by Andy Farman
“Sir, we don’t own the Temeraire…CINCLANT does, we only have nominal control.”
Bernard thought about it a moment before saying.
“Well send the order anyway…and if CINCLANT complains, then you tell him the submarine has a French name…” the senior French naval officer wore an expression of Gallic innocence and with an expansive shrug to match he finished. “….and so we thought it was ours.”
The captain of Her Britannic Majesties Submarine Temeraire looked at the message form in his hand and showed it to his First Officer.
“Blimey, has the French admiral gone down with a bad case of Tourette’s?”
“The question is…is it lawful?” he looked again at the decoded message. “He does have a point though, if the Migs are rearming and refuelling for another go, then his applying for full authority would be too long.”
“He wants us to use our entire inventory of conventional warhead TLAMs?”
“Indeed he does.” The captain was lost in thought for a minute before he spoke again. “Okay, target the bunker busters on bomb dumps, and the bomblet carriers on runways, tank farms and flight lines. We had better get rid of the surface contacts closest to us, before we put the airfields out of commission too. We already have firing solutions on them, so let’s put them on the bottom, after which we would do well to clear datum PDQ!”
“Sir…you could get in deep shit for this?”
“It is a viable target…besides, what could they do to me, hmm?” he replied, looking at the other officer with one eyebrow raised. “Put me in charge of a boat full of broken down reprobates, and send us to sit on Ivan’s doorstep?”
The First Officer grinned as he went away to set it up.
Twenty minutes later and two Krivak class frigates, one of them five miles southeast and the other seven miles west of the Temeraire were struck by Spearfish wire guided torpedoes. Moments after that the TLAMs, Tomahawk land attack missiles, began breaking the surface and roared away into the night.
North of Magdeburg, Germany: 0117hrs, 11th April.
Steel railway tracks made up the roof supports of the battalion CP, and four layers of sandbags topped those but Barry Stone still looked up at the roof with a touch of trepidation, recalling the fate of the last CP when subjected to soviet artillery.
“RSM?” Lt Col Reed said quietly. “Whatever it is that you are thinking about, it is a tad too late to do anything about it now.”
“Yes sir, just saying my soldiers prayer sir. ‘Dear lord, I haven’t taken up your time with prayers for the past twenty years…and if you get me out of this in one piece, I promise I won’t bother you for another twenty more!’
The ground shook, as even from across the canal the huge charges landing made their presence felt in the CP.
“Two hundred and forty millimetre mortars by the sound of them, sir…their big bastards.” RSM Stone informed his C.O.
“Well, let’s hope your prayer works for all of us then, sarn’t major.”
The first rounds to land were all aimed at one particular target, a solid structure designed to bear the weight of twenty fully laden, multi-axle goods vehicles at a time. Ten M240 mortars had been tasked with cutting off the ‘island’ from escape or reinforcement, their first belt landed short but whoever was spotting for them walked the successive belts onto the bridge linking the ‘island’ to the NATO held bank.
About the same distance away from the bridge, but on the other side of the canal from the CP, Bill was experiencing his first moments of the receiving end of artillery. He had felt the impacts through the damp earth he was lying on, dust and grit danced in the air inside the hide.
“Bloody hell…!” The respirator, worn since they had arrived in the hide muffled his voice.
“Grit your teeth and try not to think about it,” Stef told him. “We’ve got about two hours more of this.”
The Met firearm instructor in a can’t-see-me-suit took little comfort from the words. Stef hadn’t mentioned to him that this was just the opening act, the ranging in. No point worrying the man unduly, he thought, as he double-checked their NIAD, which would warn them of the presence of chemical agents.
