ve got to warn Phillips,” Pacino said, reaching for the Nestor handset himself.
“Lucy, this is Ricky, over!”
There was no reply.
“Lucy, this is Ricky, come in, over!”
Beads of sweat broke out on Pacino’s forehead and ran down, one droplet hitting his eye and making it sting.
“Goddamn it, Bruce, pick up the phone,” he said to no one.
USS piranha, SSN-23
Phillips lit up his second cigar of the night, or the first
of the day, since the local time chronometer had just clicked past midnight on the wee hours of Friday morning.
“Thank God it’s Friday,” Phillips mumbled to himself.
“Captain, two more in range,” Whatney called, excited.
Phillips narrowed his eyes and addressed the crew.
“Firing-point procedures, tube three, target three,” he said, puffing the stogy.
“Lucy, this is Ricky, over.”
Phillips rolled his eyes in annoyance. The radio blared insistently in the room. He kept giving orders and listening to reports as he reached distractedly for the phone.
“Ship ready,” Gustavson called.
“Solution ready,” Whatney reported.
“Weapon tube three, target five, and launch auto-sequence start. Computer has the countdown—”
“Ricky, this is Lucy, I copy, over,” Phillips said to the phone, concentrating on the Vortex launch.
“Lucy, immediate execute. Clear datum to the east, emergency fl—”
The radio call was interrupted by the violent roar of the Vortex missile as it left tube number three on the starboard side, where the radio console was located. It took several seconds before Phillips could hear anything.
When he did, he clicked the transmit button and said! “Ricky, this is Lucy, say again?”
“He didn’t hear you. Admiral.”
“Lucy, this is Ricky! Immediate execute. Gear datum to the east, emergency flank! I say again, clear datum to the east, emergency flank, ASAP, ASAP, ASAP! Do you copy me, over?”
The reply was static-filled.
“Ricky, this is Lucy, say again, over.”
“Lucy, this is Ricky, clear datum, dammit! Get out of there now! Withdraw! Do you copy?”
Bruce Phillips glared at the phone.
“Weps, tube eight, target five, firing-point procedures.”
“Lucy, this is Fred, immediate execute, clear datum east, ASAP! Do you copy?”
Phillips made a face.
“Ship ready, sir.”
Phillips made a decision. Micromanagement had its place, but he was two Rising Suns away from a Distinguished Submariners’ Medal, and he’d be damned if he was going to clear datum. Yet ignoring the radio call wasn’t his style. He’d confront the radio caller directly.
And this time he’d be damned if he’d use the stupid call signs.
“Admiral, this is Phillips, negative clear datum. I say again, negative negative negative. Piranha is at the firing point. I repeat. Piranha is at the firing point, negative clear datum. Phillips out.”
He looked at his officer of the deck while turning the volume down on the radio.
“OOD, lower the periscope, take her deep, one thousand feet, best listening depth.”
“Aye, sir,” the officer of the deck acknowledged, making the orders to the helm and diving officer.
“Well,” Phillips said to the weapons officer, peeved.
“What are you looking at? Status on the weapon, let’s go! Shoot eight!”
“Computer auto-sequence start at five, four, three…”
The three Nagasaki torpedoes soared through the water toward the target ahead, the one designated only as ST15, the fifteenth submerged target encountered that campaign.
The weapons ate up the distance at eighty-five clicks, against a target moving at ten clicks at periscope depth, the range getting closer and closer.
Patton stared at Pacino.
“I don’t believe it. He doesn’t want to hear there are three plasma torpedoes on the way inbound,” Patton sputtered.
“Shoot a Vortex at him,” Pacino commanded.
“What?”
“Now, John, let’s go, get a Vortex missile in the water, aim it for the Piranha, ceiling setting enabled, and make damned sure you disable the terminal-mode detonation.
Move!”
A look of understanding dawned on Patton’s face.
“Line up tube one. Vortex Mod Charlie, swimout mode, ceiling setting enabled, terminal detonation disabled, target—the USS Piranha. Firing-point procedures, Piranha, Vortex one. Report!” “Sir, what are you doing?” XO Walt Hornick asked.
“Launch the damned thing now,” Patton roared. The crew responded sluggishly, not understanding why they would be ordered to shoot at their own submarine, but Patton obviously did not have the time or the inclination to tell them.
It took fifty seconds for the Vortex Mod Charlie to clear the tube and ignite the solid-rocket fuel. Unlike Bruce Phillips’ Mod Bravos, which left their launching sleeves under full thrust, the Mod Charlies had a torpedo-like booster engine to get the smaller missile clear of the tube and a few ship lengths away, allowing the solid-rocket fuel to ignite only when the missile was one thousand feet away going fifty knots.
Pacino ducked into station four to see what would happen. Would Phillips finally react?
