by Andy Farman
“We wait,” he announced simply.
The digital plot showed the Kilo closing on the Upholder class submarine over the next thirty minutes, but as the hands showed exactly half an hour from the time the Kilo had started her motors the sonar department did not signal that she was drifting and listening once more, the plot showed her still coming on. After another eighteen minutes the Kilo was abeam of the British submarine, with only two hundred and forty-nine yards separating them, but she kept moving at a steady five knots for a minute longer.
“Captain, aspect change on the Kilo…….turning to starboard, speed constant at five knots.”
“Good…group up, slow ahead main motor and bring us around, slowly, to two seven zero degrees, if you please.” He wanted to get away from this damned minefield.
The First Lieutenant sidled up next to the Captain, and then turned his body so that no one in the control room could observe him speaking.
“I almost started to get worried there sir,” he said quietly.
“When he didn’t stop on schedule, I almost laughed aloud with relief!”
“Really number one?” the captain replied.
“Because that was the point where I nearly lost control of the old sphincter muscles.”
The First Lieutenant gave him a puzzled look, unsure as to whether his skipper was making a joke.
The captain saw the expression and decided to educate the man “The reason he didn’t stop Jeremy, is because he knew the edge of the minefield here is too bloody close to piss about with!”
He stabbed a finger at their current position on the chart, inside the marked area.
They had another thirty miles to go, into the Motovskiy Zaliv Inlet where their live cargo, a four man SBS team, would swim ashore from the submerged submarine. In 1995 the UK’s government of the day had decided that the cost of defending the country was still too expensive and sold off hardware at a fraction of its value as well as putting thousands of patriotic young men and women on the dole queues. The sales did not cover even ten percent of the equipment’s initial cost and the extra thousands of unemployed were a further drain on the nation’s social security benefit system, because the government declined to spend money retraining the ex-service personnel for civilian occupations. Four out of five almost brand new Upholder class submarines had been sold to Canada but the fifth, Ulysses, had been saved, retained should the need arise for covert insertion operations.
Once that was accomplished then they themselves would creep back out into relatively open water and make for Norwegian waters, to collect another team of swimmers. Temeraire would remain to monitor traffic entering and exiting the Kola Inlet. The SBS team and the nuclear attack submarine had similar roles, the marines were there to monitor troop movements for any sign of an invasion of the Scandinavian countries, and plot a bit of mischief of course. The Temeraire herself had land attack, Tomahawk cruise missiles and Spearfish torpedoes with which to cause mayhem if so ordered.
Once the Kilo’s departing course was established, the Ulysses altered course to two two four degrees and resumed her insertion of the SBS team.
The Royal Marines in the team faced an hours swim followed by a night climb of a hundred-foot cliff face in order to avoid the passive intruder detection systems on the rocky beaches.
North Pacific, 360 miles Southeast of Ust’-Kamchatsk: Same time.
Admiral Dalton had addressed the officers and crew of the USS John F Kennedy, three hours’ ago, at the same time, the Captains of all the ships in the combat group read out the message from the Admiral to their crews. They had enough weapons remaining for one strike, and even if successful they would probably succumb to the enemy retaliatory attacks that would swiftly follow.
It wasn’t a ‘damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead’ or an ‘England expects’ type of speech, it was quite matter of fact and down to earth.
With no defensive armament other than her Phalanx close-in defence system, HMS Prince of Wales was to the north of the big carrier, where she was controlling ASW operations for the group.
As before, the group was at full EMCON so as to give no warning of their position or intention, and the ships were either at battle stations or action stations, depending upon which side of the Atlantic they hailed from.
Rain came down upon the ships in sheeting gusts that frequently came in curving horizontally down from the heavens. Aboard the Type 23 frigate, HMS Malta, on outer picket duty to the west, the seas were breaking over her bows and the water that crashed against the forecastle was deep green. It was early in the year for the typhoon season to have started, and young naval ratings that took the stormy Atlantic in their stride, discovered just how nasty nature could really be when she was in the mood.
