Ssn (1996)

by Clancy, Tom

  He waited for those orders to be acknowledged and executed and then said, “Match sonar bearings and shoot tube two, Master 26 and tube one, Master 25.”

  Torpedo tube two, containing Cheyenne’s last remaining UGM-84 Harpoon, fired first. Tube one was fired as soon as the ejection pump ram had returned to battery.

  “Conn, sonar, the Harpoon’s on her way, sir, and the Mk 48 from tube one is running hot, straight and ”—there was a brief pause, and then the sonar supervisor said—“normal!”

  The Romeo wasn’t as quick as the Kilo. It took them two minutes to realize there was an enemy torpedo coming through the water at them, and several minutes longer to increase their speed. And by then, it was simply too late.

  “The Mk 48 has acquired the Romeo, Master 25, Captain.”

  “Cut the wire, shut the outer doors on both tubes, and reload tubes one and two with Mk 48s.”

  It would be several minutes before the torpedo reached the Romeo, but its fate was sealed. The Romeo had nothing on board that would fool the Mk 48 once it had acquired.

  The Luda, however, was a different matter. The Harpoon was very fast, covering the seventeen miles to the Chinese destroyer in less than three minutes.

  The Chinese sailors launched a cloud of chaff to try and decoy the missile away from the ship. When that failed, and the Harpoon began its final descent, Jinan fired its twin 25mm guns into the air, putting up a “wall of steel” in front of the UGM-84.

  Years earlier, Saddam Hussein had tried that unsuccessfully around Baghdad against U.S. Tomahawk land-attack missiles. It didn’t work any better for the Chinese sailors. The Harpoon slammed into the vessel directly underneath its antiship missile launchers, impacting downward and tearing a large hole in the hull.

  “Conn, sonar, we just heard an explosion on the surface. We hit the destroyer bad, sir. I’m hearing breaking-up noises already.”

  “What about the Mk 48?”

  “Impact in four minutes, Captain, but it’s a lock. That Romeo’s not doing much to get out of the way.”

  The combat systems officer knew his weapons well. A Romeo-class submarine could do thirteen knots at top speed—but only if it was in good condition. This one did not seem able to get above nine knots.

  Mack was pleased, but he wasn’t satisfied. He ordered tubes three and four readied, and then initiated firing point procedures against the damaged destroyer. When that had been done, he ordered, “Match sonar bearings and shoot tube three, Master 26.”

  “Match bearings and shoot tube three, Master 26,” acknowledged the fire-control coordinator.

  Tube three was fired electrically, but sonar didn’t have the chance to report on the torpedo’s status before the Romeo was hit. The old, antiquated reserve submarine had tried to evade, tried to flee, but Cheyenne had it outgunned and outmaneuvered.

  “Conn, sonar, we have the sounds of a submarine filling with water. Master 25 is sinking, sir.”

  Mack acknowledged the report and asked, “What’s the status on the second Mk 48?”

  “Conn, sonar, it’s running hot, straight, and normal, sir.”

  The combat systems officer announced acquisition.

  When the Mk 48 acquired its target Mack ordered the wire in tube three cut, tube four secured, and tube three reloaded with an Mk 48. When that had been done, he gave the command to take Cheyenne deep once more. Moments later a loud explosion marked the death of the already damaged Chinese Luda II destroyer.

  Mack was satisfied. The Harpoon might have been enough to sink it. Now, however, the destroyer went down with all hands and both helicopters on board. Mack gave the order to secure from battle stations.

  Ten hours later Cheyenne was approaching her launch point north of the Spratlys.

  “How long until we arrive at the launch point?” Mack asked.

  “We should be at our launch point within seven minutes,” the navigation officer replied. With Cheyenne currently 2.5 nautical miles south of her launch point and running at twenty knots, Mack manned “battle stations missile.”

  Mack ordered Cheyenne brought to periscope depth to confirm her location by GPS and receive any new orders. This also gave them a chance to verify the targeting information they’d downloaded earlier.

