by Andy Farman
The Murmansk’s commander looked at the speaker.
“Any chance that they haven’t got us?”
The USS John Allen was not entirely certain that they had a submarine somewhere close, the USNS Dutchman’s Ferry had gone down not far away so they had to be one hundred percent certain they weren’t just hearing her as she sank toward the ocean floor. To eliminate that possibility, her ASWO gave an instruction to a crewman.
The frigates sonar went active; its pulses hammered the hull of the Kilo, causing several of her crew to jump.
“No captain, no chance at all.”
“Pizd’uk!” the captain snarled his frustration. “Flood Q…take us down to six hundred feet……….come right to 170’, fifteen knots…and standby counter measures!”
North of the convoy screen, the night was lit up as another Standard 1 scored, its targets 500Kg warhead detonating at the moment of interception, but Conrad Mann had ceased his pacing, his eyes fixed on the big board and his jaw set in the realisation that the sea skimmers were going to get through his missiles, and some of his ships were likely to die in the next few minutes.
USS John Allen’s ASROC launcher swung out, guided by the ASWOs instructions until it was pointing unerringly along the bearing to the submerged Kilo.
The interval between sonar pulses was lessening, and not a single man aboard the Murmansk did not feel hunted, including her captain, and yet his voice remained calm. “Hard a-port…make your course 045’…hold that course for thirty seconds and release counter measures, then reverse your course and go to flank speed.”
“Aye, captain!”
The Phalanx system aboard the USS Paul Cooper was the first to open fire on the inbound missiles, the barrels rotating as it began expending rounds at a rate of three thousand per minute. One by one, other ships joined in as the anti-ship missiles came within range until seven vessels were involved in this last line of defence.
Five miles to the south of her, flame lashed the foredeck of the John Allen as an ASROC left the launcher, and its intended victim heeled over as it reversed course and increased speed, ejecting a pair of noisemakers into the knuckle it had created.
To the tearing sound created by the Phalanx guns aboard the screens warships there was added the thump of chaff dischargers throwing aloft their clouds of aluminium strips. Although all the ships were running without lights, the cruiser USS Normandy was illuminated briefly by the light produced from an exploding destroyer to the northeast, and then her superstructure was lit again as her own Phalanx opened up to engage two missiles entering the breach created by the destroyers destruction. Sweating crewmen paused for a moment to listen before redoubling their efforts to manhandle Standard 1 and 2 missiles from makeshift stores to refill the magazines.
USS John Allen’s first ASROC shed its rocket booster and a small drogue chute allowed the Mk42 Mod 5 torpedo to enter the water at the correct angle. It had been aimed to land astern of the enemy submarine, but the Murmansk had turned through 180’ and the torpedo now had no immediate target to home on. It was old technology and had no guidance from its mother ship, so it performed its hunting manoeuvre, turning in a wide arc and actively pinging.
The John Allen carried only twelve of the old ASROCs, all aged between twenty and thirty years old. As soon as the first Mk42 had left the launcher the crew had hustled to ready the next.
An ugly fireball, rich in white fire and red gold hues, rose into the air to announce the death of another US warship, this time a frigate. With the loss of the destroyer, and then the frigate, a hole had been bored through the inner and outer screens.
The Mk42 had turned through 200’ before it found a target, and quickly accelerated to 40knots.
Murmansk had achieved a speed of 24knots by the time the torpedo had plunged through the knuckle and gas bubbles generated by the noisemaker, where it immediately heard the Kilo and steered toward her.
Two seconds before the Anzio’s 20mm magazines ran dry, her sister ships automated flank defence systems ordered Normandy’s and Thomas S Gates Phalanx guns to open fire. The submarine launched missiles had been whittled down to just eight, but the three big cruisers, plus the massive USS Gerald Ford were in their path.
Murmansk did not have the battery power to run at speed for prolonged periods, and in any case she could not outrun even an old weapon such as the Mk42. She ejected another pair of noisemakers into her wake, and responded gamely to the planes in the full rise position.