The edge of the storm was lashing the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula and small port of Ust’-Kamchatsk, where the PLAN and Russian carrier combat groups had gone in order to carry out repairs. The port was sat on low ground, slightly higher than the marshy ground that surrounded it. The water was too shallow and the port too small to accept anything bigger than a frigate, but the bay offered calmer waters and the protection of land based defences whilst the ships were patched up. To the west of the bay the ground rose in a long ridge called Gora Shish and beyond that the heights of a smallish mountain named Klyuchevskaya Sopka. These features masked the SW to NE running valley that ran downhill from the hills just behind Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, to the bogs and marshes that surrounded the port of Ust’-Kamchatsk. Captain Hong was aboard the Mao supervising repairs, the repairs that could as easily have been carried out whilst they were underway, in his opinion. Admiral Li was ashore for the night, having turned the Mayor and his family out of their home, rather than stay aboard where the repairs disturbed his sleep.
With the exception of two destroyers for close-in air defence, the warships of the group had remained off the coast. With the approach of the storm they stood out to sea, giving them sea room well clear of the rocky coast in case the main fury of the storm swerved their way.
The last container ships to pass through the Bering Straits before the shooting started, were passing the mouth of the Ust’-Kamchatsk bay enroute to ports of call on the Chinese mainland. All three merchantmen’s radars picked up the warships and their captains ordered the speed reduced and lookouts posted, fearing collisions in the crowded sea.
On shore, a powerful sea and air search ground radar swept its beam through 360’. Six SA-10 Grumble air defence batteries were manned and three of their Tombstone radars also swept the horizon, augmenting the long range cover of the A-50 forty thousand feet above whilst the remainder had slaved their systems to the A-50.
Four Z2S62S6 Tungushkas, two ZSU-57-2 and four ZSU 23-4s were scattered about the port and on the higher ground above, their radars were at standby whilst they received data down-linked from the A-50, but the Tungushkas IR scanners were active. The operators aboard the aircraft were peering intently at their screens, concerned with submarine launched anti-ship missiles attacking the ships below, and as such their radar was sweeping back and forth through 100’, rather than 180. The typhoon had degraded the reception they were getting and almost constant sweeps enhanced the chances of detecting incoming missiles. They were not watching for aircraft because the only enemy carrier within a thousand miles was reportedly severely damaged and fleeing south. It came as a surprise to them when they picked up interference of a kind more severe than they had previously experienced with tropical storms. They delayed for five minutes before concluding that it was not a natural source but man-made interference and heading towards Ust’-Kamchatsk. The A-50 put out the alert to the nearby fighter station with its detachment of three Su-27s, coastal air defence batteries and the warships. Neither carrier could launch its air group as the ships were anchored and needed to be underway, heading into wind at a minimum of twenty-four knots, for their aircraft to have a chance at getting aloft. The military district headquarters passed the air raid warning upwards an
d ten minutes later the Premier was informed, he was not a man given to indecision.
The PRC aircraft that had first attacked the USS John F Kennedy, had staged out of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, some miles south of Ust’-Kamchatsk and had since returned to their home bases. The reason for the choice was that it was a long-range bomber base, built in order to attack Japan, if necessary, in the 1950’s and had all the facilities they needed. Russia could just as easily staged the attack, but because the American carrier fleet had been such a thorn in their side, inhibiting their ambitions for so long, it had been agreed that China should be allowed to sink the Americans.
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy was the home of three regiments of Backfires, two of Mig-31s and the A-50s that patrolled the region, along with a regiment of An-72P maritime patrol aircraft of the Border Guard.
Whilst the three Su-27s at Ust’-Kamchatsk were scrambling the four A-50s and fifteen An-72Ps were being ordered into the air to find the carrier that the attackers came from. In the meantime the Backfires were to upload for an anti-shipping strike, the three most experienced crews would have a pair of AS-17 anti-shipping missiles each, with 500kt nuclear warheads.
Had the weather not been so foul, the two seat F/A-18F Hornets that had made landfall to the south of the port would have been down in the weeds, but in the pitch dark with buffeting winds that was highly inadvisable.
