Counter Poised

by John Spikenard

  “Thank-you, Seaman Olsen.”

  Olsen disappeared back down the passageway toward the control room.

  The XO looked up from the chart and noticed a strange look on George’s face. “Something wrong, Captain?”

  “No, no, just wondering about the crews of the Texas and the Hawaii.”

  “Well, it brings up a good question about the Rules of Engagement, sir. Any of the attack boats are fair game?”

  The captain thought for a few moments. “It raises some interesting issues, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ll say!”

  “I hate to have to attack fellow Americans. We may know some of them and may have served with them in the past. We may consider some of them as friends. But at this point, they’re our most capable adversary—so tactically, it makes sense to take them out.”

  “Well, at least we’re not really ‘taking them out,’ Captain. We’re just rendering them ineffective.”

  “That’s true. In reality, who we take out—I mean render ineffective—depends on where they are positioned in the defensive line. You need to create a hole wide enough for us to get through undetected.” Pointing to the chart, the captain continued, “Based on our intended track, we’ll probably pass between the Kilo to our north and the Hawaii to our south. The Texas is positioned north of the Kilo, somewhere up here, and the Alpha is down here south of the Hawaii. I would recommend hitting the Kilo first. It would be the quietest while submerged, so it would do us the most good to have it out of the picture. After you hit the Kilo, one or both of the Americans may reposition to narrow the gap. You’ll need to hit whoever moves closest to our track.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  “Pappy, here’s that chance you’ve been waiting for to be a fighter pilot!”

  “Yes, sir! I won’t let you down, Captain.”

  “We’re in SF-1, Mac,” said the XO. “Let’s man up!”

  The captain returned to the control room. “All stop. General quarters. Rig the ship for silent running.” The captain grabbed the intercom switch, “Engineering, Captain.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Shut down the reactor and switch to emergency battery power—we’re going to eliminate all noise from the primary and secondary coolant pumps.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  “Shut down all nonessential electronic equipment,” ordered the captain. “We’ll be running on emergency battery power for the next eighteen hours or so. SF-1, are you ready to go?”

  “We’re manning up now, sir,” came the response over the intercom.

  “Then launch and arc way from our track. When you hit twenty thousand yards, start intermittently going to full SQID mode. You know, do it as if you’re fishing and trying to get a bite. Hopefully the cavitation will lead these attack boats away from us. I’m passing coordinates to you for our rendezvous point. See you there in six hours.”

  “Aye-aye, sir. How did you know I like to fish?”

  “Just a wild guess, XO.” The captain turned back to the conn. “Start SF-2. Go to maximum thrust without cavitating. Let’s keep her mounted to the deck and see how fast she can move us along.”

  SF-1

  After closing all hatches, Pappy settled into the pilot’s seat next to MacKenzie as they started the preflight checklist.

  “Sonar power—on.”

  “Check.”

  “Weapons systems—armed.”

  “Check.”

  “Navigation—on.”

  “Check.”

  “Propulsion system—operational.”

  “Check.”

  “Speed—five knots. Disengage locking lever.”

  MacKenzie grabbed the locking lever and pulled it to its upright position. “Disengaged, sir.”

  “Applying power,” Pappy said as he eased the throttle forward and the impeller, with a slightly increasing but almost imperceptible hum, started to move SF-1 forward. The fighter gently lifted off the Louisiana and as they rose above the deck, Pappy began a banking turn to the port side away from the conning tower and increased the power. The surge of the propulsion system pushed both Mac and Pappy into their seats, yet there was hardly any increase in noise. The balance of the impeller was almost perfect.

  “Man, what an incredible machine!”

  MacKenzie already had his headset on, and was tweaking various sonar dials.

  “Mac, our targets were about ninety thousand yards west-southwest of our position ten minutes ago. Let’s head south until we’re twenty thousand yards from the Louisiana, and then we’ll hit the SQID drive a few times to see if we can get a bite from any of those bastards. I’m pushing her up to fifty knots, which means we’ll hit that twenty thousand yard point in about four more minutes.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve already started listening, and so far I have several contacts. I’ll continue to monitor.”

