by Andy Farman
Standard 2 missiles and air launched AMRAAMs accounted for three of the remaining Alfas but the fourth and fifth began their terminal dives at the French air defence destroyer Duquesne.
Duquesne was travelling at flank speed when they put the wheel hard over, her port rail was awash as an Alfa, unable to keep itself centred on the vessel due to the speed it was travelling, missed the vessel by twelve feet. The air crackled with the electro-static charge caused by its passing, a plume of water rose sixty feet and the smell of ozone lingered. Duquesne answered the helm gamely as the wheel was next thrown to starboard, seeking to out-manoeuvre the last missile as they had its predecessor. High above the conflict Lt Col Ann-Marie Chan was talking directly to the English-speaking TAO aboard the destroyer when a high pitched shriek in the ear-pieces made her gasp and she whipped her headset off. The E-3 Sentry’s pilots saw the cloud layer below them briefly illuminated from beneath, by the glare resulting from the detonation of a warships magazine. Duquesne had lost the race.
Ann-Marie had to turn toward the bulkhead at her side momentarily, embarrassed that anyone should see the moisture in her eyes. When she turned back to her console she was all business again, entering the information the TAO had given her she quickly got a match.
“Okay people, those missiles were SS-N-27s, bad news kit but the silver lining is that production of them was halted early on through lack of funds. Vector anything with AMRAAMs onto anymore they may have in the first instance, and Standard 2s from the task force after that.” She sent a priority email off requesting an intelligence estimate of how many weapons existed, but no sooner had she pressed send, when more ‘vampires’ were being called in.
Seagull One One was making tracks back to Guépratte to reload when the Charles de Gaulle waved off all returning helicopters, establishing a 100km free fire zone for the CAPs and ships to engage incoming missiles.
“Sandman…Seagull One One requires a steer to the Norwegian replenishment site, our rails are Mk 50 compatible.”
“Roger One One…steer One Eight Seven and Squawk Three Nine decimal Two, their air defence is up.”
The pilot brought the aircraft round to that heading and headed toward the horizon. After thirty minutes his radar told him the rocky shores of Norway were indeed out there in darkness. The sudden appearance of flares ahead and to the left of their track startled him, but gave him a grandstand view of a Norwegian P-3 Orion coming in low across the waves. He saw the feather wake of what he took to be a periscope, directly ahead of the maritime patrol aircraft, and a Mk 50 torpedo dropped away, a small drogue parachute deploying behind it, slowing its entry into the sea. So intent was he on the torpedo, he almost missed the spear of light that rose from the waves, coming from the tip of the tiny wake. Apparently the crew of the Orion saw it too, for they banked hard right, almost digging a wing tip in to the wave tops. The small fiery object swerved to follow the fixed wing aircraft, flying into the starboard engine exhaust where it exploded and the starboard wing parted company with the rest of the airframe. With one wing gone, the Orion rolled inverted and struck the sea on its back. When he looked for the feather wake again, it had gone.
“Sandman, Sandman, Seagull One One…aircraft down, a sub just shot down an Orion with a missile!”
“Sandman, One One, say again last transmission…an Orion mid-aired with a Vampire?”
“One One, negative…Orion dropped a torp on what I thought was a periscope, but a small missile came up out of it, chased the Orion and flew into an engine. It was no mid-air Sandman!” He read off their position as shown on the GPS and brought the helicopter over the crash site, where he switched on the big searchlight mounted below the nose, and brought the aircraft to a hover.
There was a pause of a few seconds before Sandman responded.
“Roger…say status of Orion, One One.”
The aircraft’s tail section was the only part now visible, pointing toward the sky, and he circled it with the searchlight sweeping the vicinity. One crewman was visible in the water a few feet from it, arms and legs extended and floating face down in the waves. Keying the radio once more he reported on what he could see, and received a simple
“Roger,” in response. There wasn’t anything more so say, the enemy had found a way of hitting back at the previously invulnerable ASW aircraft that hunted them, and more men and women had died as a result. Returning to the original heading the French NH-90 headed for the temporary helicopter base on the northern tip of Norway.
