Attack of the Seawolf

The number-two periscope, the type-20, was more than a collection of lenses and mirrors. Viewed from the surface, the periscope would look like a telephone pole with an oval window in it. The top of the pole had two large spheres on it, one atop the other, called “elephant balls” for obvious reasons. The elephant balls were highly sophisticated radio receivers able to receive UHF, VHP and HF radio signals and to perform rough direction-finding to the source of a radio transmission. Below the elephant balls was a highly sensitive UHF antenna designed for receiving communications from the COMMSAT communications satellite in orbit above the western Pacific as well as from the NAV SAT geopositioning navigation satellite that enabled them to get a fix to within yards of their actual position. The oval window contained television optics, low-light infrared capability and the laser-range finder, a system designed to beam a narrow laser beam at a surface target to determine the range. For decades before the laser-range finder, submariners had prided themselves on being able to call a vessel’s range by using the division marks on the crosshairs and knowing the masthead heights of various ships. Not only was the laser device considered unneeded, it was unpopular because preliminary reports by U.S. Navy research ships showed that properly equipped warships could detect the laser beam. Being detected robbed a submarine of her one natural advantage — stealth. On the Tampa, and on most other fast-attack submarines, the laser range-finder was disabled, its fuses removed and its breakers locked open to prevent an inadvertent transmission. The whole package of the type-20 scope was shrouded in radar absorptive material, RAM, to lessen the chance of radar detecting them. That left two ways to detect a submarine’s periscope — by sighting the periscope’s vertical wing-shaped fairing that rose to the level of the water, or by an orthogonal-polarized radar that so far as the United States knew was beyond the reach of the Chinese.

Aft of control in the cramped radio and ESM rooms four Chinese-speaking NSA cryptologists listened through headsets to communications from the Chinese mainland surrounding the ship. Wide-band tape recorders captured every word from the dozens of frequencies being scanned and intercepted. Their computers alerted the spooks to the reception of any of the hundreds of key words programmed in, such as missile or nuclear or attack. In the hour since Tampa had arrived on station at Point Hotel, the harvest of communications intelligence had been rich.

A fifth spook collected quick summaries from the other four, writing his situation report that would be transmitted within two hours, assuming no urgent communications were intercepted.

On the surface, the telephone pole of the ship’s number-two periscope protruded four feet above the calm water of the Go Hai, moving north at almost a yard per second, a small foamy wake trailing behind it. It was barely visible in the overcast blackness of the night. No one on shore saw it. No one in a patrol boat or fishing vessel noticed it.

But at 0430 local time, the orthogonal-polarized radar waves began washing over the exposed length of periscope.

DASHENTANG, TIANJIN MUNICIPALITY, BEIJING MILITARY REGION

DASHENTANG PLA RADAR SURVEILLANCE POST

0435 LOCAL TIME

2035 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

Fighter Sai Fu-Ting sat at the console of the orthogonal-polarization radar set in the crude block building in the Dashentang compound housing the P.L.A radar-surveillance corps. Sai was a senior enlisted technician in the P.L.A’s radar corps, but in the theoretically rank less military structure of the P.L.A he was called “fighter,” like any other enlisted man. His uniform also did not indicate his seniority, his olive drab Mao suit jacket buttoned to the top, the red tabs on his collars the only insignia other than the red star on his liberty cap. Sai Fu-Ting was one of the best radar technicians in the platoon. He had taken over the watch on the radar console at 0400 after a night of tossing and turning. With the White Army closing in on Beijing, the radar outpost could be overrun in a matter of weeks. An electronics technician, Sai wondered how he would be in a real fight. Hand-to-hand combat was not something he looked forward to, nor was looking down the barrel of a Kuomintang rifle.

He tried to concentrate now on the screen of the DynaCorp International AN SPY-45 console, the top of-line equipment acquired through an intermediary in the Middle East. At the time of its purchase two years before, the leaders in Beijing had been worried about an invasion of Beijing from the sea, but now that the main worry was a land assault from the White Army, Sai wondered what use the SPY-45 would be.