  Pappy was all business now. Like the mind of every fighter pilot coming in for a night landing on a carrier, his brain had shifted to a higher level of concentration. The next few hours would be decisive. He would either eliminate the threat, thereby enabling the Louisiana to pass through the defensive line, or he would fail, and the future of mankind would be placed in jeopardy. You could call it superconcentration or being in the zone, but whatever you called it, Pappy and the machine he was flying had become ONE.

  The fighter was moving with virtually no noise at fifty knots due south. After four minutes, the XO warned MacKenzie, “SQID drive—watch your ears!” MacKenzie pulled the sonar headphones off while the XO hit the SQID drive for two seconds.

  “Wow!” MacKenzie exclaimed. “Without these ear cups sealing against your head, that SQID drive is deafening! I think I’ll leave them on next time and just turn down the volume on the sonar!”

  “Hey, live and learn.”

  After several activations of the SQID drive on a southerly heading, SF-1 turned west toward the defensive line of attack boats blocking the path of the Louisiana.

  “Mac, what have you got?”

  “I have good positions on three of them, sir, but I can’t find the Kilo yet.”

  “Let me see what you’ve got.”

  The XO looked at the plot. “Look, Mac, you’ve got two of them over here, then a big gap and one more. I would bet my ass the Kilo is in that gap, we just can’t hear her yet.”

  The Chinese Kilo-class submarine was the only one in the defensive line that was not nuclear powered. The Kilo was a diesel-electric boat, which ran on batteries while submerged. Although she had a limited time she could remain submerged, she was quieter and harder to detect.

  “I’m heading for the gap, Mac. Keep listening. I’m going to hit the SQID drive a couple more short bursts and see if we get any reaction.”

  The Chinese Kilo

  The Chinese captain called to his sonar operator, “Sonar, Captain. Do you have any contacts?”

  “Captain, I had nothing, and then there were a series of intermittent cavitations. No engine noises, no coolant pumps, just cavitations.”

  “Hmm…what do you think? A decoy noisemaker?”

  “I would say so Captain, but obviously not a very good one—cheap American copy!”

  “Ha! Very good, Comrade. But I will tell you something truer: where there is noisemaker, there is submarine! Helm, steer toward the noisemaker, all ahead one-third.”

  SF-1

  “XO, I’ve got her now,” MacKenzie reported. “Kilo-class, bearing two-four-zero degrees. No range information, unless we want to do some S-turns. I could figure out a range with some changing bearing lines.”

  “Mac, the other three appear to be in a line. If the Kilo is in line with the others, the range must be about twelve thousand yards—a little close in for S-turns. Let’s make one sweep to port and see if we move that bearing line enough to get a range.”

  “Sir, the bearing is sweeping pretty rapidly, so I think we’re pretty close. What do you want to do?”

  “Ping her.”

  “Sir?”<
br />
  “You heard me, Mac. Go active on the sonar. One ping.”

  “Aye-aye, sir. One ping, coming up!”

  Pinnnnnnng.

  “Got her, sir—eleven thousand yards. Neutral Doppler.”

  The term “Doppler” referred to the Doppler effect in which sound waves in the sonar echo were compressed by a target moving toward the sonar or were expanded by a target moving away from the sonar. The sonar equipment detected the compression or expansion of the sound waves as a change in the frequency or pitch of the received echo as compared to the frequency that was transmitted. A neutral Doppler indicated the received frequency was the same as what was transmitted. So this target was not moving either toward SF-1 or away from SF-1. Therefore they had either pinged the Kilo broadside as she moved through the water, or she wasn’t moving at all, which was not likely.

  “All right, we’ll head toward her. Tell me if she drifts right or left. Arm ‘em up. We’re going in, and I want you to have a ‘hot pickle,’” ordered the XO.

  “Aye-aye, sir. Master Arm—On.”

