The boat shifted under them as they started a new leg. Every movement of the Miami in water this shallow was a delicate ballet. The Los Angeles class had been built for speed in the deep, not to limp along in shallow water. With only three hundred feet of water under their keel, a sharp pitch up would be very bad indeed. The swells topside were starting to make themselves felt in what was normally the steadiest of worlds. That was bad. It was going to degrade the passive sonar performance even more.
The driver of the North Korean Bear bomber could not believe his orders, but belief in the DPRK forces did not matter, only abeyance. The Bear plowed through what was the most disastrous weather the pilot ever had the misfortune to fly in. The bomber’s four contra-rotating propellers on full power were just able to keep them at cruise speed.
The flight engineer kept a wary eye on the engine temperatures, the pilot, and an even closer eye on the altimeter. This was an old plane and they were only four hundred meters above sea level, right in the thick of the maelstrom. The airframe bucked and surged around him. One good downdraft and it would be a long swim home… if they survived.
The navigator sat between the pilot and copilot seats. His was the most important job of alclass="underline" keep them on course.
The electronic warfare officer came alive behind the pilot. “Eisenhower has us on radar. They want us to identify.”
The pilot swore under his breath. So it was going to get even harder. “Launch a barrage of chaff on my order.” He looked over at his copilot. “We go lower when the chaff is away, understand?” The copilot, too scared to speak, just nodded his head. The pilot steeled himself. “Now!”
“Chaff away!”
The pilot pushed the heavy steering yoke hard forward. The Bear plunged ever deeper into the murk, rain sheeted off the windscreen. They had turned the wipers off long ago… the wipers did no good and there was nothing to see anyway. The lumbering bomber leveled out at one hundred and fifty meters. The battering at the airframe increased in volume. At this altitude, there was absolutely no hope of surviving a crash. Now if Eisenhower wanted to find them, they would have to use their bigger radar array and that would give away the flagship’s position. The pilot wrestled the Bear along, his hands locked onto the steering yoke. “How long till the first drop?”
The navigator checked his watch and chart. “Fifteen more kilometers.”
“Open the bomb bay doors.”
The copilot pressed a stud on his steering yoke. They surged sideways as the wind caught hold of the new expanse of surface area.
The pilot struggled to keep the aircraft trim. “Any more sign of Eisenhower?”
The EW officer shook his head and then realized the pilot could not see him. “No. We seemed to have confused them. No sign of airborne search radars either.”
“Good.” The pilot glanced at the navigator. “On your mark.”
“Entering the drop zone. Standby.” The navigator counted off the last seconds on his chronometer. “Mark!”
The pilot thumbed the drop button on his flight yoke. Depth charges and noisemakers knifed into the water below. The release times were random, but he could not come to a new heading until six of each were dropped.
The navigator kept one eye on the drop indicator and one on his stopwatch and map. Only when the sequence was done did he speak. “Come to new heading one six zero.” The Bear banked in compliance.
The pilot called out the new heading. “Heading is one six zero.”
The navigator never took his eyes off the chronometer. “Again on my mark. Mark!” Another series of counter-measures splashed into the gray waters beneath them. These units were programmed to all go off at the same time. Everything depended on the navigator’s timing. “Series complete. New heading of one four zero, drop on my mark.”
“Heading one four zero.”
“Mark!”
The Bear was getting lighter by the minute.
The EW officer cried out in alarm, “Airborne search radar to our rear! Missile lock! Launching chaff and flares. Counter measures ineffective. There’s more than one lock.” His voice cracked with fear, “We’re dead…”
The pilot flicked the Master Arm switch to, ‘ON’ and armed the remainder of the load. The navigator read out the next heading. “Come to zero nine zero. Drop on my ma…”
The Bear exploded, vivisected in midair as three Phoenix missiles found their target. The wreckage tumbled down and was swallowed by a hungry sea.
