Small Anti-Submarine Warfare Aircraft
Flight deck of an Aircraft Carrier
Enemy Waters
Tom Lucitor double-checked his straps, gave the catapult controller a wave, and inhaled sharply as his aircraft was catapulted off the heaving deck of the carrier in a whoosh of steam. He slowly exhaled as the aircraft climbed into the dawn sky, and turned to his flight crew behind him.
Kelly gave him a thumbs-up from her antisubmarine warfare console, and the other crewmembers nodded.
"Okay, guys. Higher-ups want us over patrol box six. I'll… tell you when we get there." Tom had never been the best at motivational speeches.
"Why patrol box six?" Kelly tilted her head.
"I… dunno. Command has their reasons, I guess. Maybe they heard something on SOSUS." Tom shrugged.
SOSUS was a hemispheric network of underwater microphones linked to ground stations by long cables, each capable of detecting sounds produced by fast-moving submarines thousands of miles away. In conjunction with similar microphones towed by specialized spy ships, it was widely believed that SOSUS could detect noisy, fast moving submarines across a quarter of the world's oceans – under ideal conditions, of course.
A dedicated antisubmarine warfare (ASW) aircraft, the S-3 Viking had not been designed for air combat. Instead, its design had emphasized long range, high efficiency, and large internal volume. As such, it looked like a stubby, baby-sized cargo plane.
They were over box six in no time at all. Tom looked out the window at the icy seas below. Somewhere, down there, between the slips of ice floes and icebergs, enemy submarines lurked. Some were hunter-killers, bent on blowing up carriers and escorts to bits with nuclear torpedoes. Others were fleet ballistic missile submarines, ready to unleash nuclear hellfire at their enemies should they receive their launch orders.
"Keep an itchy trigger finger on those depth charges, Tad." Tom checked the predawn skies, and turned on the radio. "Better keep a lookout for enemy fighters, too. We do not want to ditch in that stuff."
Kelly turned on the magnetic anomaly detector (MAD), and a long tail emerged from the aircraft. "MAD deployed. If there's a metal fish down there, we'll get it."
Tom tapped his fingers. "I always hated the waiting part of fishing. You know what I mean?"
They waited.
"Attention Angler-2-3, this is Sandtrap. We just lost a destroyer west of your patrol box to a nuclear torpedo. Grid square 7. Go get 'em."
Tom scanned the sea for debris as they approached the grid. "There's nothing left."
Kelly checked her MAD. "Of course there's nothing left. It was a nuclear torpedo. I'm getting nothing here. Sonobuoy away."
A little microphone-equipped float– a sonobuoy – fell from the aircraft into the dark waters below.
Kelly concentrated on her headphones. "Nothing yet." She winced. "Aw, hell. Nuclear detonation. Another one." She checked her instruments. "Same direction. Looks like a pair of nuclear anti-sub rockets, by the looks of things. The noise is going down now." Kelly smiled as her MAD registered a signal. "We're close."
Another sonobuoy fell into the water.
"Bingo. I've got a contact. Rattling like hell. Sounds like the enemy sub didn't get away without a scratch."
A pattern of sonobuoys hit the water.
"Localizing… got a bearing. I think we can prosecute."
Tom proceeded with the bombing run.
Kelly grinned. "Sounds like a twin screw sub. Ballistic missile boat. The destroyer must have run right over her."
Tom smiled. This was a great victory for the Navy's attack plan.
Three aircraft carriers, dozens of escorts, and a score of submarines had been run deep into enemy seas, through a gauntlet of enemy ships, aircraft, naval minefields, and submarines, in order to destroy the enemy's ballistic missile submarines. Unlike friendly ballistic missile submarines, which tried to disappear into the vastness of the oceans, the enemy's noisier ballistic missile submarines were instead held back in heavily-defended seas – bastions – where they could be protected from attack.
So far, that protection had been unsuccessful. A major naval battle was gutting the enemy's submarine ballistic missile force, wearing down the enemy's nuclear forces until the enemy had nothing with which to retaliate.
"Set to two thousand feet. Maximum yield." Kelly dropped her arm, and Tad hit the release.
A nuclear depth charge, slowed by a small parachute, plunged into the icy waves, sinking like a stone – that is, rapidly.
A hundred stories beneath the waves, it detonated with the explosive energy of ten thousand tonnes of TNT, creating a massive bubble of steam and a powerful shockwave that ripped through the deep sea, destroying all before it – including the hull of an enemy ballistic missile submarine. Against the energies of the nuclear blast, the many inches of titanium that protected the submarine from the crushing depths afforded little more protection than tissue paper.
The bubble of steam began to rise, but surrounded by thousands of feet of cold seawater, it could not remain steam for long.
The bubble cooled, contracted, and collapsed. The pressure fell dramatically, causing the water to boil anew, and the bubble to expand once more.
Several cycles later, all that remained of the vast energies of the explosion was a plume of hot water, slowly rising from the depths.
"We got 'em!" The crew whooped silently.
The radio crackled to life. "Attention all Anglers, this is Sandtrap. We have inbound cruise missiles… oh crap…" The radio died, and another radio came to life. "Uhh… Anglers 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, divert to grid square six six zero and descend to five hundred feet. Discard previous flight plan – the carrier's a pile of radioactive scrap at the bottom of the ocean. Await instructions there."
The crew fell silent. Tom was the first to speak. "Well. It looks like we'll be seeing a new flight deck. Meet new people. That sounds like fun, right?"
In the event of nuclear war, US carriers were expected to last two days… or less. US naval strategy during the 80s was to push carriers as far forward into Soviet bastions – the Barents Sea, Kara Sea (in summer) and the Sea of Okhotsk – as possible. There, patrol aircraft would conduct aggressive antisubmarine operations against Soviet ballistic missile submarines hidden in those waters. US naval forces might also launch airstrikes against Soviet targets ashore.
The plan was controversial. Some feared it might not work, some thought it would remove forces from protecting convoys crossing the Atlantic, and others considered it destabilizing.