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 hear 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.