  With everything confirmed, Cheyenne proceeded to her launch point and prepared to launch six land-attack missiles at the Cuarteron Reef Submarine Base. Two of the Tomahawk missiles were the UGM-109D varieties, each of which carried 166 BLU-97/B combined-effects munitions. These would be able to take out soft targets and destroy electronic sensors and early-warning systems protecting the base. The remaining four were fitted with a 1,000 pound “bull-pup” warhead that was designed to take out the base headquarters and the piers where the submarines were being rearmed and refueled.

  One by one, Cheyenne launched her missiles, and then slipped deeper into the sea. She would now have to wait on word from naval intelligence to determine if her mission was a success.

  “Diving Officer, make your depth five hundred feet. Let’s get out of here before they know what—and who—hit them.”

  Mack was pleased. His crew had performed well, Cheyenne had carried out her mission, and now they were heading toward the Sulu Sea. McKee would be there waiting for her, and Cheyenne would get a mini-refit. Mack secured battle stations once more, hoping it would be the last time this trip.

  Mack didn’t know what his next orders would be, but he was sure Cheyenne was going to need all the weapons McKee could give her.

  4.

  Dogfight

  Mack walked through officer country on board the submarine tender McKee, accompanied by his combat systems and operations officers, his navigator and communicator, and his sonar officer. Cheyenne was just completing her mini-refit, and Mack and his officers were on their way to their final briefing. The refit had taken several days, and for each of those days the officers from Cheyenne had taken their meals in the vast wardroom on board McKee. This day, the final day of their refit, Mack had elected to take his breakfast with his own officers rather than in McKee’s flag mess.

  Mack was pleased that the refit had gone smoothly. On the first day, his executive officer and his chief yeoman, along with the communicator and officer-in-charge (OIC) of the naval security group (NSG) detachment on board Cheyenne, had been responsible for transferring numerous boxes from Cheyenne to McKee. Those crates and boxes had contained the myriad logs, data sheets, and sonar and radio and ESM tapes that Cheyenne had amassed during the period of time from when she departed Pearl Harbor until she arrived in the Sulu Sea alongside McKee.

  Among this, carefully stored in box 1, was the three hundred-page “Patrol Report of Cheyenne, Pearl Harbor to Sulu Sea,” which Mack had signed earlier. This was a running narrative of events and tactics employed, along with a written guide to the rest of the items in the boxes.

  Mack always enjoyed looking back through this report. It was compiled four times a day by the off-going officer of the deck and his assistant, the junior officer of the deck. As soon as it was compiled, the ship’s yeomen typed it up on the high-speed PCs in the ship’s office. The color printer and color scanner made the patrol report an interesting novel, complete with color pictures of the tactical encounters experienced.

  This report, with all the details of Cheyenne’s first adventures, would remain on board McKee for some time. Eventually, couriers from Independence would transfer the materials from McKee to the carrier, and from there they would travel by C-2 aircraft to the Yokosuka Naval Base.

  The pilots of these C-2 Greyhounds, called “COD” for “carrier onboard delivery,” were used to making 3,000-mile flights. They had already completed numerous deliveries to and from Independence and the island of Diego Garcia while Independence steamed south of the Arabian Sea.

  Not that Cheyenne‘s successes were being kept secret. Interim reports had been submitted as required, and as soon as she had surfaced inside Mindoro Strait, Mack had released a long message containing
a condensed version of the patrol report and a tabulation of the contents of the boxes to be shipped. This message was already in the hands of Cheyenne’s superiors. Picked up and relayed by one of the numerous SSIXS satellites, this one perched high in its equatorial synchronous orbit over the Indian Ocean, the message had been printed out and copies had been distributed all the way to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C.

  On that first day alongside McKee, while some of Cheyenne‘s people dealt with the patrol report, the engineer officer’s people had been busy with the details of taking on shore power. This was vital to Cheyenne’s taking steam out of the engineering spaces and shutting down the reactor for the duration of the refit.