For most of the participants of what the press would dub ‘The Third Battle of the North Cape’, it was the longest night of their lives. More missiles flew at the ships, coming from scattered sources and of differing types and abilities. Helicopters prosecuted contacts, dropped torpedoes on them and went back and forth reloading and refuelling, hunting and attacking. Three helicopters fell to the new weapon; both instances were on the landward side of the battle, as had been the downing of the Orion. Eighty-four anti-ship missiles of different varieties were fired from soviet submarines, all with conventional warheads. The exhausted AWAC operators, who had been aloft for over 24hrs, and ASWO staff were so swamped that they were slow in picking up on what the soviets were up to.
The soviets had split their submarine force into two parts, one of which was concerned solely with sinking the ships of the Task Force and keeping them and their air assets occupied, whilst the remainder pushed through between the land and the ships.
Only four submarines had the mast launched DAMs, Depth to Air Missiles, and all were old Whiskey class boats which had been used as test beds for the system which had been proven by the soviets in the eighties, but never adopted. The old Whiskey class boats were all in the southern force, providing air defence for the guided missile submarines and hunter killers intended for the Atlantic.
Bernard’s ASWO was the first one to see it, and Bernard sent the aircraft carrier Jeanne d'Arc and her escort south, to facilitate the helicopter effort. The makeshift helicopter base on the northern tip of Norway was not set up to service the needs of the aircraft recovering there, as Banak had been. Bernard had a half dozen aircraft on the beach, shut down while they awaited the armourers and fuel bowser. His helicopter assets couldn’t recover to their own ships to rearm and refuel because of the danger of becoming own goals to their own sides air defences. With Jeanne d'Arc nearer the coast they would free up the replenishment backlog. Being to the rear of the ASW line, the danger to her was less than it was for the remaining ships so Bernard pulled the Cassard off the escort. Leaving the General K. Pulaski for ASW protection and the multi role frigate Senegal, a thirty-year-old reserve fleet vessel for air defence; the trio headed south.
The first warning that the Task Force had of the enemy were getting through came when eight SS-N-19 ‘Shipwreck’ cruise missiles appeared on the AWACs screens, coming from the southwest, and 80km inside the ASW line. Senegal had her old Crotale II launcher run out over the port side, ready for threats from the east when the E-3 shouted a warning. The Crotale launcher had not been part of her original design, it was an add-on fitted several years later. Squeezed between her foc’sle and mast there was insufficient space for the launcher to simply swing around. The launch tubes rose to the vertical and the launcher pivoted through 180’. Senegal was already tracking the inbounds and she launched on them as soon as the tubes lowered to 20’ above the horizon. The Sentry took control of the Crotale as the launcher cycled the empty tubes back into the vertical, to receive four more missiles from the magazine directly below.
Two Sea Kings and a NH-90 on the carriers deck began to spool up, the carrier and the Polish frigate fired chaff bundles aloft while heeling over, the carrier turning to port, turning away from the threat and the Polish frigate turning to face it, both presenting smaller radar profiles. Senegal had no such option; she had to present a flank, going beam on to unmask her single launcher.
Lt Col Chan’s fingers were drumming out a tattoo of impatience on the sides of her
keyboard as she waited for the Senegal’s schematic to indicate to her that the Crotale was ready to fire again. The side image on her monitor showed three Crotale missiles intercepting successfully whilst the fourth was a clean miss.
“Come on, come on…” the launchers icon changed from red to amber as it lowered again into firing position, and finally glowed green.
“At last!” she growled, assigning each one to an incoming vampire. The Crotale IIs screamed from their launch tubes, three following the guidance from the AWAC, a fourth going rogue and flying into the sea a mile downrange. The noise created by the three ships screws, churning up the waves at high turn rates ruled out any possibility of the sonar operators locking down their attackers position, they could hear nothing but harsh hydro acoustic noise.
