Ghost Force am-9

by Patrick Robinson

  HMS Iron Duke was now seventeen years old. Her captain was Commander Keith Kemsley, at thirty-seven the youngest of the frigate COs, and tipped by many to make it straight to the top of the Royal Navy ladder. An outstanding exponent of guided-missile warfare and an expert in both ASW and gunnery, Commander Kemsley was by nature an aggressive war fighter and, privately, Admiral Holbrook thought it entirely likely he might end up with a Victoria Cross, or else die in the attempt. A young Fogarty Fegen was Kemsley.

  HMS Westminster, one year younger than Iron Duke, was a very-well-maintained ship under Commander Tom Betts, who ran his ship with considerable discipline and limited laughter. But it was highly efficient, particularly in the field of ASW. Commander Betts was himself a former torpedo officer with an expert's grasp of the complicated operational procedures with the Marconi Stingray weapons carried by Westminster.

  HMS Richmond was commanded by Captain David Neave, former Executive Officer in the Type-45 destroyer Dauntless. At forty-six, he had always longed for a full command but had not considered the possibility of going to war within three months of his first appointment. Today he stood on the jetty watching stores being loaded into his ship, awaiting the new Westland Lynx helicopter that would arrive on his aft deck within the next hour.

  And that, essentially, was it for the Royal Navy's guided-missile frigate force, which would face the Argentinian air assault less than five weeks from now.

  Two bigger, 7,350-ton Type-45 destroyers were definitely in the group heading south. HMS Daring would sail from Devonport under the command of Captain Rowdy Yates, from Sussex, a barrel-chested former center-three-quarter for England Schoolboys, and then the Navy.

  The brand-new HMS Dauntless was going, despite still conducting her sea trials. She would sail under the command of Commander Norman Hall, a former able seaman on HMS Broadsword, who had come up through the ranks and was enormously popular with his 187-strong crew.

  The twenty-five-year-old HMS Gloucester, commanded by Captain Colin Day, would also go, and all three of these destroyers were taking on board stores and ammunition on the jetties near the Ark Royal. The shore crews were attempting to have HMS Dragon and HMS Defender ready to join them. Failing that, two of the old Type-42s would go, probably HMS Edinburgh and possibly HMS York, which were smaller, 4,675 tons, and equipped with the old Sea Dart missile system.

  Sea Dart was a medium-range missile, best used against high-level aircraft, but pretty useless against an incoming sea-skimming missile. Also, its radar was suspect when aimed across the water and over the land. It was neither as modern nor as efficient as the new Harpoons on the Type-45s, which also carried the new European PAAMS surface-to-air system as their principal antiair missile defense.

  HMS Ocean, the Royal Navy's 22,000-ton helicopter carrier and assault ship, was also going. The Ocean, under the command of Captain John Farmer, would carry six Apache attack helicopters, a half dozen big Chinooks, plus vehicles, arms, and ammunition for a full Marine Commando Assault. It could transport more than 1,000 troops comfortably, 1,350 at a pinch. For this trip it would take the full 1,350.

  A second specialist assault vessel, the 19,000-ton HMS Albion, would transport a thousand troops, sixty-seven support vehicles, plus a couple of helicopters. She would sail under the command of Captain Jonathon Jempson, whose legendary Royal Navy lawn tennis partnership with Captain Farmer of the Ocean had once seen them reach the second round of the men's doubles at Wimbledon.

  The final significant ship was the almost new 16,000-ton Landing Ship (Logistics) Largs Bay, built at the great Swan Hunter Yards on Tyneside, and intended as the lynchpin of a second wave of an amphibious assault. The ship held, if necessary, 36 Challenger tanks, 150 light trucks, 200 tons of ammunitions, and 356 troops. Its reinforced flight deck could cope easily with heavy Chinook helicopters. It would sail under the command of Captain Bill Hywood.

  Portsmouth Dockyard now resembled an industrial city, with transporters arriving by the dozen twenty-four hours a day. Of course, the government's idea of a "rapid deployment force" was a mere euphemism for cutting back on everything. What politicians never understand — among several other things — is you cannot have rapid deployment when you don't have enough of anything.

