by Andy Farman
Staring once last time at the map pinned to the cellar wall of his CP, he came to a decision, and turned to his assembled staff.
“Gentlemen, we are leaving.”
The simple statement registered as unease on several faces of the assembled staff.
After a moment of silence, one of his regimental commanders spoke.
“With respect General, our orders to hold until relieved were quite specific?”
Serge looked carefully at all of them before replying.
“We jumped into Germany….correction; we took off with six full strength brigades of men and equipment. Attrition started the moment we crossed into NATO territory. The brigade that went to Belgium was doomed from the outset, and their mission was a failure as all intelligence suggests that SACEUR survived. Our own brigade at Helmstedt, and the 2nd’s brigade in Eisleben, plus their headquarters, are gone….somehow NATO destroyed them, although I do not believe nuclear weapons were responsible, it was something equally catastrophic. That leaves only us and the 2nd’s two regiments at Bernburg.” He paused for effect before asking the question. “Would one of you like to toss a coin and guess who is next on NATO’s list?” There was no reply from any of the assembled group so Serge aimed the next question at his regimental commanders.
“Has there been any enemy activity around the perimeter?” There had been no contact with the enemy since dawn, no harassing fire, no sniping, and no patrol activity. It was a first.
“Going west, toward the channel ports would be a futile gesture, we would never make it on foot without close air support on tap, and however, by heading east we can be a credible force that NATO will need to deal with. I can see no practical value in a phased withdrawal Gentlemen, as I am willing to bet good money that the opposition has lit the blue touch paper and has withdrawn to a safe distance as it were…so let’s not waste time destroying non portable equipment and stores in place, are friends will do that for us. Any vehicles are for the carrying of ammunition, rations and the wounded until such time as we regain friendly lines…now, let us carry out what will probably be the fastest O Group in military history.”
Another O Group was taking place at the same time but further east. Nikoli Bordenko and his small force of paratroops had been circling Helmstedt looking for a blind spot in which to slip through NATO lines and into the town under siege to join their brothers in arms within. They had been in a hide position near the crest of a wooded hill, sleeping and observing, when the town had been levelled. Nikoli had decided to head west and join with Alontov’s brigade in Braunschweig. There was to be no move before 2100hrs.
In addition to Nikoli’s men, several other parties of soviet troops, in similar situations, were coming to decisions as to whether to go east or west at that time.
36 57 N 103 18 E: 0122hrs 16th April.
Major Richard Dewar had earned his parachute wings at No. 1 Parachute Training School, RAF Brize Norton many years before, as had all of his Marines. However, wearing the wings was not an endorsement that the wearer liked launching himself into oblivion.
Dewar hated parachuting, and considered enthusiasts of sports parachuting to be either certifiable, or Californian, which was the same thing in all probability. To him it was a necessary evil, a means of arriving at B having left A by a more sensible mode of transport. He hated the feeling of having nothing under his feet but fresh air, and the sensation of falling in the seconds before his canopy deployed always made him kick involuntarily, as his brain told his legs to find something solid to stand on.
Tonight’s jump had been no better, it had been pitched dark as he’d left the B-2 bomber above the small valley chosen as the DZ. Twelve seconds later he was on the ground in mainland China, trying to catch his breath in the bitterly cold air, and gain his feet at the same time. He then had to shuffle downwind through powdery snow to overtake the canopy that the wind was trying to refill, and pulling on the shrouds he collapsed it once and for all.
He had the parachute gathered up by the time Cpl Alladay collected it from him, for burial with the rest of the team’s parachutes. Each man would be carrying a little over his own weight in kit over mountains uncharted except by satellite photograph, so no one would be taking excess baggage on this yomp.
Garfield Woods and Shippey-Romhead gathered up the men and carried out a check on both men and equipment, any damage to the radios or laser designators could jeopardise the mission, and an injured man could equally harm their chances of success.
Lady Luck was, by and large, with them.
One man had a suspected broken rib, plus a variety of bumps and scrapes amongst the remainder, but nothing that would hold them up.
Forty minutes later, the M&AWC contingent led off with the Green Berets and Mountain Troop in trail, heading roughly WSW and into the night with 36.2 miles to go, as the crow flies, to their objective.
North Atlantic: Same time.
The Alfa, pennant number 512 had become, by right of succession, the flagship of the soviet submarine force in the Atlantic. Its commander had left port somewhat junior to the then commander. He was eighth in the seniority stakes at that time, but attrition by NATO had thrust him into a command position he would have taken ten years to reach in peacetime.
He had a problem; inasmuch as Admiral Conrad’s convoy was approaching the point where land based maritime patrol aircraft would add considerably to its defence. Latest humint reports told of a massing of these aircraft on the closest airfields, coming in from all points to arm up and await the convoy.
Since his attack on the Royal Navy anti-submarine vessels, the convoy had altered course, choosing a more direct line to the ports of destination, rather than going further south. The Russian submariner was aware of the only three realistic choices he had presented the convoy’s commander. Maintain course and speed in the knowledge that the enemy were too strung out to mount a concentrated attack, and suffer instead a lighter, but prolonged series of strikes, as the submarines came into range. Take a longer, more southerly course, and hope that would avoid the wolf pack, or, take a more direct line to safety, and hope that its defensive screen was sufficient to resist a mass onslaught. Admiral Conrad had chosen the third option, so perhaps NATOs armies were even closer to collapse than was thought.
