by Andy Farman
“You’ll do.”
Eric did not have a lot of time for officers either, no matter what their nationality.
“Useless buggers the lot of ‘em,” had been his indictment of those he had served under in the Lancashire Fusiliers and later in the Royal Army Service Corps. He had little time for women in uniform either; he related to Nikki how he had got into trouble for swearing at his female pupils as a driving instructor in the RASC.
“Lorries,” as he termed trucks. “Are no place for bluddy women.” However, when Chubby had related how she had shot down at least nine enemy fighters and bombers he had softened considerably.
An aircraft had buzzed them during the night, stooging around for several minutes before departing. They had only been able to hear the sound of its engines but had no doubt that it belonged to the enemy. What they did not know was that the Border Guard An-72 had looked them over through a lo-lite TV and seen the flag of Great Britain on her stern. The only thing that had saved their lives was the ordnance the aircraft carried.
The P-21 Termit R anti-shipping missiles that NATO calls the Styx 2D, would not lock-on to the small wooden vessel and the Antonov had turned for home after reporting the ketch as being a ‘probable spy ship’.
HMS Hood had abandoned her search and was headed for Pearl Harbour when her sonar department picked up the sound of trouble ahead, in the form of a nuclear boat on a sprint. It took just two minutes to get an idea as to what they were up against
“Captain…classify Sierra five one as Han Class, SSN. Bearing now two zero one degrees, course one two eight…speed twenty-six knots.”
Traffic traversing the ocean had dropped to virtually nil since the start of the conflict. What shipping there was hugged the coast, where they could dash for cover if threatened by a surface vessel and where submarines were least likely to venture.
It was the first PLAN submarine they had yet encountered. The People’s Liberation Army Navy had five of the Han nuclear attack boats and one was known to be laid up with reactor plant problems, which left four unaccounted for.
The captain was well aware that the PRC had only one SSBN, or a ‘boomer’ in submariner’s parlance, carrying submarine launched ICBM missiles. Normal practice for the PLAN was to have two Hans escorting the sole Xia class SSBN boat when it was on a cruise, and after their attack on the carriers the captain would have put money on one of the Hans being with the carrier screen now. Was this Han off hunting on its own, or was it part of the Xia escort?
If it remained on its present course it would pass twenty thousand yards to their south, so the question was what was it stalking or was it just a forward scout for the boomer.
“Captain, aspect change on the Han, she’s slowing sir”
They listened whilst the Chinese attack boat crept up to periscope depth where it remained only briefly before returning to its former depth and speed.
“How long was his last sprint?” he asked.
“We had him for thirty-one minutes sir.”
“Okay then…let’s take us up slowly and have a look at what he sees…call out the moment you pick up another aspect change.”
“Aye, aye sir…making our depth sixty feet.”
The Hood’s ESM mast peeped above the waves to check the coast was clear before the periscope followed and the captain performed a 360 with it above the horizon in a visual check for aircraft before lowering the angle, making a complete sweep for surface craft. He did this setting the magnification at its lowest and then increasing it with each rotation, before pointing it down the bearing the Han had gone for a more detailed look. The surface of the ocean was barely moving, giving him a continuous view unobstructed by high waves but the sun was in his eyes. After observing either side of the bearing he was none the wiser as to what had caught the Han’s attention. A camera within the periscope assembly automatically recorded what the captain pointed the scope at, sending the images to videotape so that they could replay it at slow speed later on.
“Down periscope...nothing,” he told the Number One.
The video footage was played over in slow motion; digital effects enhanced the picture by filtering out some of the glare but they still saw nothing but sea and sky.
“Okay, raise the radar mast, one sweep only.”
Both officers watched the screen and saw the tiny blip, which they concluded came from a vessel just over the horizon.
“Could be the radar reflector on the mast head of a small ship?” suggested the captain before ordering the radar and ESM masts retracted.
“If…that radar trace is what they are after, and I was the Han’s captain I might be inclined to have the sun behind me when I took a closer look at it, perhaps that is what he is planning to do?”