  For military commanders it is a constant struggle to put together any kind of force when the entire operation is beset with shortages — not enough artillery, not enough warships, not enough tanks, not enough top-class combat clothing, not enough spare parts, everything scattered thinly, and worst of all, not enough people.

  There remains a mind-set in the Parliaments of the United Kingdom, based on hundreds of years of history, that the armed services can pull together a fighting force at the drop of a hat that will beat any other armed force in the world.

  It's been a very long time since that was true, and with each passing year of leftward-inclining governments, it has become less and less feasible. Certainly the British troops and Royal Navy performed heroically well in the two conflicts in the Gulf. And there was much to recommend the operations in Bosnia. But they were all comparatively low-tech campaigns.

  But by the year 2011, Great Britain had not gone into battle alone for almost thirty years, when they last fought for the Falkland Islands. And that was a close-run thing. A look at Admiral Woodward's private diary revealed a somewhat disturbing sentence. "On the night of June 13, 1982," he wrote, "I do not have one ship without a major operational defect. I am afraid if the Argentinians breathe on us tomorrow, we might be finished."

  As it happened, the Argentinians surrendered the next day, and Britain celebrated a hard-won victory. But it may prove to have been her last, unless Westminster governments began to rectify the problems they have created.

  In any event, assailed by problems, the Task Force struggling to take shape in Portsmouth in the freezing winter of 2011 was the antithesis of rapid deployment. The shortages made everything take twice as long.

  And two more weeks went by until the troops were able to show up in significant numbers. The first to arrive were members of the Royal Marine Brigade, plus their artillery support, the engineer squadron, their Logistic Support Regiment and the Air Squadron. Altogether 5,000 men from Forty Commando, Forty-two Commando, and Forty-five Commando began to embark the ships.

  They were followed by a second 5,000-strong formation, the Sixteenth Air Assault Brigade, including 1 and 2 Para, and a battalion from the Royal Green Jackets. This was part of the Army's rapid-response force, equipped with Chinooks and Apache attack helicopters. It was a specialist force, trained specifically for this type of mobile operation.

  They personally supervised the loading of their beloved Apache helicopters, which bristled with guns and rockets, and would provide valuable air support against Argentinian armor and ground troops.

  The Artillery Regiment had their eighteen light field guns, which hopefully could be deployed all over the combat area…If they could make a landing.

  On March 4, a declaration signed by the Prime Minister informed Buenos Aires if the Argentinian armed forces had not vacated the Falkland Islands completely in five days, the British Task Force would sail from Portsmouth to the South Atlantic, where they would wage war upon the Republic of Argentina until the islands were cleared of this foreign invasion.

  Suitably warned, the Argentinians made no response, despite much urging from the American State Department, which was doing everything in its power to persuade Buenos Aires to back down and then negotiate. The U.S. government even offered to broker the talks, which could be held in Washington, until some satisfactory agreement was reached.

  But Argentina was not about to negotiate. And the British Prime Minister was essentially in the hands of his own Navy and military High Command. All the Admirals and Generals were making it clear that once the Task Force sailed, it had either to fight or return home. They simply were not sufficiently strong to reach the South Atlantic and then hang around indefinitely while politicians and diplomats argued.
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  The problems of food, fuel, and supply lines were colossal, and many of the ships were old and likely to have serious malfunctions. They could fight perhaps once, fiercely, for maybe a month, but they could not waste time. Britain's naval and military leaders made it clear…You may not leave us down there in bad weather and high seas, falling apart in the middle of the ocean: once we arrive, we either fight or leave. There's no halfway ground.

  General Sir Robin Brenchley in person told the Prime Minister an 8,000-mile journey down the Atlantic, and perhaps a four-week battle for the islands, was the maximum stress this Task Force could take.

  "Prime Minister," he said, "to leave us down there for several weeks, fighting the weather, waiting for your clearance for battle, would be suicide for us, and perfect for our land-based opponents. So you'd better get used to it. When we clear Portsmouth Dockyard we're going to fight, and if you can't cope with that, you'd better call the whole thing off. Because if we get there and you put us in a holding pattern, we'll probably lose half of this aging fleet before we even start.

