by Larry Bond
“We are already sending one of the ROVs in. It will take three, maybe four minutes.”
“If they’ve simply come loose, be ready to reattach them.”
“Understood. We can do that.”
USS Seawolf
Jerry and most of the wardroom were in control, with as many of the crew that could fit down in the torpedo room, watching the displays. Maxine had been running slow, angled racetracks, her sonar optimized for short range, high-resolution images.
They’d heard the explosion through the hull, a little alarming in spite of being right on time. Sonar also reported the tug’s engines running flat out. Maxine’s sonar showed most of Severodvinsk, lying angled to port. They all longed for her to slowly roll to starboard, and then for the escape chamber to appear above the sail. The UUV would be able to see it, even through the murk from the explosions.
Rumor was, the cooks were putting together a big party, with a Russian menu. Blinis, something called piroshki. They might even invite Borisov back. Seemed like a nice enough guy.
Sonar then reported the engines slowing, followed by a revving up again to full power.
But Severodvinsk never moved. Kurganov’s call over the underwater telephone confirmed the bad news.
USS Churchill
They’d moved from CIC to the bridge, as if actually seeing the vessels would tell them something new. The radiomen piped the circuits over the bridge loudspeakers, and they listened to Borisov’s questions and his order to maintain power.
After about five minutes, Lindstrom came back on the circuit. “We have a clear view of the bow from the first ROV. The mooring point is gone! It’s been torn off of the casing!”
He was reporting to Borisov, who responded in English. “I do not understand.”
“The fitting that the cables were attached to has been ripped from the submarine’s deck.”
“Impossible. Those mooring points are designed to withstand tremendous forces.”
Lindstrom patiently answered, “We will be sending the photos to you in a few moments. The foundations are cracked, and the metal of the casing is torn. The fitting itself is missing entirely. The cables did not come loose, they pulled it off the deck.”
Borisov’s voice, even over the radio, was incredulous. “How could this happen?” He was asking himself as much as Lindstrom.
“Severodvinsk suffered a lot of damage to her bow. The hull’s structure must have been weakened.”
There was a long pause, and everyone on the bridge could imagine the Russian searching for some solution. “Can the cables be reattached to the bow some other way? It must be done quickly,” he added.
“No, Admiral. There’s nothing left to attach them to. And the tugs would have to stop while we did the work.”
After another pause, Borisov answered, “Very well. I intend to continue with the remaining two lines.”
Lindstrom’s answer was simple. “Good luck. Out.”
Joanna Patterson, Captain Baker, and the others stood listening to the conversation. After the Norwegian had signed off, they stood silently, absorbing and understanding. Silas cursed, Russo walked out to the bridge wing, and Patterson saw him pounding his fist on the rail.
She was surprised when Joyce Parker pulled out a Kleenex and offered it to her. She hadn’t felt the tears until then.
They watched as the tugs strained, working to move Severodvinsk. Borisov had them alternate, then angle left and right. All the while, Seawolf and Halsfjord watched their vehicles, eager to report any movement. Finally, after half an hour with nothing to show, the admiral had each tug cast off one of its cables, so that Pamir had the midships while Alt ay pulled on the stern. He ordered them to pull in opposite directions, hoping that the twisting motion might somehow help.
Severodvinsk
Petrov waited, holding his hand against the metal bulkhead of the capsule. It was a lousy way to monitor the rescue efforts, but the capsule had no sensors. He held his hand there, feeling the vibration, knowing the tugs were working, but the inclinometer never moved.
Soon after the explosions, he’d felt a jar that had passed through the deck, but the vibration had resumed quickly. It stayed constant, and he could only wait and hope and watch the needle as it hovered at thirty-six degrees.
After ten minutes, he pulled his hand away, but others took up his watch. He visualized the tugs, tried to calculate the forces, but his thinking kept trailing off into worries about his men, and what was taking so long.
