Voyage of the Devilfish mp-1

by Michael Dimercurio

  The general was taken off by a waiting petty officer and as he was being pulled to the blast door he heard Donchez talking to the lieutenant.

  “Does SOSUS still have a detect on any of the subs up there? He’s still got the Russian unit? Goddamn… get the admiral on NESTOR secure voice and tell him I’m sending a chopper for him, then get back on NESTOR and notify CINCLANTFLEET, NMCC, the White House—”

  The blast door slammed. As Brigadier General Tyler was escorted down the hall, he lingered for a moment at the picture of the attack submarine the commander had been so proud of. So much for the assumed overwhelming superiority of American machines over Soviet ones, he thought.

  SIX DAYS LATER, 19 DECEMBER 1973

  PIER 7

  NORFOLK NAVAL BASE, NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

  A light rain had started about four hours after Stingray’s scheduled dock time. The soaked banners read “WELCOME HOME STINGRAY’:’ The brass band had long since gone. Families huddled in groups, their conversations hushed, apprehensive.

  The Squadron Seven Public Affairs Officer was nearly mobbed when he walked onto the pier.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I have an announcement concerning the Stingray.”

  Family and friends of the Stingray’s crew crowded around the podium.

  “I’m reading now from a statement from the Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, CINCLANTFLEET: Unconfirmed reports indicate the USS Stingray may have been lost at sea in mid-Atlantic while returning from a classified deployment. Search vessels have been in the vicinity for the last several days. The announcement of the Stingray’s possible loss was delayed in the hope that she might have suffered a mere loss of communications and surfaced today as scheduled. Now that she is overdue by almost six hours we must begin to believe the worst. Search efforts will continue until further notice.”

  At first, they stayed on the pier, as if thinking the Stingray might still round the turn any minute and put her lines over the pier. But soon the drizzle turned into a driving rain, and when the pier floodlights came on hours later, the crowd had finally dispersed. Only the dark submarines of Squadron Seven remained, tied up on each side of the pier, with a conspicuous gap left for the mooring of the Stingray.

  U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY

  ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND

  Commander Donchez entered the office and put his cap on the single desk. He rubbed his hand over his balding head, a habit when he was uncertain, and looked around at the office. The room was normally occupied by the officer of the watch at the Academy’s Bancroft Hall, the enormous, forbidding granite dormitory for the midshipmen. The room hadn’t changed since he’d been a midshipman himself, the wall still done in dull brown ceramic tile, like a large bathroom. Donchez looked out the window onto the flood-lit bricks of Tecumseh Court below, remembering the view from his and Anthony “Patch” Pacino’s room some twenty years before. As the late Anthony Pacino’s best friend and former Annapolis roommate, it had fallen to him to tell Pacino’s son about the loss of the Stingray. The sinking had not yet leaked to the press; they had not even told the families on the pier. The door to the room opened and latched with a crash. The officer of the watch delivered a tall, thin, closecropped midshipman in a black shirt and trousers. The midshipman took three large steps into the room, pivoted in front of the desk and came to stiff attention, eyes frozen at infinity as required of plebes at the Academy.

  “Midshipman Fourth Class Pacino, sir!” he sounded off. Donchez sighed. “It’s me, Mikey, Uncle Dick. Carry on.” Donchez nodded to the lieutenant, who left and shut the door behind him. Pacino looked confused for a moment, then a dark cloud came over his face.

  “Commander Donchez,” he said, unable to drop the formality in the midst of his regimented plebe year, “it’s Dad, isn’t it?” Donchez nodded. “Mikey, the Stingray sank off the Azores in mid-Atlantic about a week ago. We couldn’t confirm it until she was due in. She failed to show up at the pier today. I’m afraid we have to presume your father is dead.” Pacino sank into a chair, a thinly padded steel-legged seat. His mouth opened and shut twice before he found his voice. “… what happened?”

  Donchez inhaled, preparing for the lie. The world would never know that the Stingray was intentionally downed — the very fact that U.S. sonars were capable enough to hear the sinking was still highly secret. A protest to Moscow would only alert the Soviets that American ears could hear them from continents away. More to the point, the Stingray’s top-secret mission had been to spy on the Russians, and an admission that she was under the polar icecap would be a confession to the Soviets that she’d been ordered north for covert surveillance. The President would not appreciate a media frenzy over a spying American submarine sunk by the Russians. But the multitude of valid national security reasons to cover up the sinking did not make the lie any easier, not when he had to look into Michael Pacino’s eyes.

