Just as he was about to tear into his officers for this screw up, a voice over the speaker yelled, “Conn, Sonar. We have a new contact. It’s an American Virginia class attack submarine… Torpedo in the water! Torpedo in the water!”
“Left full rudder. Ahead full speed!” yelled the Captain as the sub driver began to turn the sub hard and took them to full power.
“Drop countermeasures and let’s create another knuckle,” he said, hoping the trick that had worked on the Korean submarine might also work on the American submarine.
Turning to his weapons officer, he ordered, “Fire off two torpedoes at the American submarine!”
“I am not about to let those Americans get away with shooting at my sub,” he thought. “Plus, I need to have them reacting to my torpedoes if we have any chance of evading theirs.”
There were now four torpedoes in the water and numerous noise makers. It was unclear if either submarine would be able to escape, but both captains and crews were giving it their best effort. One of the American torpedoes hit the Chinese noise maker in the knuckle and exploded. The second torpedo blew through the explosion and continued to hunt for them.
As Captain Ma’s submarine began to rise now to further throw off the torpedo that was still tracking them down, they heard the unmistakable sound of a new third torpedo.
“Where did that come from?!” yelled the captain to anyone who could give him an answer.
“It was probably dropped from a helicopter,” one of the officers responded nervously, a bit of fear in his voice.
This new smaller torpedo began to speed below three hundred feet at an alarming rate. It immediately triggered its active sonar and went to full speed towards them.
In that moment, Captain Ma knew that they were not going to be able to get away. This third torpedo had been dropped too close to their position and they had been rising, not diving, when it landed in the water.
“At this point, my only hope is to get this submarine to the surface so that I can give my crew the best possible chance to escape and live,” he realized.
Turning to the submarine driver, Ma yelled, “Blow the ballast tanks and surface!”
Then he directed his communications officer, “Send a FLASH message to fleet headquarters. Let them know we’ve been fired at by an American sub and we are not going to make it.”
As their submarine began to climb towards the surface, the American torpedo slammed into the forward section of the sub. The whole vessel was rocked by the explosion, and water began to push its way into the confined space of the sub.
Still safely breathing air in Control, Captain Ma began receiving reports of the damage. “Sir, there is flooding in the forward compartments, and it is moving towards us!” one officer yelled.
“The ballast systems are beginning to fail!” yelled another.
“How far are we from the surface?” Ma shouted.
“Less than a hundred feet now,” came the response.
“We have to get to the surface,” the captain thought. “That’s all that matters. I have to save as many of my crew members as possible.”
The submarine broke through to the surface and began to level out immediately. Unfortunately, the sub almost immediately began slowly tipping back down into the waves because of the gash in the hull.
“Abandon ship!” the captain bellowed. “Get to the life rafts!”
The crew had less than three minutes to push and shove their way out of the escape hatches before the remaining American torpedo hit them. When it impacted, it nearly split the submarine in half. It took less than sixty seconds for the sub to slip below the water, this time for the last time.
Of the one hundred and nine crew members, only eighteen escaped before the sub slipped beneath the waves for the final time. An American helicopter began to hover over the remaining survivors, quickly joined by a second helicopter. They threw down a number of life preservers to the survivors while an American destroyer began to head towards them to pick them up as prisoners of war.
Captain Michael Richards of the USS Carl Vinson breathed a sigh of relief when one of the helicopters reported that their torpedo had hit the enemy submarine. It had been a chaotic 34 minutes. Their anti-submarine warfare screen had been tracking a North Korean diesel submarine for some time, when out of nowhere a new sub was identified and the two of them started shooting at each other.
Suddenly, the calm waters of the Yellow Sea had multiple torpedoes racing through it. At first, they were not sure if the attack was being directed at them. Then, the ROK navy informed them that they had a submarine operating in the area and it could have been one of theirs that was under attack.
It was a confusing moment. “We thought that the first sub we were tracking was from North Korea,” thought Captain Richards. “Could we have been wrong?”
Then, one of the torpedoes headed towards one of the American attack submarines, which fired in retaliation. The fight was on.
At that moment, Richards realized, “It doesn’t matter who fired at who first anymore. All that matters is that American sailors are now in harm’s way. The fleet has to defend itself.”
Admiral Lomas ordered several helicopters to assist the American submarine and neutralize the underwater threats.
The war with North Korea had officially started. Perhaps the Chinese were trying to move into position and they had jumped the gun. In either case, they were about to pay the price for it.
Admiral Lomas turned to Captain Richards, “Order the fleet to begin engaging the North Korean fleet now. We need to sink the rest of their ships before they launch their own attacks.”
Lomas then turned to face his Commander Air Group (CAG) and issued his next set of orders. “I want your aircraft to start hitting their targets and keep an eye out for the Chinese; I think they may try to jump the fleet now that hostilities have officially started,” he said, hoping the fleet was not sailing into some sort of trap.
He turned to look at his weapons officer and directed, “Send the signal to the rest of the fleet to start launching their Tomahawk missiles.”
“We need to start hammering the landing zones and the known enemy positions before the Marines begin their assault from the sea,” thought Lomas. “The seaborne assault isn’t scheduled to take place for another day, but we need to start buttering them up now.”
Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Dogs of War
In the early 2000s, the Chinese began to help the North Koreans develop a series of Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) silos near the base of Paektu, a mountain that stands at 9,003 feet in height along the Chinese/North Korean border. Technically, Paektu is still considered an active volcano, although there haven’t been any eruptions since 1904. A large crater lake called “Heaven Lake” is situated in the caldera atop the mountain and had been a tourist destination for several generations, until the North Koreans began to develop a series of underground missile silos.
The Chinese continued to believe a strong and belligerent North Korea could keep the Americans distracted for many years while they focused on their Greater China strategy. While the North Koreans continued to develop their own ballistic missiles, they kept the Western intelligence eyes focused on their more active launch sites and centers. To help keep the focus off of them as long as possible, the Chinese also provided the North with ten Dongfeng 5B (DF-5B) ICBM missiles under a secret deal in 2015.