  The Chinese Kilo

  Panic! No submarine pinged another except to refine their ranging information for a final fire-control solution. So a torpedo launch was imminent! The ping had come from their starboard beam. “Right full rudder! All ahead FLANK!” ordered the Chinese captain. The Kilo accelerated and turned toward the origin of the ping to reduce her cross section and bring her own torpedo tubes to bear on the enemy. By rapidly closing the range to the enemy, the Kilo could also possibly avoid destruction by reducing the range to less than the minimum arming distance of the American Mark 48 torpedo, the suspected weapon they were facing. In such a case, the torpedo would not arm until it was past the Kilo.

  SF-1

  “Mac, what have you got now?”

  “Sir, the Kilo is cavitating, but there’s not much change of bearing. The screw noise seems a bit muffled now. If I had to guess, I’d say she might have turned into us.”

  “If you’re right, we need to move out of her path. We have the advantage in maneuverability—let’s use it. Turn on the spotlight—they can’t see us anyway.”

  MacKenzie reached forward to the control panel, flipped on the switch for the spotlight, and flooded the area in front of SF-1 with bright light.

  Directly in front of SF-1, not more than one hundred feet away and perhaps five feet below them at the most, was the massive bow of the Chinese Kilo—on course for a head-on collision! Both men automatically drew back in their seats trying to avoid the massive nose of the submarine.

  “Shit!!!” shouted Pappy and Mac in unison as Pappy rolled left so that their right wing just missed the conning tower of the Kilo as it sped under them. Pappy leveled the wings as they passed the conning tower, and SF-1 skimmed along the top surface of the Kilo toward the stern, with barely two to three feet of clearance. Then, directly ahead was the gigantic seven-bladed screw, with its huge blades chopping furiously through the water, creating a torrent of cavitation bubbles.

  “Shit!!!” Pappy and Mac again shouted in unison. Pappy yanked back on the stick, and as he did so, the inertial G-force caused MacKenzie’s thumb to push the “pickle” button on the top of his weapons control stick. SF-1 fired a single rocket, which struck the front of the massive screw at almost point-blank range. Instinctively, Pappy hit the SQID drive and rapidly accelerated away from the Kilo.

  Although SF-1 was extremely close to the blast, she was aft of the screw by the time the shock wave was generated, and the screw itself shielded them from the blast. The screw did not fare so well. The rocket impacted near the center of the screw, where it mounted to the Kilo’s engine shaft. The momentum of the rocket, combined with the rearward force of the blast, blew the screw completely off the shaft. The angular momentum of the screw kept it turning, and the screw flew forward, careening up the deck of the Kilo and crashing into the conning tower before falling into the depths of the sea.

  The Chinese Kilo

  The Chinese captain was completely bewildered. Strange whooshing sounds reported by sonar, an explosion, and tremendous crashing noises down the length of the deck, but no hull damage. No station reported any flooding. Meanwhile, their speed dropped even though the shaft accelerated wildly and they still had full engine power! Finally, although there was no internal damage, they were dead in the water. The captain did the only thing he could do and blew ballast tanks. The Chinese Kilo bobbed to the surface like a fishing cork—out of action.

  USS Texas

  Captain Buffalo Sewell called to his sonar operator, “Sonar, conn. What’s going on out there?”

  “I don’t know, sir. There was a sonar ping in the direction of the Chinese Kilo, and the Kilo started cavitating heavily. Then there was an explosion, but it wasn’t near big enough to be a Mark 48 or any other known torpedo. I don’t know what it was…”

  “Who…”

  The sonar operator held up a finger as he listened intently to his headphones. “Sir, the Kilo is blowing ballast. They’re surfacing—dead in the water!”

  “Any sign of the Louisiana?”

  “No sir. Nothing resembling an Ohio-class boomer.”

  “Maybe it was a minisub or someone else working with the Louisiana,” said Buffalo. “After working with George Adams for three years on the SUBLANT staff, I wouldn’t put it past him to have recruited other help with this little venture of his.”

  “The Russian Alpha is moving away, sir. Apparently too much action for her.”

  “Where’s the Hawaii?”

