A Richard Rohmer Omnibus, page 45
“Is that Alfa still pinging us?”
“No, sir,” Petty Officer Pratt replied, the earphones back on his head. “They stopped just after the big sound started, just before I gave the earphones to you.”
“But you could hear the pinging over the big sound. It didn’t blank out the pinging.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“What about our back-up sonar?”
Pritchard shrugged. “We’ve tried it, sir. We get the same thing. The big noise, as Pratt calls it.”
Back again in the control room the captain leaned against the periscope shaft as he turned this new information over in his mind. Either there was something wrong with their own sonar gear or there was some strong external force out there producing an overpowering, overriding noise on the white sound frequencies. His memory told him that he had seen an intelligence report some months back. How did it go? The Soviets had been trying out some sort of a noise-generating device in their “race track” testing area in the Barents Sea north of the Kola Peninsula. Intelligence had made no judgment on what the device was for. Just that the defensive hydrophone chain across the Iceland Gap to Norway had picked up short bursts of its sound.
Whether the interference was from an internal fault in the boat’s gear or an external source, way below periscope depth, which was also radar depth, Splendid was blind. Then what about the ship’s inertial navigation system?
“Pilot, is SINS functioning all right?”
The navigation officer appeared startled by the question, even though he had heard the commotion going on about the sonar. “No problem, sir.”
So the navigation system was not affected. But without the sonar, Splendid was not only blind but, as an attack vessel, useless. With its sonar eyes in operation, the attack submarine could do many things. It could act unsupported against surface ships. It was complementary to aircraft and antisubmarine operations in that the long range patrol aircraft “located” the enemy ship, the ship-borne helicopter “pinpointed” and the submarine “destroyed.” By itself the attack submarine was also an extremely good antisubmarine vessel, greatly aided by its ability to carry the biggest and best sonar—because of its size, its powerful nuclear reactor, and its ability to stay submerged for weeks on end. It was capable of firing a variety of weapons from its torpedo tubes in support of a task force such as the flotilla that Splendid was on its way to join in the Arabian Sea. But without the sonar, she could perform none of the functions for which she was built.
Pritchard appeared in the door behind the captain. “Sir, we’ve completed all the checks.”
Leach was certain of what his sonar officer was going to tell him. “And?”
“There’s nothing wrong with the main sonar or the back-up. We’re getting interference from an outside source.”
“That’s probably why the Alfa stopped pinging at us. She’s undoubtedly getting the same big noise. It would blanket her active sonar reception.”
“That’s right, sir,” Pritchard agreed.
“Have your watchkeepers let me know the minute that damn noise disappears—if it does, that is—or if there’s any other change in the situation. You can take back the watch.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
To his first lieutenant, the captain extended an invitation, “Buy you a beer.” Without waiting for Tait’s acceptance, Leach went down the passageway toward the front of the ship to the cramped but comfortable wardroom. It was empty. All the officers not standing watch were down on the deck below in the Junior Ranks’ Mess watching a movie from the ship’s ample library of first-run films. The steward, Joyce, was hovering as soon as they entered his domain. He took their order and immediately produced two lagers. Leach slumped in the corner of the settee that ran along the curve of the ship’s hull. His first lieutenant perched on a small padded chair, his long legs and big feet propped up on another.
“Well, what do you make of it, Paul?” Leach asked.
“Blessed if I know. It must be some diabolical device the Russkis dreamt up.”
“Or the Americans, or for that matter our own research people.”
Tait smiled, “Perhaps. What do you propose to do, sir?” There was no first-name familiarity permitted the first lieutenant. The captain was far senior to Tait. They had never served together in equal ranks and Leach never gave the first name invitation, nor would he.
“I think we should either surface or go to periscope depth, and I think we should do it immediately.” The captain had come to that conclusion before they left the control room, but he wanted to try it on for size with the first lieutenant, out of earshot of the rest of the crew.
Tait was alarmed. “But, sir, going to the surface at night in one of the busiest sea lanes in the world and with no sonar. The chance of collision …”
The captain finished the sentence: “Is very high, I agree. But there’s a chance of collision down here, too. Maybe not as great. We know that there were two subs. The other’s probably an Alfa too, about six miles behind us and closing when the sonar went off. Right now, they’re probably just as blind as we are and they can be right up our jaxy. As long as we’re below periscope depth we have a collision risk. Sure, it may be small, but it’s there. On the other hand, if we run close to the surface, we’ll be able to use our eyes and our radar. The risk of collision will be practically nil.”
“Except when we’re on our way up.”
“That’s right,” Leach acknowledged, “Furthermore, I want to make a signal to Admiralty as soon as possible, telling them what’s happened and asking for instructions.” Leach could not transmit while Splendid was completely submerged. He could only do so if he surfaced or was running at periscope depth with his aerial exposed.
The first lieutenant was still not convinced. “Shouldn’t you wait until first light, sir?”
“I think not.” The captain had made up his mind. He had had only one sip of beer. He put his glass down, reached over his head to the switch on the speaker on the forward bulkhead immediately above him. Turning his face toward the speaker, he pulled down on the switch, saying, “Pilot, this is the captain.”