  "Try to remember," he added, as if talking to a child, "all engineering problems, great and small, which would normally be carried out in a dockyard, will have to be completed at sea. I cannot condone any delay.

  "And if you try to achieve one, you'll have the immediate resignations of both myself and the First Sea Lord, plus a dozen of the highest ranked commanders. Our reasons will be unanimous: the total incompetence of your government."

  The Prime Minister was beaten and he knew it. "Very well, General," he said. "I must agree. When the Task Force sails there will be no further delay. Your rules of engagement will be set out and not subject to change."

  Which essentially boxed everyone into an even tighter corner. The days were running out, the American diplomats were making no progress whatsoever, and Argentina had nothing to say to anyone.

  At 0800, March 17, 2011, the Task Force sailed. The dockyard was packed with well-wishers. Families of the men on board the Royal Navy flotilla lined the jetties, many of them in tears. The band of the Royal Marines played "Rule Britannia" over and over as the warships cast their lines and headed out into the Solent, line astern.

  Great crowds lined the seafront at Southsea, watching the ships sail slowly out into the English Channel and then toward great waters, where devastating battles had been fought and won for centuries.

  Admiral Alan Holbrook's flag flew from the mast of the Ark Royal, and the route they took was close to the shore, enabling the carrier to pass close to the naval stations along the south coast, Lee-on-Solent, Devonport, and Culdrose. And as they passed, a constant stream of helicopter deliveries were made from the shore. There were also stores and ammunitions being unloaded for other ships that had not been prepared in Portsmouth itself, but which were heading out later in the day.

  And all along the historic coastline the crowds were out watching the warships on their way, clapping and cheering them in the gusty offshore breeze that carried their hopes and best wishes out into the Channel.

  In the sprawling naval base in Devonport, where HMS Daring was preparing to depart, a naval chaplain was present to conduct a short service of hope and prayer for relatives of the ship's company. And as the big Type-45 destroyer pushed out through the harbor, a Navy band played, poignantly, the hymn "Abide With Me," a fragile shard from the past, the last sounds of England heard by Admiral Woodward off Gibraltar all those years ago.

  0900, MARCH 17, 71.00N 28.47E

  DEPTH 300, COURSE 225, SPEED 22

  She slipped swiftly through the cold deep waters off the most northerly coast of Norway: Viper K-157, the 7,500-ton pride of Russia's ever-dwindling attack submarine fleet. The old Soviet Navy was probably in terminal decline, but no expense had been spared in building this sleek, black underwater warrior, completed a dozen years earlier, lightly used and now "worked up" to its maximum efficiency.

  They built her right across the wide estuary of the Severnaya Dvina, opposite the port of Archangel, on the often hard-frozen shores of the near-landlocked White Sea. This is the location of that cradle of Russian maritime engineering, the shipyards of Severodvinsk, where even the attack submarines built in faraway Nizhniy Novgorod on the Volga are transported for their nuclear engineering.

  The Viper took four years to build, constructed with the meticulous care of the Severodvinsk nuclear engineers, many from the same families as the men who had built the enormous old Soviet Typhoon-class 26,000-ton ballistic missile submarines back in the 1980s.

  By general consensus Viper K-157 was the finest submarine ever built in Severodvinsk. She was nuclear-powered by a VM5 Pressurized Water Reactor, which thrust 47,600 horsepower into her two GT3A turbines. A member of the excellent Akula-class ships, she was 14 feet longer than the old Akula Is, and, at 360 feet overall, was the first of a new class of Akula IIs. The standard of engineering around her extra-long fin was unprecedented in Russian submarine building. She was comfortable dived to a remarkable 1,500 feet, where she would make a good twenty-five knots.

  Every possible radiated noise level had been notably reduced. She was virtually silent at seven knots and under. Her sonar system was the latest improved Shark Gill (SKAT MGK 53) passive/active search and attack. It functioned on low-medium frequency, hull-mounted.