Various calibre rounds were landing on the ‘island’ now, some struck the flood defence barrier they had tunnelled this hide into, whilst others wasted their energies in the river. After about five minutes there was a pause as the Divisional Artillery co-ordinator for the 43rd Hungarian Motor Rifle Regiment set up all but two batteries of his guns, rocket artillery and mortars for a TOT shoot. Now that they all had the range and he had the times of flight from their scattered positions, all their shells would be landing at once. Intelligence reports had identified the units dug in on the piece of land as having played an effective roll against 6th Shock Army’s airborne division at Leipzig. He had no idea which idiot had given those troops that piece of ground to defend, but whoever it was had facilitated the removal from the board of a crack battalion. Once the ‘island’ had been made to resemble the surface of the moon, the guns would shift to the newly arrived unit behind them. The Hungarian artilleryman had no information on that units identity, but if they were green troops then they would soon be wishing they had taken up the cloth, rather than arms as a career.
Stef checked that the pieces of rag Bill had secured over the rifles muzzle and working parts with masking tape were still in place. He swept the torch beam around the hide to check all was packed away, and thought briefly of his last partner. Although it was only a few days ago that Freddie had been killed, Stef frowned when he could not picture his mates face. The freight train sound of over eighty shells and rockets of all calibre’s screaming down drove the thought from his mind, as he rolled himself into a ball.
Unlike the previous occasion when the Guards had been subject to this ordeal, the Brigade artillery and mortar platoon did not wait for ground forces to show themselves before getting to work. Shoot ‘n scoot took place as soon as the Hungarian gun lines were identified.
In the battalion CP a signaller answered a field telephone. Lt Col Reed looked over at him expectantly as he spoke. “Sir that was No.1 Company CP reporting that the bridge is down.”
“Thank you…call them back and ask if the boats tied up on the far side are ok.” Six aluminium assault boats had been left for the troops left behind to get off the ‘island’ if, or rather when, the bridge was destroyed.
1 Company’s reply left the C.O none the wiser, there was too much smoke and dust in the air from the barrage for them to be able to see clearly.
Far to the west of the river line, in a wooded valley on the Belgian border, General Allain sat quietly amidst the bustle of his headquarters. He watched the symbols identifying enemy units and types move about on a 12x12, plasma screen before him.
His job at the moment was that of trying to second guess the enemy commander, was he forging forwards everywhere, looking for a weak spot to exploit, or, had he already decided where to concentrate his main effort, and the rest was merely a supporting act?
JSTARS was still trying to sort out the wolves from the sheep across the Elbe. After half an hour of firing they had a fair idea of which suspected gun lines were bogus, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be used later on.
The last few days had given both sides time to catch their wind and replace equipment lost earlier in the conflict, and the JSTARS operators had completed their count of the artillery pieces involved so far. According to them, either the enemy was short on artillery, or they had not yet committed all they had at this stage. It was just one of the many variables SACEUR was dealing with tonight.
Above SACEURs head lay a rather non-descript Belgian Army depot for construction materials, and in between was fifty feet of reinforced concrete and a series of titanium lined blast doors.
An infantry heavy mechanised company stood guard above ground, whilst a platoon of Canadian military police provided close protection for the general and his staff below ground.
The bun
ker was proof against all but a five megaton near miss, of within half a mile distant, or a 2 megaton direct hit, and it would take the best part of a battalion to storm the site, however the prize would be long gone by the time they’d fought and blasted their way to the inner sanctum, via an escape tunnel.
The KGB had acquired the building plans for that site, and others like it, back in the eighties from a traitor within NATO Headquarters. Several plans for destroying the site existed, as did others for taking SACEUR alive or dead.
North Cape: 0258hrs, same day.
The Charles de Gaulle took up its new station eight miles west of the Spanish carrier Principe de Asturias, as the task force reconfigured to ASW formation, from what had been a more air defence conscious one. Yesterday they had circled the wagons and beaten off air and surface attacks, but now they had a different threat coming their way.
Bernard was confident, well 90% confident anyway, that HMS Temeraire had eliminated the air threat from the Pechenga airfields with her TLAMs. A satellite pass would have given them a damage assessment, if it were not for the cloud cover, or alternatively a post-strike recce, but the British observation post had gone off the air and Bernard refused to risk another aircraft. Replacements for the losses in the air battle would not begin to arrive until the following day, but a strong CAP was up covering the helicopters, just in case. The CAP was covering rescue efforts too, attempting to locate downed fliers. One thing this war was good at, he thought, was reducing the numbers of trained men and women who could fly the aircraft or fulfil the myriad other jobs that no raw conscript could do.