  They were also responsible for some of the more delicate procedures. The engineering laboratory technicians first had to transfer a quantity of nuclear waste materials generated during their periodic sampling of the reactor coolant to ensure its purity. Once this transfer was complete, they would assist in refilling the coolant charging system’s pure water tanks with CPW. This “controlled pure water” was generated on board McKee by passing SSN discharged coolant from start-ups through the submarine tender’s massive ion beds. The coolant was no longer radioactive, yet it was controlled because of its source. This way the water from the SSNs alongside was constantly recycled rather than discharged to the environment.

  While all this was going on, with the executive officer supervising the transfer of the patrol report and the engineering officer overseeing the power plant, the combat systems officer and his people had their hands full. The combat systems officer was responsible for readying the vertical launch tubes for removal of the spent Tomahawk loading canisters so that the tubes could be reloaded. Others of his crew had to ready the three decks between the weapons-loading hatch and the torpedo room.

  Mack smiled to himself, remembering how well it had all gone. Those activities had mainly been Cheyenne‘s responsibility, and they had all occurred on their first day alongside McKee. After that, Cheyenne’s officers and crew had been able to rest while the refit crew took over the rest of the normal operations.

  After the rigors of their contested ingress and transit of the South China Sea and the relatively simple TLAM-C and TLAM-D attack on the Chinese submarine base at Cuarteron Reef, the officers and men of Cheyenne appreciated this rest a great deal. Even more, they appreciated the assistance of McKee’s crew. In peacetime, a tender like McKee would not have been employed for such a short refit. But this was war now, and peacetime rules did not apply. Especially since it appeared that Cheyenne would be the only U.S. submarine in the South China Sea for a good while.

  Cheyenne’s officers and crew understood this. “No rest for the weary,” as the saying went. It was simply an extension of a policy established for returning war patrol crews in Pearl Harbor during World War II. The only difference was that this time there was no relinquishment either of command or of the individual officers’ responsibilities. Refits like this one were merely opportunities for rest and recreation, unlike the twenty-four-hour refit/repair periods that so many submarine crews had experienced during peacetime.

  All of which meant that the policy was logical and intelligent—but policy was generally not made by the people it most directly affected. Cheyenne’s officers and crew agreed with the policy, and they appreciated it—but they appreciated the hard work and extra effort put forth by the sailors and engineers from McKee even more.

  McKee was good, with a seasoned crew, and the refit had gone well. Cheyenne was restocked and resupplied. The executive officer, engineer officer, the remaining junior officers, and their leading petty officers would attend to the final details of turnover from the refit crew. As soon as this briefing was over, Mack and his officers would be ready to return to active patrol.

  Entering the war room, Mack immediately noticed that the eagles (captain’s insignia) on the collar of the Commander Submarine Group Seven (CSG 7), also known as Commander Task Force Seventy-four (CTF 74), had been replaced with single stars. Mack had expected that. With war declared in his theater of operations, it was standard procedure for the commodore, as he was addressed during peacetime, to be frocked to rear admiral, lower half.

  After exchanging greetings with the captain of McKee and CTF 74, Mack and his officers quietly took their seats in the front row as the briefing officer dimmed the lights for his presentation of the bomb damage assessment at Cuarteron Reef.

  The satellite photography provided clear evidence that each TLAM-C and TLAM-D, which had been launched from Cheyenne’s vertical-launch tubes at a comfortable, uncontested datum north of the Spratly Island chain, had reached a mark. Not necessarily the intended mark, but at least damage enough to put the Chinese submarine base out of business for a while.

  Mack had seen the smoke and fire from the explosions through the high-power, 16X magnification of the Type 18 periscope, but, because the Chinese submarine base was beyond the horizon of the periscope’s height of eye, he hadn’t been able to discern the actual targets that were hit. He listened carefully as the briefing officer said that the main repair facility and weapons stowage buildings had been hit as planned, with 1,000 pounds of explosives per Tomahawk.

