Echo Class

by David E. Meadows

  Williams was a one-port one-drunk sailor.

  MacDonald already knew that once they arrived in Olongapo, Williams would amble down the same gangway, make his way to the on-base club, watch the strippers to the wee hours of the morning, and then someone would find his body between the club and the ship and bring him back. For the remainder of the port stay, Williams would remain on board except for a trip or two to the base exchange. Most sailors liked to entertain one another with their “girl in every port” stories, but they also entertained one another with their “one-port one-drunk” stories about guys like Williams. Try as they might—and MacDonald had stood on the bridge wing of the Dale and watched them—no one had yet been able to get Williams into Olongapo.

  He automatically looked up at the 1MC speaker on the bulkhead when he heard the familiar click of someone hitting the “push to talk” microphone. “Captain to Combat.” He glanced at the clock. MacDonald stepped hurriedly through the hatch, hunched over to avoid the low overhead of the passageway, as he headed toward Combat.

  “Captain in Combat!” someone shouted as MacDonald stepped through the watertight hatch. A nearby sailor secured the hatch behind him. He moved hurriedly through the tight maze of equipment, noticing the activity around the target motion analysis table.

  “What you got?” he asked as he neared.

  “Sonar has a contact, sir,” Lieutenant Kelly replied.

  The two officers stood there, watching the TMA team plot the second line of bearing from the plotted location of the Dale. The line crossed the farthest-on circle.

  “Soviet?”

  “Not American.”

  “How far out?”

  Ensign Hatfield answered. “Can’t be more than one hundred twenty-eight nautical miles from us, sir.”

  “One hundred twenty-eight?” MacDonald asked.

  “Yes, sir. We are estimating max speed of eight knots for the submarine. Any faster he’d be blind. His passive sonar would be unable to detect any signals. Ergo, one hundred twenty-eight nautical miles since the reconnaissance aircraft picked him up.”

  “We’ve had two lines of bearing?”

  “Yes, sir. Just two.”

  MacDonald turned toward Sonar, stopped, and turned back to Kelly. “What is our course and speed?”

  “Sir, we are still on two-two-zero, but speed is eight knots.”

  He had ordered the speed reduction a couple of hours ago to increase detection ability. “Well, we can’t have this, can we? If the submarine is doing eight and we are doing eight, then we’ll never close.”

  “No, sir, but if we increase speed, we’ll have to restart our time motion analysis.”

  MacDonald shrugged. “We only have two lines of bearing. Bring the speed up to twelve knots, so we have some closure rate on the contact.”

  Kelly acknowledged the order, and as MacDonald walked toward Sonar, he heard the Combat watch officer pass his instructions to the bridge.

  “What you got?” MacDonald asked as soon as his head parted the curtains.

  Lieutenant Junior Grade Burkeet was hunched over the shoulders of Petty Officer Matthew Oliver. The two men were watching the display console as sound in the water bounced across the sensistive hydrophones within the bubble bow of the Dale. He straightened, but his eyes never left the display. “Oliver has a weak signal directly in front of us, sir. Very weak, but every now and again it grows stronger.”

  MacDonald pulled himself all the way into Sonar. He touched the sailor on the shoulder. “Does the signal fade in and out, or does it seem you have two signals: One that is faint but constant and then one that startles you as it overrides the faint one?”

  Oliver’s forehead wrinkled. “I don’t know, sir. I haven’t given it thought. I think it is a convergence zone signal. Would mean the contact is at least fifty-six miles from us.” The petty officer ran his hand through his hair. “I think you’re right, Captain. Every now and again it grows in strength. That’s when I’ve gotten two good bearings on it.”

  MacDonald looked at Burkeet. “How far apart are the bearings?”

  Burkeet seemed puzzled.

  “Time, man? How many minutes apart between the signals?”

  His eyes seemed to light up. “Five minutes—maybe six.”

  “Aren’t you keeping track?” MacDonald asked sharply.

  “Sir, the Gold Team is keeping track of the times.”

  “You keep track also,” MacDonald ordered.