“Conn, Sonar, Sierra one! Multiple transient contacts bearing two seven three, it’s on the roof.” The Sonar Supervisor relayed the information to Miami’s Captain and then took a look at his operator’s scope on his own screen. Damn the storm anyway!
“Conn, Sonar, Sierra two!” Similar series of transients bearing two three five.”
The supervisor watched the straight lines drag their way across his CRT Waterfall display. An icy chill began to crawl up his spine. The contacts were swinging onto their heading.
“Conn, Sonar, Sierra three! Whoa!” They all heard the explosion and then the impact of the Bear’s wreckage on the surface directly above them.
The sonar supervisor tore his earphones off and yelled at his men to do the same. “Get your phones off! Shut down the passive arrays and get the towed array pulled in! Conn, rig for impact! Something big just landed on the roof and I think we have depth charges on the way down.”
At four knots, the Miami was a sitting duck. The Captain acted as fast as he could. “Ahead flank, come to two nine zero.”
The helm relayed the command, “Ahead flank, come to two nine zero. Aye, sir.”
Miami’s screw surged in rotation to push her from a sluggish four knots up to thirty, but it was too late. A large piece of the Bear’s starboard wing sliced through the towed array’s cable, dragging both to the bottom.
“Conn, Sonar, towed array just went dead!”
Luck was not with the crew of the Miami. The remains of the Bear’s fuselage slammed across their bow before breaking in half and sliding away. Those standing clawed for any available handhold as the Miami rolled hard on its port side.
Captain Garret Billings held his seat, but his favorite mug detonated on the far side of the bridge in a spray of coffee and ceramic shrapnel. “Damn! Get us out of here. Chief! I want a damage report and I want it now!”
“Aye, sir.” The chief of the boat held the sleeve of his shirt above his left eye. Trying to staunch the flow of blood from the gash he received when Miami rolled. Piece by piece, the boat’s situation came in over his headset. “No apparent damage forward, sir, but we must have lost a bunch of tiles.”
Billings took it in stride. “Thanks COB. Launch a noisemaker. Make a hard ninety to starboard. Back us off to one quarter ahead once we’re on the new heading.”
“Coming to new heading, zero two zero. New heading, zero two zero, ahead one quarter. Aye, sir.”
Billings called over to his sonar supervisor, “Sonar! I need you up and running.”
“Sonar, aye, sir!” The supervisor turned to his men. “You heard him, get yer ears on. Get a fix on what’s out there.” Headsets were donned and systems powered up just in time to hear the depth charges and noisemakers the Bear had dropped earlier go off.
Three hundred feet beneath the Miami’s stern, the surviving depth charges in the Bear’s fuselage also went off. A huge cloud of gas bubbles soared upwards. The bubbles robbed the water of buoyancy. Miami’s stern section, caught in this saturated cloud, dropped violently. Its screw began to cavitate in the less dense mass of the infused water.
Billings, still in his seat, could not believe this was happening to him as the front of the control center shot up at a harsh angle and the sub began to move backwards. “Son of a bitch!” What the fuck was going on? With a violent jerk, the sub began to level out. “Sonar! Do you have anything?” The lights went red as the primary power shut off and the auxiliary kicked in.
The supervisor answered, “Negative, sir. Both rear lateral arrays are down and the port forward array is intermittent. Towed array is also down, presumed lost, but with the amount of noise being produced out there, it’s doubtful that our Korean friends can hear us either.”
The fire klaxon erupted. A shaft of ice shot down the back of every sailor on board. Fire is a greater fear for a submariner than even the sea. Fire lives and breathes the same air you do, only far faster. Billings turned to the Chief, who was relaying orders into his headset’s mouthpiece.
The Chief looked up, “Fire in the power-plant area, sir. It’s out. A nexus blew after that last explosion. No one injured. They’re in CHEMOX gear for the moment until the air clears a little bit.”
Billings glanced over at the remains of his mug. “Well, that’s the first good news I’ve had all day.”