Attack of the Seawolf

When the violent explosion did come the deck jumped several feet upward, throwing the men in the room into the overhead, twenty-one pancakes nipped by a huge skillet. As Murphy lost his footing and was hurled into the periscope pole of the number-two scope he wondered whether the depth charge had broken the ship in half. He slid down the pole of the type-20 periscope, his chin crashing into the curb around the periscope well. A lump was rising from his jaw, the pain momentarily clouding his mind. He pulled himself to his feet, surprised he was still whole, and felt a moment of hope that the ship had likewise survived the explosion. But as the watch standers around him picked themselves up from the deck, something seemed very wrong … the deck wasn’t vibrating the way it should for an ahead-flank speed order.

Murphy looked over at the ship control console to the starboard display panel. The ship’s speed-indicator showed fifteen knots and slowing — they must have sustained a casualty in the propulsion plant. Murphy was turning and reaching for the PA. Circuit Seven microphone when he heard the Seven’s speaker rasp out Lube Oil Vaughn’s voice, harsh in the quiet of the room.

“CONN, MANEUVERING, REACTOR SCRAM, REACTOR SCRAM.”

Murphy clicked the button on top of the microphone and shouted into it.

“Engineer, Captain, what’s the cause?”

“SCRAM BREAKERS TRIPPED FROM THE SHOCK.”

“Engineer, take the battle short switch to battle short and restart the reactor and main engines with emergency heat-up rates and give me propulsion now.”

“CAPTAIN, ENGINEER, COMMENCING FAST RECOVERY STARTUP WITH EMERGENCY HEAT-UP RATES, BATTLE SHORT SWITCH IN BATTLE SHORT ESTIMATE FULL PROPULSION CAPABILITY IN TWO MINUTES.”

Murphy tossed the microphone to the deck and moved over to the Pos One console. The ship was drifting without propulsion power, at least for the next two minutes, but the battery would still allow them to get some weapons into the water. And by the time he had some torpedoes on the way to the skimmers, the reactor would be back in the power range and with luck he could get the hell out of here.

“Weps,” Murphy said to the officer at the Pos Three panel. Lieutenant Chuck Griffin, the Torpedo/ Cruise Missile Systems Officer, “report weapon status.”

“Sir, tubes one through four loaded with war shot Mark 50 torpedoes, all tubes flooded and equalized, all weapons spun up and warm. No indications of problems from the shock of the depth charge. I reinitiated the self-checks. Self-rechecks are all complete, all torpedoes nominal.”

“Good. Open the outer doors on tubes one and two. Select active circler mode, surface-wake homing enabled. Set the astern-default solution for Targets One, Two, Three, Four, high-to-medium passive snake-search pattern.” And into his lip mike: “Sonar, opening outer doors, tubes one and two.”

“Outer doors open, tubes one and two,” from Griffin.

“Solution status, Pos One?” Murphy to Colson, the Pos One console operator.

“All four contacts are within a thousand yards of each other, sir, on the edge of the port baffles, range twenty-three hundred yards, solution quality fair from our course change.”

Murphy looked at the faces of the men surrounding him on the control-room floor below.

“Attention in the firecontrol team. Firing Point Procedures, tubes one and two, horizontal salvo. Targets One, Two, Three and Four.”

“Ship ready, sir,” Tarkowski reported from the aft part of the conn.

“Solution ready, sir,” Colson said.

“Weapons ready, sir,” Griffin called.

“Tube one, shoot on generated bearing,” Murphy ordered, full of the realization that he was about to shoot the first torpedoes in a combat situation since 1945.

“Set,” Colson called, pressing a variable-function key on the Pos One panel, locking in the latest firecontrol solution to the surface warships astern.

“Standby,” Griffin said, pulling the trigger to the STANDBY position. The torpedo in tube one was now seconds away from launch.

“Shoot!” Murphy ordered.

“Fire,” Griffin replied, rotating the trigger to the FIRE position.

A loud thunk sounded from two decks below, followed by a violent crash. The air-driven pneumatic hydraulic ram had just pressurized the water tank around the tube, blasting the weapon from the steel cylinder with a burst of water pressure. The first torpedo was on its way.

“Tube one fired,” Griffin reported.

“Lined up for tube two.”

“Conn, Sonar, own-ship’s unit, normal launch.”

“Tube two,” Murphy commanded, “shoot on generated bearing.”

Again the combat litany sounded in the control room. When Griffin pulled the trigger the second time the crash of the torpedo ejection sounded again, so loud that Murphy’s eardrums ached. He grabbed his nose, closed off his nostrils and blew until the pressure equalized. In the control room the men were doing the same.

“Conn, Sonar, own-ship’s second-fired unit, normal launch.”

“CONN, MANEUVERING, REACTOR’S CRITICAL, READY TO ANSWER ALL BELLS!” the Circuit-Seven speaker blared.