  “She seems to be moving in to fill the gap, but still some sixty thousand yards out of position.”

  “Good. At least somebody’s got some balls around here.”

  Pinnnnnnng.

  “Where did that come from?” Buffalo asked incredulously.

  “Near the Hawaii, sir.”

  “Well that can’t be any kind of minisub! There’s no way any known minisub could travel that far in such a short period of time. Or maybe there’s more than one…”

  Pinnnnnnng.

  “Again?!?”

  Pinnnnnnng.

  “What the hell? This is ridiculous!” said Buffalo. “I haven’t heard this many active pings in my entire career! Now I’ve heard four in less than half an hour—three within a minute!” Blam! “What the hell was that?” demanded Buffalo.

  SF-1

  After their near-miss with the Chinese Kilo, Pappy and Mac laid off a ways, let their hearts stop pounding in their ears, and had a talk about their tactics.

  “We have a steep learning curve here, Mac. We learned our lesson on that one not to rely on passive ranging, especially at close quarters. It’s hard to overcome ten years worth of training that taught us to never use active sonar unless absolutely necessary to stay alive. But in this sub-fighter, all the old rules are out the window. Since no one can defend against us anyway, let’s ping the hell out them!”

  “I imagine they’re all going crazy trying to figure out who we are, what we are, how we’re doing this, and what we’re going to do next!” said MacKenzie, reveling in the moment.

  “Yeah, well they can fret and think all they want, but the truth is, even if they knew exactly who, what, and how we’re doing what we’re doing, and even if they knew exactly what we intend to do next, they are powerless to stop us. So let’s make this gap a little wider—we want the Louisiana to have plenty of room to slip through. Who’s the next one down the line?”

  “There’s a pretty good gap, XO, but it sounds like the Hawaii may be moving into it from the south.”

  “All right! A worthy adversary! Top of the line U.S. attack boat…think we can, uh, render her ineffective?”

  “Absolutely, sir!”

  “So do I. I’m accelerating to fifty knots…let’s close this gap in a hurry. We’ll slow down when we get closer, but I want to move right in on her—inside minimum torpedo range—before we go active. It shouldn’t be a problem. We could fly circles, or even loops, around her
completely undetected.”

  After ten minutes on a course toward the Hawaii, the XO slowed to twenty-five knots and began a series of sweeping S-turns to generate changing bearing angles to the contact so MacKenzie could get a passive ranging solution.

  “XO, aren’t you concerned about a repeat of our Kilo near-miss?” asked Mac nervously.

  Pappy felt his heart race and noticed the palms of his hands were wet. However, he needed to keep an air of calm for the sake of the mission. “No. The reason we closed that gap quicker than expected was because the Kilo panicked after we pinged her and turned into us at flank speed. We’re not going to make that mistake this time. We’ll ping the Hawaii all right, but not until we’re practically in firing position. I just need to get a final ranging to know when we might be in visual range with the spotlight.”

  “Okay, XO. I’m showing the Hawaii at about ten thousand yards on a heading of approximately zero-three-zero degrees.”

  “All right, we’re headed west, directly for her. We’ll swing around to the south and circle in behind her…no wait…I think I have a better idea. What’s her depth, Mac?”

  “I can’t really tell, sir. We have a single, horizontal row of sonar transducers mounted around the bow. So we can get pretty good azimuth information, but I can’t really tell whether they’re above or below us.”

  Pappy appeared lost in thought for several seconds and then it was like a light bulb came on. “By Jove, I’ve got it!” he exclaimed.

  “Sir?”

  “Tighten your harness, Mac. I’m going to roll this baby into a ninety-degree angle-of-bank to the left. With a little top rudder and forward stick, I can hold the nose level and keep us pointed at the Hawaii. You get an angle-off reading on that sonar, and because we’re banked at ninety degrees, it will convert into a “depth-off” angle. By that, I mean it will indicate how much the Hawaii is above us or below us or whether she’s level with us. Since we know the range—probably about eight thousand yards by now—with a little quick trigonometry, we can calculate the difference in depth.”