Barracuda- Final Bearing

by Michael Dimercurio

  USS Piranha Bruce Phillips stood on the conn and heard Gambini’s voice calling in something from sonar.

  “Say again. Master Chief?” Phillips said.

  “We’ve got distant noises that I’m classifying as torpedoes, all concentrated on a bearing set to the south. I am not, repeat, not, calling torpedo in the water.”

  “I’m confused. What’s the deal?”

  “Sir, the torpedoes appear to be… Mark 50s. This may be a battle with another US unit and the Japanese.

  All I can detect are the torpedoes, they’re the loudest, but there must be something going on to the south.”

  “Attention in the firecontrol team. After we launch this Vortex at Target Five we’ll clear datum to the south at emergency flank. There may be someone down there who needs our help. Firing point procedures. Target Five, Vortex tube six.”

  The launching litany continued for the sixth time since the first Destiny was shot. With the missile that Phillips had launched at the arctic ice ridge, after this one was gone, he was six missiles down, four to go. The launch sequence went as the previous five had, ending in a deafening roar of the Vortex rocket motor ignition, the noise easing as the missile flew underwater downrange, then the second deafening transient as the missile hit the fifth Destiny and exploded.

  “Helm, left five degrees rudder, steady course south, all ahead emergency flank,” Phillips ordered.

  Piranha came up to emergency flank turns, almost sixty-one knots, her deck shaking hard as the main engines shrieked aft, the steam flow-rate twice the maximum allowable.

  SS-810 Winged Serpent

  “Sir, may I remind you that we still have eight incoming torpedoes and we have not evaded them? Shouldn’t we turn the ship and run?”

  Tanaka glared at Mazdai. “Don’t ever again advocate turning and running from the enemy. I’ll kill you.” He bent back down over the console and bit his lip, the filters for the Seawolf class now entered into the Second Captain’s processors. All there was to do was wait to collect the data. The American was out there and he was dangerous. He had the acoustic advantage, he hadn’t shown up on the Second Captain system with the Los Angeles-class filters set up, so he had to be a Seawolf.

  Yet how did he get by the Galaxy satellites? It didn’t make sense but the proof was in front of them, the Second Captain beginning to show data coming through the filters. The screen annunciator went off, confirming the sounds of the Seawolfclass submarine. Perhaps they didn’t have the acoustic advantage after all, Tanaka thought, perhaps it was just that the Second Captain was looking for the wrong sounds.

  This battle might yet be turned around.

  “Sir, what are you going to do about the eight torpedoes?”

  “I’m going to let the Second Captain take care of it as soon as the two Nagasakis are away. Now let’s maneuver the ship to get a range on the Seawolf out there.

  And then we can launch.”

  USS Barracuda

  “Still nothing from the target, Captain,” Omeada’s voice said in Kane’s headset. The Destiny hadn’t counterfired, hadn’t maneuvered, just kept going as if he didn’t care that he’d been shot at, or didn’t know. But it was one thing not to hear the Barracuda. It was another not to hear eight loud Mark 50s.

  “That’s a fact. Captain,” executive officer Leo Dobrowski reported from the attack center. “Contact has maintained course and speed. He doesn’t know we’re here, or our torpedoes.”

  “Very well, then, we’ll keep waiting.”

  Pacino glanced at Paully White, an uneasiness filling him.

  USS Piranha Bruce Phillips stood over the chart, his pointer shaking over its surface with the vibrations of the deck. The speed indicator showed a velocity of sixty-two knots now, since all but four of the Vortex tubes were gone.

  At this rate, assuming the noises they had heard were at the limits of sonar detection, fifty miles, the ship would be in the vicinity of the battle in another forty-five minutes.

  Phillips looked up at the overhead, wondering if that would be enough.

  SS-810 Winged Serpent

  “Finally,” Tanaka said as the first leg of data was in on the American Seawolf. Now he could turn the ship to get a parallax range. “Left minimum rudder, ship-control officer, come to course north.”