The Han passed directly below the ketch, coasting past at eighteen knots as the speed bled off from her last sprint. Being 600’ feet down none of the occupants of the ketch were aware of her presence.
Muriel was using up the last of the bread before it went off by making what Americans called jelly sandwiches, but in the north of England they are ‘Jam Butties’.
Lt Fu Chen and Chubby were sat with legs dangling over the side as they waited for some unsuspecting sea creature to take an interest in the bait on their hooks.
Sandy, Nikki and Eric were sat in the stern chatting. None of them noticed the ESM mast and periscope break the surface 300m away, the sun's glare from that direction provided perfect cover.
“Do we have a firing solution yet?” The Hood’s captain enquired.
“Setting it up now sir…safeguards set, they won’t go active until they’ve cleared the sailing vessel.”
The First Lieutenant looked hard at his captain.
“Are you sure this is wise sir…if we track the Han it might lead us to a boomer?” They now knew that the surface contact was a ketch flying the Union Flag, having taken another look when they closed with it.
“If they do nothing other than look the ketch over then we will indeed track it, but if they open their bow doors…although that would be a criminal waste of a torpedo for them, or if they surface…then we will attack.”
The Han could mount an 18mm automatic cannon on the conning tower, if the vessel surfaced it was odds on that the ketch would be sunk by gunfire.
“Those are British citizens aboard that boat, and the last time I heard, our job was still to protect them from all enemies”.
The Hood’s bow doors had been opened whilst the Han was coming to the end of its last sprint, Spearfish within the tubes were now programmed to run dumb and at 40’ below the surface until past the ketch, after which time they would go active. The control wires would be cut immediately after the launch and the doors shut for the reloading of the tubes whilst the Hood prepared to avoid return fire from the Han.
With the wires cut the Hood would be at risk from her own Spearfish if the Han managed to avoid them first time out, because the torpedoes would manoeuvre and re-attack, anything they detected whilst they sought to reacquire would be in-play.
Two Chinese ratings lugged the 52lb cannon through the narrow confines of the Han whilst two more young ratings dragged a long ammunition box containing a belt of fifty high explosive and armour piercing cannon shells. The sound of the ammunition box being dragged across the steel deck was loud within the hull, especially when it crashed down again having been pulled through a hatchway.
The sonar men aboard the Hood heard the racket and informed the captain.
“Standby everyone…I’m not sure what this means but if she’s going to surface we’ll wait until she blows her tanks, they may not hear us.”
The Han’s periscope disappeared, to be replaced by a radar mast that immediately started radiating.
Lt Fu Chen reeled in his line and hauled aboard a 4lb fish, which he clubbed and dumped into a bucket at his side before baiting the hook and casting out his line again.
Muriel emerged from below decks and began handing out the sandwiches.
Chubby and Fu Chen stood up and like everyone else on-board they shielded their eyes and squinted against the sun's glare as the sound reached them.
The sound of air filling the Chinese attack boat’s ballast tanks initiated a flurry of orders from the Hood’s captain. Officers and crewmen repeated his orders aloud as they swiftly carried them out.
“Fire one…fire two!”
“One fired sir…Two fired sir!”
“Cut the wires…flood Q…take us down four hundred feet …close bow doors and reload one and two…twenty knots!”
Great bubbles of air boiled to the surface as the big ballast tank known as the Q filled with seawater, removing neutral buoyancy.
“Q flooded sir…making our depth four hundred feet!”
“Aye, aye sir…making turns for twenty knots, aye sir!”
“Bow doors closed captain!”
“Cox’n?”
“Aye, sir!”
“Bring us round to a heading of two eight five degrees!”
“Aye, aye sir…coming left to two eight five degrees, sir.”
“Close all watertight doors…standby countermeasures!”
Heavy hatch doors were slammed closed and secured as the Royal Navy vessel began to pick up speed and turn to port.