As the launchers icon turned back from red to amber, as it lowered itself to its firing position, the last three Crotales met the five incoming Shipwreck cruise missiles, whittling them down to two. Ann-Marie was about to target all four newly loaded Crotales onto the last pair, but eight more appeared on her screen from well south of where the last had come from. She sent two after the last pair of the first salvo, and two at the newcomers.
“Sandman this is Pointer!” She waited for a reply and cursed as another ships icon on the line flared red and disappeared. Inside the Sentry’s long cabin her operators were grim faced as they fed in mid-course corrections to defending missiles in flight, assigned new ones and sent vectors to the sub hunting helicopters, Nimrods, and P-3 Orion’s.
“Sandman, Sandman, this is Pointer…do you copy?”
“This is Sandman, Bernard speaking…go ahead Pointer.” Ann-Marie’s eyebrows rose when she heard the accented voice. Since when did the French Admiral speak English? Her fingers flew over her keyboard as she ran an analysis on the transmissions origin, and it had not come from overhead, from a satellite or from the warship, but from the Murmansk area of Russia.
Shit, shit, shit. Turning to the pad beside her terminal she ran a finger down the list of codewords relating to communications security.
“All stations, all stations Crap Game! Crap Game!” At the height of the fighting and they had to instigate compromised security procedures, altering encryption programs that took up time that they could not spare. She returned control to Senegal and got busy; the enemy was jamming out the Task Force’s voice communications, perhaps even the data link feeds too, so they had no option but to change everything. She was not blind to the distinct possibility that only voice communications had been effected, and the enemy had let her know this to cause disruption in command and control. She got the correct identifiers from Charles de Gaulle with her next try; they had received the communications security message via satellite and switched over to the next prearranged settings.
“Sandman this is Pointer?”
“Go ahead Pointer.”
“Pointer, at least two missile boats have gotten through to the south. Senegal is coping at the moment. Jeanne d'Arc is launching helos as we speak.”
“Sandman…..we have nothing to send, we are barely holding our own against the attacks. We are beating on those still east of our ASW line, but any that get through will have to be dealt with by someone else, we are fully committed.”
If a pint pot holds a pint, then it’s doing the best it can, thought the American air force officer.
For an old ship crewed mainly by reservists the Senegal was doing outstanding work, although admittedly the attackers were using equally old ordnance. Only three of the second incoming wave had so far avoided destruction as the frigates launcher lowered once more into firing position. Her own CIC still had control and her TAO finished designating targets for the Crotales, the launcher moved fractionally as it tracked the targets, but before it could fire the frigate staggered with the impact of a torpedo blowing off her bow. The forward twelve feet from the waterline was ripped open by the explosion, exposing the ships interior with only flooding proof bulkheads to keep the sea at bay. Senegal was travelling at 24 knots, her gaping wound scooped up the seas which piled against the first bulkhead, and it gave way with a shriek of tortured metal. Like a pack of cards the bulkheads gave way, one after one and the sea began filling her innards. The frigate's bridge disappeared beneath the waves and then the rest of her superstructure, as her engines drove the vessel beneath the surface. In less than a minute, only oil, floating wreckage, bodies and a handful of shocked and floundering crewmen marked where a warship had once been.
From below the cold water layer a Russian Sierra class had fired a spread of four torpedoes at the charging frigates, one malfunctioned, one scored on the French frigate, and the last two passed the Poles stern, unseen by any of her crew.
Unchecked, the remaining cruise missiles locked on to the helicopter carrier and Polish frigate, but neither vessel carried anything more than chaff as counter-measures. The SS-N-19 that acquired the Polish ex-Perry class frigate General K. Pulaski started to analyse the ships electronic emissions and its control surface’s twitched as it adjusted its lines of flight, lining up on the frigates CIC. From an altitude of eight feet it popped up to one thousand, and then dived at a 45’ angle into the ships superstructure, penetrating to below the waterline before exploding.
