“Nose coming right.”
“Roger.”
Victoria pushed in her right pedal and the aircraft yawed to the right. Then she centered the pedals when the nose was aimed forty-five degrees off the ship’s course.
“Instruments normal, pulling power. One… two… three positive rates of climb. Radalt on.”
“Roger, radalt on.” Her copilot depressed the radar altimeter button.
“Your controls.”
“I have the controls.”
“You have the controls. Take her up to five hundred feet.”
“Roger, coming up to five hundred.”
“Fetternut, let’s get the radar up.”
“Bringing the radar right now, Boss.”
Victoria began speaking with the aircraft controller on the ship.
“ATO ASTAC.”
“Go ASTAC.”
“We have a P8 approximately one hundred and forty miles to your northwest laying a buoy field. It sounds like they got a sniff, ma’am.”
“Roger, we’ll be heading that way. Do you have a frequency for us?”
The ASTAC passed her the UHF radio frequency that the P8 would be listening on. Victoria dialed in the frequency and made sure she was transmitting on the appropriate channel. She climbed up in altitude and began racing towards them. After getting closer, she made her call.
“Penguin 123, this is Cutlass 471 forty miles to your southeast, inbound for ASW.”
Antisubmarine warfare, or ASW, was the bread and butter of her helicopter community and of the maritime aircraft known as the P8 Poseidon. While her helicopter had three on board and was limited in the number of sonobuoys and torpedoes that it could hold, the P8 had a crew of nine and could hold many more sonobuoys, torpedoes, and other equipment. It was also much faster and had a longer on-station time, both of which could prove crucial in prosecuting an enemy submarine.
“Cutlass, Penguin, we’ve got you. Stand by for our report.” The naval flight officer on board the P8 passed information about the situation and enemy submarine they were tracking. Victoria quickly copied down the coordinates on a pad of paper that was strapped to her knee.
“Copy all, Penguin. Our ETA is twenty mikes.”
Two clicks on the radio confirmed that he’d heard her.
Victoria typed on her multipurpose display.
“Cutlass, Ford Control, come up our datalink.”
“Roger.”
Victoria was out of range of her own ship now, so she didn’t bother telling them that she was switching. They made the adjustments to start having the aircraft carrier Ford begin controlling her. The datalink connection made, her helicopter immediately began filling with real-time data from all the other ships and aircraft in the link.
“Shit. The Ford is only ten miles away from that submarine track.” She checked her fuel, altitude, and navigational data. They would be there soon. She began rattling off checklist items, to which her crew responded appropriately, getting ready for antisubmarine warfare operations.
The voice from the P8 said, “Cutlass, Penguin. We’re going to pass you a lat-long. Can you dip there?”
“Affirm.” The language was nonstandard, and whoever was speaking sounded junior. But as long as it got the job done, Victoria didn’t care. She glanced at her display again and realized that there were hostile submarine symbols all over the place, each with friendly air tracks above them. Now she knew why she had launched. They were pairing off two friendly aircraft to each enemy submarine. The fact that the Ford was headed in this direction probably meant that they didn’t expect this particular track to be here. She and this P-8 were probably the last ones to get an assignment. Yet based on the locations, it appeared to be the biggest threat.
A few minutes later, they were parked in a hover roughly one hundred feet above the ocean surface, lowering their multimillion-dollar dipping sonar into the water.
AWR1 Fetternut, her sensor operator in the back of the helicopter, said, “Okay, ma’am, we’re ready to ping.”
Victoria contacted the Ford controller and informed them of what they were doing, then she heard the high-pitched noise of the ping in her headset.
Her sensor operator said, “We’ve got good contact. Up Doppler, two thousand yards.”
Victoria typed a series of commands into her display while relaying the information to the P8.
The P8 naval flight officer said, “Roger, Cutlass. Penguin will be coming in for weapons run.”
Victoria’s copilot said, “I’ve got Penguin in sight at two o’clock.”
On the horizon, Victoria could see the large dark shape of the P-8 making a steep turn and then leveling off on a heading that would take it right next to the helicopter. Lessons about wingtip vortices fluttered through her mind.
“Gonna be a little close.” She watched as a torpedo dropped from the P-8, and then the aircraft again banked sharply, turning away from her aircraft.
“There it goes. Good chute.” From the rear of the helicopter, her sensor operator said, “Torpedo’s in the water, up and running.”
“Roger,” said Victoria. She had switched up her comms to listen to one of the closer passive buoys’ acoustic transmission. She could hear the high-pitched tones of the MK-50 lightweight torpedo as it searched for the Chinese submarine in the depths below.
Victoria watched the updates of the sonar track on her display screen. “Looks like they’re turning and picking up speed.”
Whether it was Chinese or not, it was probably a nuke as opposed to a diesel-electric boat, based on the speed. The contact was now going over thirty knots through the water — so fast that their current dipping position was now useless.
“Let’s reel up the dome.”
“Roger,” AWR1 Fetternut said and began procedures to bring the dipping sonar back up into the helicopter.
She scanned the instruments, checking her gauges to make sure their fuel was at a healthy level and her engines performing normally. Her copilot was supposed to be monitoring those things, but it was always smart to double-check.
“Sounds like the torp’s gone silent.”
“Roger.” She switched up her UHF to the channel they had been using to speak with the P-8. “Penguin, Cutlass, we’re available for a reattack if you need us.”
“Roger, stand by.”
“Dipping sonar is secure, ready for forward flight.”
“Coming forward,” her copilot said as he inched the cyclic ahead. The airspeed ticked up and the crew felt a flutter as they got past translational lift and into forward flight.
“Cutlass, Penguin, come to zero-nine-zero and prepare for weapon drop.”
“Zero-nine-zero, wilco.”
Victoria ran her finger down her torpedo launching checklist, saying each step aloud, her free hand physically verifying that each switch, knob, and digital readout was in the correct position. “Checklist complete.”
“Boss, the P-8 just pinged with that buoy closest the target and got a good hit. If we can get there soon, it’ll be a good drop.”
“My controls,” Victoria said, taking the cyclic and collective in her hands.
“Roger, your controls,” said her copilot.
“Cutlass, Penguin, come left zero-two-five.”
“Zero-two-five.” She banked the aircraft to the left until she saw her heading approach the magnetic compass heading of zero-two-five and leveled off.
“Stand by for weapon release on my mark. Ready… now, now, now.”
With her right hand, she pressed the weapons release button and felt a shudder as the aircraft let go of a six-hundred-pound torpedo.