  “Means we have both a convergence and a direct zone, doesn’t it, Captain?” Burkeet replied.

  MacDonald nodded. “Most likely. If we do, then the submarine is closer than fifty miles. Most likely not that far if we’re getting both signal bounce off the layer and a direct path to the Dale. I doubt we have two submarines out here. The TMA team says we are within one hundred twenty-eight miles of it. I don’t believe we are that far.”

  “I’ve got another one!” Oliver said, holding his headset tight against his ears as he glanced at MacDonald and Burkeet. “This one is real strong.” Oliver shut his eyes. “Seems almost as if I have two signals instead of one.”

  “Convergence zone,” both officers said together. Both officers were wrong. It would take time to reach the contact, but he had a line of bearing regardless of how the signal arrived at the hydrophones located in the bulbous sonar nose on the bow of the destroyer.

  FOUR

  Friday June 2, 1967

  “SKIPPER.”

  MacDonald heard the voice along the outer rim of his doze, pulling him back from the comfort of a near-dream of him home with his wife, Brenda, the joyful sounds of Rachel, twelve, and Danny Junior, eight, in the background. A comforting vision that had accompanied him on this voyage.

  Without opening his eyes, he shifted in his chair on the bridge. “What is it, Lieutenant Goldstein?” The warmth of the early morning sun on his face disappeared.

  “Sir, radar is showing a couple of contacts that are going to pass close to us—well, at least one of them. Combat recommends we alter course to open up our passage.”

  He opened his eyes. Goldstein stood between him and the Pacific sun. “You’re blocking my morning sun, Mr. Goldstein.”

  The officer shifted quickly to the side. “Sir, Combat—”

  “I heard you the first time.” He pushed himself completely upright. The boatswain mate of the watch handed him his cup filled with hot coffee. “Thanks, Boats.” He yawned.

  “How close are they going to pass and how long until we reach the point where we see them?”

  “One is going to pass about two thousand yards off our bow. Unless the second one changes its speed or course, it will be a CBDR.”

  CBDR stood for “constant bearing, decreasing range.” A ship said to be CBDR was one you would collide with somewhere along the way, as the range between the two of you decreased and neither of you changed your course or speed.

  “Time?”

  Goldstein cleared his throat. “Sir, we can see the closest one. He’s about twenty thousand yards off our port bow. The second one radar has just over the horizon, about twenty nautical miles out.”

  MacDonald stepped down from the chair and strolled to the port bridge wing. Goldstein trailed along the left side of him a couple of paces behind.

  MacDonald stepped through the opened hatch into the glare of the sun, realizing he’d left his cap beside his chair. His wife had warned him to keep his face covered because of his proclivity to sunburn. It was that Irish-Scot pigment, she kept telling him.

  “Merchant,” MacDonald mumbled.

  “Yes, sir. Out of Hong Kong.”

  “British.”

  “Flying the British Hong Kong flag, sir.”

  “How much will it upset our ASW team if we turn or change speed?” MacDonald asked.

  “Mr. Burnham didn’t say, sir.”

  “Mr. Burnham has the watch?”

  Goldstein nodded.

  “Have you tried bridge-to-bridge with the merchant?”
/>
  “No, sir. You said radio silence.”

  “What’s your recommendation?”

  “I recommend we alter course twenty degrees to starboard, sir. It’ll open up our passing range to eight thousand yards, then once passed, we can return to base course of two-two-zero.”

  “When?”

  “When?”

  “Yes, Mr. Goldstein. When should we turn?”

  “Captain, as soon as possible.”

  “Tell Combat what we are doing, then do it.”

  Goldstein disappeared back into the bridge. MacDonald stood alone, watching the merchant vessel, scanning the empty ocean surface. He was more surprised over the lone merchant occupying their space than over the closeness of approach. In this part of the China Sea merchant traffic was usually heavy. But nothing was as heavy as ships transiting the Strait of Gibraltar.

