The real damage was caused by the collision of the pressure waves in each of the areas as water, which refused to compress, encountered titanium and steel constructions that would.
The Alpha attack boat Omsk, which had broken formation to chase the USS Twin Towers shadow, was making ten knots in order to regain her position at the centre of the leading line of 9th Flotilla submarines.
Screams from the duty sonarman woke her captain and he leapt from his bunk to dash to the sonar station just aft of his cabin as a boom like the hammer of hell sounded throughout the hull.
Blood was leaking from between the young man’s fingers that were pressed over his ears and his screams were high pitched with agony. As the captain reached out to pull the sailors hands away the pressure waves reached the Omsk almost simultaneously. Bow and after planes bent or sheared from the hull as the eastern pressure wave struck the stern and whipped the vessel into the vertical plane, bow down.
The majority of the crew were either killed or rendered unconscious as they were propelled into ceilings and bulkheads, and then the western wave struck. The Omsk’s titanium hull collapsed flat. Like stepping on a polystyrene cup the two waves slammed together the walls of her pressure hull.
Those vessels not caught between hammer and anvil either lived or died depending on their positions in relation to ground zero.
USS Twin Towers was at 600ft and making 18knots on a heading of 045’ when the speakers in the sonar compartment screeched and then cut out. Her captain’s face drained even as he bellowed orders.
“Hard left rudder, come around to two seven zero degrees… crash surface, blow all tanks!” He gripped the periscope mounting and set his feet “Sound collision… all hands brace for impact!”
The deck heeled hard over and all those in the know prayed that they would make the turn and not be hit beam-on by what was coming, and as it was they were when the acoustic wave arrived like a vanguard, causing more than one man to unconsciously wet himself.
Twin Towers completed the turn and reached the surface, bursting out of the depths.
“Sail camera on!” and the monitor flicked to life, to show just darkness ahead. “Switch to lo-lite… I can’t see shit!” The picture changed and he could see the submarines casing up to the bow, but the picture looked wrong, it was as if the vessel were down at the bow. He could see the horizon but it was too high… and then his mouth went dry as the horizon got ever higher.
“Oh my God… ” was all he was able to whisper before the bow started to rise, higher and higher.
Sixty-two miles from ground-zero of the eastern device in area Bravo, an eighty foot high wave was travelling outwards at seventy miles an hour, whilst to the west, rising up into the stratosphere, it appeared as if six white columns were holding back the vacuum of space, as the tops of the plumes spread wide to eventually join fingers.
Eleven minutes before the mines had detonated; Captain C.D Steinways, Commander Air Group for USS Gerald Ford watched his wingman trap successfully and called the GF’s controller with his fuel state and range.
“Tower, this is Tomcat zero one… ten miles out, showing eleven thousand pounds… do I have a clear deck?”
“Zero three one, Tower… we don’t have you visual as yet… continue approach… the deck is clear, be advised that all vessels are battened down and we are at high NBC state ”
“Zero three one, rog.”
“Tomcat zero three one, Tower… we have you visual now… you are slightly high.”
“Zero three one, roger that.”
“How’d it go zero three one?”
“Six buckets of instant sunshine right on the nose Tower.”
“Roger that… we have you at one mile, call the ball zero three one.”
The Tomcat caught the three-wire on an almost empty flight deck; every other airframe that couldn’t be crammed into the hanger deck had been flown off. Being the last back the aircraft would be secured for heavy weather and hopefully would survive the coming event. The CAG and his RIO were hustled below as the wranglers raced to secure the twenty-two ton Tomcat. All that was aloft now were helicopters, maintaining the ASW screen.
Computer modelling in the States had given them some idea of what the outlying effects would be, but it was all theory when it came down to it, no one really knew. The CAG had joined Admiral Conrad Mann and the rest of the staff in CIC, arriving after the scheduled detonation of the weapons, and there they drank coffee, spoke in low tones and waited.
Twelve miles ahead of each convoy, three frigates cruising in line abreast and five miles apart had their radars radiating. Forty-six Knox class frigates were built between 1969 and 1974, with the coming of the larger Perry class they were paid off, with the majority being sold to other nations. A number joined the reserve fleet of which five had been reactivated for this convoy. On the bridge of the small, elderly Knox class frigate, USS Peel, her captain had the deck, peering out ahead into the darkness. The majority of the crew, like her captain, were reservists and had been together as a ships company less than two weeks. The captain ran a car dealership in Seattle since leaving the regular navy in the mid-nineties, his Executive Officer was a journalist and the helmsman an actor in a soap opera, eager for the war to end so he could get back to playing the ‘evil twin brother’ in ‘The Wealthy &The Beautiful, three days a week, before the scriptwriters had his character abducted by aliens, or similar.
The ship was rigged for a hurricane and all the crew in life vests when the radar painted over something forty miles ahead, moving fast and wider than the display on the bridge radar repeater.
“Start the upload… let’s get this data out.” He avoided adding ‘in case we don’t make it’ as the radar picture was beamed to a communication satellite and from there distributed to a hundred different stations where they could see the speed and dimensions.
His voice was a lot calmer than he felt inside.
“Mr Corben,” he addressed the Exec. “Sound the collision alarm, if you please… all hands brace… this could be a rough one.” He stood up from his chair, crossing to the helmsman. “Son, it’s been awhile since I drove, why don’t you get off below until this blow passes?” looking around the bridge at the remainder of the watch he nodded aft. “Same with you people, you can come back up once its past… dog the hatch behind you.” Once they had cleared the bridge he spared a thought for his wife,
“Honey, don’t go getting all mad at me now,” and removed the cellophane from a pack of cigarettes before lighting up for the first time in three years.
The top of the wave was higher than the Peel’s superstructure and the captain gripped the wheel firmly in both hands. The bow rose to a full 20’ above the horizon before the foredeck disappeared into the wall of water and the superstructure was engulfed. USS Peel became a submarine as the moving mountain smashed over her, swallowing the 5”/54 turret but tearing away her ASROC launcher that sat aft of it on the foredeck. The Peel was a surface combat ship, below the waves was not her element and she rolled to port with her single screw seeking to drive them to the surface once more.
She was almost lying on her port side when she emerged out of the reverse side of the wave and it looked as if she would succumb for a moment until at last she began to roll upright once more. Her mast had been stripped from the superstructure and water poured from her upper decks as the bridge watch strained to un-dog the hatch and regain their posts. They could feel the ship starting to turn beam-on to the seas as they at last released it. A signalman had an arm crushed as the hatch slammed wide but he was too shocked to cry out as they were all washed off their feet by the torrent they released in so doing. The Exec gained his feet first and pulled himself past the injured signalman.