December
was arriving… But when one was aboard a ship stationed between the icy coasts
of Alaska and Siberia, nothing really changed. It was the same… The wind, the
icy cold, and the bleak grey waters.
For
the men aboard the USS Iowa and her battlegroup, however, there was
something to be hopeful for.
With
the Russian war machine stalled on the American Front and the bloody defeat of
an entire Soviet army on the European Front, the Red's were off-balanced. Now,
all that remained was for the imminent armoured assault on the Artic Front to
strike the final nail into the communist heart of the USSR.
The
general statement was "It'll be over by Christmas…" After the defeats the
Soviets had suffered under the leadership of Romanov, several men were even hoping
that the Russians would finish the job for them. Afterall, incompetent leaders
had a way of being disposed by their own subordinates.
Hope,
however, was the most insidious evil of all…. Legend has it that when Hope had
escaped Pandora's Box before she had managed to close it, it had borne the face
of an angel…
The USS Iowa
was the latest of the United States Navy carriers. Together with her
battlegroup, the ship could fend off air threats with her Aegis cruisers, take
out submarines with her escort destroyers, or call down a devastating airstrike
with her airgroup.
A mile away
sailed a recently refurbished ship, the HMS Warspite. An old World War 1
relic, she had survived the 1914 to 1918 conflict and fought in the World War 2
(otherwise known as the Red War or Stalin War) during the 1940's to 1950's.
Mothballed after that, the British had managed to scrape together funds to
restore her to her former glory. The battlecruiser mounted 16-inch guns and
boasted impressive armour protection. Her battle control and bridge alone were
shielded by seventeen inches of Class A steel plate.
Her resurrection
was due to the painful lesson inflicted on the Brits just a couple of months
ago. A single Soviet guided-missile battlecruiser, the Zaitzef , had
slipped into the Channel undetected in the dead of the night. Skirting the
coast and avoiding British submarines, she had succeeded in getting close
enough to a convoy to fire off two salvoes of surface-to-surface missiles
before turning tail and heading home at flank speed.
Aiming for the
escorts first, the single Russian raider had snapped the destroyer HMS Valour
into two with a missile that had struck behind her forward funnel. Another
missile had slammed into the helideck of the HMS Revenge. Although the
warhead ended up being a dud, the impact of four thousand pounds of steel
moving at 1700 miles an hour had shredded the destroyer's thinly armoured
insides. Set ablaze, the Revenge had followed her sister ship to the
bottom a day later. None of the four transports with the two destroyers had
survived, all four wiped out by the second salvo of SS-N-19 missiles.
With the
refurbished battlecruisers, the Allies had been given ships that could take a
missile or two while being able to reply with heavy 2,700-pound armour-piercing
shells. However, the Warspite was all that was available at the moment.
The first US
battleship to be recommissioned had struck a soviet-laid mine 2 hours after
leaving New York harbour. She had limped back home in red-faced defeat to join
the long list of damaged ships awaiting repairs in the already overtaxed naval
base.
Cruising far
forward of the 'thundering herd' were two Sea-Wolf class submarines, the USS Reagan
and USS Midge. The nuclear powered submarines were on 50 percent alert,
sonar operators listening in to their passive systems and towed array. The long
'tail' of sensitive noise-receivers on the steel cable towed by each of the two
subs collected the myriad sounds of the sea and fed them into the screens of
the sonar operators.
Both subs were
not giving out any sonar pulses, relying only on the expertise of their
sonarmen to identify any unknown contact. Supporting them were the Sea Ospreys,
naval versions of the helicopter/fixed-wing transport aircraft, each armed with
Mark 48 torpedoes. The Sea Ospreys operated off destroyer helidecks, replacing
the old Sea King antisub helicopters.
The Stalingrad
was an Alfa class submarine. Contrary to common belief, not all Soviet
submarines were of the 'Typhoon' class. There were Tangos, Victors, Oscars,
Novembers… But of all these, the Alfa took the crown.
Powered by a
unique but very expensive liquid-metal heat exchanger superior to the Allies
pressurised water technology, the Alpha was capable of reaching speeds of 46
knots submerged and a crush depth of four thousand feet. It was also very
silent. In other words, it was superior to the Sea Wolf in every aspect except
its sonar.