  Tanaka watched the data fall into the Second Captain, waiting tensely, biding his time. All the while the incoming eight American torpedoes were soaring in at them, arrival time could be as soon as five minutes. The thought occurred to him then that the SCM, the sonar countermeasures feature of the Second Captain, might malfunction and he would have to eat his words about being able to take torpedo hits and survive. Of course, if that should happen, he would not long be embarrassed.

  He would be on the sea floor, dead.

  “Tube status?”

  “Ready to open the outer doors. Tubes eleven and twelve are flooded, weapons warm. The enemy location and velocity are locked in, gas generators ready to arm an outer-door opening.”

  “Good, open the outer doors.”

  USS Barracuda

  “He’s maneuvering,” Kane said quietly to Pacino, his hand covering his boom microphone. “He knows we’re here.”

  “Getting a range on you,” Pacino said. “He’ll be opening his outer doors soon and then we’ll have company, Nagasaki torpedoes. Have you got the ship positioned so we can hear the target without our torpedoes masking him?”

  “We’re going north at full speed. I don’t dare flank it or our noise signature will double.”

  “Just keep your bearing separation in mind—”

  “Conn, Sonar,” Omeada’s voice called on the battle circuit, “we have transients coming from Target One.

  I’m calling torpedo tube doors coming open.”

  “Very well, Sonar,” Kane replied into his headset, looking at Pacino. “Helm, all ahead flank.”

  “Ahead flank, aye, sir, maneuvering answers, all ahead flank.”

  “Helm, right one degree rudder, steady course zero two zero.”

  “Rudder right one degree, sir, passing zero one zero to the right, ten degrees from ordered course… steady course zero two zero.”

  The deck trembled slightly as the ship accelerated, the reactor circulation pumps aft—huge pumps, each the size of a compact car—started up, their 1500 horsepower motors spinning the rotors, pumping the coolant water through the core so the reactor power could double from 50 to 100 percent.

  “Any minute now, sir,” Paully said to Pacino.

  SS-810 Winged Serpent

  “Shoot,” Tanaka commanded. The torpedo in tube eleven left the ship under the force of the gas generator’s steam pressure, the torpedo’s engine starting and spinning the pumpjet propulsor of the Nagasaki torpedo to full revolutions. The Nagasaki dived to 400 meters and sailed on toward the target.

  Tanaka remembered what he had been thinking about using only one torpedo per American submarine, but this was a special circumstance. The Seawolfclass ship would be a threat on an even playing field with the Destiny II class, and a single Nagasaki could not be completely trusted to tear it apart. A second torpedo launch was the safe thing to do.

  “Tube twelve,” Tanaka said. “Shoot!”

  The twelfth Nagasaki launched by the Winged Serpent departed the bow of the ship, starting its engine and accelerating toward the target. “That should take care of the Seawolf,” Tanaka said, his mood improving. “Now for the incoming eight American torpedoes.” He concentrated on the Second Captain console, switching it to the ship-control and weaponevasion screens. He found what he was looking for, the function that would turn control of the vessel over to the Second Captain and allow it to use the massive computing power to ping out with the ventriloquist SCM sonar system.

  Soon the Seawolfclass ship would be on the bottom, the Winged Serpent able to continue in its search of the offshore waters for any remaining Americans. When the American sank he would go to bed confident that the worst threat in the P
acific had been neutralized.

  There was even more good news here, he realized.

  With the most formidable ship in the American submarine force on the bottom, how willing would the Americans be to send in an inferior Los Angeles-class ship? So this was it, the concluding battle of the American blockade.

  The Second Captain took command of the submarine then, distracting Tanaka from his thought as the ship went into a violent maximum-rudder/maximum-speed maneuver to try to get the range of the incoming torpedoes.

  The deck abruptly tilted twenty degrees to the right, almost throwing Tanaka into a row of Second Captain consoles. He grabbed a handhold to steady himself, watched the computer driving the ship. The ventriloquist SCM sonar system kicked in then, which meant the Second Captain’s calculations were complete and it could begin its work of confusing the incoming torpedoes.

  Surely the system could fool two, perhaps three torpedoes—but eight? A terrible moment of doubt, but he shook it off.

