Northern Fury- H-Hour

by Bart Gauvin

  “Con, sonar,” came the hushed call from the boat’s sonar room, just forward of control.

  “Con, aye,” responded Rogers immediately.

  “Sir, my scope is clear. No contacts on either array,” reported the sonarman.

  Rogers nodded, forgetting for the thousandth time that the sonar technicians could not actually see him. Their report was the last bit of assurance the captain needed before taking his boat to communication depth.

  Connecticut was one of several submarines currently lurking off the north coast of the Soviet Union’s Kola Peninsula, patrolling on what NATO submariners had been calling “X-Ray Station” for the past thirty years. During those three decades at least one, and usually several, American and British submarines had constantly been on station in this cold, shallow patch of water that covered the exits from Murmansk, the Kola Inlet, and the White Sea, monitoring the comings and goings of Russian warships. This was Commander Rogers’ fifth patrol on X-Ray Station in his twenty-three years of Navy service. All told, Ethan Rogers had spent over six months of his life up here in these waters, Which is longer than my first wife stayed with me, he thought wryly. The sea was a cruel mistress, especially for the men of the Silent Service.

  “COB,” Rogers said, addressing the chief of the boat, standing behind the two nineteen-year-old sailors at the controls of the three-billion-dollar submarine, “where’s the top of the layer?” He referred to the thermocline layer, a stratum of water in the ocean with a significantly different temperature than the sea above and below. This layer impeded sound from passing through it, allowing submarines to use the thermocline as terrain in which to hide.

  “Layer tops out at one hundred thirty feet, sir,” answered the chief.

  The captain nodded, then said, “Alright. Con, all ahead slow, up five degrees on the planes, make your depth one hundred thirty feet.”

  “Aye aye, sir, all ahead slow, making my depth one hundred thirty feet,” answered the sailor on the dive controls.

  “Sparks,” Rogers said, signifying by institutional nickname the communications officer standing next to the captain’s chair, “stand by to release the buoy. Chief, ready on the stopwatch.”

  Both men responded “Aye” in unison.

  Rogers felt the deck tilt gently upward as the boat ascended from the depths. Command of Connecticut more than made up for the hardships Rogers had put up with to get here, he thought, still pondering his first wife. Three years ago, he had despaired of ever seeing the inside of one of the Seawolfs, let alone commanding one. With the supposed end of the Cold War imminent, the whole class was in danger of cancellation, part of the “Peace Dividend” the politicians talked about. That bastard Medvedev sure fixed that in a hurry though, reflected the captain. Rogers couldn’t believe his good fortune when his name had shown up on the list for command of Connecticut, the second of what would eventually be twenty-nine of the big, lethal subs. Except he could believe it. I’ve got a wake of failed relationships that proves I’d sacrifice anything for this job, he thought soberly.

  “Skipper, depth is one hundred thirty feet and hovering,” reported the sailor at the helm.

  “Scope clear, Skipper, no contacts,” called Sonar over the intercom.

  “Release the buoy!” ordered Rogers.

  “Time, start,” announced the chief, clicking the button on his stopwatch.

  “Buoy away!” said Sparks.

  Outside the hull, a winch began to unreel a long metal cable, on the end of which was a buoy that floated an antenna. This allowed the submarine to remain submerged while sending and receiving burst VHF radio messages via the E-6, which was turning racetracks near the North Pole. The submariners used this method on a daily basis to send routine situation reports back to their headquarters, Task Force 42, in Norfolk, and to receive whatever updates the shore-weenies back there deemed important enough to send them. In an emergency, COMSUBLANT could send Connecticut messages while she was running deep via ELF—extremely low frequency—radio waves that could pass through some depth of water, but ELF was slow. Only a few letters could be sent at a time. Consequently, it was only used for the most urgent of communications, like the start of a shooting war.