Captain Volery
Nacha had the sub at total war-condition silence. With only the pumps of her
nuclear reactor working, the Alpha was exceedingly hard to detect. The American
fleet was another story. Try as they might, it was impossible to silence an
entire surface fleet of various ships. Also, it was totally impossible to
silence an aircraft carrier. Doing so would mean shutting down flight
operations and losing the advantage of having a carrier in the first place. The
Alpha was directly astride the path of the fleet.
So far, the
Americans had been dropping active sonar buoys ahead of their formation with
their Ospreys. Since it was impossible to silence the fleet, the only other
option was brute force… to blast the ocean depths with active sonar pulses in
the hopes of detecting any hidden soviet subs.
Volery studied
the plot and noted the pattern of the sonarbuoys. He knew that there were
Allied subs out there… it was standard practise for American fleets to have at
least one sub as an underwater scout.
In submarine
warfare, there were no long glorious slugging matches, of great guns exchanging
volleys of fire, dented armour and flying colours.
Sub warfare was
different, each one keeping total silence while hoping for the other to make a
mistake. Once a sub was detected, all bets were off when a torp was in the
water… It was impossible to tell if a torp was headed your way until it was too
late to evade. Most captains would push their subs to flank speed and fire
back.
Then the subs
would flee at top speed from incoming torps. In the noise created, all sense of
order disappeared… it took a calm and patient officer to become a good sub
captain. Mistakes were invariably fatal… once hit, a sub was almost certain to
die. Even if the initial hit did not sink it, the lost of streamlining due to
battle damage meant noise… which meant a second torp inbound for the cripple.
And Volery was a patient man. Now,
however, was a time for action. The American Ospreys had been too predictable.
They had been laying sonarbuoys at a predictable pattern and Volery had used
the cover provided by the fleet noise to creep at five knots between two
sonarbuoys.
It had taken
half an hour of tension to creep closer to the fleet, each of the men sweating
in the knowledge that if any of the sonar operators on the Ospreys had detected
the slight difference in returned sound energy, the Stalingrad would
have a 48 dunked on her from above. All hands were already at battle stations;
ready to unleash a volley of torps in the general direction of the fleet should
the sub be detected and attacked before it could close.
He (all Russian ships were male)
was now between the patrolling Ospreys and the fleet. No sonarbuoys were active
there, for pinging the water here would mean bouncing echoes off the American
subs, giving away their position. Volery was now simply waiting for the fleet
to pass close to him, relying on the presence of fleet noise to get to
point-blank range.
He would then
empty a wide salvo of torpedos at the biggest contacts, paying special
attention to the one giving off aircraft elevator noise. At such close range,
the torps would strike home in mere seconds, flooding the ocean with the sounds
of explosions and forcing sonar operators to turn down their sets or face
permanent hearing loss.
In the ensuing
chaos, with the Ospreys reluctant to dump torps in the vicinity of their own
ships and subs, the Stalingrad would escape.
The
fleet was getting closer. Volery turned and snapped off an order.
"Take
her up, hundred meters"
The
first officer confirmed the captain's order and the planesman eased his
controls backwards.
"Rising…
angle ten… level and steady at hundred meters, sir"
Volery
turned to his officer of the deck. His voice was quiet but terse.
"Battle
stations."
Immediately,
soft chime of the alert filled the silent sub. Everyone was already in
position, but the chime now raised the tension to the max… Each man now knew
that if a mistake was made in the next few minutes, it would be the last for Stalingrad
and her crew.
"Bearing
to six biggest targets?" Volery asked.
The
officer of the deck rattled them off. Volery gave the next order to face the
sub at the fleet.
Five
hundred meters away, Sonarman Jones blinked. He had seen a slight spike in his
display. Could it be the sound of a soviet sub creeping closer to the fleet?
Surely the Red had not managed to get that close? Jones frowned, knowing
that the Iowa was only two miles away, launching a couple of F-14
Tomcats to supplement the air patrol. Jones' vessel, the USS Archer, was
part of the third layer of defences. The first were the two Sea Wolf's, the
next being the Aegis cruisers. HMS Warspite cruised a mile off on the
other side of Iowa.
The
spike did not reappear… and Jones relaxed slightly. Probably just the krill,
great schools of shrimp that gave off clacking noises during their mating
season. Nothing to worry about.