After fifteen minutes, he started to look for reasons why the hull hadn’t shifted yet, but would. After another ten minutes, he confirmed that the vibrations were still there, but according to the inclinometer, they were not having any effect. Were the vibrations something else? If not the tugs, what? He decided he didn’t want to know.
The excitement of moving into the chamber and the explosions had passed. The crew waited patiently, and silently. There was no point in wasting air by asking questions. They knew as much as their captain. Most of the injured appeared to be asleep, or at least passed into a quiet state brought on by exhaustion and stress.
Petrov promised he’d wait until forty minutes had gone by, and then found himself looking for reasons to keep waiting. Waiting meant there might still be a chance. When he stopped waiting, and opened the lower hatch, it meant that yet another rescue attempt had failed.
He knew Borisov and Rudel and Lindstrom were probably calling on the underwater telephone. But they knew he and his men would be waiting here in the chamber, out of touch but ready to ascend the instant the sub rolled far enough to starboard.
Fifty-two minutes after the explosive charges had been detonated, the vibration stopped. He waited a full five minutes for it to resume, or for anything else to happen. Feeling like a failure, he unsnapped his seat belt and stood.
His action, final as a jail door slamming shut, brought moans and cries from his crew. A few wept as he walked to the hatch and unsealed it. Before descending, he turned to Kalinin and ordered, “Keep them here for a few more minutes while I call Petr Velikiy.” The starpom nodded sadly, even though it was just delaying the inevitable.
Petrov left the escape chamber, heading for the underwater communications station and bad news.
28. FINAL PUSH
12 October 2008
1433/2:33 PM
Petr Velikiy
It took only a few sentences for Borisov to tell Petrov what the unmanned vehicles had revealed. No explanations were needed. They both understood exactly what it meant.
“What is your CO2 level?”
Petrov reported, “Fonarin did an analysis just before we boarded the capsule. It was three point two percent, and he says the chemicals, the cassettes, everything is exhausted. The physical activity of climbing in and out of the escape capsule has also produced more of the gas. We’ve all had headaches for some time now, but many of my crew are starting to complain of dizziness and seeing spots before their eyes. With all the regeneration cassettes depleted, there really isn’t much we can do. Dr. Balanov is attempting to administer another round of sedatives, but some of the men are refusing to take them.”
Borisov could understand men not wanting to end their lives in a drugged trance. “I understand. The Americans have another unmanned vehicle. They’ve offered to send you more cassettes.”
“No. Absolutely not.” At first, the strength of Petrov’s answer surprised Borisov, but then he realized it shouldn’t. One or two more days of lingering cold misery, and for what? To sit around and contemplate a fate that could not be changed? It would be his choice, if he were down there.
“My apologies, Admiral. I appreciate Rudel’s offer, but it wouldn’t matter. My Chief Engineer reports that we are almost out of reserve battery power. We can’t operate the air-regeneration system anymore, even if we had cassettes. I’m afraid we are just running out of time.” Petrov’s voice was remarkably frank, almost mechanical, as he made his report.
“We are not yet
ready to concede, Captain. I must go now, to speak with Lindstrom and the others. Everything will be considered. We will speak again afterwards.”
“Thank you, sir. But, I fear it will be a short meeting.” Borisov couldn’t tell if Petrov was joking or not.
USS Churchill
Captain Baker told his crew after the Russians tugs stopped pulling. Most of them already knew. When the tugs had whipsawed, and the escape chamber hadn’t appeared, it was obvious they’d failed. But Baker waited, like everyone else, hoping and praying for a miracle.
Patterson was with him, on the bridge, when he spoke on the 1MC. If the expressions of the bridge watchstanders were typical, the crew took it pretty hard. She tried to understand why the crew of Churchill would care so much about the Russians. They’d even printed pictures of the crew from the Wives and Mothers website and posted them in the mess. Perhaps her husband had best summed it up when he said, “It was a sailor’s thing.”
A short time later, they watched while workboats transferred the cables from the tugs’ sterns back to the buoys, freeing them to maneuver. Saving the cables was pointless, really, but nobody wanted to abandon that physical link to Severodvinsk.