USS John Allen’s ASWO held off launching the Mk42 now waiting on the launcher, he had few to play with and watched the information being added to the plot in the small CIC. Only if the torpedo in the water looked certain to have failed, would he re-attack with a second ASROC.
The instructions to both cruisers Phalanx guns were sent within milliseconds of one another, Normandy and her older sister were already tracking, and Normandy’s guns began to hammer at the first of a pair now homing on her.
Thomas S Gates had three coming straight for her and her computerised guidance system selected the greatest threat, unfortunately through some fault that would never be identified, both of her Phalanx guns remained silent except for the whirr of the motors that kept the barrels unerringly following the path of her killers.
With the magazines for her Phalanx guns now empty, Anzio had her own problem to contend with, and she heeled hard over as she turned toward it. Her Sea Hawk kept station, above and abaft her stern as the pilots played decoy with a sharp eye on the glow of the incoming missiles exhaust, ready to evade if they saw the ruse had worked.
The approaching SS-N-19 registered that its principle target was shrinking, as the ship turned bow-on to it, yet a smaller target above that one suddenly expanded, as yet another chaff bundle appeared in the Sea Hawks path.
The aircrews concentration was broken when two miles away, an SS-N-19 detonated inside Thomas S Gates hull immediately above the magazine, which both startled them with the violence of the cruisers destruction, and robbed them of their night vision so that they never saw, or even felt, the missiles impact against the UH-60Bs port engine.
Although she escaped the older cruisers fate, the close proximity of the exploding warhead rout havoc with Anzio’s stern works, it stove in hull and deck plates, and set her hangar ablaze.
Below the ocean’s surface, several miles south, Murmansk was answering her helm well and rising toward the surface. At 200 feet she came level and again heeled over in a hard turn, this time to starboard but again ejecting noisemakers. It was the Tortoise and the Hare, except the Hare showed no sign of needing a nap.
The noisemakers left by the Kilo served only to mask its location from the Mk42 so long as the devices were between the torpedo and the submarine. Once it pierced the bubble cloud it quickly reacquired without losing much in the way of ground.
Murmansk was merely prolonging the inevitable, but fortune favours the brave and the Mk42 overshot as the Kilo turned hard a-starboard. It registered the steel hulls proximity however, but its speed carried it beyond the target before detonating.
The blast rolled the Murmansk clear onto her side, severing the towed array’s umbilical and dealing the vessel a hammer blow that only months refitting in a dry dock could cure. Inside the hull it became bedlam, with electrical fires triggering alarms, failing lighting and injured crewmen’s screams mixed with that of the simply terrified.
The second of the three SS-N-19s that had singled out the Thomas S Gates wasted itself as it flew into the cruisers funeral pyre. The third missile flew on with its sensor suite questing southwards for a new target.
A brief exultation in the USS John Allen’s CIC, was quelled when they heard the sound of the Kilo re-emerge as the explosions reverberations diminished.
It took almost ten seconds to lock down the Kilos new bearing, course and speed, which was how long it also took the stray SS-N-19 to acquire the frigate and cover the distance.
In the Murmansk’s control room they did not h
ear the anti-ship missile do its work, their sonar suite was offline, acrid fumes from burning insulation were making breathing and vision difficult, and a vibration that originated in the bearings of the submarines single propeller shaft was noticeable throughout the vessel.
Her captain picked himself up off the deck and shouted for quiet.
“Silence!” His eyes were smarting from the smoke, but he could see he had their attention. Taking the PA microphone he depressed the switch but there was not operating light, it was dead so he tossed it aside to hang by its coiled cable.
“Damage reports…get on it…and find out what the hell is causing that vibration while you are at it!”
Whilst his officers made their way along the vessel, compartment by compartment, he went around the control room speaking with the men, a few words of encouragement to settle shaken nerves.