From the control room, the navigating officer’s voice crackled through the box, “Pilot here, go ahead, sir.”
“What are the surface conditions?”
All ears in the control room listened with curiosity. Why was the old man asking about surface conditions?
“The latest weather report, sir, at 16:00 Zulu [Greenwich mean time]: We’re in a high pressure area. Winds five to six knots from 085 degrees. No cloud cover reported. Sea rolling, almost calm.”
“What’s the temperature?”
“Seventy-eight degrees, sir.”
As he stood up to leave the wardroom, Leach turned to Tait and said, “Good show. It’s a pleasant night up top, Paul. Let’s hope there aren’t any great goddamn tankers up there.”
He was followed into the control room by the first lieutenant. Leach picked up the broadcast microphone and clicked the button twice to test it. He heard the clicking echo throughout the ship, alerting the entire crew that something was coming. Even those who were sleeping wakened, their ears sensitive to the signs of an imminent announcement.
“This is the captain speaking. We will be going to periscope depth in a few minutes and I want to tell you why. Our sonar is unserviceable. It has experienced a most unusual interference from outside the ship in the form of a big noise on the range of frequencies that it’s designed to operate in. The result is that our boat is now blind in the water. By not hearing we can’t see a thing.” He thought he put that fairly well.
He then explained his line of reasoning, as he had to the first lieutenant in the wardroom.
“Everyone should realize there is a risk of collision when we go up blind, at least until we get up to periscope level. At fifty feet, we can take a look around to make sure no bloody tanker is bearing down on us. Most tankers don’t have a draft of fifty feet, so they would pass over us. But these days some of the loaded big ones reach down ninety feet and more. If we have trouble, it will be from one of those. But I’m quite certain nothing’s going to happen. I’m sure that when we get the periscope up I won’t find a ship anywhere. So we’re going to go to periscope depth so we can take a look around and use our radar for anticollision purposes. As soon as the sonar interference is cleared, we’ll dive and go back to normal running procedures.” He concluded by giving them a report on the weather up top. “That’s all. Carry on please.”
He put the microphone back on its storage holder.
Splendid was still running at 500 feet.
“Keep 150 feet.”
“One hundred and fifty feet, sir,” the planesman reported the order pulling gently back on his wheel. The cant of the deck tilted upwards while the blowing of the ballast tanks began. Splendid was headed for the surface.
At the systems console, the first lieutenant, who had taken over from Pritchard, gave a flow of running orders to the watchkeeper controlling the blowing, flooding, and topping of the trim tanks and the blowing of the main ballast tank.
Splendid was rising rapidly.
Leach sat in his chair, listening to the chatter of orders and responses around the control room.
“Two hundred feet, sir.”
His eyes confirmed the figure on the depth gauges.
Slightly nervous, he got up to stand beside the periscope. Time to cut back the speed. If they were going to hit another ship, no sense doing it at full bore. “Half ahead.”
“Half ahead, sir.”
He could feel the propellers and the ship itself slowing down.
“One hundred and fifty feet, sir. Keeping 150 feet, sir.”
He would keep it there for a few moments, making sure that the first lieutenant had the trim and was able to keep her level close to the hard-to-achieve neutral point of buoyancy that would allow her to sit at the desired periscope level so the ship would not pop out of the water. He wanted the glass eye at the top of the periscope to emerge cleanly and stop just about a foot above the surface. In the red glow of the control room, darkened to allow the captain to maximize his night vision, he called, “Keep fifty feet!”
“Keep fifty feet, sir.” A gentle easing back on the control wheel. A shade of ballast blowing.
“Up search periscope!”
Instantly, the thick shaft standing vertical in the middle of the control room responded. Oil pressure rams forced down the unseen wire pulleys that silently moved the binocular and bifocal, high-powered periscope, able to see and search for many miles, upward in a shaft until its eye pieces stopped in front of the waiting face of the captain.
“One hundred feet, sir.”
Leach moved the periscope handles out and down from their stored position. A question went through his mind. Would it be best to stop engines so that Splendid had no forward motion? Would that minimize damage in the event of a collision? He had thought of those questions before and decided against stopping. He reasoned that if his boat was making way at, say, fifteen knots when the periscope first cut the surface of the water, and some great bloody monster of a tanker was bearing down on him, his hydroplanes at fifteen knots would have sufficient bite to bunt the Splendid down the additional fifty feet to get under the biggest tanker’s hull. He would stay with the fifteen knots option.
“Seventy-five feet, sir.”
Leach grabbed the periscope handles turning the shaft until it pointed dead ahead. Then his face clamped into the eye piece.
His voice ranged out through the control room, “Be prepared for emergency dive. If I give the order to dive, just shove the goddamn wheel right through the front!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” came the sharp response from the planesman.
Through the flat, glass eye of the extended periscope, Leach could see nothing but smooth blackness.
“Coming up to fifty feet, sir.”
“Up radar.”
There it was, just a slight tone change in the blackness. A streak of white foam, and phosphorescence, then a new, lighter blackness. The periscope had surfaced, cutting cleanly.
