“Well…” Beck was perhaps the only man at the briefing who fully understood the uncertainties and risks of what was proposed.
“It certainly gives us the best way to lay down accurate fire and live to tell about it,” Stissinger said. He was warming more and more to the overall plan. “Since the Allies use random formations for their carrier groups, and they shift the formation shapes constantly, we won’t know which ship in a clump of warships is which. They’ll use heavy passive and active electronic countermeasures too. If Berlin tells us exactly where the high-value targets are, sir, and their course and speed and zigzag habits, we shoot fan spreads of missiles with a very high kill probability.”
Beck frowned. “Launching our missiles from extreme range maximizes their transit time, and gives the enemy the greatest margin for evasive maneuvers too. That’s the one thing that bothers me.”
Von Loringhoven shook his head. “Your missiles go Mach two point five. From five hundred sea miles away, they’ll reach their target coordinates in less than fifteen minutes…. That’s why you carry so many missiles, Captain. You saturate each target coordinate zone. The Americans will have no escape.”
“The Americans call that overkill,” Beck said with irony, mostly to himself. “You shoot enough weapons to nuke your opponent several times over.”
“And what’s wrong,” von Loringhoven said, “with destroying our enemy several times over? With the carriers and marine amphibious warfare ships and escorts out of the way, our wolf packs can then close in and savage the cargo ships at will. Even were there no Axis interference, it would take those merchant vessels a solid week to steam from the Atlantic Narrows to the Congo-basin coast. With such a long gauntlet to run, subjected to coordinated and merciless U-boat attacks, and not one friendly nation in sight for thousands and thousands of miles, a worthless trickle at most will ever get through to the Allied pocket.”
CHAPTER 18
Jeffrey and Milgrom and Bell were still sequestered in Jeffrey’s stateroom. Jeffrey had moved the discussion to a different question. They were once again, hurriedly, going over what little they knew about the von Scheer, to try to work out more specific tactics for when the fateful confrontation came — if it ever did. Jeffrey and his key people had been doing this often since leaving Norfolk. It became their daily mantra, a benediction almost, but unlike meditation or prayer, this convocation gave no peace of mind. And as Jeffrey said, pointedly, now could well be their final opportunity to brainstorm before the maelstrom of battle began. Then there’d be no pause button, no calling time-outs, no do-overs.
They knew the von Scheer was a very big ship, much bigger than Challenger. She was almost certainly slower than Challenger if both made flank speed. How much slower, Jeffrey didn’t know — and knowing could be the difference between life and death in a stern chase or dogfight. Running at the same speed, Milgrom suspected, knot for knot, von Scheer would be even quieter than Challenger: bigger meant more room for quieting gear, more room to isolate noisy machines from the hull.
But they had no good noise profile on the von Scheer. They didn’t know what her hybrid Russian-German propulsion plant sounded like. They didn’t even know if she had one reactor or two, one propulsor at her stern or two, or even if each propulsor was a screw propeller or a pump jet.
Milgrom pointed out that Challenger did have some sonar advantages. Von Scheer’s bigger size made her a bigger target on hole-in-ocean passive sonar — a larger spot in the water that was too quiet because the hull blocked ocean noises from farther off. And since ocean sounds or nuclear blasts bounced off the target and served to give it away in the same way as the echo from an active sonar ping, a larger hull meant a larger ambient-sonar contact too. “We can expect a longer detection range against the von Scheer than she against us in those modes, sir,” Milgrom said.
“We have another advantage, Skipper,” Bell said. “Von Scheer has to go shallow to launch her missiles. Otherwise they’d implode in the tubes. Going shallow, she loses the help of concealment by bottom terrain. She leaves herself wide open to easy tracking on active sonar, and a preemptive attack by us from below… or by other Allied forces from above.”
“And then there’s the wild card of Orpheus,” Jeffrey said, “our secret eye on von Scheer looking up from the bottom of the sea… assuming the gadget actually works.”
Felix stood behind the pilot’s seat in the cramped, red-lighted control compartment of Challenger’s minisub. There was just enough space for him to squeeze between the back of the seat and the front of the pressure-proof bulkhead to the lock-in/lock-out chamber. The mini was all of eight feet high externally, and inside Felix could barely stand up straight.
The mini was too small to have a gravimeter, but the nautical charts were detailed and the inertial nav position was accurate. At four knots, submerged, it took an hour to go from the edge of the undersea ridge — where Felix lost direct contact with Challenger — to the immediate vicinity of the Rocks. Instrument panels bristled with buttons and readouts. Computer screens showed depth and course and speed, ballast and trim, and the condition of the minisub’s atmosphere. Other screens showed sonar displays and a tactical situation plot. Right now there were no threats.
The very existence of the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks was an accident of nature. They just happened to be in a most strategic location, where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge stopped curving south and took a sharp turn east along the Romanche Fracture Zone — a gigantic transform fault in the ocean floor straddling the Atlantic Narrows. At the eastern edge of the Romanche fault, hundreds of miles nearer Africa, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge resumed its southern procession, all the way through the South Atlantic Ocean to Antarctica. The St. P and P Rocks — as Felix and the others called them — were, in fact, a part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, right at the elbow of that sharp turn east. The Rocks were the only dry land of any sort, anywhere near the center of the Narrows. The relief convoy has to steam through the Narrows. The Germans have to know all this too.
Compared to the seafloor down in the sprawling abyssal plains on opposite sides of the endless and massive ridge, the St. P and P Rocks were the summit of a mountain range three miles high. Compared to local sea level, though, the highest point of the Rocks peaked barely sixty-five feet above mean high water.
“We’re at periscope depth,” the copilot said. “Want to take a look, sir?” The copilot was a senior chief in the SEALs, qualified to operate the minisub — he’d come with Felix from the Ohio. The pilot, also a senior chief, was a submariner from Challenger. This was standard doctrine for using the ASDS minisub in combat: teamwork, a marriage of cultures, between two of the navy’s different elites, submariners and SEALs.
“Do it,” Felix said.
The copilot flipped some switches. The fold-down periscope mast was raised hydraulically, and one of the control compartment’s display screens lit up with scenery from outside.
It was first light, just before sunrise. The sky facing east was a beautiful golden yellow.