  “We think she had a hot-run torpedo that blew up inside her bow compartment,” Donchez said. “Probably someone doing maintenance on the weapon screwed up, and it started its engine, armed, and detonated before they could jettison it. Goddamned Mark 37 torpedoes. They hot run all the time.” Donchez dropped his eyes. He himself had been the author of the official cover story. Eighteen-year-old Pacino shut his eyes and put his head in his hands. Donchez looked on, feeling helpless, wishing he could hug the boy, comfort him somehow. When young Pacino started to shake, Donchez could no longer stay still. He pulled Pacino up and put his arms around him.

  “Dad…” young Pacino said to no one, his voice shaky. Did he really believe Donchez’s story?

  Someday they’ll pay, Donchez thought. Was his old friend’s son possibly thinking the same thing?

  CHAPTER 1

  MONDAY, 13 DECEMBER 1993

  WESTERN ATLANTIC OCEAN

  The anniversary of the sinking of the Stingray had never been marked or even mentioned in any way by the Navy. Nor had the Soviets mentioned it. Nobody was that keen on a nuclear war. But nobody felt easy that somehow it would not repeat itself. This anniversary, over two decades later, was a rehearsal for a reprise. A U.S. fast-attack submarine was again within weapons range of an enemy submarine. The Piranha-class submarine ran quieter, deeper and faster than the Stingray. Her electronics and fire-control and sonar were more accurate, her nuclear reactor and engines more powerful, her layout more efficient and her torpedoes more deadly.

  Two conditions about the USS Devilfish were very much reminiscent of the old Stingray. Her control room was just as cramped, and her captain’s nametag read Pacino. Commander Michael Pacino frowned down on the fire-control solution from the periscope stand. His green-hued eyes and crow’s-feet wrinkles around them were hidden by the dim light of the fire-control television monitors. At six feet two inches he was almost too tall to qualify for submarine duty. Pacino was as slim as the day he had graduated from the Naval Academy, mostly from skipping meals and running in place between the broiling hot main engines. He had a mustache and his hair was a thick black mass in need of a regulation Navy cut. But as the son of a legendary submariner lost at sea with his ship the USS Stingray, he was not about to be denied his role. Over the years young Pacino had lived with memories of the day Commander Donchez had brought him news of his father’s death. Even more, with imaginings of what had happened and how. He had tried to believe the official version, but somehow had never quite bought it.

  Since Pacino had ordered Devilfish to battle stations ten minutes earlier, the control room had been filled with twenty-one men, most wearing headsets and boom microphones. They called it an “exercise,” but it was one in name only. Sooner or later it could be the real thing. As far as Pacino went, it couldn’t be soon enough.

  In front of Pacino, showing the Devilfish’s position in relation to the enemy submarine — designated Target One — were the computer screens of the fire-control system, displaying the distance to Target One as well as its speed and course. The readings were educated guesses aided by the multimillion-dollar Mark
I fire-control computer, though subject to error.

  “Attention in the fire-control team,” Pacino said. “It looks like Target One still doesn’t know we’re here. Let’s hope he won’t until it’s too late. I intend to fire two torpedoes in a horizontal salvo. Be ready to evade if Target One fires back and be alert in case he runs from the torpedoes. If Target One zigs we’ll do a quick maneuver to get his new solution and turn the weapons… Firing-point procedures — tube one Target One, tube two Target One, horizontal salvo, thirty-second firing interval, ten-degree offset.”

  Officers at the panels checked the target solution and locked it in. The final program was readied for the two Mark 49 Mod Bravo Hullbuster torpedoes twenty feet below on the lower-level deck of the operations compartment. The torpedo tubes of the Devilfish were twenty-one inches in diameter and twenty-one feet long. All four were set in the lower level of the operations compartment amidships. Unlike previous submarine classes, the Piranha boats had the main sonar gear in the nosecone and the torpedo tubes amidships, each tube canted eight degrees outward from the ship’s centerline. Tubes one and two were the upper tubes; number one on the starboard side, number two on the port. Each tube was flooded and equalized with sea pressure, and the torpedo tube outer doors were open.