  USS Piranha Bruce Phillips was back in his submarine coveralls. Scott Court was stationed as officer of the deck with an augmented section-tracking team.

  Phillips strapped on the battle-circuit headset in time to hear the sonar chief saying something about torpedo pings and” odd sonar groaning sounds coming from the southwest and more pings in a different frequency from the southeast. Phillips checked the bearing separation, realizing that he was closer to the action than he’d originally thought.

  “Man silent battlestations,” he told Court. “One last time.” ( USS Barracuda

  “Attention in the firecontrol team,” Kane said. His voice was steady, authoritative, but Pacino knew he was probably more frightened than he’d ever been in his life.

  “We’re running from two Nagasaki torpedoes fired by the Destiny II class astern of us. The torpedoes are on the edge of our port baffles. I intend to jettison the caboose array to gain some speed, then turn fifteen more degrees westward. We have countermeasures loaded in the forward and after signal ejectors and we’ll launch those at the appropriate time. Carry on.” Kane turned to Jeff Joseph, the skinny, odd-looking navigator and officer of the deck. “Make that happen, O.O.D. Cut the wires, shut the doors and jettison the caboose. Move it.” Pacino bent over the plot, wondering about the Piranha.

  SS-810 Winged Serpent

  Tanaka held onto the handhold, his knuckles white as the ship executed the second loop of the figure-eight maneuver, the computer trying to determine the range to the incoming torpedoes. Finally the maneuver was complete, the ship now heading south at maximum turns.

  The SCM sonar countermeasures were making so much noise and the pump jet propulsor was putting out so much turbulence that the rear-facing passive sonar system was unable to detect the arrival in the area of the second Seawolf ship.

  USS Piranha

  “Captain, Sonar,” Gambini said to Phillips, “here’s the picture. At bearing one nine eight, southsouthwest, we have Target Seven, Japanese Destiny II class. Target Seven is turning max revs getting out of town because at bearing south I’ve got multiples Mark 50 torpedoes, all of them in pursuit of the Destiny II. At bearing one seven five, south-southeast I have at least two Nagasaki torpedoes in pursuit of the contact at bearing one six zero, southeast, which I’m classifying as a US Seawolf submerged submarine, designated Friendly One.”

  “Skip the Friendly One bullshit. Master,” Phillips said. “Call it the Barracuda.”

  “Aye, sir. So what we have here is that the Destiny II and the Barracuda have fired at each other. Tough to say who shot first, but since the Barracuda got off eight shots I’m guessing she fired first.” “Doesn’t matter,” Phillips said, staring at pos one, the geographic plot, the God’s-eye view of the sea. The three ships, the Destiny, the Barracuda and the Piranha formed a triangle with Piranha at the top, coming in from the north. At the bottom left the Destiny was running southwest away from eight Mark 50s. At the bottom right the Barracuda was sprinting to the northeast trying to get away from two Nagasaki torpedoes. An image came into his mind of the Barracuda being chased by two sharp-teethed black muscular dogs. He had to do something.

  The first order of business was the Destiny II. “Attention in the firecontrol team. One crisis at a time. We’re going to put Vortex unit seven down the bearing line to Target Six, the Destiny bearing southsouthwest. Let’s get that out of the way now. Firing point procedures.

  Vortex seven. Target Six, bearing one nine eight.”

  “Ship ready.”

  “Weapon ready.”

  “Solution ready.”

  “Shoot on generated bearing.”

  “Set.”

  “Standby.”

  “Shoot!”

  “Fire!” The roaring of the missile ignition was once again deafening. The watchstanders had all plugged their ears with their fingers as the solid-rocket-fueled underwater-missile launched and sailed off to the south. “Attention in the firecontrol team,” Phillips shouted over the roar of the missile. “I intend to try to do something for the Barracuda. Everyone just hold on for a second.” Phillips leaned over the weapon-control console, where round-headed Tom McKilley sat looking up at him. “Weps, is there any way we can program the Vortex to detonate at a particular bearing and range without it homing on a target?”

  “You mean disable the blue laser and have it count seconds until it’s at a certain bearing and range to own ship, then go off?”

