Voyage of the Devilfish

Pacino felt excitement at an emergency operation, mixed with some disappointment at the timing. Devilfish had spent the last six months on a deployment and had been scheduled for a month of “stand-down”—R and R for the crew. He glanced at his watch — the date on the Rolex’s dial showed the number 13, and abruptly he realized that it was the anniversary of his father’s death on the Stingray. In the rush of battle with Allentown and the flush of victory afterward he hadn’t realized. With the realization now came grief, an old friend, and guilt.

“Admiral, Devilfish has been submerged over 230 days this year. My men have barely had a chance to say hello to their families. Over 120 days without surfacing. Admiral—”

“Sorry, Mikey. You and yours are it.” His tone turned chillier. Donchez dimmed the room lights and pulled a computer keyboard off a shelf on the wall and set it on the briefing table. He hit a key, starting a computerized slide show on the far wall, a television projection driven by a computer display. The COMSUBLANT emblem dissolved into a projection map of the north pole.

“A chart of the Arctic Ocean,” Donchez said. “You’ve been there a few times. The boundary of the ice zone is shown in green.” The chart slowly zoomed in to the Russian northern coast. A city named Severomorsk was highlighted in red. “As you know the Severomorsk Naval Complex is a major shipbuilding facility, ammunition depot and command center for the Russian Northern Fleet, including the biggest and most capable arm of the Navy, the Submarine Force.” The screen changed to a view of the Severomorsk complex. Pacino could tell by the odd slanting lines through the photograph that it was a shot from a spy satellite. On a clear day a satellite could peer over from its path to get side-angle photos like this. The perspective made it much more valuable than the usual God’s-eye-views satellites provided. It was like being there. Clearly visible in the photograph was a giant drydock filled with scaffolding and equipment and the dots of workers. The dock’s immensity could be told from the tiny trucks parked along the security barrier. Cranes on rail wheels surrounded the scaffolding in the dock lowering massive pieces of equipment into place. ‘The old Cold War is over, but submarine-building continues and at a fast pace. We’ve been watching during the past few years as one particular class of submarine has been built. The lead ship of the class is almost ready to get under way. It happens to be the newest, most advanced attack submarine in the world, at least so far as we know.”

“Not much of it to see,” Pacino said, thinking the OP probably involved trailing the new Russian submarine under the polar icecap. The screen changed and Pacino blinked hard. The same perspective but now the clutter had been removed and a behemoth of a submarine was clearly visible in the dock. Her lines were graceful. She would be very fast. The boat had a teardrop-shaped sail forward, not the sheer-sided fin of American boats but a gently sloped bubble leaning forward. Far aft, where the long hull of the boat finally tapered to the screw, a pod shaped like a long teardrop was mounted on top of the rudder fin. Aft of the rudder was a shroud. None of the screw blades was visible. Pacino looked at the ship in frank envy, wondering what it would be like to drive.

“This is the OMEGA-class Russian fast-attack submarine.” The picture changed to a blueprint of the ship, streamlined, her nose and tail sections elongated elliptical curves. Inside the lines of her shape was a second long shape.

“Double hull,” Pacino said, and stood up and walked to the screen to look at the drawing up-close. He concentrated on the gap between inner and outer hull. The Piranha and Los Angeles submarines were single-hull ships. A hole in the skin of an American sub punctured the “people tank,” flooding the ship. A puncture in the skin of the Russian sub would do no real damage. The only disadvantage of the doublehull ship was weight, the extra metal and water would slow the ship down.

“The inner hull of the OMEGA is titanium,” Donchez said. “Strongest submarine-hull material in the world. Outer hull is plate carbon steel. The annulus, the ring, between inner and outer hull is about fifteen feet on the top and bottom, about twenty-five feet on the sides. That’s twenty-five feet of water a torpedo would have to blast through to get to the interior.” Pacino looked at the blueprint’s end-on drawing. The inner hull was cylindrical while the outer hull was oval shaped. The annulus was filled with tanks and air bottles and batteries and piping, all leaving more room inside the pressure hull.

“Omega’s 656 feet long,” Donchez went on, “Eighty-two feet wide, longer and fatter than our Trident. A Trident sub — which I consider to be a giant underpowered hog to drive — is eighteen thousand tons submerged. This ship is sixty thousand tons submerged.”

“She’ll be slow,” Pacino said.