Before the clouds had obscured the area, the US satellites had seen the enemy carriers approaching the port and the latest RORSAT’s radar images were unclear as to where in the mass of returns, the big ships were.
The leading four F/A-18Fs in this group were configured for wild weasel SAM suppression, whilst the other half carried four AGM-84A anti-ship missiles apiece, five minutes behind them. They were going for the port and if the ships weren’t there they would take on the warships at sea from the landward side.
Coming in from the sea were a further twenty-two F/A-18Cs and F-14 Tomcats, two carried nothing but jammer pods whilst the remainder were loaded with HARMs and AGM-84A Harpoons, they carried only two Sidewinders apiece for defence.
In order to burn through the jamming, the A-50 focused its radar beam even further, to the annoyance of the self-propelled ZSUs who had a quick radio conference, after which they killed the downlink and went active.
At 250 miles the A-50 burnt through the jamming and launched six land based SA-10 Grumble, supersonic missiles their way before quickly slaving the nearest four ships by data link, and launching a further fifteen of the Grumbles naval variant at the attackers also. The A-50 was in the process of slaving a further six ships air defence systems when two HARMs impacted within a split second of each other. The missiles were fired from the wild weasel element in the valley that ran parallel to the bay, they guided onto the
A-50s huge radome and the fuselage split in two, spilling out those operators not strapped in as both sections began the 40,000 foot plunge earthwards.
With the loss of their external guidance data, the twenty-one SA-10 missiles reverted to their own narrow aperture internal sensors, as they approached the incoming American aircraft, none acquired a target and they flew right on by.
Commander ‘Freddie’ Kruger led the anti-ship element of F/A-18Fs as they sped along the valley, which would dogleg east at the far end where it opened out to the sea. His RIO, Lt Slim Templar had his eyes glued to threat screen, which with the destruction of the A-50 had cleared. They were at 500’ above the valley floor, although had it been daylight they would have been at 50’. “Sixteen miles to the turn, threats clear,” he told the pilot. Ahead of them on the ground a light appeared. The preceding element had awoken at least one resident of the tiny village of Kirganik, who had come outdoors to see what all the fuss was about. It was very rare for his country's air force to be aloft at night, even rarer for them to venture down low. The approach to the small field was out over the bay.
Both elements were in trail as they flew between the steep sided mountains flanking the valley, until the first Hornet banked hard right, pulling four G’s as it shot clear of the valley, straight into the path of an Su-27 as it took off on burner from the small airfield. The vertical stabilisers were sheared from the Hornets fuselage, sending it cartwheeling toward the small town that surrounded the port.
Admiral Li had been awoken by a phone call, stating that they were under attack, at first he refused to believe it until he heard the shore based SA-10 Grumbles launch with a roar. Pulling on his trousers he shouted for his aide, asleep in a rickety chair outside his door. He snapped at the man as he entered, the Admiral was struggling to button his flies as he ordered him to open the curtains and tell him what he could see. Having flung the curtains wide both men froze…and then screamed as they saw the crippled Hornet, a split second before it impacted the front of the house.
The Sukhoi’s left intake had struck the Hornets stabilisers and sucked in fragments, which shattered the fast spinning turbine blades of the left Turmanski engine. A fragment of blade severed the left main fuel feed and the interceptor turned into a comet, trailing a 200m long tail of fire across the bay. In the thirty seconds before the second Hornet appeared, two ZSU-23-4s, a ZSU 57-4 and two of the ZSU-2S62S6s had pivoted in the direction the first American had appeared from, what followed was a slaughter. Two of the ZSUs were destroyed along with one Tombstone radar, but so were the next three Hornets, with two falling to a mixture of 57mm and 23mm cannon fire, whilst one was blotted from existence by a heat seeking SA-8 missile.