  And she packed a serious wallop, with her batteries of submerged-launch cruise missiles, the Raduga SS-N-21s, which were also surface-to-surface weapons. She also carried Sampson (GRANAT) missiles, also fired from twenty-one-inch tubes, making Mach 0.7 for 1,600 miles, flying two hundred meters above the ground, carrying a 220-kiloton nuclear warhead, if required.

  She carried forty torpedoes, the twenty-five-foot-long TEST-7IME fired from tubes fifty-three centimeters wide. This is a Russian ship-killer that travels through the water at forty knots, up to thirteen miles, packing a 220-kilogram warhead — nearly five hundred pounds of pure dynamite. Two of these would probably level the principal buildings of the Smithsonian Institution.

  Viper had slipped her moorings in the Russian submarine base of Ara Guba shortly after midnight. Aside from the shore crew, just one lone Russian Navy Admiral stood on the north jetty to see them off. And a substantial figure it was, that of the giant greatcoated figure of Admiral Vitaly Rankov, who had been personally briefing the Captain and his senior officers for two days.

  Free of her lines, Viper ran north up the long bay, which by some geophysical freak was not frozen solid, and headed up the channel into the icy depths of the Bering Sea. She dived in twenty-five fathoms, turning west toward the North Atlantic, on a voyage during which her crew would not see daylight for possibly three months.

  The opening few hundred miles would see her running down the endless narrow coast of Norway, which sweeps 1,100 miles, from the southern city of Stavanger, straight past the western frontiers of Finland, Lapland, and Sweden to the Kola Peninsula, way up on the Russian border. It's six hundred miles down to the Arctic Circle, and five hundred more south to Stavanger.

  Generally speaking, Viper could move pretty briskly during the first part of the journey, but would need to slow down measurably as she approached the narrowest point of the North Atlantic, the eight-hundred-mile wide electrically trembling waters of the GIUK Gap.

  This is the most sensitive submarine country in the world, the stark line that runs from Greenland, bisecting the island of Iceland, dead straight to the northern coast of Scotland. The waters between Iceland and Greenland, the Denmark Strait, are often used by submarines, despite the danger of ice floes, the trawl nets of local fishermen, and generally shocking weather.

  But it's the stretch between Iceland and Scotland that matters. These are the waters through which every Russian submarine from the Northern Fleet must pass if they wish to join the rest of the world. These are the waters still patrolled assiduously by submarines from the United States Navy and the Royal Navy.

  During the Cold War, the U.S./UK patrols were even more intense than they are tod
ay. It would not be stretching a point to claim, as the U.S. Navy does, that no Soviet submarine traversed those waters, running either south or north, between the 1960s and the 1980s, without being detected.

  In addition there is installed all through the GIUK the U.S. Navy's ultrasecret Sound Surveillance System, a fixed undersea acoustic network of passive hydrophone arrays, sensitive listening equipment connected to operational shore sites, which collect, analyze, display, and report acoustic data, relayed back from the strings of hydrophones laid in the deep sound channels.

  These systems are laid in all of the key areas of the Pacific and North Atlantic, crisscrossed over the seabed, forming a giant underworld grid. Nowhere, repeat nowhere, is the system more vibrantly sensitive than in the waters of the GIUK Gap. They say if a whale farts, fifty American hearts skip a beat as the undersea sound waves ripple the SOSUS wires.

  It would be prudent, of course, to say this was a slight exaggeration. Except that it's not. Little imagination is required to picture the total, steely eyed reaction in the U.S. Navy listening stations when the steady engine lines of a possibly hostile submarine are detected.

  The commanding officer of Viper K-157, Captain Gregor Vanislav, one of Russia's most senior submariners, knew that once he ran south across the Arctic Circle he would be treading on eggshells. Like all Russian COs, he was highly nervous of being picked up electronically by the Americans.

  He also knew no one would ever know precisely what had happened if his ship were sunk. Because the chances of a submarine being found in water two miles deep, somewhere in an area of several thousand square miles, was remote. It usually takes a couple of days for any command HQ even to realize one of their underwater ships has vanished, by which time it could be anywhere. Also, no one ever wants to admit the loss of a big nuclear ship, and certainly no one wishes to admit they destroyed it. Submarine losses are thus apt to remain very, very secret.