  “Layer relatively weak,” the head sonarman was reading from his instruments. “Low salinity, water temp is two degrees C, won’t get much bounce on the CZ, Skipper.” The CZ, or convergence zone, was a sound phenomenon in the water connected to the thermocline layer. In effect, sound transmitted in the water would bounce off the layer at predictable distances, creating bands, called convergence zones, within which another ship could be heard more readily than if it were closer but outside of the CZ band.

  “Buoy on the surface,” announced Sparks. “Transmitting.”

  Now the boat’s ECM—electronic countermeasures—officer spoke up. “Skipper, we’re getting faint radar hits on the buoy.” A pause, “It looks like routine ASW stuff.” Anti-submarine warfare, Rogers translated in his head automatically.

  “SITREP transmitted,” said Sparks, “receiving now.”

  “Thirty seconds,” announced the COB, urgency creeping into his voice. The longer Connecticut remained shallow, the greater the chance she would be detected by some lucky Russian.

  “Con, sonar,” came the chief sonarman’s voice, “I’m picking up high speed turns at one three five degrees relative, twin screws, twenty-plus knots, heading our way, distance unknown. Designate Contact Sierra One-Seven.”

  Rogers tensed. There was a ship out there, a fast one. Most likely a Russian frigate. Did they intercept our burst transmissions? Unlikely. No telling how close the contact was in so little time. The captain bit back the urge to hurry his men just as the chief announced, “Forty seconds.”

  “All messages received,” reported Sparks.

  “Secure buoy,” ordered Rogers. “Chief, where’s the bottom of the layer and the floor?”

  “Layer bottoms out at two-thirty, the floor’s at four-fifty,” answered the COB, just before growling, “Fifty seconds!”

  “Buoy secured, sir,” announced Sparks, deflated.

  “Con,” said the captain, “make your depth three-five-zero, right full rudder, come to heading zero-nine-zero. Once we pass two-fifty bring her up to eight knots. Chief, time?”

  “Fifty-seven seconds, Skipper,” reported the wiry older man as the deck tilted forward beneath them. The COB was eyeing the young communications officer with something that approached disapproval. “Nine seconds slower than yesterday.”

  “Con, Sierra One-Seven contact is fading, probable Grisha-class, but I can’t be sure,” interjected sonar. So, it was a Soviet frigate, thought the captain. Bad luck we came up so close to her. Of course, the chances that the Russian had gotten a hit on Connecticut was nearly nil. Still, it’s a bit too close for comfort.

  “Skipper,” called the ECM officer, who was at his console reading the intercepts from the buoy’s electronic eavesdropping sensors, “looks like a lot of aerial activity up there. We got radar hits from at least two Be-12 Mail flying boats, one Il-38 May, and two others I can’t classify.”

  That was a lot of birds in the air, thought Rogers. Still, none had been anywhere close enough to have a chance of detecting his stealthy sub. In the end, just another day on X-Ray Station, mused the captain. The most dangerous part of today now over.

  “Alright,” said Rogers, “secure from general quarters. XO, you have the con. Sparks, once you get the transcripts bring them to my cabin and have your petty officer report to the COB for debriefing.”

  Rogers stood up and walked the few steps aft to his cabin. Entering, he shut the door and sat down at his small desk to continue his ongoing work of reviewing efficiency reports for his officers. Part of the joy of commanding an elite Seawolf was that the boats came with picked crews. The officers and sailors aboard Connecticut were the best that the submarine service could pr
ovide, and they had rallied around their aggressive captain in the best traditions of the Navy. The skipper had even heard some of the petty officers referring to the boat’s crew as ‘‘Roger’s Jollies,” a mildly profane acknowledgment of the nearly piratical mission assigned to submariners in both peace and war. Of course, the high quality of his crew presented the captain with a problem in writing evaluations. How do I rate the officers on the boat against each other when each one is a top performer in his own right, and would probably be a superstar on any other boat?

  A polite knock at the cabin door pulled Rogers from his reflections on the problem. “Enter,” he said.

  Sparks, also known as Lieutenant (junior grade) José Santamaria, slipped tentatively through the door and handed the captain a printout of the messages they had received.