The replenishment at sea had been carried out hours earlier, re-stocking the ships magazines and stores that had been almost emptied in defeating the air attacks.
His helicopters were prosecuting half a dozen contacts, the Norwegian shore based ASW squadrons were doing the same with a couple more, and he would have liked to think that they were on top of every submarine out there, but that probably wasn’t the case. Their early warning advantage had gone when the Russians had taken out the choppers and fixed wing units on station, the task force lost 40% of its rotary wing anti-submarine force and a third of the fixed. Worse still, by the time they had regained air superiority, the threat was almost knocking at the door of the task force.
Seagull One One, the NH-90 NFH medium lift ASW helicopter off the frigate Guépratte was experiencing a problem not considered when the crew had been training, too many contacts. It made the process of singling out one from the pack more time consuming, the overlapping acoustic signatures were proving very frustrating. In the past twenty minutes they had dropped on one contact, and succeeded only in destroying a submarine launched torpedo decoy.
Their neighbour to the south, a Portuguese Sea King, had been more successful, killing an old Victor 1 on their second attempt. The Sea King had departed to reload and the NH-90’s pilot was growing irritable with his operator in the back. “Dordogne has scored, so has St Nazaire, and now that Portuguese!”
“Well good for them pilot…and so will we if you just get off my back. Depending on what weapons these boats are carrying, they could be in range of our ships already, so with respect sir…shut up, lift the dipper and take us a kilometre north.” The operator was working on firming up their best contact so far; he needed a triangulation to be certain. If there had not been so many contacts the helicopters could have worked in pairs, making the work twice as easy.
Muttering under his breath the pilot raised the machine, and the Thales DUAV4-UPG dipping sonar beneath it.
“I may have something but it keeps disappearing below the layer when he hears us.”
“Why would he keep coming above the layer, he’s safer below it isn’t he?”
“Because…sir, below the layer is too deep for him to fire!” He turned the aircraft north, keeping the speed down in order to prevent the dipper oscillating dangerously. Lowering the sonar back below the surface, he resisted the urge to make some sarcastic comment to his operator.
“Okay…156’, six hundred metres, he’s above the layer again, he must be planning to launch.”
“Right, get the dipper up, we’re going to drop on him…send as such to Sandman!”
Their intention was broadcast to Charles de Gaulle and their neighbours while the dipping sonar was winched up clear of any dropping torpedoes, this allowed the other helicopters to get their delicate equipment out of the water.
“Dropping…drop, drop, drop…weapon away!”
Relieved of its last item of ordnance the aircraft rose a couple of feet before the pilot caught it, and the MU90 torpedo disappeared into the black depths with a splash.
Although the dipping sonar had been raised the operator was listening in on one of the sonar buoys that they had dropped on the contact earlier.
“Merde…the weapon has turned the wrong way…and they have heard it, noisemakers in the water!” He frowned deeply as he listened.
“Pilot, they have only accelerated to twelve knots.” The Victor III was capable of 30knots, and yet they were not using that speed to get well clear before the torpedo heard the commotion and homed on the noise. As it stood, the weapon would probably go for the noisemaker first and then hear the Victor as it emerged out the other side of the cloud of gas bubbles it was producing. After two minutes only, the submarines speed dropped off rapidly. The pilot was cursing the weapon, and the fact he had no more until they reloaded, when the first anti-ship missile broke the surface.
Pressing the transmit button on the side of the cyclic he put out the warning
“Vampires! Vampires! Vampires!…all ships, this is Seagull One One, sub launched vampires are in the air!”
“Seagull One One this is Sandman…can you identify type of missile launched?”
“Fast and big Sandman!” The sarcasm was thick in the young pilot’s voice; he reigned in his frustration though and transmitted again. He could see the first missile climbing at about a 45’ angle; accelerating fast and the glare of the rocket motor left him blinking to clear the after-image etched on his retinas. Two, three, four, a fifth and finally a sixth burst out of the sea, a protective shell falling away as the rocket motor fired.