“Sir,” Hornick said, “why did we put friendly fire on the Piranha!” “Think, XO,” Patton said. “He didn’t hear our order for him to clear datum; he wanted to keep shooting. He can’t hear a Nagasaki torpedo, not even three, not while he’s lighting off solid-rocket-fueled weapons, and I doubt he’d hear them anyway. So the next sound he’ll hear is an inbound Vortex missile aimed at him. He’ll go absolutely crazy and blow to the surface and shut the ship down. The Vortex is set with ceiling mode enabled, so anything it sees that is at a depth above two hundred feet it’ll ignore. So Phillips will try to avoid the Vortex missile, and by doing that he’ll avoid the Nagasakis he can’t see. They’ll completely miss him and swim on by, deep.”
“Now all we need is to see what happens to the last two Rising Suns and Phillips,” Pacino said on his boom mike.
“Loss of battle control!” came over on his headset just as the system nickered out and died.
Pacino climbed out of station four, miserable. It had crashed yet again.
The explosion that came next was deafening. *
“Conn, Sonar, I have an incoming Vortex missile.”
“Looks like Devilfish wants part of the action,” Phillips said to Whatney.
“Conn, Sonar, this missile is constant bearing, decreasing range. Conn, Sonar, recommend evade!” The master chief’s voice suddenly became distorted as he screamed into his circuit. “Captain, Sonar, the missile is targeting us! Recommend immediate emergency blow!”
Phillips didn’t stop to wonder what was going on. He turned his head to the chief of the watch at the ballast-control panel and screamed, “Emergency blow, both groups! Helm, ahead full! Dive, thirty-degree up angle!”
No one needed to be told twice. The emergency-blow levers, two stainless steel levers in the overhead, put ultrahigh-pressure air to the ballast tanks. The draining was as quick and violent as if an explosion had happened in the tanks. The room was engulfed in a symphony of ear-splitting noise as the air blew into the ballast tanks.
Piranha drove to the surface at a thirty-degree angle, the full bell and the blow and the angle bringing her up from a thousand feet to the surface in less than two minutes.
The ship was traveling at thirty-four knots when it broke the surface above. The parabolic cross-section nose cone penetrated the waves first, bringing with it tons of seawater. The cylindrical length of the ship followed, the sail emerging, then the aft cylinder, until the tail came out of the water. The giant submarine then crashed back into the ocean and vanished to a depth of two hundred fifty feet, then returned for the second time, bobbing and rolling on the surface.
“Scram the reactor!” Phillips ordered. “Shut down the ship!” The OOD passed the word aft to maneuvering, and within seconds the lights flickered and the air conditioning shut down. All but one console of the fire-control system went dead.
“Sonar, status of the missile?”
“Still inbound, sir, getting closer,” the master chief said.
Phillips tossed the soggy cigar, started to pull out a new one, but then put it back in his pocket. He tapped his feet, waiting.
&nb
sp; Four hundred feet beneath the USS Piranha the Vortex Mod Charlie passed. Its detonation circuits told it to disregard targets shallower than two hundred feet, so it sailed by the Piranha and continued on until its fuel ran out forty seconds later. Then, as programmed, it shut down and sank to the bottom of the sea.
The three Nagasaki torpedoes became confused and sailed far beyond where their target should have been.
They didn’t have a ceiling setting, and were allowed to climb all the way to the surface. But at a depth of 178 feet lay a steep thermal layer. The water above was stirred by the wind and waves, heated by the sun. Below, the water temperature hovered a tenth of a degree above freezing. The Nagasaki torpedoes were deep, searching using passive sonar—listening only. As a result, any sound from above the layer reached downward only when the source was directly overhead. Sound waves out ahead of the torpedo, to the side, or behind bounced off the thermal layer like light bouncing off a mirror.
Waiting quietly above the layer, the Piranha confused the torpedoes. They drove back and forth and in circles before detonating in plasma explosions. But by that time they had drifted many miles away from the Piranha’s position.
The explosions that had come after the Devilfish’s battlecontrol system had crashed had been two Rising Sun submarines, put down by Piranha’s last Vortex shots.
The sea was empty. Almost.
Piranha had survived. Yet there remained one last Rising Sun submarine, the Arctic Storm.
USS devilfish, SSNX-1
“Status of Cyclops?” Patton asked.
“Down hard,” Colleen O’Shaughnessy said on the battle circuit.
“Can we launch Vortex missiles in manual?” Pacino asked.
“Should be able to,” Colleen said.
“John, let’s get fifteen of them out there in a saturation attack. And get someone on the horn to Piranha.
Tell Phillips under no circumstances shall he submerge.”
“Aye, sir.”
Pacino leaned against the conn handrail, shutting his eyes, listening to the battle litany as they attempted to open the torpedo-tube muzzle doors to program the Vortex missiles to go out on a specific bearing line and look for contacts. A fan of fifteen Vortexes ought to do it, and if they didn’t, perhaps by then the Cyclops system would be back and they could actually target the last Rising Sun.
Piranha Firing Point Page 34
