Voyage of the Devilfish

The SSN-X-27 would have proceeded in this fashion, oblivious to the death throes of its mother ship, if not for the shock wave that travelled at sonic velocity through the water, hitting the missile’s capsule when it was just ten meters short of the surface. But the only effect of the pressure pulse was to force the capsule to the surface a few seconds sooner. The capsule broached. Thirty-two explosive bolts fired the cruise missile’s nosecone into the dark sky of the dawn, the fiberglass tumbling end over end, the faint moonlight, now peeking between the clouds, glinting off its orange surface with each revolution. The computer software, knowing the next command in the sequence, lit a small grain can at the far aft-end of the solid rocket stage. The grain can exploded into incandescence. In a chain reaction, the solid-fuel rocket-motor ignited. Under the influence of almost 100,000 newtons of thrust, the missile lifted itself out of the elongated capsule. The capsule sank from the hot gas reaction forces. The missile flew skyward with an acceleration of four g’s that caused it to reach 600 kilometers per hour within five seconds. Three seconds later the rocket motor cut out. The missile arced over in a ballistic trajectory, feeling zerog at the peak. On the way back down, the first-stage solid rocket-motor blew off from eight explosive bolts at an altitude of 500 meters; it was no longer needed. The intake diffuser popped out of the underside of the missile’s fuselage, ramming in the predawn Atlantic air into the suction box of the axial compressor. The highspeed air windmilled the compressor, spinning up the unit on its near frictionless journal bearings. As the compressor speed came up to several thousand RPM, the computer processing unit amidships sensed that it was time for fuel injection. An air-driven fuel pump, also windmilled by the 400 click airspeed, pressurized the kerosene jet fuel in the fuel lines. The missile measured the pressure buildup in its fuel lines. When the compressor RPM was high enough a solenoid valve in the fuel line popped open, sending the pressurized fuel into the sixcanned combustion chambers. The air in the combustion chamber was very hot as a result of being raised to so high a pressure by the compressor vanes. With the injection of fuel, all that was needed was the lightoff of the chamber spark plugs, and black smoke came out the tail of the missile as the fuel partially burned in the cans.

The missile now activated the six-can spark plugs, the cans instantly coming up several hundred degrees in temperature, and the air fuel mixture burned at a rate just shy of explosion. The hot gases were passed into the turbine connected by a shaft to the compressor — the turbine designed to keep the compressor running during the journey. The hot high-energy gases flew by the turbine and out the missile’s aft nozzle, which sped the gases up to supersonic velocity, creating the reaction thrust. As the exhaust flowed out the nozzle, the missile felt the push of 50,000 newtons of thrust, and the jet engine was self-sustaining. While the missile was injecting fuel into the combustion chamber cans it extended its amidships fins, horizontal square miniwings, then rotated the wings to pull out into level flight. Just in time. Altitude was a mere ten meters above the water.

At 790 kilometers per hour, the 1.1 megaton hydrogen bomb flew toward its target.

USS DEVILFISH

The engine room was the furthest aft compartment of the ship, going from the escape-trunk hatch all the way to the shaft seals near the screw and rudder. The compartment was conical and large, the biggest aboard. It was humid, miserably hot even in the arctic water, from the massive steam pipes threading their way through the space.