The high-pressure oil rushed from the accumulators unchecked, back to the cylinders that controlled the sternplanes, now unopposed by the seawater force on the sternplanes, likewise unopposed by the actions of the sternplanes man in the control room, the youth slumped in his control seat dazed and on the border of consciousness. The cylinders forced the stern planes back down to the full-dive position and kept them there.
The final result was a jam dive — the ship speeding ahead at over forty knots, the stern planes in the full-dive position, inclining the ship downward at high speed heading for crush depth, her dead reactor unable to pull her back, her dazed crew no longer capable of pulling the ship out.
In the control room, Kane watched his ship’s lethal dive toward the bottom.
The explosion of the Nagasaki torpedo was picked up by several dozen sonobuoys floating below the orbiting P3 Orion at the western strait mouth. The sonar technician shared a look with the ASW officer. The explosion detections were all at the position of the submarine contact they had tracked as the 688-class USS Phoenix. There was nothing the airplane could do except continue the effort to find the Destiny-class if and when it outchopped the Med. The ASW officer, hoping for good luck, and needing to do something, ordered the spinup of the Mark 52 torpedo nestled in the weapon bay beneath the wings. When the torpedo was warm, its computer asked for target coordinates. The ASW officer, frustrated, was unable to answer the question.
Sharef looked back to the chart table to see their progress through the strait, debating with himself whether he should increase speed, finally deciding against it out of unwillingness to generate a louder sound-signature with the aircraft so close. Behind him, on the fifth and sixth sensor-display consoles, lines of noise intensity jumped and danced as the ship’s hull arrays picked up the propulsors of the American Mark 50 torpedoes orbiting at the mouth of the strait, as yet unnoticed by the officers at the consoles, who had been suddenly distracted by the indication of a dozen sonobuoys that had just splashed into the water above them.
Sharef’s mouth opened to order evasive action when Tawkidi, his eyes wide, his characteristic calm cracking, announced the next jumping graph on the display, much worse than sonobuoys: “Low aircraft overhead, sir, looks like he’s got a positive detection.”
Two sonar techs and the ASW officer of the midchannel P-3 Orion leaned over the central console, reviewing the incoming data from the last field of sonobuoys dropped five minutes earlier.
“That’s him,” the sonar tech said.
“One last volley, about here,” Lieutenant Commander Quaid said, speaking into a lip-mike intercom to the pilots up forward.
The plane turned, pulling many more g’s in the turn than its ungainly turboprop appearance would indicate. Quaid held himself on a handhold as the plane lumbered back around to the south, watching the displays as the next round of sonobuoys dropped out of the plane’s belly and splashed into the water below. The console display curves filled the display, the lines incomprehensible to the uninitiated but full of detail and luscious information to the fraternity of flying antisubmarine warriors.
“Definite contact. Destiny submarine. Lock-in solution, shift to internal power and prepare to drop.”
“Weapon ready, solution set.”
“Skipper, ASW, target located and confirmed. Right turn now to zero one five. Request release.”
“Turning now … on zero one five. Permission to release.”
“Drop!”
“She’s down.”
The aircraft, glinting silver in the moonlight, dropped its payload into the strait, the torpedo looking like a large bomb as it separated from the P-3 and dived nose-first toward the black waves, a parachute popping astern to slow its entry into the water. A flash of phosphorus foam, and the torpedo vanished.
The Mark 52 torpedo was still, in effect, groggy, half-asleep as it hit the water, but the sudden deceleration jolted it into full electronic consciousness. It immediately began listening to its seeker sonar as it dived to 300 feet and turned two complete circles. Its computer had been loaded with the bearing to the hostile submarine, but targets had a nasty habit of evading once they heard the heavy splash of a Mark 52 hitting the water. The unit turned, on its first circle hearing something to the west, ignoring it to make sure there wasn’t another target closer, its electronics trained to discriminate between cheap decoys and real submarines. Now at 300 feet, the unit turned again past west and heard the target again, somewhat fainter this time. The torpedo abandoned its second circle and spun the propulsor to maximum speed while pinging with active sonar.
The return came back, solid, hard. The target was directly ahead, the range minimal. The weapon sped up to fifty-three knots and bore down on the sub, diving slightly to a depth of 450 feet, the depth of the target. As the target grew closer, the torpedo shortened the pulse-repetition frequency. It would be a short run. In anticipation, the unit armed its warhead and continued speeding toward the target.
“Loud splash, bearing of the aircraft at one one two, sir,” Tawkidi reported, his voice level but unnaturally loud in the hushed room. “We’ve got a propulsor, definite torpedo in the water … and the unit is active and closing.”
“Reactor control, emergency ahead, maximum power to the point of nucleate boiling in the exit plenum, transfer loads to the battery and disable the overload protection in the propulsion motor breakers. Ship control, steer two six five, depth 200 meters, report speed.”
Sharef had ordered reactor control to put out maximum power short of melting down the fuel assemblies, the calculations for emergency-ahead speed predicting a speed of eighty-eight clicks. Sharef did not smile as the display wound out to ninety-three clicks, since the American airborne-launched torpedoes could do well over ninety-five clicks, perhaps even 100. Sharef continued heading west, out of the Mediterranean with its flocks of aircraft launching torpedoes and their damned sonobuoys toward open ocean and the Atlantic. The torpedo was still driving up on them but it was small. Sharef hoped that it would not harm them too badly. Still, no commander took a hit without evading. At that moment he devoutly wished for another Dash-Five evasion device.
“Commander, report status of the SCM.”
SCM was sonar countermeasures, a torpedo-deception system designed by the Japanese shipbuilders, a sort of ventriloquist sonar pulse generator built to fool an incoming torpedo and make it explode too early, the transmitters mounted in the two lower X-fins aft. The sea-trials test results on it had been inconclusive, but in a torpedo tail chase the SCM sonar received the pulse of a torpedo sonar, listened for how often the pulse came in, then on the next ping-listen cycle the SCM would transmit an identical pulse back to the torpedo.
The SCM transmission was designed to be heard by the torpedo before it heard the echo return of its own original transmission bouncing off the sub. It was simple in concept but close to impossible to make it succeed at sea. The problem that came up first was making the ship able to transmit a ping that exactly matched the torpedo’s ping, then changing it so it would sound like an echo return, adjusting the timing and frequency of the bogus echo so that the torpedo would be fooled into thinking the target was nearer, farther, slower or faster than it actually was. The system required the most sensitive receivers, the most perfect transmitters and the dedication of an entire supercomputer.