What he lacked was a plan of the convoy, something to tell him where NATOs ships carrying the troops, equipment and supplies were. He had ordered his diesels to try to penetrate the warship screen and give exact coordinates for these vessels that were so vital to NATO in Europe. .
He had just five diesels remaining, all Kilos but only two of these were the even quieter improved models, of these he needed at least one to infiltrate the screens and provide him with that fix.
Behind Potyemkin, the commanders Alfa, a half-mile in trail the Oscar II guided missile submarine Stalin held station, and in her vertical launch tubes sat twenty missiles topped with one-megaton warheads. He had the means to sink each and every merchant vessel in the convoy, but the last radar picture was two days old, and it showed his enemy spread over fifty square miles of ocean. Warships formed an inner and outer screen, and the merchantmen lay within, but there was a lot of room to manoeuvre inside that screen
Two days ago when they had then known that they were safe from nuclear attack, the convoy had covered fifty square miles. They would likely have now increased the spacing between ships, and so be covering a greater expanse. As powerful as his weapons were, they could easily be wasted vaporising empty sea.
The American’s had shot down the RORSAT over the Midwest, and its replacement was still on a launch pad somewhere. All he could do was blanket the area occupied by the ships with conventional, chemical and nuclear tipped weaponry, unless his diesels could provide him with hard data.
His Kilos were shadowing the convoy, and in just over thirty minutes his missile boats could accelerate into firing position. Every minute he delayed brought Conrad’s gamble closer to success, so he gave the order to his commun
ications officer.
“Make to all vessels…Attack!”
With the loss of the Illustrious ASW group from the convoy’s defence, so too went 50% of its rotary wing airframes. Conrad no longer had the comprehensive cover of before, but those that remained heard the enemy begin their approach.
In the CIC aboard the USS Gerald Ford, Conrad ordered the ships to carry out pre planned spacing, putting greater distance between themselves, without losing ASW screen and missile defence integrity.
The carrier’s principle bodyguards, the AEGIS cruisers USS Normandy and USS Anzio, along with the older USS Thomas S Gates, took station to port, the threat side, of the carrier. The ageing AEGIS cruiser lacked the VLS; vertical launch systems of the younger pair, but her Mk 26 launchers would hopefully find plenty to do. With that done the admiral turned the fight over to the ASWO and ordered the CAG to launch all the F/A-18 and F14s. Once their hard points were bare of air to air ordnance they were free to meet with the tankers, 200 miles to the west of the Gerald Ford, and then on to Europe. Should the carrier be lost, at least SACEUR would have some damn fine men and women bolstering his available air assets.
Launching of the Tomcats and F/A-18s was still underway when the soviets started the ball rolling; the shadowing diesels launched spreads of acoustic torpedoes at the mass of surface ships before using the distraction to try to breach the screen.
The Perry class frigate USS Paul Cooper, found two torpedoes heading for her and kicked on all the speed she could, making radical course changes as she did so. The soviet weapons did not waver, keeping with the target as she twisted and turned, closing the distance all the time. The ship was closed up for NBC warfare, and there was no one above decks to observe the outcome of the race, but everyone heard it and felt it. The closer torpedo homed onto the little ships streamed Nixie, its mate a split second behind. The double concussions rang through the hull as the ocean heaved behind her, knocking men and women off their feet, and causing unsecured crockery in the galley to jump a foot in the air, to shatter on the deck.
Of the twenty torpedoes fired, five malfunctioned, thirteen were decoyed by Nixies, and two found the fleet ammunition ship, USNS Dutchman’s Ferry.
Six hundred feet up at the controls of the Paul Cooper’s UH-60B Sea Hawk, its pilots watched the exploding torpedoes white water column drench the stern and upper works of their own ship, and they were then buffeted by the titanic explosion that had obliterated the ammunition ship a full mile away.
In the back, the Sea Hawks operator gripped the edge of his workstation to steady himself, but his attention was on his instruments.
“Sir, we have a solid contact on our last line of sonar buoys!”
“Gimme a steer!”
“It’s just south of number four…take a heading of 009’ and hustle, he’s heading down!”
Turning onto that heading, the Sea Hawk dropped down toward the waves and the co-pilot reported their sonar buoy contact to Paul Cooper’s ASWO, who in turn passed it along to the ASW department on the carrier where it was added to the big picture.
On reaching the area of the number four buoy of that particular line, the Sea Hawk flared and lowered its dipping sonar below the waves.
The usually quiet diesel boat had traded stealth for speed, to egress its firing point before the hunters came looking. Its poor luck had been its proximity to the line of sonar buoys when it had launched its attack.
Less than a minute was all that the operator needed to lock its position down, the dipper was raised and a Westinghouse Mk50 dropped from the Sea Hawk. The torpedo immediately locked on to the Kilo that had tried to sink their home, and accelerated toward it.