More by mutual agreement than design, many of Patterson’s group had congregated in the wardroom, along with several of Churchill’s officers. It had the feeling of a wake, or a deathwatch. Nobody used either of those words, but they gathered and talked quietly, or simply shared each other’s company. When they did talk, they searched for any alternative, however absurd, that might have been overlooked or dismissed as being too risky.
Some talked of stretching the crew’s breathable air somehow. Others wanted to move the sub. Commander Silas actually suggested detonating a small nuclear weapon on the seabed. “It’s simple physics. Figure out how much force we want to apply to the hull, account for the transmission through the rock formation, and then drop the device far enough away Boom. The sub rolls upright and up they come.”
Unfortunately, the general consensus was that the resulting blast would still crush what was left of Severodvinsk like a dented beer can, and besides, there wasn’t enough time to do all the necessary calculations to figure out if it were truly feasible. Sometimes, physics isn’t quite so simple.
Each scheme, no matter how harebrained, was inspected, measured, and eventually found wanting, either time or technical reasons, sometimes both. It was pointless, but there was nothing else to do while they waited.
USS Seawolf
They listened to the conversation between Petrov and Admiral Borisov over the underwater telephone. Rudel didn’t have anything to add; besides, he wasn’t part of the Russian chain of command. There’d be opportunities to talk later, when Petrov might need it more.
Most of Seawolf’s officers had also gathered in their wardroom. They weren’t as shy as Churchill’s or Patterson’s people. Shimko had called it a “deathwatch” from the start. Men like them, men they could easily have been, were slipping off the edge of existence. Jerry, Shimko, Lavoie, and others sat and talked about what should happen next, or what should have happened.
“The big mistake was getting too cocky,” Shimko declared. “We got complacent and assumed nobody was in the area, so we got sloppy in our searching when we were recovering the UUVs. We could have placed one in a position to cover our blind spot aft, to make sure we weren’t caught unawares.”
Jerry shook his head. “That would have meant less survey time for the UUVs on each sortie, and we have a limited number of sorties. We would have been out here longer, which would have increased our risk of discovery. No, all I had to do was realize that the Russian, Petrov, was trying to cut a tether that Patty didn’t have. If we had sent Patty straight away at max speed, Petrov would have seen his mistake.”
Lavoie disagreed this time. “That only explains the first two passes. By the third pass, he had doped it out. On the third pass he was trying to corral Seawolf!’
“And once he’d made that decision, the result was inevitable.” Rudel’s voice surprised them, and they started to rise, but he motioned for them to sit. He poured himself a cup of coffee, then sat down wearily. “I don’t like my stateroom right now.” He paused for a moment, contemplating, searching for the right words. “There’s no rule that says there has to be a solution for every problem. Sometimes you’re just going to be on the receiving end, no matter what you do.”
“How do you handle those situations, sir?” Will Hayes asked, frustrated and perplexed.
“Many times, Will, there are answers,” Rudel replied, “but that’s not when you earn your pay. You get paid the big bucks for situations like this— when all the outcomes are bad. Having to choose between rival goods, or worse, rival evils, is when one truly understands the burden of command.”
He paused again; nobody spoke, or even moved. Rudel continued, “Recovering from a complicated, dangerous situation, with no outcomes but lousy choices, requires more than skill. Beating yourselves up over the road not taken is worse than a distraction. It may lead you to believe that you’re no longer able to make a good decision. Learning from the past is the mark of a good officer, but don’t ever think it has all the right answers.”
Rudel leaned back, seeming to sit straighter than before. Looking around the wardroom table, he noticed Lieutenant (j.g.) Williams. As the damage-control assistant, he was responsible for life support on Seawolf and was the resident expert on a sub’s atmosphere. “Todd, what’s your estimate?”
“Based on Petrov’s last report, carbon dioxide is probably near three point four or three point five percent now. It will build up very quickly once it’s over four percent.” He seemed reluctant to give any details, but finally concluded, “I don’t think anyone’s going to be conscious in twelve hours.”