Jeanne d'Arc sounded collision alarms and her crew braced themselves for the impacts that were inevitable. An SS-N-19 detonated in the chaff cloud above her stern, sending red-hot shrapnel outwards in all directions. An unserviceable Sea Harrier and three troop-carrying NH-90s upon her flight deck exploded as their fuel tanks were ruptured. The last cruise missile dove into the flight deck alongside the carriers offset island and penetrated the steel decking to explode inside the hangar deck. There were only two aircraft below decks, both were being serviced and their fuel tanks had been drained, but there was no shortage of flammable material.
The General K. Pulaski was dead in the water, listing over on her port beam and fires burned in a dozen places throughout the vessel. Struggling to keep from falling over the side, crewmen removed the fuses from her depth charges and threw them over the side, lest they go off when the ship went down, killing survivors in the water above. Her engineer was trying to restore electrical power and the surviving senior ratings and officers were organising damage control parties to fight the fires when the Sierra fired another torpedo at her.
Confident that all the helicopters were to the west of their position, hunting the missile firers, the Sierras captain then brought the hunter/killer up to periscope depth so he could view his handiwork.
Directed west of the line by the Charles de Gaulle’s ASWO, an RAF Nimrod got an indication on its MAD equipment, short for Magnetic Anomaly Detector, it looked for hiccups caused to the planets magnetic field, such as that of a large metal submarine near the surface.
The Nimrod circled back on itself, firming up its contact before dropping two Mk 50s on its contact. Both entered the water 300m off the Sierras starboard quarter and went active immediately. The Sierra had no time at all to react, and was struck in her portside ballast tank and forward torpedo room. The ballast tank absorbed the damage from the shaped charge, the pressure hull remained intact but air boiled from the ruptured ballast tank, and the submarine began to cant over at an ever-increasing angle. The forward torpedo room however was breached, and the white-hot jet and gases ignited combustibles in the compartment. The Sierra broke the surface with a 30’ degree list to port and her hatches opened to crewmen who emerged and slid down the casing into sea, forced out by the press of bodies behind. Only half a dozen had escaped the vessels confines when the first torpedoes warhead exploded, cooked off by the fire. The remaining eighteen followed in rapid succession, shattering the hull forward of the conning tower; what remained slipped back beneath the waves.
The torpedo the Sierra had launched lost guidance from the vessel and switched to its own passive sensors, it could hear the Polish frigate; even dead in the water noise emitted by the warship exceeded the background. However, the
sensors detected a more enticing target and accelerating to its maximum cruise speed it tore past the frigate, heading east toward the louder source.
Jeanne d'Arc’s hangars sprinkler system was fed from two different water mains via four networks of pipes, in full appreciation that at least one matrix of pipes would be rendered by an attack in time of war. With the ships pumps forcing the water along the mains, and from there to the two complete and one partially functional network, the sprinklers were fogging the interior of the hangar with a mist of water vapour, which lowered the temperature and robbed the fire of oxygen. Fire-fighting foam had covered the floor of the compartment before the sprinklers engaged, preventing the fire spreading via burning petrochemicals, but with the deck being buckled downwards by the blast, they had pooled and were not a danger at present. The main danger to the vessel lay behind the aft bulkhead, peppered by shrapnel, as had all the bulkheads, the storage tanks of aviation fuel were exposed. Constructed of rubber so as to be self-sealing, the 5000-gallon fuel cells were coated with a fire retardant layer which was a safety measure, rather than a guarantee, eventually the rubber would burn after prolonged exposure to a direct flame.
The Jeanne d'Arc’s captain was fairly confident that although his ship may now be out of the war, he still had hull integrity and power, so it was not lost. Damage control parties set-to in augmenting the automated fire control systems whilst the remainder stayed at the action stations. He called up the Charles de Gaulle and gave them a situation report, requesting a rescue effort begin for survivors of the Senegal and assistance for the General K. Pulaski. Bernard could send none, with the loss of the Jeanne d’Arc’s escort it brought the total number of ships lost to this latest attack at five…so far.
