The boat heeled over instantly as the Helmsman executed his orders. “Sir, my rudder is full left! All ahead flank!”
“Very well,” Kharitonov said. “Launch countermeasures!” He paused for a half-second. At flank speed, hydrodynamic force would mangle the periscope and the radio antenna. “Down scope! Retract the antenna mast!”
The deck began to vibrate as the turbines brought the screw up to maximum speed. Something had to be wrong with the sonar equipment. The torpedo had to be a mistake. But no … he could hear it now, right through the hull, the unmistakable dental drill whine of high-speed propellers. It wasn’t a sonar error. It really was an incoming torpedo. The sound was quickly growing to a howl.
“Countermeasures away!” the Watch Officer shouted.
The intercom speaker flared again. “Control — Sonar, we have startup on a second torpedo! Repeat, we have two inbound torpedoes! Classify both torpedoes as 400 millimeter type UMGT-1!”
Those were Russian torpedoes, air launched. They had to have come from Volk-shentnadtsatiy. Why was their own aircraft shooting at them?
“Emergency dive!” Kharitonov said. “Full down bubble on all planes!”
Before the Diving Officer could acknowledge the order, the intercom speaker crackled again. “Control — Sonar, no takers on the countermeasures. Both torpedoes have acquired.
Outside the hull, the howl of approaching torpedo screws rose to a deafening shriek.
Kharitonov opened his mouth to order an emergency rudder change, but his voice was drowned out by the explosion of the first torpedo. He couldn’t tell where it hit, but the shock of the impact slammed into him like a speeding car, lifting him off the deck and throwing him sideways against the housing for #2 periscope. He felt several of his ribs break.
The submarine heeled well over to port in response to the explosion. Kharitonov tumbled to the deck where he lay in a haze of shock and confusion, his body too stunned to even draw breath.
His left wrist was turned at such an angle that his old watch, the Vostok Komandirskie, was positioned just a few centimeters from his face. He stared stupidly at the heavy stainless steel timepiece, his addled mind not really registering its presence. Slowly his eyes slid back into focus and his brain began to process information again. Somewhere beyond the numbing silence of his damaged eardrums, he thought he could hear the thunder of rushing water.
He blinked, and his body began to think about moving again. He could dimly perceive the first ghostly twinges of pain, and he realized that he had been temporarily shielded from the reality of his injuries by shock. It would all come back to him; he knew that. His body’s defense mechanisms could delay the inevitable for a little while, but they could not prevent it.
He couldn’t stay down here any longer. He needed to get to his feet, get his brain working, regain command of the situation. He had to save his boat.
But something caught his attention. It was his wristwatch. The second hand was frozen in place. The watch had stopped. The all-powerful bulletproof masterpiece of Soviet craftsmanship had given up the fight. It was almost funny if one only knew when to laugh.
Then the second torpedo struck, and the world disappeared in a fury of fire and water.
CHAPTER 13
The 14th and 15th centuries were periods of great experimentation in the field of rocketry, and several major advances came about as a result. An English monk named Roger Bacon developed improved formulas for gunpowder, greatly increasing rocket flight ranges. In France, poet, historian, and inventor Jean Froissart discovered that the accuracy of a rocket’s trajectory could be improved by launching it through a straight length of pipe, or tube. His idea became the precursor of the modern bazooka.
Meanwhile, rockets continued to become more common on the battlefield. French troops led by Joan of Arc used rockets in the defense of the city of Orleans in the year 1429. The French also used rockets during the siege of Pont-Andemer in 1449, and at the assault on the city of Ghent in 1453.
By the 1500s, rocket warfare began to fall into disfavor. Advances in artillery made the smoothbore cannon an increasingly attractive alternative for the armies of Europe and Asia. Nevertheless, the 16th century brought a new development to rocketry: one that would ultimately open the door to both space travel, and nuclear warfare.
In 1591, a German fireworks maker named Johann Schmidlap began building ‘step rockets’ in order to lift his fireworks to greater altitudes. Schmidlap’s earliest step rockets had two stages, consisting of a large sky rocket (first stage), which carried a smaller sky rocket (second stage). The larger first stage would propel the rocket as high as it could go before its engine burned out. The engine of the smaller rocket would then ignite, and the second stage would separate from the husk of the first, and continue to climb to higher altitude.
Schmidlap’s goal was simply to build more impressive fireworks, but his multi-stage rockets would become the foundation for manned spacecraft, and nuclear missiles.
It should be noted that the idea of multi-stage rockets may have originated with Conrad Haas, an Austrian artillery officer who described the concept in a manuscript written between 1529 and 1569. Johann Schmidlap may or may not have been aware of the works of Conrad Haas, but — regardless of his possible influences — Schmidlap was the first to put the concept into practical use.
The next great breakthrough in rocketry occurred in 1687, when Sir Isaac Newton published ‘Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica’ (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy). Although the text was not geared specifically toward rockets, Principia Mathematica outlined ‘Newton’s Laws of Motion,’ and described the natural principles that allow rockets to function. This work has been credited with elevating rocketry from blind trial and error into the realm of science.
Thanks in part to the work of Sir Isaac Newton, rocket warfare experienced a revival in the 18th and 19th centuries.
After a series of successful Indian rocket attacks against the British Army in the late 1700s, artillery expert Colonel William Congreve began designing rockets for the British military. Congreve’s rockets proved to be highly effective weapons. British ships used Congreve rockets to bombard Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.
Francis Scott Key, who witnessed the assault from the deck of a British warship, was inspired to write the poem that became America’s national anthem: The Star Spangled Banner. When he penned the famous line about the rockets’ red glare, Francis Scott Key was referring to the British Congreve rockets that were pounding the besieged American fort.
In 1903, a Russian schoolteacher by the name of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published a report in which he suggested the switch from traditional solid rocket fuel to liquid rocket propellants. Tsiolkovsky theorized that the range and speed of a rocket are controlled by the velocity of its exhaust gasses, and he calculated that liquid rocket fuels would provide higher gas velocities than solid rocket fuels.
Tsiolkovsky’s writings influenced the research of Robert Goddard, who began building liquid fuel rockets in the early 20th century.
Unlike solid fuel rockets, which require few (if any) moving parts, a liquid fuel rocket is a highly-complex machine. In place of a simple combustion cylinder and exhaust nozzle, a liquid fuel rocket requires feed-pumps, turbines, oxygen tanks, and an intricate network of piping to connect them all. And where a solid fuel rocket needs only an ignition source, a liquid fuel rocket requires precise control mechanisms.