“Helm, all ahead full, left full rudder, steady course zero four zero. Mark speed twenty.”
The deck canted into a starboard roll as the ship came around with full rudder and turns for full speed.
Murphy could feel the vibrations from his feet as the main engines aft began to accelerate them through the water of the shallow bay, moving them away from the sonobuoys.
“Captain, steady course zero four zero, ship’s speed twenty knots,” the helmsman called from the ship control panel.
“Helm, all stop, mark speed six,” Murphy called.
“Downshift reactor coolant pumps to reduced frequency.”
Murphy looked over to Tarkowski at the geo plot.
“That’ll be the last sonobuoy that guy finds us with.” He hoped. Tarkowski said nothing.
“Captain, speed six knots, sir,” the helmsman said.
“All ahead one third, turns for six knots.”
“One third, turns for six, helm aye, sir.”
Murphy joined Tarkowski at the plotting table, seeing the plot of their drastic maneuver since the last splash. For several minutes nothing happened, the team in the control room silent as a funeral, waiting to see if their attempt to fool the aircraft above had succeeded. Murphy’s attention switched back and forth from the plot to the sonar display. Each minute without contact on the airplane was a plus.
“Seven minutes since the maneuver, Captain,” Tarkowski said.
“Sonar, Captain, any sign of the aircraft?”
“Conn, Sonar, we’re not getting him at all. No sign of him, sir.”
Murphy allowed a smile. Tarkowski’s frown stayed in place. Murphy turned to look at the display on Pos One.
“Colson, any speed or course changes by the surface force?”
“No, Captain. The previous intercept-solution is tracking.” As Murphy watched, a new dot in the dot stack on Colson’s screen veered off to the left, away from the neat rows of vertical dots that Colson had lined up by dialing in his solution course, speed and range.
“Sorry, sir, now I’ve got a possible target zig, Target Two.” Colson began lining up to find the new solution to the surface forces. Murphy chewed his lip, wondering if the skimmers had found out their new course and position.
“Conn, Sonar, the surface force is slowing down, turn-count dropping fast. Sounds like they’re doing a large-sector sonar search.”
“Captain, JOOD,” Colson said, “I’m getting a solution with the surface force at fifteen knots.”
Murphy nodded, pleased.
“Sonar, Conn,” Tarkowski said to his lip mike, “any detects on aircraft engines?”
“Conn, Sonar, no.”
Only then did a smile break out on Tarkowski’s face.
“We ditched them. Skipper.”
“Conn, Sonar, we’re getting a faint detect on … helicopter rotors.”
“Helm, all stop!” Murphy said.
“XO, line up to hover.”
“Conn, Sonar, chopper’s getting closer.”
“Ship’s speed, a half knot and slowing, sir,” Tarkowski reported, “ready to hover.”
“Chief of the Watch, hover on the trim pump,” Murphy ordered, feeling the sweat on his forehead and under his arms.
“Ship is hovering. Captain,” Tarkowski reported.
“You think that’s an ASW chopper?”
“That’s exactly what I think it is. That son of a bitch is about to drop a dipping sonar set. If he does, when he does, we’d damned well better not be showing any speed through the water or his Doppler will snap us up.”
Murphy and his crew were well aware that helicopters were a lethal enemy to the submarine when they were equipped with a dipping sonar — the chopper could cover hundreds of square miles of ocean an hour with the dipper. It could dip and listen and move to another spot, dip and listen and go on until it located the submarine. All a good ASW chopper pilot needed was a sniff from a surface ship or an aircraft, just the slightest hint that a submarine was there, and after a few dips, get the target’s position down to within a hundred yards. Murphy silently prayed it wasn’t an ASW helicopter.
Pwiiiiiiing! The sound of a dipping sonar pulse coming through the hull, a whistling sound, very prolonged, perhaps four seconds.
“Conn, Sonar, that’s a dipping sonar, bearing one five five. Fairly distant …”
Tarkowski plotted the bearing to the dipper.
“Sir, if he sees us we’ve had it,” Tarkowski said.
“Range to the surface force?” Murphy, tight-lipped, directed at Colson.
“Thirty-five hundred yards, bearing two two zero, sir.”
“Damned close, if that chopper catches us, Captain,” Tarkowski said.
Murphy nodded. Still, he thought, hovering dead in the water should make it tough for the dipping sonar to find them. With no ship’s speed, the hull would not upshift the sonar’s frequency when it was reflected, and the sensor would have trouble distinguishing the return-ping from the water’s reverberations of the original ping.
“Conn, Sonar,” the sonar chief said, his voice distorted and loud in the earpiece, “we’ve got helicopter rotor noises, close aboard to starboard! Contact is hovering overhead!”
Murphy looked up at the sonar display above Colson’s panel. A broad, ugly, loud streak was forming on the red television monitor, the noise of the helicopter. PWIIIIING! The sonar ping seemed impossibly loud.
This close. Murphy thought, the dipper shouldn’t be able to pick out their ping from the return off the bottom. Right on top of them, and they’d be just so much bottom clutter—
“Conn, Sonar, the surface force is speeding up. Sounds like max revolutions again.”
“Colson?”
“Can’t tell without own-ship speed, sir, but when I dial in an intercept course the dots are stacking … I think that chopper just nailed down our position …”
“Conn, Sonar, up-Doppler on the surface force, thirty-five knots approach speed.”
Murphy leaned over Colson’s Pos One console and dialed in other solutions for the surface force. The only one that worked showed them coming on a direct intercept course.
“Time to intercept?”
“Two minutes, sir,” from Colson.
“Let’s clear datum, sir,” Tarkowski said, the urgency distorting his voice.
“They’ve got us pinned.”
PWIIING!
“Helm, all ahead flank and cavitate!” Murphy ordered.
“XO, man battle stations and spin up the torpedoes in tubes one through four.” They were going to have to fight their way out of this.
As Tarkowski prepared to arm the torpedoes, the deck began to vibrate with the ship coming up to thirty five knots. Murphy looked over at the ship-control team. The Diving Officer and bowplanesman were struggling to maintain depth control in spite of the odd effects of their rooster-tail wake aft and the shallow-bottom venturi force amidships. It was possible that depth control would get so difficult that the ship would leap from the water like a whale or dive into the bottom.
The control room began to get crowded as watch standers filled the room for battle stations The geo plot that had been manned by Tarkowski was now taken over by two plotters and an officer. Another officer now sat at each console of the firecontrol system where only Colson had sat before. Other manual plots were manned along the aft bulkhead of the room. Within a minute of the initial call to battle stations the room’s population had grown from eight to twenty-one.
“Attention in the firecontrol team,” Murphy said to the assembled battle stations watch standers
“It’s clear that the surface force is alerted and prosecuting us at maximum speed, close range. The ASW helicopter above has gotten our position down so there’s no longer any benefit to stealth. We’re trying to withdraw at maximum speed and I don’t care that we’re putting up a hell of a wake topside. We’re only a few moments away from being attacked. It’s my intention to put four wake-homing torpedoes out astern of our track to target the surface force and to act as evasion devices.