After hours of stalking and shadowing the convoy, her batteries were far from fully charged, so making her best speed on the charge that was available, fell short of what was required.
Paul Cooper’s Sea Hawk did not need to drop its second weapon, as soon as they heard the sound of the pressure hull letting go; they called it in, claiming a kill and went looking for more trade.
A mere quarter of a mile from the scene of that interception, the feelings of another crew were mixed with sorrow and relief that the torpedo they had at first thought was meant for them, hadn’t been, but more of their comrades were now gone. The Murmansk nursed the batteries and crept along towards the first screen of warships.
Of the five diesels involved, two were sunk within minutes of launching, and both as they attempted to duck inside the screen. A further pair were located during the next ten minutes, and shortly thereafter shared the fate of their sister ships. The attrition to their numbers since the breakout had begun had claimed good and bad crews alike, but those that had gotten this far were all first team quality.
Whilst the convoy screen was dealing with the attack by the diesel boats, the first salvo of anti-ship missiles broke the surface one hundred and eighty miles to the northwest, shedding their protective launch containers and deploying stubby wings.
An E-2C Hawkeye, within its longer-range radars saw the threat first, and an operator sounded the alarm even as its ‘take’ was being beamed to the ships far below.
“Vampires, Vampires, Vampires!….twenty plus inbound vampires, range 175 miles…. bearing 351’…. speed Mach one plus!”
Two flights of F14s were vectored toward the inbounds, launching AMRAAMs as they achieved a lock and egressing to the northwest, leaving the thirty-two missiles under the guidance of the Hawkeye.
Whilst the missiles were still fifty miles apart, a further forty-eight of the high speed SS-N-19s appeared on the E-2Cs screens.
Admiral Mann paced up and down the deck in CIC, allowing the men and women to do their jobs without interference, but taking it all in.
The continuously updated big screen did not give him the information he wanted, which was how many enemy submarines were out there.
Intelligence sources claimed no more than twelve faced them but would not hazard a guess at how many of those were SSGNs, the Oscar II’, the big missile boats capable of carrying the anti-shipping SS-N-27 nuclear missiles.
The incoming missiles were not coming on dumb, but jinking and altering speed. Conrad could see at a glance that the AMRAAMs were not stopping them all; the seventy-two incoming missiles had been whittled down to forty-seven that his warships were going to have to deal with.
The ASWO called off his helicopters, and their search for the Kilos was halted as they got out of the firing line and hovered behind warships as radar decoys.
Withdrawal of the ASW helicopters left the way clear for the soviet Akulas, Alfas and Sierra IIIs to try and close to firing range of their shorter-range ordnance, largely unhindered.
Conrad Mann had little with which to counter this other threat. He had nine of the old Knox class frigates with Mk-26 launchers and ASROCs, but the weapon had been out of production quite a few years, and supplies were limited. Four of the frigates patrolled inside the cordons whilst the remainder were paired off with air defence capable hulls and their operators listened to the lines of sonar buoys, waiting for a contact. Of the four prowler sentries one had no offensive anti-submarine weaponry; she had only her sonar suite.
The warships increased speed and trained their Phalanx systems to port, whilst those delegated by the TAO began launching air defence missiles at the incoming missiles.
Aboard the Murmansk the crew breathed a little easier, the increased speed of the convoy screen meant a larger margin of safety for them, and they passed below the surface ships, into the convoys’ inner sanctum. Pressed by time and the need to acquire targeting data, her captain ordered their speed increased to 10 knots and to standby to stream the towed array.
On the big screen an icon representing the Knox class frigate USS John Allen, one of the four inner piquet’s, altered course, coming about to retrace its steps. An operator’s fingers flew over her keyboard, sending an interrogative to the small ship. After a few seconds she read the reply.
“Our tail jus
t twitched…investigating.”
Twisting and turning, the first of the anti-ship missiles dodged inside of the defenders Standard 2 missiles, losing a quarter of their remaining number and coming into range of the shorter range Standard 1s.
Admiral Mann decided that the fight was out of the hands of the aircrews, and ordered away those that still carried air-to-air ordnance, sending them to holding orbits.
The Murmansk’s sonar department plotted their own journey past the outer and inner lines of warships, and when that plot showed them a kilometre inside the convoys’ defences they streamed the array. Her captain allowed himself the small indulgence of feeling hope, although that hope was focused on achieving his objective, actually surviving the battle was pushed to the back of his mind. “Sonar, any sign of the convoy?” He received a brief shake of the head.
“No sir, not yet, too much background noise from the warships.”
Aboard the AEGIS cruiser USS Anzio the roar of launching Standard 1 missiles reverberated through its hull as she added her quota to the defending missiles racing north.
Murmansk’s sonar department were concentrating their search for the convoy, the towed arrayed listening southward. So intent were they that they almost did not hear the USS John Allen heading their way.
To the west of the John Allen, one of her sister ships was closing fast to assist, her screw thrashing the sea in her wake to a phosphorescent glow, but she was coming from the rear of the convoy, ploughing into the Atlantic rollers as she drove east.
“Captain…enemy warship closing, bearing 025’, two thousand metres!”