Attack of the Seawolf

The Chief of the Watch shouted into his headset and reached to the ballast-control panel to open the main ballast tank vents at the same time. The diving officer ordered the bow planes to twenty degrees dive, the stern planes to five degrees. The deck began to take on an angle. The Chief of the Watch, still following the rig for ultra quiet called “Dive, Dive!” into his headset rather than on the Circuit One PA. system.

The deck began to incline as the ship drove deep, then flattened as the Diving Officer pulled out.

On the bridge Tim Turner felt the deck beneath his feet tremble as the ship began to move. He dropped the white sheet and bent to snap up the heavy clamshell on the port side. When he stood to fold up the central clamshell he saw the Luda destroyer directly ahead. The bow wave was gone, the hull already under. His eyes were level with the shoes of the men running on the main deck of the destroyer, men running away from him … Turner stood half-frozen as the hull of the destroyer grew closer. The captain was going to ram it, he thought dimly, the thought breaking his inertia. He dropped the walkie-talkie down the bridge hatch and jumped down after it. He had reached up for the hatch when the ship hit the destroyer, the force of the collision throwing him down the tunnel.

The sail of the Seawolf hit the hull of the Luda destroyer Kaifing at a speed of twenty-eight knots, forty seven-feet-per-second. The sail’s top five feet still protruded above the water as it hit the hull of the Kaifing, but the destroyer had a draft of about fifteen feet, reaching deep enough that only a few feet separated the top of Seawolf’s cylindrical hull from the bottom of Kaifing’s keel. The leading edge of the sail crumpled, the hardened steel yielding but not rupturing, the sail designed to impact submerged icebergs under the polar icecap without giving, the designers knowing that a six-foot-thick chunk of polar ice was equivalent to a half-inch plate of steel, at least when approached at two-feet-per-second. But now Seawolf had hit the Kaifing’s hull at twenty times that velocity, and the target’s hull was not just a single plate of steel but a matrix of steel plates stretched over structural-shaped frames. As the sail slammed into the port-side hull, the steel dented, then gave way, finally tearing open into a gash large enough to allow the sail to pass through. The sail continued inward, slicing through a fuel tank, through a berthing compartment and shower room, through a passageway into a row of engineering maintenance offices and through the plate steel of the starboard side.

By the time the Seawolfs sail emerged from the far side of the Kaifing, the submarine had slowed to two knots, her kinetic energy almost expended in ripping open the hull of the Kaifing. The Seawolfs screw continued to turn, eventually accelerating her back to flank speed, but Kaifing’s screw would never turn again. The destroyer settled in the water, her lower compartments flooding as she sank to the silty bottom of the strait.

BOHAI HAIXIA STRAIT

“I told you it was a damned trick,” Chu said into Lo’s intercom.

Below them the Udaloy destroyer was in flames and dead in the water, starting to sink by the bow while listing to port, crippled and near death. A half-kilometer to the southeast the Luda destroyer was closing the position of the submarine, but the sub was developing a bow wave and sinking into the water. Chu had to believe his eyes. The American submarine was not hurt at all but speeding eastward, not toward open water but directly toward the Ludaclass destroyer. As he watched, the submarine’s hull vanished, leaving only its conning tower behind. The Luda’s stern boiled in foam as the ship tried to accelerate out of the way-too late.

The conning tower of the American submarine hit the Luda destroyer’s hull amidships, slicing into it.

Smoke rose from the collision, and Chu brought his jet closer to observe. The conning tower of the sub had vanished, not emerging from the other side. The Luda destroyer began to slow down, coasting to a halt, the hole in her hull now invisible as the ship settled into the water and began to list starboard, now completely stopped. Chu no longer wanted to wait to see what would happen to the second destroyer. A glance over his shoulder revealed that the Udaloy was gone, sunk, nothing left but a foamy oil slick, a few boats, and men floating in the water.

“It’s up to us, now,” he told Lo.

“I’m flying over the continuation of the submarine’s course. Do you have a detection?”

“Yes, four hundred meters ahead. Depth shallow but getting deeper.”

“Drop the Type-12 on my mark.”

Chu cut in the lift-jets and throttled back on the cruise engine, finally matching the submerged submarine’s speed.

“Call it,” Chu said.

“Directly overhead now.”

“Drop!”

“Type-12 away, clear the area.”

Chu throttled up the cruise engine and sped away, waiting for the results of the depth charge.