  “Right?”

  “Skipper, I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell going to find out,” McKilley said, reaching to the overhead for the technical manual.

  “Don’t you have its tech manual on the outline software?”

  “Yes sir. One moment.” McKilley was becoming flustered, flashing through the software to the help-screens, going through one after the other. It had been two minutes since the missile launch and still no explosion. Phillips looked back at the geographic plot, deciding to work on the range to the Barracuda. To do it would be violating yet another hallowed submarine tactic by using active sonar. Active sonar was the practice of pinging a noise into the sea, waiting for the ping to bounce off the object of interest and return to the listening sonar set. The time delay and the sound velocity determined the two-way-trip length, which divided in two was the range to the contact. It was a tactic unused for decades. A stealthy submarine attempting to remain undetected would never ping out a noise. It defeated the purpose and besides, passive listen-only sonar could be just as effective, although it took the ship longer to determine the range to the contact. But the entire ocean knew Piranha was there—hell, he’d just launched the loudest weapon ever known to man. Another noise in the form of a ping would make no difference and would save time to getting the Barracuda’s exact location in the sea.

  The only problem was that active sonar was subject to interpretation just as passive sonar was, the human brain definitely part of the combatcontrol system. And the sonarmen were generally not too great at active sonar, an unpracticed art. Still, if anyone could do it, Gambini could. “Master Chief, I want an active range to the Barracuda. Can you do it?”

  “Yes sir. It’ll just take a moment to line up.”

  “Ping when you’re ready and step on it. Master. Weps! What’s the status of the answer? Can we put an explosion at.a preplanned point in space?”

  “Still trying to find out, sir.” Phillips bit his tongue, knowing that yelling at the lieutenant would make him feel better but would only mess up McKilley’s efforts. Nothing like the heat of battle, Phillips thought. There was something about pressure that made most human minds start to go to hell.

  The fluster factor was with them now. The simplest things could become immensely complicated under pressure. Phillips took a deep breath and waited.

  The Vortex missile speeding toward Target Six should have had an unobstructed shot at the target, but the Mark 50 torpedoes shot by the Barracuda were sent off course by the ventriloquist sonar set of the Winged Serpent.

  The tor
pedoes were all lagging by several miles, directly astern of the Destiny II ship, their sonars convinced that the target was 4000 yards closer than it actually was because of the Destiny’s rear-facing active sonar sending false pulses that mimicked the Mark 50s’ pinging sonar sets. The Mark 50s all tried to slow down and detonate where the Destiny should have been, but when the weapon computers said the Mark 50s should be right on top of the target, they instead found only empty ocean. The sonars tried again, pinging out to the target, hearing now that it was straight ahead, then speeding up and positioning themselves where the target should have been, only to meet nothing. In spite of a Mark 50’s ability to do seventy knots, they followed the Destiny in a tail chase at fifty-five knots, a constant distance behind the Destiny as it evaded to the southwest. After a few miles down the track, the Mark 50s would run out of fuel and sink. From the viewpoint of Vortex Seven’s blue-laser sonar, eight Mark 50 torpedoes and their combined turbulent wakes met the target parameters for a valid submerged target. The Vortex got within twenty yards of the aftmost torpedo before exploding into white-hot plasma, destroying every single torpedo. Still, the Destiny II-class submarine did not escape undamaged. The blast effect and underwater shock wave hit it hard.

  SS-810 Winged Serpent The explosion from the stern took Tanaka by complete surprise. The detonation extinguished the lights and killed the Second Captain, and the ship went into a dive since the computer no longer controlled the ship’s attitude.

  “Override in manual!” Tanaka ordered the ship-control officer. “Bring us back up, two hundred meters. Kami, get down to the lower level and reinitialize the Second Captain. Mazdai, help him while I try to see what else is damaged.”

  There was no questioning Tanaka’s frantic orders.

  Kami and Mazdai rushed out of the room. Emergency battle lanterns flickered in the space, then came alive, lighting the compartment in a ghostly incandescent glow, patches of light and darkness spreading throughout the ship.