  The national command authority and the USCINCPAC target staff had done a nice rush job in providing both the terrain contour matching (TERCOM) data for the entire length of the Philippine Island of Palawan, and the final, more accurate, digital scene-matching area correlation (DSMAC) data, especially since Palawan was not previously a high-priority digital terrain-data-collection effort. With the Tomahawk Block III Global Positioning System (GPS) providing updates to the missiles, the three hundred-nautical-mile flight from the last DSMAC update on the southwest tip of Palawan had not degraded the targeting accuracy.

  As the briefing officer went over this, Mack found himself thinking that the last-minute sighting of missiles arriving at Cuarteron Reef from the east must have been totally confusing to the Chinese. Moments later, the briefing officer confirmed that guess. If the Chinese had known Cheyenne’s position, they would have sent some of their assets after her. But that hadn’t happened. Although the base infrastructure was essentially out of commission, satellite imagery showed that a number of Chinese submarines and a few surface ships remained in port, still moored to only slightly damaged piers.

  Mack knew that the Chinese would be able to make some guesses about Cheyenne’s position. Because the missiles had not arrived from the west, the Chinese remaining in port would assume that Cheyenne was lingering in the safety of deep water to the north of the Spratlys. And they’d be right ... but only to a point.

  Cheyenne had indeed launched from the north, but she was not lingering in the area, having entered the Sulu Sea from the north via the Mindoro Strait. Mack knew that the delay in the Chinese exodus from Cuarteron Reef should give Cheyenne the opportunity to reposition from her safe haven alongside McKee in the Sulu Sea. They should end up in their prime location west of Cuarteron Reef before the Chinese decided to deploy their submarines and surface ships to the safety of the sea. Attacks from Cheyenne off Cuarteron Reef also might make the Chinese believe they had more than Cheyenne with which to contend, a ploy which the submarine force had used in previous conflicts.

  The briefing officer continued with the latest status of the location of the USS Independence Battle Group and background on the Battle Group transit into the South China Sea. Prior to Mack’s rendezvous and reporting in as the SSN(DS), Independence had steamed to the southern coast of Borneo, having passed through the Lombok Strait with her AO (oiler) and AE (ammunition ship), while several of her surface ships, including the two Ticonderoga class cruisers Gettysburg and Princeton, had slipped through the Sunda Strait to the west under the cover of darkness the night before.

  The CVBG admiral had wisely split his forces to ensure that all his eggs were not in the same basket should the Chinese have sympathizers, or even their own soldiers, on Java, Sumatra, or Bali. Both the Lombok
and Sunda Straits were narrow enough that even small-arms fire from the cliffs overlooking the straits could inflict damage to personnel on deck.

  At any rate, the no-longer-covert show of force from the CVBG, which rendezvoused in the Java Sea near Belitung Island, was intended to flush the Chinese at Cuarteron Reef to sea for attacks on the Battle Group.

  The briefing officer went on to explain that once Independence had recovered the S-3 aircraft, which had provided air cover of both straits, the Battle Group steamed north to a position northwest of Natuna Island. There they maintained position until Cheyenne had rendezvoused and notified the submarine element coordinator (SEC) and the anti-submarine warfare commander (ASWC), co-located on board Independence with the SEC’s submarine advisory team (SAT), that the time was right for the Battle Group to continue safely to the Spratly Islands without fear of Chinese submarine attacks.

  The orders for Cheyenne at this stage of the naval war against China were clear and simple: unrestricted submarine warfare on Chinese submarines and surface warships, with the main targets expected to be those departing Cuarteron Reef.

  Mack had known this, of course. Because there was a strong possibility of encountering Chinese warships, Cheyenne had taken on four UGM-84 Harpoon missiles instead of a full load of twenty-six Mk 48 ADCAP torpedoes. In addition, a mix of TLAM-C and TASM had been reloaded into the twelve vertical-launch tubes: TLAM-C in case another land attack would be authorized while Cheyenne was at sea, and TASM in case they needed their longer range against the Chinese surface ships. The TASM had an extra two hundred nautical miles of range over the Harpoon. Either way, for those long range shots, over-the-horizon targeting from Battle Group aircraft would be necessary unless the Chinese surface ships themselves provided enough radar targeting information to Cheyenne’s ESM antenna for bearing-only launches.