  “Anything interesting?” asked Rogers, glancing at the paper.

  “Uh, yes sir,” said the young man, who, the skipper knew by now, grew nervous when addressing senior officers. “Yes, sir, Norfolk reports that HMS Churchill picked up a boomer yesterday and tracked her north towards the icepack. The rest is just routine. Baltimore is still on track to arrive on station tomorrow to replace Philadelphia.”

  Two boomers in a week? wondered the captain. That’s unusual. The Soviets didn’t typically like to keep as many of their nuclear ballistic missile submarines—boomers— at sea like the NATO navies. We haven’t detected any return of the ones that are already out there, thought Rogers. Is there more to this?

  The NATO submarine presence on X-Ray Station was rather strong at the moment, the captain knew, consisting of the American Los Angeles-class boats Bolta III-class boomer days previous. Now the Churchill was off chasing another one, weakening the screen that was acting as a hedge against the temporary absence of big carriers in the north Atlantic. Each boat off station meant more chances that a Russian warship could slip out undetected.

  “Any word on a replacement for Churchill?” the skipper asked.

  The young officer shook his head. “Nothing yet, Skipper.”

  Rogers nodded. “Okay, Sparks, carry on. I’ve got some reading to do.”

  Santamaria nodded and backed out of the small cabin, clearly relieved that the daily one-on-one interview with his captain was over.

  Rogers smiled to himself. That boy’s going to need to grow a pair quick, or the chief will eat him alive. The COB had a reputation for riding young ensigns and junior lieutenants hard, sometimes, perhaps a bit too hard.

  The captain returned his attention to the officer evaluations, back to routine.

  1200 MSK, Saturday 12 Feb 1994

  0900 Zulu

  TAKR Baku, Kola Inlet, Murmansk Oblast, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

  Contra-Admiral Ilya Petrovich Ivanenko looked out from the flag bridge of the Baku, final ship of the Kiev class, the USSR’s first and oldest true aircraft carrier. Rugged, treeless hills flanked the Kola inlet and rose to either side of him, white snow covering black rocks. Baku, technically considered a “heavy aviation cruiser” by the Soviets due to the missile and gun armament on her bow, plowed through the cold gray seas of the inlet connecting the Russians’ northern fleet bases to the Barents Sea. Stretching fore and aft of the carrier in a long column was the most powerful escort with which Ivanenko had ever sailed, consisting of a cruiser, three destroyers, including two of the powerful Fregat-class, and three smaller frigates. Farther ahead, on the gray northern horizon, Ivanenko could just make out the antenna masts of four frigates, denoting the position of an ASW group, one of three that had left the inlet ahead of his own force.

  Ivanenko was relieved to be going to sea, thrilled at the part he was about to play in what he knew would be the great event of his generation. Of all the men on the warships around him, he was the only one who knew the storm about to break upon the North Atlantic, and the world. The rest possessed no real inkling of why they’d been recalled to their ships on such short notice and then put to sea after many weeks of dockside maintenance and drills. Indeed, until three weeks ago, Ivanenko himself had been chafing in his Moscow office advising Marshal Rosla.

  He was also glad to be free of that insufferable Khitrov. It wasn’t that the Spetsnaz officer’s ideas for dealing with the Americans were all bad. They weren’t. Some were even brilliant, Ivanenko had to admit. The problem was that the man gambled with the fate of the fleet like a drunk at a craps game, never being satisfied with the doctrine the Soviet Fleets had developed over decades of shadowing the American navy. Now the newly promoted Contra-Admiral, who still stole glances at the star on his shoulder boards, was in a position to see that at least one of the Red Banner Northern Fleet’s task forces operated according to correct doctrine in the coming fight.