  At Pacino’s order to man battle stations, the Mark 49 Hullbusters had received power to spin up their navigational gyros. Their central processor computers came up after a self-check and reported back to the fire-control computer.

  With their central processors, each torpedo had roughly the same intelligence as a golden retriever, which for a weapon was near-genius level.

  As the central processors reported the results of the self-check, the Weapons Officer at the control room firing panel began to load the run instructions, which sounded like an alien language: “Unit one, you are in tube one. The mother ship is on course 180, depth 546 feet. When you’re launched, turn to course 240 at 45 knots and dive to 800 feet depth. Arm the warhead when you are 6000 yards away from mother ship, your run-to-enable. Then start your 25-knot active sonar search at depth 300 feet. The enemy sub, Target One, is currently at bearing 225, and will drive into your search cone at a range of 2000 yards. When you get three confirmed return pings in a row, accelerate to your 50-knot attack speed. When you detect the iron of the enemy hull, detonate your explosives. If you turn more than 180 degrees, you may start homing in on the mother ship. If that happens, shut down your engine, flood and sink. If the target zigs we will turn you toward him with further instructions using your guidance wire.” With each downloaded instruction the Hullbuster torpedoes acknowledged.

  Two faithful golden retrievers, wagging their tails and panting near the master’s hand, waited for the command to go.

  In the control room, the furthest forward space in the three-deck-high operations compartment, Captain Mike Pacino watched the fire-control solution and the red television sonar-repeater screen on the port side of the periscope stand conning-console.

  The Officer of the Deck, Lieutenant Scott Brayton, reported: “Ship ready.”

  The Weapons Officer, Lieutenant Commander Steve Bahnhoff, called out, “Weapons ready.”

  “Solution ready,” said Commander Jon Rapier, the Executive Officer.

  Pacino opened his mouth to speak as Lieutenant Stokes, the officer on the central fire-control panel, said, “Possible zig. Target One.”

  “Zig confirmed,” Rapier said. “Time-frequency plot. Possible maneuver to starboard—”

  “Check fire, tubes one and two,” Pacino told the executive officer, aborting the launch sequence. Target One had turned and would no longer be where Pacino had been about to send the torpedoes. Launching a torpedo was something like throwing a touchdown pass — the torpedo was sent to where the target would be. If the target changed course, zigged, the firing solution was no good and the torpedoes would miss.

  “XO, get a curve and get it quick.” Into his cordless boom microphone he spoke to the sonar chief in the sonar room aft: “Sonar, Captain, do you confirm a zig on Target One?”

  “Conn, Sonar,” came the reply in Pacino’s single headphone, a custom configuration allowing him one ear for the sonarphone circuit and one for the control room. “We’re investigating…” Pacino waited impatiently. “Conn, Sonar, zig confirmed. No change in engine RPM. Target One is at the same speed, turning to his… starboard.”

  “Any sign of a counterdetection by Target One?” Did the son of a bitch hear us? he thought, trying to read the mind of the opposing commander.

  “No… he’s steady on course now, sir.”

  Pacino spoke to Rapier. “XO, you got a curve yet?” Rapier, the most senior executive officer on the Squadron Seven pier, was about Pacino’s age, thin, with silver hair and the same crow’s feet around his eyes that Pacino had from hours of squinting out of the periscope.

  Rapier was overdue for command of his own boat but his replacement was late. He leaned over Lieutenant Stokes’ shoulder.

  Stokes sat at the central-fire control console. Position Two, and stared intently at the screen as if willing his dotstack of sonar data to line up. But the sonar sensor was passive — it only listened and gave the bearing or direction of the enemy sub, not its range, course or speed. At the base of the screen were knobs that could dial in trial enemy ranges, speeds and courses — the combination of range/course/speed of the enemy submarine making up the “solution.” It was found by driving the Devilfish back and forth and seeing the effect on the bearing to the target. With the computer to help. Lieutenant Stokes could dial in any number of guess-solutions, but he started from a reasonable one and refined until the bearing dotstack was vertical.