  He had made the mistake once of transiting the mouth to the Mediterranean during the evening, figuring the traffic would be lighter. It was worse. And it was at night. During the night, the Moroccan drug runners joined the fray in their dash to the Spanish coast with hashish. Two ships in the middle of the morning in the middle of the China Sea were barely worth bothering about.

  “Combat concurs, Skipper.”

  MacDonald turned. Goldstein stood straddled-legged across the hatchway, one leg on the bridge wing and the other inside the bridge. MacDonald realized how thin Goldstein was as the man stood there, his long neck giving him a flamingo appearance. Like those pink flamingos MacDonald’s mom thought looked so attractive in her flower beds back in Middletown, New Jersey, home of AT&T. “Then let’s do it.”

  He turned back to the merchant. Inside, Goldstein issued orders for a ten-degree rudder to port.

  MacDonald gripped the railing lightly as the Dale tilted slightly to the left and changed course. Ten degrees wasn’t much, but changing course and speed was the easy way to ensure distance between the two vessels increased. Two thousand yards was a nautical mile, which for a landlubber might seem a lot, but at sea two thousand yards was a small distance that disappeared rapidly if two ships discovered themselves suddenly on a collision course. More distance meant more time to react.

  “Distance to contact?”

  Goldstein shouted from his position behind the navigation plotting table, where the quartermaster of the watch was taking bearings from the radar repeater, “We show sixteen thousand yards.”

  MacDonald glanced inside the bridge. The second-class quartermaster was doing a quick maneuvering board calculation to see how the course change would affect their distance. Quartermaster was one of the oldest ratings in the navy. That and boatswain mate. Quartermasters served the navigators, ensuring the ship arrived at the right port at the right time, while the boatswain mates did the work of keeping the ship shipshape. Ratings from the days of sail that kept the navy moving, through the decades of coal, to today’s modern steam-driven plants and growing number of nuclear-powered ships.

  MacDonald’s forehead wrinkled. He looked at his wristwatch. An Omega his wife gave him on their tenth wedding anniversary five years ago. At the time, they could not afford it and he wanted to return it, but she insisted. “Fifteen to eight,” he mumbled quietly. Her pert smile. The twinkle in her eyes when she was happy. She had been right about how every time he looked at the expensive watch he would remember her. If Goldstein had left him alone in his chair, he could have visited longer with her.

  “I thought you said twenty thousand yards?”

  “Yes, sir, but . . .”

  “But what?” he asked sharply when Goldstein failed to finish his sentence.

  “Sir, I think it has changed course also.”

  MacDonald turned his attention back to the merchant. “Bring me my binoculars!”

  A few seconds later the boatswain mate of the watch handed them to MacDonald. He quickly raised them, spotted the merchant in his lens, and swept the glasses to the stern of the ship. The wake came into view. He followed the wake. “The merchant is turning to starboard!”

  “Sir, it’s turning into us!” Goldstein said.

  “Distance?”

  “Twelve thousand yards.”

  Six nautical miles. Still plenty of maneuvering room.

  “Sir, we have CBDR!” the quartermaster shouted to Goldstein, the words reaching MacDonald.

  MacDonald kept telling himself, Plenty of time, plenty of time. Give Goldstein a chance.

  “Captain, recommend increase speed to twenty knots, maintain course.”

  “Solution?”

  “Merchant will pass astern of us.”

  MacDonald lifted his glasses and looked at the wake again. The merchant was still turning. He dropped the binoculars and looked at the midships bridge of the merchant. He could see the starboard side of the ship, angling its bow as it turned. He looked at the wake again. No sign the ship had quit turning, then the wake was blocked by the port bow.

  “The merchant is still turning, Mr. Goldstein, and he is turning so his direction will take him toward us.”

  “Yes, sir, but his speed is about eight knots. If we kick her up to twenty for about ten minutes, then . . .”

  “You’re assuming she is going to retain constant speed.”

  “No, sir,” Goldstein answered.

  MacDonald detected confidence in the officer of the deck’s reply. “Why?”

  “Distance eleven thousand yards, slight right-bearing drift,” the quartermaster of the watch announced. “Will cross in front of us, less than one thousand yards!”