  Ivanenko was grateful for the new rank, and even more so for the command of the Baku task force. Marshal Rosla was nothing if not loyal to those who served him, and the old paratrooper had interceded to ensure that his erstwhile aide received this plum assignment. Baku and her consorts would gain the mouth of the inlet in less than thirty minutes. At that point his task was to coordinate the efforts of his force with the three ASW frigate groups, as well as dozens of maritime patrol aircraft operating from bases all along the Soviet Union’s northwest periphery. These operations were all oriented towards the attainment of one end: find the blasted NATO submarines that were always lurking, smug and silent, off his country’s coast, and destroy them.

  Looking down and to the left at the flight deck, the admiral could see that his carrier was loaded to capacity with helicopters and jump jets. Beyond capacity, he reminded himself. The dozen stubby-winged Yak-38M fighters were lashed down on the margins of the deck to allow ASW helicopters to fly off during their initial passage through the Barents Sea. Newer, more formidable airframes occupied the ship’s cramped hangar deck.

  The Contra-Admiral was eager to get on to his primary mission, the one where his air group would be given the opportunity to truly shine. For now, he focused his thoughts on the task at hand. Today we find them, he thought. Tomorrow we sink them.

  CHAPTER 29

  2030 MSK, Saturday 12 Feb 1994

  1730 Zulu

  Olenya Airbase, Murmansk Oblast, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

  THE GUTTURAL, MANLY roar of nearly seven thousand voices shouting an enthusiastic “Hurraaah” resounded in the frigid arctic night. Marshal Aleksandr Rosla, speaking to the officers and men of the assembled 76th Guards Airborne Division, nodded in satisfaction. The stirring culmination of rhetoric in this address had been particularly successful, Guards Colonel Ilya Romanov thought. He watched with mixed feelings as the marshal, who was dressed identically to the thousands of desantniki around him, whipped the assembled paratroopers into a frenzy of patriotic fervor. The formations of the division’s three infantry regiments crowded to the front, left, and right, around the low platform from which Rosla was speaking, while the members of the division’s artillery and specialty units stood behind him. Romanov stood at the head of his 234th Guards Airborne Regiment, which, along with the rest of the division, was assembled amid Olenya Airbase’s offices, machine shops, and storage sheds to listen to their chief. The structures protected the expansive concrete pad on which they were all assembled from the biting Arctic winds, but only just. The whole scene was lit by the white beams of floodlights from the tops of the surrounding single-story structures. These pierced the polar darkness, but did nothing to push back the cold.

  “Those westerners, the Americans and their German and British lackeys, think that we,” he paused for just a moment, “Think that you are weak, tovarichi!” the barrel-chested marshal was shouting, the faintly Asiatic features of his face lending intensity to his address. “They have forgotten their history!” he went on. “Who was it that smashed the fascisti before the gates of Moscow?” The cheering from the assembled desantniki began again. “Who destroyed them
on the streets of Stalingrad?” The shouts grew louder. “Who routed their vaunted armies and drove all the way to Berlin, planting our red banner on the Reichstag?” The hurrahs now reached a crescendo as Rosla asked, “The Americans? The British? No!”

  Ilya Romanov felt the stirrings of intense pride as his chief recounted the glories of Soviet arms. The old desantnik knows where to strike to get at the hearts of these men, he thought, remembering the time not too long ago when Rosla had commanded this very division. He stole a glance over his shoulder at the massed files of young men behind him, their layered uniforms of white smocks over mottled green overcoats made each appear larger than he was. Despite the frigid temperature, which was rapidly falling below minus fifteen degrees C, each man kept his outer garments open in a vee below his neck, revealing the blue and white striped undershirts that were the hallmark of their elite community. Each had also removed his gray fur shapka hat for the marshal’s speech, donning instead the sky-blue berets of the desantniki, despite the cold that nipped at exposed ears.

  Ilya turned back as the defense minister continued in a more subdued tone. “No, my children, it was not the westerners who defeated the Nemtsy in the Great Patriotic War. It was young men, just like you. Young Russian men. Young Soviet men. Those people out there,” he gestured emphatically to the west, “know nothing of the sacrifices we Soviets made to save the world from fascism. They know nothing of the toughness of the Soviet soldier! That will be their downfall!”