USS Gerald Ford’s TAO allowed himself to breathe again, now that there were no longer hostile missiles in the air. The plot showed the firing positions of every soviet vessel that had taken part; at least at the time of firing anyway, and as tempting as it was to extract vengeance on those vessels for the sinking of US warships, it would have been a serious error to do so. Those vessels were missile boats, and now empty of surface to surface ordnance, but the hunter killers, the Sierras, Alfas and Akulas, still had theirs, albeit shorter ranged. Once again the Sea Hawks moved out from the ships to begin hunting once more, because those vessels were now free of their tasks of protecting the big missile submarines, and would right now be seeking to come within launch range of the convoy.
Admiral Mann took stock of his warships situations; an AEGIS cruiser, a destroyer, two frigates and an ammunition ship had been lost. A second cruiser, the Anzio, had now come about and was steaming slowly into wind, to keep the fires raging aft from spreading to the superstructure, her damage control parties were pumping gallons of seawater into the conflagration, and trying to stem the dozen or so leaks in her hull. Conrad had to detach a frigate to escort her until she could rejoin the fast moving main body. Away from the mutually protective arms of the remaining escorts she was an easy target, but they could not afford to wait for her, and certainly could not spare more than the single frigate to ward off the attack submarines that were out there.
Elsewhere, a destroyer and a frigate had suffered the effects of large warheads detonating close inboard, intercepted at the last moment by Phalanx. A further destroyer and a frigate had also endured similar narrow escapes although without the associated damage, but aboard those two vessels alarms had screeched the warning that the upper works were contaminated with a persistent nerve agent. In its gaseous form the agent had spread with the wind, contaminating two other warships, so far. The chemical warfare agents were a minimal hazard to the crews so long as the ships were closed up for NBC, but for merchant ships it would be a different story. The crews of the merchant vessels pressed into service had all been issued with nuclear, biological and chemical warfare suits, along with the requisite training in there use, but with ships not equipped for such an environment, manned by crews of a different mind-set to that of their military cousins, the effects would be devastating.
Manoeuvring to avoid burning hulks that had minutes before been ships of war, the remaining warships were even now shifting formation to fill in the gaps, reloading ready-use magazines and carrying the injured down to sickbays, readying themselves for the next onslaught.
Considering the speed with which the surface ships had emptied their magazines, the surviving ammunition ships would be unable to replenish them all inside of four hours, and the soviets were unlikely to be so obliging as to wait. Admiral Bernard’s tactics might defy health and safety, but the American’s adoption of them was about to save lives.
South of the surface ships, two hundred feet down the Murmansk’s captain had received the reports of his own commands situation without expression. Sonar was out, cracked bearings were keeping his vessel below 10knots, and his engineer was seriously concerned about the effects of going any deeper. Communications were also out, although his troops thought they could send, if not receive. The only plus was radar, it appeared to be fully functional and so he intended to take the only course of action that would fulfil their mission, locating the merchantmen carrying troops, equipment and supplies.
Summoning his communications officer he spoke quietly. “Oleg, we have arrived at the time that the Americans call ‘make or break’, and I have an important task for you.”
The young officer nodded.
“Yes captain?”
“We are about to come up to periscope depth and raise the radar mast, this will make us extremely vulnerable but it is the only way that we can complete our mission in pinpointing the troopships and cargo carriers.” He paused as he let that sink in. “We may have only moments in which to send that information to our comrades, so your mast will be raised at the same time and I need you ready to transmit, do you understand?”
The communications officers face sagged.
“But captain, the board shows only an intermittent transmission light whenever we test it, we have not been able to find the short yet!”
The captain’s reply was rueful.
“We are out of time Oleg, you must keep on transmitting, over and over until…” he left the sentence unfinished. Slapping Oleg on the back his voice changed to one of authoritative optimism. “Perhaps the NATO boys have too many troubles of their own right now to worry about us, so come along and get back to your men.”