"Tubes
one, two, three, four, five, six loaded, sir. Bearing matched with target
Sierra One."
"Warheads
armed. Calculate final target solution." Volery ordered.
"Warheads
armed, sir."
"Solution
ready, sir."
Volery
watched the plot. "Flood the tubes. Match bearing and shoot. Tubes one through
six."
The
whoosh of water entering the opened tubes was a dead giveaway… But it was too
late… Sonarman Jones turned and yelled.
"Transient!
Transient! Probable underwater contact! Range five hundred! Bearing
two-five-zero!"
'Transient'
meant a man-made noise… The sonar officer spun around, horror on his face…
The
fire control officer was now the man to watch. He turned from the Volery and
snapped, "Stand by! Match bearing and shoot!"
The
six torpedoes shot out of their tubes… it was 'noisy' launch, as compared to a
'silent' launch whereby a torp was gently ejected from the tube with compressed
air and allowed to glide closer to the targer on low power. 'Noisy' launch was
a giveaway, but it gave the torpedo a fast increase in speed and considerably
less reaction time for the enemy.
"Hard
right rudder! Bearing three seven zero! Flank speed! Full angle dive! Release
decoys!" Volery ordered. Before his had finished, the Stalingrad was
tilting, her powerful powerplant roaring into life as decoys shot out of her
twin rear tubes. Volery held on to a handrail as the sub ploughed through the
water.
Above them, the
high screech of six torpedoes had alerted every Allied ship. Noise levels
leaped as engines were slammed to full speed. The fleet scattered in a
starburst pattern, each ship zigzagging as decoy noisemakers were dropped into
the sea.
The Iowa
got her priorities correct. The ship went to full speed and turned away
abruptly. A Tomcat coming in for landing was thrown off its path, the fighter
yawing crazily as the pilot tried to match the turning ship. He turned away at
the last moment, his afterburners flaring as he pulled up desperately. The
airspeed dropped quickly, and despite the swept-forward wings, which afforded
the big plane better lift, the laws of physics took over.
The Tomcat
tipped up and stalled before cartwheeling into the sea. A wing snapped off,
spilling fuel onto the afterburner flame and exploding the fighter in a brief
fireball that quickly disappeared in the wake of the Iowa.
There
was too little time to react… The captain of Iowa called for all hands
to 'brace for impact' as the first torpedo came in.
A
miracle happened, the torp turning away at the last moment to chase a decoy… the
fifty pound barrel saving the massive ship from impact.
The
second torpedo made no mistakes. It slammed into the Iowa 's stern at
the waterline. There was a savage explosion that knocked down hundreds of men.
A massive hole fifty feet long and a dozen high appeared in her. The sudden
explosion also caused massive damage on the hangar deck. Costly planes were
knocked against each other or tipped over. Thankfully, there were no fire or
secondary explosions… However, the hangar deck was a total wreck. Flight
operations effectively went out the window.
A
massive explosion two hundred meters from Warspite indicated one of the
soviet fish striking a garbage can sized decoy. Fragments smacked off the
battlecruiser's heavy armour. The only casualty was a sailor who was scalded by
hot liquid from a coffeepot that had been knocked off its antiroll perch,
exploding at his feet.
Archer
was hit as well. It was again not a direct hit, the torpedo striking a decoy a
hundred meters away. However, the destroyer was no Warspite. The
explosion buckled and peppered her armour plates along the portside. She took
on a massive list as water flooded in. Her Osprey, which had been on the deck
when the torp had come in, became a casualty when it tipped over and fell into
the sea, the cables securing the aircraft snapped by the shock of the torp's
warhead.
The
remaining two torpedoes went wild, churning on past the fleet and running out
of fuel before plummeting quietly into the depths.
As
for the Stalingrad… Despite half a dozen torpedoes fired at possible
contacts, the sub slipped away in the noise and churning water from the torpedo
explosions. After the last torpedo lost lock and nearly took out the USS Reagan,
the Americans called off the search.
There
was another situation developing… The radar screens of several Tomcats filled
with static with jamming coming from the west.
The source was airborne… and the Iowa
was still unable to resume flight operations. On the Tomcats and Hornets,
pilots tried not to look at their fuel gauges as the jamming intensified.
It
had been a tough day… and it promised to get harder very soon.