  It all worked fine when the target stayed on course. When he zigged, only an expert like Stokes could reach out with his intuition and capture the target’s motion. Finally the dotstack was vertical and Stokes announced his arrival at a solution: “XO, I have a solution.” From Stokes, a fiery ex-football player from western Kentucky, it came out, Eh-yecks Zoh, ah’ve a slooshun.

  “Time-bearing, what’s the status?” the XO said.

  “XO, gotta curve, bearing-rate right, range… ten thousand yards,” Ensign Fasteen reported from a manual-plot board.

  The XO immediately reported it to Pacino: “Captain, we have a curve and a firing solution.”

  “Firing-point procedures,” Pacino announced again, “horizontal salvo, first fired unit, tube one.” He paused a moment, then said, “C’mon, guys, let’s get these fish out. Target One may detect us at any moment and zig again. Okay, first fired unit, shoot on generated bearing,” Pacino ordered, starting to feel intensely alive, and sweating. This was the point of no return.

  “Set,” Stokes said, sending the final solution to the firing panel and to the weapon in tube one.

  “Stand by.” Bahnhoff, on the firing panel, taking his trigger lever all the way to the left, the “Standby” position.

  “SHOOT,” Pacino commanded.

  “Fire,” Bahnhoff said, taking the trigger level all the way to the right, to the “Fire” position.

  The whole ship jumped and a booming roar slammed the eardrums of all twenty-one men in the control room. Pacino’s white teeth, upper and lower, were all visible. This was a sweet sound, the crash of a torpedo launch.

  “Tube one fired electrically, Captain,” Bahnhoff reported, resetting his panel to address the weapon in tube two.

  “Conn, Sonar,” the sonar chief’s voice came into Pacino’s headpiece. “Own ship’s unit, normal launch.”

  Pacino looked at the digital chronometer. The thirty-second interval was coming up quickly. ‘Tube two, shoot on generated bearing.”

  “Set.”

  “Stand by.”

  “SHOOT.”

  “FIRE.” Again the explosive pressure slammed the crew’s eardrums.

  “Tube two fired electrically, sir,” Bahnhoff reported.

  “Conn, Sonar, second fired unit, normal launch.”

  I
n the ocean outside the skin of the Devilfish, two highspeed Hullbuster torpedoes screamed in the direction not of the enemy submarine but toward a point in the sea where the enemy sub was calculated to be six minutes ahead. The control room crew was quiet, waiting for the torpedoes to go active. From this point on the weapons were “units”— friendly weapons launched by “own ship.” “Torpedo” was a threat launched by the enemy.

  Pacino watched the third fire-control console, Pos Three, waiting for the torpedo to report its status. Three minutes later Pos Three’s status indicator blinked that the first fired unit had gone active, pinging a sonar beam forward as it tried to see the enemy a mile ahead, and if it did it would go after it at maximum speed of 50 knots. No matter what the target did, as long as the unit had fuel the target had had it. № 30-knot or 35-knot submarine could outrun a 50-knot Hullbuster. But if the enemy detected the unit and zigged before the unit went active, he might escape.

  “Conn, Sonar, Target One’s screw is cavitating… he’s speeding up… definite target zig. Target One. Captain, he’s detected the first fired unit and he’s running. Max speed.”

  “Damn,” Pacino muttered. “Helm, right fifteen degrees rudder, steady course north, all ahead standard. XO, you’ve got a one minute lag to get a new curve and steer the weapons. After that it’ll be too late.”

  “Working it, Cap’n,” Rapier replied. At least the target hadn’t yet fired a weapon in response. Not yet, anyway.

  “My rudder’s right fifteen degrees, sir,” the helmsman at one of the airplane console-style seats on the forward bulkhead said, turning his wheel. “Maneuvering answers ahead standard. Steady course north, sir.”

  Pacino frowned at the fire-control console. The first zig had been routine, but a target zig with target acceleration was much more difficult to deal with, particularly when their own ship was turning. Now the sonar data had become a mass of relatively meaningless numbers. Computers were useless at times like these. Only human judgment and intuition, and perhaps some luck, would put the torpedoes on the alerted target.