The Han broke the surface, within moments figures appeared on the conning tower and aboard the ketch they could see her large dark shape silhouetted against the morning sun, black and shiny with seawater still streaming off her casing. They clearly heard orders being shouted and the sound of a heavy weapon being cocked.
As the noises caused by the vessel surfacing diminished, the Han’s senior sonar rate heard the sound of high-speed screws, rapidly growing in volume and then the first Spearfish struck, angling up from below to impact just above the keel.
The sound of the explosion and the sea bursting skywards had them all ducking for cover, Muriel screamed and Eric put his arms protectively around her. The Han split in two just aft of her conning tower and both severed ends were raised clear of the water just as the second torpedo struck the bow.
The effects of the second torpedo hitting were even more spectacular than the first as it set off the Han’s own torpedo warheads, tearing the forward section asunder. Jagged metal whipped outwards from the explosion; some splashed into the ocean short of the ketch, some beyond it.
With a splintering sound the top ten feet of the mainmast crashed down, amputated by flying shrapnel and bringing the sail, now peppered with holes, down like a shroud. The Han’s starboard bow plane, torn free of its mounting was sent spinning skywards. Measuring 10’x 6’ it arced across the space between the vessels and slammed into the ketch 5’ from the bow and removed it cleanly, the ocean rushed in and the old vessel immediately began to settle.
Tied to the stern rail where they were being towed along was the collection of life rafts and the ketch’s own Gemini. One of the one-man rafts was rapidly losing its rigid shape, holed by shrapnel from the Chinese attack submarine.
Eric opened a locker and pulled at the Gemini’s outboard motor, Nikki helped him lift it as Sandy hauled on the painter, pulling it up to the stern.
Fu Chen ducked into the cabin and was soaked from the waist up as he emerged from below decks with a three-gallon container, ¾ full of fresh water carried in one hand and a box containing a jumbled collection of food stuffs under his other arm, which he handed over the stern to Eric. Muriel and Nikki were in the Gemini where Nikki was attaching the outboard motor, whilst Sandy was kneeling in one of the one-man rafts and holding on to the side of the Gemini and the stern rail.
Eric shouted to the Chinese aviator, gesturing at another locker where the lieutenant retrieved a five-litre petrol can and was in the act of stepping over the stern when he stopped.
“Chubby?”
Nikki looked around frantically and shouted her friend’s name.
Fu Chen suddenly looked back towards where they had been fishing, and passed the can to Eric before dashing into the tangled folds of sailcloth, pulling the material away.
Chubby appeared to be sat down looking out to sea when Fu Chen uncovered him. The Chinese aviator spoke loudly in rapid fire Cantonese and grabbed the RIO’s left forearm but the American did not move. Chubby had a peaceful look on his face and both hands were resting on the jagged end of a 6” wide shard of submarine casing that had pinned him to the side of the cabin through his sternum. Blood soaked the young American’s flight suit from the chest down.
Stepping astride the aviator’s legs Fu Chen crouched and looked into the lifeless eyes, before bracing his legs and pulling hard on Chubby’s arms. Such was the damage to the American; he pulled him free without too great an effort and stooped to lift him onto his shoulder before he carried him to the stern rail. The water was almost level with the deck as he passed him across and untied the painters.
A half-hour later the Hood’s ESM and periscope appeared, to be followed after a few minutes by the conning tower and upper hull as she rose to the surface, less than 50m from the collection of inflatables.
Despite initial protests from a couple of ratings the body of the young aviator followed the survivors below the casing where the contents of Chubby’s pockets were placed in a plastic envelope before his body was sealed into a body bag.
HMS Hood sank below the waves to egress the area, leaving only empty life rafts, oil and the detritus of war at sea, bobbing on the surface.
A long way east of HMS Hood, the USS Nimitz led the centre column of ships that were making a high speed crossing of the South Pacific.
5th (US) Mechanised Division and a small number of British troops, plus equipment, accompanied them aboard the merchant ships that were strung out in three parallel columns.