Freddie Kruger barked orders at the remainder of his element when he heard the shouted warnings from the wild weasel flight that the valley mouth was locked up with AAA. None of the lead element now answered his calls and he accepted that the worst had happened. At the end of the valley was a steep re-entrant and he now planned to fly up before turning south in a curving 180 to the right, that would bring them over the port from the north. The two surviving Sukhoi’s ignored calls from the warships to intercept the aircraft approaching from the sea, they knew the backdoor was open and intended checking that no-one else was using it before wandering farther abroad. Their lookdown radars caught Kruger’s four F/A-18Fs close to the earth with mountains both sides and loaded down with ordnance; none of the Hornets made it out of the valley.
The approaching Tomcats and Hornets radars began picking up the tracks of ships, and they pickled off HARMs to neutralise the air defence radars and switched on their PAVE TAC systems as they began looking for the carriers. At about the same time, the warship radars burnt through the jamming and ships ripple fired SA-10 Grumbles, Klinok and Hongqi-7 missiles in reply. At 30 miles out the first thirty Harpoons were launched, nineteen survived to pass the outer line of pickets where they went active, seeking the largest radar returns. Behind them a further forty Harpoons dropped from hard point’s, two continued to fall as their motors failed and hit the sea in showers of spray. Five Russian and PLAN warships were struck by HARMs, degrading the air defence cover by twenty percent. Of the first wave of nineteen Harpoons to penetrate the outer picket screen, four were dummied by chaff clouds but causing damage to ships when their 220lb warheads went off, whilst eight fell to point defence systems. The remaining seven found targets even as the second wave passed the outer pickets. Three USN aircraft fell to supersonic SA-10s before all offensive stores were expended and they could turn for home, but a further four fell into the ocean before they could get out of range.
Ashore, the senior operator of the ground station picked up a phone, he spoke rapidly into the receiver, giving the Americans last course and bearing before they disappeared from his screens. Aboard the container ships the crews found themselves in the middle of a very hot war and their captains called for full speed to clear the area. Harpoons struck two destroyers and two fleet replenishment ships, despite the clouds of chaff they threw up. Unlike the warships the merchantmen had no chaff dispensers, added to which they were far larger than any other ship outside the bay. The Pullidin Osk was carrying
second-hand cars, plastic kitchen utensils and tinned foodstuffs in containers from Murmansk; she had already rolled over in flames when the last two Harpoons slammed into her. Of her companions, one was down by the bow; the foredeck already awash and her sterncastle had completely disappeared, blasted apart by two successive Harpoons. The third ship had avoided being hit by of the American missiles, as she had been in the lee of a PLAN replenishment ship, passing within 500m of the fleet auxiliary and seeking to get clear of the combat zone. The three Harpoons that struck the replenishment ship set off the munitions and 30,000 gallons of high-octane aviation fuel it carried, in a colossal explosion that rolled the merchantman onto her starboard beam and drenched her in fire. In the bay, Captain Hong allowed himself to breathe again now that the air raid was over. No Harpoon had come within three miles of hitting either carrier.
The odd mix of aircraft, that constituted the CAP protecting the three British and nine US ships, was above the storm at 32,000’.
Sixty miles to the landward of the ships, an E-2 Hawkeye had energised its radar once the air group broke radio silence to report it was returning. After half an hour its radar had painted over two aircraft.
Sat off the Hawkeye’s port wing the pair of Sea Harriers dropped toward the clouds and split, one going for each target. Two F-14 Tomcats moved from their position over the fleet to replace them, leaving the last pair as the TAOs reserve.
Papa Zero Two steered due east as Sandy Cummings completed the business of ensuring that the single AIM-54 Phoenix he carried was receiving the Hawkeye’s data stream. The big missile dropped away before accelerating and going near ballistic, its terminal flight to the probing A-50 would be almost vertical. To the north, Sub Lt ‘Donny’ Osmond kept hold of his missiles as he entered the murk below the cloud to stalk the slow moving track ahead of him, guided in by the Hawkeye’s data link. At 400m he selected guns and flipped his own radar to active, locking up the Border Guard An-72 and sawing its port wing off at a point 2’ from the fuselage, with a single burst from his rotary Vulcan cannon. He was ninety miles closer to the land than the Hawkeye, and as the Russian maritime patrol aircraft tumbled towards the sea he picked up a mass of radar tracks and they were all headed his way.