Turning back to address the control room, he dropped the optimism and pushed the authoritative up a notch.
“Bring us up to 50 feet, standby to raise ECM, radar and communications masts.”
As Murmansk rose to the required depth, an air of fatalism settled on her crew. Although only the officers had chosen this profession, the remainder of the crew were fiercely proud of their vessel, and the reasons, rights and wrongs of the war now counted for little, all that mattered was their role in this particular bit of it.
“Raise ECM.”
A moment or two passed once that electronic sensor emerged above the surface, but its operator’s screens remained blank, and its dials failed to register any activity.
“Up periscope.”
The device slid up out of housing, and was accompanied by a trickle of water down its shaft from damaged seals losing integrity as the periscope rose, a trickle that increased by the moment. It did not bode well, the captain could see nothing through the lenses, and switching to lo-lite illuminated nothing except the fact that that facility was also unserviceable.
“Radar…we know what’s behind us so don’t waste time with 360’s, just sweep from 30’ to 200’, understood?”
“Raise radar and communications…begin sending our position straight away.” The captain crossed to the radar position and folded his arms to mask from the crew his crossed fingers.
It took but seconds for the beam to swing back and forth but no returns showed up on the screen. Either the radar is out also, or there is nothing there, he reasoned. However, their radar had a finite range and the greater the transmitter’s height above the seas, the farther it could see.
“Conning tower party close up…standby to surface.” Turning to his 2 i/c he added. “Lieutenant Stepov, the way our lucks running the repeater will be out, you will go topside and I will remain here.”
Wet weather gear was pulled from lockers and quickly donned, the lieutenant and lookouts gathered at the bottom of the ladder.
“Surface!”
The captain’s eyes returned to the radar screen and he spoke without turning. “Communications?”
“Aye captain?”
“Are we sending, Oleg?”
“I don’t know captain, maybe someone is receiving broken text and will put the pieces together.”
Above them the sky was overcast, and the Atlantic the colour of ink, a uniform blackness that suddenly parted in white foam to admit the Kilo back in
to the realm of air.
Water cascaded from her plates, a dark gleaming killing machine now out of its element, vulnerable to the ships it hunted.
Below, the captain breathed in the salt air that had entered the hull as the lieutenant opened the hatch, but his eyes remained on the screen unwilling at first to accept what they told him.
“Communications, send and keep sending, our position and the following…from west to east through south, to a range of twenty-eight point seven miles, there are no, repeat no, merchant vessels!” For the number of vessels he knew to be in the convoy, they should have picked up at least some of the outlying ships, if not the majority. The only conclusion he could draw was that they had been suckered, and the merchant ships were elsewhere.
Something close to despair crossed the young communications officers face.
“Aye captain…sending.”
Lieutenant Stepov emerged into the wet and cold, stepping clear of the hatchway for his lookouts he first braced himself against the roll of the deck before raising a night vision device to his eyes. Common sense should have told him not to look first in the direction they thought the merchantmen lay, but toward the north. It would not however have affected their fate even if he had done so.
At a speed of 18knots, the bow of USS Peel sliced deep into the Kilos starboard ballast tank, just forward of the conning tower before riding up onto the Murmansk’s coaming, the screech of tortured metal drowning out the screams of the submarines look-outs. The Knox class frigate came to a halt with her bows in the air and twenty feet of keel exposed to view, and for a moment it remained in that position as air boiled from the submarines ruptured tank. Peel’s single screw still churned the water to froth and then the frigates weight, the push of her screw, and the damage already inflicted on the Kilo brought an end to the brief impasse. With a groan the Murmansk’s pressure hull gave way and the frigates crumpled bow again met the ocean. Murmansk’s bows disappeared from sight and her stern rose clear of the waves, up and up until it stood close to the vertical, its propeller a blur as it turned unchecked. Slowly at first, and then increasing in speed the submarine sank from view forever.