Sgt Rebecca Hemmings stood at the stern rail of the New Zealand merchantman Rotorua Princess, and although her eyes were open they saw nothing of the view before her. Bloodshot and red-rimmed from three days and nights of tears gave her a haunted look.
She had managed to telephone her parents when the Queen Elizabeth’s Combat Team had arrived in San Francisco only to find that her parents were a lot more up to date with world events than she. Her parents had assumed that she had already been informed that her husband was listed as missing, believed killed, along with everyone else aboard the Royal Navy surface combat ships in the Prince of Wales group.
Lt McMarn of the Royal Green Jackets had been waiting in line to use the telephone; her cry had silenced the chatter of others waiting their turn.
He had led her back to her dormitory in the transit barracks and collared a JNCO to fetch the REME detachment Commander from the BOQ, as the Americans called their Officers Mess.
They had offered to arrange priority air travel back to the UK but the sergeant had refused. She was thousands of miles from home and family so she elected to stay with her friends and alternative family, her unit.
Heck went to the British Consulate at 1 Sansome Street in the city, and informed them of the unit’s location. He requested the MOD be informed of the unit’s current disposition and stated that unless he received orders to the contrary they would begin boarding the ships with the US Division in four hours.
The convoy was two days out of San Francisco when he was summoned to the cabin of Major General Thackery, Commander of the beefed up division that was enroute to Brisbane.
Foot drill in the British Army differs in many ways from that employed by the armed forces of the United States of America. British soldiers describe their cousin’s drill as being akin to the soft-shoe-shuffle and Heck discovered the US Army’s opinion of the Brits’ martial style ten seconds after being admitted to the division commander’s presence.
Captain Hector Sinclair Obediah Wantage-Ferdoux, 1st Royal Tank Regiment stepped into the cabin, took a half pace forward with his left foot, pulled the foot back sharply and bent his right kn
ee until the thigh was parallel with the ground and drove the right foot in beside the left with a resounding crash.
Having thus halted and assumed the position of attention he saluted smartly, it impressed the divisional Commander, but not favourably.
“Jesus H Christ on a muvaluvinbroomstick, boy!” exclaimed the general officer as he frantically grabbed at his cup and coffeepot on a table before him. A spoon danced out of the saucer and hit the cabin’s deck with a clatter. A jug of cream tipped over, and a second cup hit the deck and shattered.
“Does this look like Buckingham Palace boy?” the General enquired in a slightly quieter tone. “Well does it?”
As tempting as it was to have pointed out to the general that ‘Buckingham’ was in fact one word, and not the two ('Bucking' and 'Ham') that the American had used, and he wisely remained silent.
‘Duke’ Thackery regarded the British captain who was stood rigidly at attention and staring fixedly at an invisible point on the bulkhead. He was about to say ‘at ease’ but stopped himself; he didn’t want his table bouncing a foot into the air again.
“So you’re Obi-Wan, huh?”
“It is but a nickname, sir.” Heck replied without looking at the general.
“Okay young Captain…make like a sloppy civilian and shuffle on over here without wrecking the joint again.”
Heck relaxed and walked over to the chair that General Thackery was indicating.
Duke refilled his coffee cup.
“I would offer you coffee,” the General said. “But someone just broke the second cup.”
Heck smiled apologetically but remained silent.
“Do you know, The Honourable Winston Smithers, Captain?”
“No sir, I do not.”
“Well, he sure as shit knows you!”
Withdrawing a fax from a stack of papers on a desk to his left, the General continued.
“The Honourable Smithers is the British Consul in San Francisco; he states that he sent a messenger with a letter for you two hours before we began boarding. He says here that he was unable to get a definitive response from London, so his letter ordered you to remain in San Francisco with your people and equipment. He states that he also advised you in that letter, that he envisioned you would probably remain in San Francisco for some time until low priority transport could be arranged for your return to the U.K. He adds, ‘without your vehicles and equipment due to excessive cost of shipping’.” The General looked up from the page speculatively, but the Englishman said nothing so he continued.