Alarms sounded aboard John F Kennedy as sensors detected the nuclear detonation eight miles away. On all ships of the group, men prayed as they went about their tasks and braced themselves for the shockwave and against the tilt of the deck as ships heeled hard over, seeking to put their bows toward the storm and presenting the smallest surface area. The danger of collision was high; John F Kennedy could not turn like a frigate.
In CIC the TAO was thrown off his feet as a giant hand slapped the ships huge exposed surface area. The carrier was virtually broadside on to the blast wave and the TAO hit the deck and continued sliding toward a bulkhead as the deck tilted further and further over.
HMS Hood was barely making headway as she closed on the fleeting contact ahead of her. The Russian submarine was deep, well below the Hood’s own crush depth, which meant it could only be an Alpha class attack boat. The Hood’s captain could only speculate as to how the Russian could launch from its present depth. Had his own vessel been able to go so deep, it would take virtually all their reserve air just to get the weapon clear of the tube.
When they had first detected the Alpha, the Hood had slowly risen, using the thermal layer to mask the sound of their outer doors opening before descending again. The Russian was moving with great caution, which meant they knew Hood was in the vicinity. The fleeting contact made for haphazard ranging so Hood again rose above the thermal layer. The Hoods plan was to launch four torpedoes, run them out at slow speed before turning them in toward the target. The Alpha would undoubtedly launch back along the approaching torpedoes heading. If it launched more than one in reply, from that depth, then they obviously had solved the problem of expending too much air reserve whilst firing at extreme depth, a problem not yet cracked by the west. Each torpedo was set to steer toward a different point along the bearing that the Alpha was believed to be on. If it worked, then at least one would detect the target on its passive sensors, indicating as such down the long filament that connected it to the Hood.
“Fire two,” the captain almost whispered.
“Two fired sir.”
“Fire four.”
“Four fired sir.”
“Fire one.”
“One fired sir.”
“Fire three.”
“Three fired sir… all weapons running normally skipper.”
They could not reload the tubes without cutting the wires with which they steered the torpedoes that were running east and slowly diving to 1000 ft.
The forward torpedo room stood by to reload the tubes as the Hood sank below the layer once more, where she could again hear the Russian as he searched for them.
Cuchullainn fired her last Sea Wolf, targeting on the closest of the eighteen missiles rapidly closing on the two ships, they now only had the distant ships missiles for protection along with their own Phalanx ‘last ditch’ systems and chaff dischargers.
Mig-29s had joined in the melee’ with the Sea Harriers. A few Su-27s had ditched their bomb loads at the start of the fight, the remainder kept them, using the drag of the ordnance to their advantage as they tried to come to grips with the slower Sea Harriers.
Major Lee led eight of the Flankers from the fight; their A-50 controller now had the Prince of Wales on its screens, beyond the decoying warships. A trail of smoke hung in the air above the main group of ships, marking the plummet of the AEW helicopter that had fallen to a pair of the long-range AA-11 Archer missiles.
Lt Fu Chen looked to the horizon and swallowed hard, a distinctive mushroom shaped cloud climbed toward the stratosphere. Closer to home a violent explosion caught his eye, he was not to know it but it was the Royal Navy Destroyer, HMS Cuchullainn, two
AS-18 missiles had escaped the Phalanx gun above her helicopter hangar and disregarded the clouds of chaff to pop up and dive down near vertically. 640kg of explosives arriving at 285 feet per second tore through the vessel that broke in two, sinking within the hour.
Ahead of Lt Fu Chen’s formation there appeared a frigate, tracers rose at them from machine guns mounted along the side, dirty grey puffs of smoke spotted the path ahead of them from its single turret mounted gun, then he was past. The aircraft split into pairs to single out ships for attention. He ducked as both aircraft to his right exploded, hit by anti-aircraft missiles. He heard Major Lee cry out on the radio and Fu Chen banked to the right as the majors aircraft slowly rolled onto its back and dived into the ocean, its cockpit shredded with the shrapnel of an air-bursting shell. Ahead of the young pilot was the British carrier, far smaller than his own ship. Selecting the FAB-100 bombs he aimed along the ships centreline and as the laser, bomb-aiming system sounded a rapid pulse in his ears, he pickled the four bombs away. He banked right; looking over his shoulder as he did so, determined to watch the fall of his bomb load. Three tall pillars of water straddled the warship and one of smoke and debris rose from its flight deck. Fu Chen was cheering aloud when something sent his aircraft pitching nose upwards and rattling his teeth as his helmeted head was hammered backwards into the seat. His left engine’s fire warning light was lit but there was no light indicating the automatic extinguisher had activated. He shut down the engine and the fire warning light flickered, and then went out.
Finding his aircraft far less responsive than was desirable, Lt Fu Chen took stock and found he had passed beyond the ships. There were no other aircraft in sight and his radio was dead, as was his systems management suite, without it he was in the dark as to what functioned and what did not. The touch-screen instrument that enabled him to see at a glance, the state of his airframe was blank. His HUD showed the current level of his fuel but it was sinking fast and he no longer had the ability see what was broken.
He completed a gentle turn for home, wondering how he was going to land the wounded machine when he got there.
To Lt Nikki Pelham, the dogfight seemed to have lasted hours’, she could not shake the pair of Sukhoi-27 fighters unaided and no one answered her calls for assistance. She had tried to extend but the furthest PLAAF fighter had locked her up and Chubby Checkernovski had thrown up in his mask once they had avoided the AA-8 Aphid that had been loosed at them. The ocean was only a thousand feet below, once less dimension available to her limited list of options. The Su-27s broke, discharging chaff and flares as they pulled high gee’s. Nikki pushed the throttles to zone 5 afterburner, determined to regain some height and banked right to engage the Flanker that had broken to the west.
“Bad guy to the east’s got a missile chasing him!” shouted Chubby. Nikki was fixed on the Flanker ahead of her and didn’t look at what the RIO was watching. She killed the afterburner and the wings swept forward to 50’ as the speed bled off. The Tomcats manoeuvre had brought them in on the Flankers port quarter and Nikki got tone from her AIM-9 Sidewinders. The PRC pilot had been attempting to catch whoever had his wingman locked up in a scissors, trying to get into a firing position behind it. The PLAAF fighters wings were swept fully forward as it banked hard, and it was the worst position he could have been in when Nikki called ‘Fox Two’, announcing she had fired a Sidewinder missile. The PLAAF pilot’s only option was to punch out flares in an attempt to decoy the heat seeking missile and continue his present manoeuvre, rolling away into a dive, but he was out of time and airspeed. The Sidewinder flew straight and true into the Su-27s port engine nacelle and Nikki rolled hard left to avoid the airborne debris.