  Still too close.

  Still closing, but the bearing drift meant they were no longer on a collision course, unless the merchant took the bow of the Dale off.

  MacDonald raised his glasses. The wake was visible again and now it was twisting left behind the merchant. So the merchant captain had realized the dilemma both ships had placed themselves in in their efforts to avoid each other and had shifted his rudder. The merchant was tilting left as it came about smartly to port. This would open the separation even farther. Even as he watched, MacDonald saw the left-bearing drift of the merchant begin, meaning that even at this speed the merchant would pass close down the port side of the Dale.

  “Twenty knots is going to cause our ASW teams to have to start over,” MacDonald said, his voice raised.

  “Yes, sir, but it’s either restart TMA in a few minutes or find ourselves changing course again, and the TMA solution will be even more garbled.”

  He was impressed. Goldstein had stood up to him, even if he did detect a slight tremor in the voice.

  “Mr. Goldstein, seems to me you have the deck.”

  “Helmsman, ring up bells for twenty knots!” Goldstein shouted. “Ten-degree starboard rudder.”

  Several seconds passed before MacDonald felt the power of the Dale’s steam engines as they kicked in. The destroyer seemed to leap out of the water. The motion drift to port of the merchant ship increased. MacDonald smiled. Another officer had passed his standards. Goldstein was still a little rough around the edges for his liking, but with the trait of self-confidence combined with more time on the bridge, the junior officer might turn into a good officer of the deck.

  Below in Combat, the Blue ASW Team were ripping the edges of the trace paper away from the tape, folding the penciled calculations to one side, and putting on new paper. At twenty knots, they would have to start over.

  BOCHARKOV hiccupped.

  “It’s the cabbage,” Ignatova offered.

  “If it was the cabbage, I’d be farting like the rest of the crew,” he whispered back, waving his hand in front of his face.

  They laughed.

  “Passing one hundred meters!” Lieutenant Yakovitch, the officer of the deck, shouted.

  “I think with Yakovitch on duty, the noise of the sump pump below will be the second thing the Americans detect.”

  Bocharkov grunted. “Noise in the water is the curse of submariners. How else would we be so successful against the American
submarines?”

  “Give them our cabbage.”

  “Passing ninety meters!”

  “Lieutenant Yakovitch!” the XO called. “Could you lower it a little? That operatic bass voice of yours is shaking the bulkheads.”

  Yakovitch smiled. He was proud of his amateur opera career. He cleared his throat to the amusement of the men in the control room.

  Chief Ship Starshina Uvarova turned from his position of hovering over the helmsman, rolled his eyes, and nodded at Bocharkov.

  “Even my senior enlisted man approves of your command, Vladmiri,” Bocharkov added softly.

  “Aye, sir!” Yakovitch replied, his booming voice not one octave lower.

  Bocharkov smiled, the right side of his lip turning upward. “XO, I haven’t heard a report from Boyevaya Chast’ 4 in a few minutes. Hit them and see if our communicators still have underwater communications with the K-56.”

  Ignatova nodded and stepped to the sound-powered phone talker. “Give Communications a check and tell the communications officer to give me a call.”

  Almost immediately the internal communications box squawked. Ignatova looked down at the buttons and pushed in BCh-4. Across the small control room compartment, Bocharkov listened as the XO chewed the communications officer’s butt about not keeping the control room informed on the communications ongoing between the K-122 and K-56 Echo submarines. Here they were surfacing simultaneously with another submarine—neither quite sure where the other was—and Bocharkov needed to know exactly what was happening around them. Oceans were so big that seldom did submarines collide with other ships and subs, but every so often, it did happen.

  One of the sound-powered phone talkers pressed his headset to his ear, acknowledged the unseen talker on the other end, and then lifted the right side off his ear.

  “Lieutenant Yakovitch, Bch-3 reports they believe they have faint noise of an American warship.”

  BCh-3 was the communications channel for Sonar and the torpedo rooms.

  Bocharkov straightened off the bulkhead and walked toward the far end of the control room, where Sonar was located.