Dead ahead—nothing. A fast turn of the periscope to starboard, sweeping the horizon to ninety degrees. There in the distance, green and white twinkling running lights. No problem.
A quick wheel back to begin a sweep of the port side. He had moved the periscope no more than twenty degrees to port off the bow when he caught the first blazing running light. It was red and close. A swing further to port. A green light!
“Christ, she’s coming right at us!” The words ripped through Leach’s brain. Range? In the darkness and in a split second guess maybe 300 yards.
Leach could hear himself screaming, “Dive! Dive! Dive!”
He felt the boat lurch forward as he slammed up the periscope handle, shouting, “Down periscope! Down radar! Full speed ahead!”
By this time the submarine was approaching the maximum downward dive angle that the riding control systems would permit. In the stern, Splendid’s propeller spun furiously, pushing her faster and faster. The periscope slammed down into its well.
All that could be done was to wait. Wait.
“Sixty feet, sir.” Yes, he knew it was sixty feet. His eyes were glued on the depth gauges, as they moved slower than he had ever seen them before. Seconds clicked by. Sixty-five feet. More seconds. Seventy feet. More seconds. Eighty feet.
He could hear the thumping of the churning screw of the gargantuan tanker, its booming noise reverberating through the hull of the plunging Splendid. Closer and louder came the petrifying, ominous pounding.
More seconds.
Ninety feet. The crescendo of deafening propeller noise shook Splendid from stem to stern. Its thumping beat was the signal of death and disaster for every man of the Splendid’s crew. At the peak of the devastating noise, a long screaming sound could be heard above like the screech of reluctant chalk drawn across a blackboard. That penetrating din lasted for two seconds. Then as quickly as it had started it was gone. Immediately the deafening thunder of the tanker’s engine and screw began to diminish. Slowly, then more rapidly, their throbbing noise disappeared to the north as the distance between the two vessels rapidly increased.
Splendid’s crew, many of them buffeted about by the harsh handling of their boat, knew what had happened, what the brutal noise immediately above them meant, and in fear of their own lives began pulling themselves together. The captain, steadying himself and gathering his wits after that closest of calls, ordered in a calm business-like voice, “Keep 125 feet!”
“Keep 125 feet, sir.”
As the boat’s descent stopped and she leveled off, Commander Leach picked up the broadcast microphone once again. After his usual testing and alerting clicks on the speak button, he said into it, “This is the captain. I think it is obvious to everybody that we’ve just had a narrow escape.”
He heard the words muttered from the planesman, “By a bleeding snatch hair!”
“What I plan to do is this. The area to the west is clear. I checked it first just before I caught the tanker coming in on top of us. We’ll sail west for ten minutes, then surface. There may have been some damage. However, I’m quite certain there are no ships in the area where we’re going to surface next.”
He released the microphone button, shouting forward toward the sonar room, “Any joy on the sonar yet, Pritchard?”
The young officer’s head popped around the doorway. “No, sir, it’s still duff.”
Back into the microphone, “There’s still no joy on the sonar, so we’re going to run on the surface as I earlier advised. Carry on please.”
Ten minutes later, Leach brought his vessel to periscope level. Up went the search periscope. The horizon was clean and clear except for the port and aft running lights of the retreating tanker that had almost killed them.
To the first lieutenant went the order, “Clear. Take her up. Down periscope. Telegraph to stop. Wheel amidships. Planes amidships!”
Splendid was sitting comfortably on the surface of the South Atlantic, rolling gently with the swell. Orders were given to raise and drain the snort mast, to open the lower hatch of the tower and switch on the power and lighting. Before he climbed the rungs of the ladder into the tower, Leach planted his gold-braided hat squarely on his head, telling the messenger of the watch to get him a flashlight. There was something he would have to inspect in the darkness of the tiny bridge, high up the top of the tower. Young Smith was back within twenty seconds.
“Stick it in your shirt and follow me up the ladder.”
The young lad, no more than seventeen, was thrilled to have the privilege of following his captain and to be the first one after him to be up on the bridge. “Aye, aye, sir.”
The call came, “Lights switched on in the tower, sir.”
“How’s the pressure in the boat?”
“No pressure in the boat, sir.”
Smith followed him up the ladder to the top.
“Shine the torch up here, lad.”
In the wavering, strong light Leach took out the two upper hatch hooks and undid both. The hatch swung upward and back easily under the pressure of his right hand.
The captain hauled himself quickly up onto the deck of the small bridge. The steel of the vessel glistened as the sea water ran off through the perforated lattice work of the deck. Leach strained to adjust his eyes to the total darkness, moving rapidly in a 360-degree turn to scan the ebony sea for running lights. There were none except those of their near nemesis, now some miles to the north, its stern superstructure and port lights showing themselves to the master of Splendid.
Leaning down, Leach gave a hand to the young seaman scrambling up behind with the much-needed torch. Behind Smith, whose unsure feet were now solidly on the tower deck, came the first lieutenant with the portable voice pipe and the broadcast extension. Both communications instruments were essential to the sailing of the ship on the surface.
Leach stepped to the rear of the bridge, waiting until Tait was on the deck. He stood in darkness illuminated only by the internal tower lights shining up through the open hatch.
