“Battleships?”
“That’s right. Battleships were big, lumbering behemoths with tremendous firepower. They were employed against other big, lumbering behemoths and shot it out with long-range sixteen-inch guns rather than torpedoes. I’m sure you remember your naval history — Jutland and all that?”
“Yeah, sure. Crossing the T was everything.”
“That’s right. Everybody’s thinking was oriented toward battleships. Victory ultimately went to the admiral who could maneuver his line of battleships across the bow of the enemy’s line of battleships, forming, in effect, a T. The victorious admiral then had the powerful and plentiful broadside guns of his ships pitted against the much fewer bow guns of the enemy so he could blow them away! So right up until World War Two, everybody kept building bigger and more powerful battleships. But what happened then?”
“Aircraft carriers,” Pappy responded, suddenly coming out of his doldrums and getting interested again. “During World War Two, aircraft carriers took over as the primary fighting ship. After that, entire battles were fought without enemy fleets ever even seeing each other. It was the end of the battleship era.”
“That’s exactly right, and what I’m doing is changing submarine warfare the way the aircraft carrier changed surface warfare. Until now, submarines have been like battleships. From this day forward, the USS Louisiana is an underwater aircraft carrier. Remember how I told you the wings on these fighters enable them to maintain depth at less than five knots? You saw that for yourself, right?”
Pappy nodded in agreement.
“Well, if the Louisiana is moving at five knots as well, then the relative motion between the two is zero. One of our fighters can literally hover over the deck and land. They can take off the same way. When we detect a sonar contact, which may be an attack boat, we’ll launch a fighter to investigate. With our towed array, we can get an accurate bearing on the contact in order to initially direct the fighter to an intercept. In fact, since we have a pretty capable sonar system in each sub-fighter, we’ll be launching reconnaissance missions even if the Louisiana does not have any sonar contacts herself. The fighters will be able to listen above or below thermal layers, which are blocking our sonar, or listen beyond our sonar range, which may be limited by salinity conditions or biologics. When the fighter returns, it lands on the deck, and the crew reports the locations and types of contacts they detected. The Louisiana only has to maintain enough headway for the fighter to maintain depth and have a little maneuverability. It simply hovers over our moving deck, aligns with the mounting brackets, and then lands.”
“How does the pilot know where to land?” Pappy asked.
“Remember those markings I told you about, which we’re paintin’ on the deck?” asked Dwight.
“Oh yeah. I guess I had a little ‘information overload’ out there.”
George continued, “The pilot simply looks out the porthole and visually aligns the fighter with the markings on the deck. Once he sets her down, the sonar operator uses the locking lever in the fighter to engage the brackets and clamp the fighter securely to the deck, forming a water-tight seal over the escape hatch.”
“Okay, sorry, I should have remembered that.”
“It’s okay, Pappy. There’s a lot to absorb at one time.”
“I’ll say! Remember, you guys have been thinking about this for ten years. I just got here!”
“You’re doing great.”
“Thanks, but I have another question.”
“Shoot.”
“Precisely! I was wondering what the fighter does when it intercepts an enemy contact. Dwight mentioned something about rockets?”
“Each fighter carries a new type of weapon in a pod mounted right on the side of the fuselage. The weapon is an underwater rocket.”
“Aha! So I was right, we did take the rocket idea from the Shkvall after all!”
“Okay, I guess in a way you’re right. It’s a solid rocketpropelled projectile with a short range — no more than one hundred yards — and a small, five-pound, contact warhead in the nose.”
“A range of only one hundred yards and only a five-pound, contact warhead? What good is that?”
“It can do a lot of good, depending on what you are trying to accomplish. Have you ever heard the term ‘weaponeering’?”
“No I haven’t, what is it?”
“It’s used in the aviation community when they are planning an air strike against a particular target. It’s the process of determining how many aircraft are required and what types of ordinance they should carry to achieve a desired result. If the target happens to be a warship, the desired result can be one of several things. First, the ship could be sunk. Second, although the ship is not sunk, the weapon systems on the ship could be knocked out of commission. This is known as a ‘firepower kill.’ Third, the engineering section of the ship could be damaged so badly, the ship cannot maneuver or make headway. This is known as a ‘mobility kill.’ It was determined long ago that it requires far fewer weapons on target to achieve a firepower kill or a mobility kill than it does to actually sink a ship.”
“Well, that certainly makes sense, Captain. And I can see how in some circumstances, a firepower kill or a mobility kill is all you need.”
“That’s exactly right, and since our little sub-fighters are limited in how much ordnance they can carry, we are going to employ those same principles when defending the Louisiana. We’ll go after mobility kills. All we need is one rocket fired into the screw of an enemy submarine to achieve our desired result. There’s no need to sink her.”
“What about a firepower kill?”
“A firepower kill essentially requires sinking her because a submarine’s weapons systems are internal.”
“Oh yeah, I guess you’re right. So mobility kills are the way to go. I understand that, but these are rockets, not missiles, meaning they are unguided once they are fired. That has to be a pretty accurate shot to hit the screw, doesn’t it?”
“Not if you’re sitting right behind her and shoot from one hundred feet away!”
“Sir?” Pappy looked at George as if he was crazy.
“You have to remember your sub-fighter is completely silent, and the enemy is not. That means you can maneuver ‘at will’ and take your shot from wherever you wish. When you pick up the enemy on sonar, follow the bearing to find her. If you need range information, go ahead and ‘ping’ her with your active sonar. It doesn’t matter if it alerts her to your presence, because she can’t do a darn thing about it. She’s like a big lumbering battleship, except she has no anti-aircraft weapons. She only has Mark 48s, her equivalent of sixteen-inch guns. Shooting a Mark 48 at you would be like trying to swat a bee with a tree trunk! You can easily outmaneuver it, and fly on in and sting her.”
“But still, Captain, how do I aim exactly at the screw?”
“Use your underwater spotlight. When you get within range, you will see her visually. You have portholes to look through, while the enemy doesn’t. Just visually proceed to the enemy’s stern and blow away the screw. There’s nothing they can do to stop you. Their idea of maneuvering is a joke! Once you’ve blown away the screw, all they can do is blow ballast and bobble to the surface until someone comes along and picks them up.”
“Is a five-pound warhead adequate?”
“These rockets travel at high speed and have tremendous momentum. Even without a warhead, one of them would probably deliver enough energy on the target to achieve the mobility kill. It could knock a blade off or so severely mangle a blade, the screw would be useless. The warhead is for extra insurance and to provide us with the option to use the rockets against other types of targets. With only a five-pound warhead, we ensure that the blast will not affect a sub-fighter shooting from one hundred feet away.”