“Sandman, Seagull One One…it’s too dark and the rockets are blinding me, the first went up at a steep angle but not vertical.”
The E-3 Sentry had them now and began assigning ships air defence missiles, and at the same time trying to identify the missiles. So far, a solid fuel booster had fallen away from each and they were still climbing and accelerating. The ships all switched their radars to standby but the missiles trajectories did not waver a jot, until the first missile came within 40km of the Danish long hulled corvette Karl Jung, well east of the ASW line and searching for downed aviators who were still unaccounted for.
Sea Sparrow missiles roared from the Karl Jung’s vertical launchers and her Phalanx gun began tracking the high altitude, inbound missile.
A great deal of research and thought had gone into the SS-N-27 AFM-L Alfa, it was built initially to take advantage of the Phalanx systems main flaw, and then given the legs, and smarts, to get past the other air defences in order to exploit that weakness. The first Alfa was at 28,000 feet and travelling at 2.8 Mach on a flat trajectory with its stubby wings extended when its downward looking, multi frequency radar swept over the corvette. The missile banked towards the Swedish warship and was already locked on when the same radar detected two pairs of Sea Sparrows climbing to intercept it. Its electronic brain increased the burn rate of the second stage to produce a less fuel economic 3.4 Mach and it began to nose over. Twenty-seven seconds later it separated from the still firing second stage and accelerated to 3.9 Mach, its dive increasing as it did so. The first pair of Sea Sparrows impacted with the tumbling second stage, and as designed, the second stage body fragmented like a grenade, creating a big, hot, radar and IR target for any other missiles.
The second pair of Sea Sparrows tore past the final stage and warhead, plunging
into the debris cloud and detonating.
Karl Jung launched another pair but it was too late, the final stage of the Alfa was travelling vertically downwards at four and a half time the speed of sound and they detonated in its wake. One second later the corvette was struck by the titanium cased missile, which actually entered the top of her superstructure and travelled straight through, tearing away her keel before exploding fifty feet under her. The corvettes Phalanx gun had not fired a single round, because it didn’t have the elevation to engage targets coming from directly overhead.
Karl Jung’s back was broken and the pressure produced by the explosion beneath the vessel played on that break, lifting it in the middle. The corvette broke in two, and sank with all hands a little over one minute later.
The Victor launched six SS-N-27 Alfas from its forward 533mm torpedo tubes, and ejected two more noisemakers as it tried to build up speed and avoid the MU90 torpedo, but the weapon had learnt from its previous encounter with a noisemaker, and it was having none of it.
The warhead on the torpedo was small, even for a lightweight/air-droppable weapon. Its small warhead ruled out a proximity fuse so the makers went for maximum impact. They weren’t thinking along the lines of a massive Hollywood-style-spectacular-explosion, but more of a train wreck at depth concept. The MU90 was doing 50knots when it impacted the pressure hull, just aft of the port ballast tank. Had it happened below 300 feet, the hit would have been instantly fatal to the vessel, but they were at 64 feet and the tremendous pressures on the hull were not present. Slamming into the Victors flank, the torpedo first pierced the rubbery, anti-hydro acoustic coating and then the outer pressure hull, the shaped charge warhead went off against the inner hull, sending a jet of white hot metal and super-heated gas into the engineering spaces, igniting anything flammable.
Inside the submarines engine room, those crew members not killed or rendered unconscious by the torpedo strike dragged crewmates towards the pressure door set in the forward bulkhead, but choking smoke and seawater were quickly filling the compartment. The Victors captain initiated a crash-surface and the helicopter crew witnessed the vessel emerging from the deep, already stern heavy. Its externally mounted propellers, set on stern planes were still working the vessel up to its maximum speed as the sea had not yet drowned the steam turbines that powered them. The crewmen appearing out of hatches onto her casing could not launch life rafts or jump over the side, one man who slipped and fell over the edge of the casing disappeared into the maelstrom created by the threshing screws, and he did not re-emerge.