Rudel nodded. “Thanks, Todd. That matches my own estimate.”
“What about balloons? Flotation bags? We could put them in the damaged ballast tanks, or have the Norwegians weld attachment points right to the hull.” Ensign Santana looked excited, hopeful. “There’s room for dozens of lines to be rigged, and it could be done quickly.”
Rudel answered, “No, they thought of that on day one. Putting the bags inside is a good solution, but the ballast tanks would have to be opened up even more to get the bags inside. It would have taken too long, about a week. Now we’ve got less than a day. And just attaching bags to the hull? Severodvinsk displaces some twelve thousand tons submerged, and then add the water in three or four flooded compartments. She probably displaces close to fifteen thousand tons. How many bags would we need to shift her?”
Lavoie added, “That’s more right than you know, sir. I just spoke with Halsfjord’s chief engineer. Lindstrom and the rest of his team are kicking themselves. They’re still trying to figure out why their plan didn’t work. He wanted to run over some of the figures. So many tons from the tugs, so many from flooding the starboard tanks, and so on.”
The engineer explained, “Their problem wasn’t that the mooring point pulled loose from the sub’s hull. At that time, the tugs were at full power, and Severodvinsk hadn’t shifted a single degree! She should have shown some sort of movement. Their bet is that if the fitting hadn’t come off one of the cables would have parted.”
Rudel sighed. “In other words, they just couldn’t couple enough force to Severodvinsk’s hull to do the job.”
Lavoie said, “The only thing they could have changed was to push Severodvinsk from the side with AS-34, but that only increased the total force on her hull by a few percent. And that’s before Priz’s batteries failed. She was never really an option.”
Jerry’s eyes widened a little bit. In that quiet gathering, several people noticed his hopeful expression. “What is it?” asked Shimko.
“What if we did the pushing?” The idea, half-formed, took shape as he spoke. “We don’t ram Severodvinsk. Ease in. We can use Maxine to guide us. Make contact at a slow creep, and then carefully increase power in stages. And unlike tow
cables, we apply the force directly, hull-to-hull contact.”
Nobody responded immediately, although from their expressions it was clear they had heard him. “Brute force,” he explained.”Seawolf can generate nearly three times the push of both those tugs.”
Lavoie was the first to respond. “But our bow. ”
Then Chandler said, “They’ll never agree. ”
And Wolfe replied, “Hell, we’re going in the yards anyway.”
Shimko started to speak, then paused, and stated flatly, “The forward pressure hull is not at full strength. It might not hold. If it goes, we’ll be in the hurt locker.”
Jerry answered, “Once we start pushing, it will only take a few minutes to do the job. We’ll be ready for it, and do an emergency blow the moment the escape chamber separates.”
Lavoie speculated, “We’d have to cut away some of the debris forward to make a smoother contact surface. The supporting structure for the forward arrays is like a spear. It would slice right through Severodvinsk.”
“Skipper, we can do this,” Jerry pleaded. Captain Rudel had sat silently through the exchange, listening. Like every other officer in the room, Jerry could see him calculating. Seawolf added almost forty-six thousand shaft horsepower to the equation.
Rudel stood suddenly and headed for the wardroom door. “We’ll meet back here with department heads and chief of the boat in fifteen minutes. ” He paused, since two-thirds of his wardroom was already there, and added, “Others may also attend. Have a rough draft of the procedure and a timeline ready for me.”
He turned to leave, but then looked back. “Mr. Lavoie, calculate how long we can handle flooding forward before we can’t surface from an emergency blow.”
Rudel disappeared, and Jerry helped Shimko summon the few missing officers and chiefs to the wardroom.
USS Churchill
“It’s Seawolf, ma’am, Commander Rudel is on the scrambler phone.” Everyone in the wardroom mirrored Patterson’s puzzled look. All other ship-to-ship communications had been in the clear.