Operation Ivy Bells, page 10
“Shut down the sidescan every fifteen minutes for a complete sonar sweep,” I suggested. “And clear the baffles during the sweep.”
“That often, you think?”
“This is their lake, Skipper. Better safe than sorry. The last thing I want is for my guys to be deployed when they find us.” That’s the one that gave me nightmares.
“Good point. I’ll put it in the Standing Orders.” He reached for his Standing Orders notebook and outlined the procedure for shutting down the sidescan and clearing the baffles every fifteen minutes. It would be a bit tedious, but it came with the territory.
“Sonar, Conn, what’s your status?”
“Clear board, Conn. No contacts. We lost Bravo-one in our baffles.”
“Roger. Activate sidescan.”
As the display lit up, I could see the bottom was dropping away. “Right full rudder, I ordered to clear our baffles. “Check the baffles, Sonar.”
As the boat swung, Sonar reported nothing. Apparently the warship had turned the corner for home. “Rudder amidships. Make your depth sixty feet.”
I raised the scope and checked the landscape as we leveled at sixty feet. “There’s a glow in the sky – mark this bearing,” I said as I saw an eerie glow low on the horizon.
“Two-six-five,” Parrish reported. He went back to his chart table. “I think that’s the Alaid Volcano on Atlasova.”
“That’s a pretty healthy glow,” I said as I handed the scope to the Skipper so he could take a look. “How far is it?”
“The base is about fifty-five miles away, but it’s over a mile high, so you should be able to see the glow if it’s bright enough.”
“Sounds like it,” the Skipper said as he made a full sweep.
And that was it for the night. We turned toward the west for a stretch to gain a bit of clearance around the tip of Kamchatka, and then set a course just west of north, paralleling the western Kamchatka coast. We moved slow and easy, because the Skipper wanted to start looking for tell-tale coastal signs of a marine cable at dawn, and he didn’t want to get too far north before commencing our search.
CHAPTER TWELVE
USS Halibut – Off the West Coast of Kamchatka
As dawn climbed up the eastern slopes of the Kamchatka central ridge, I approached the chart table in Control where the boat’s Navigator, Lieutenant Commander Larry Jackson, and the Skipper were poring over the annotated Admiralty chart of the Sea of Okhotsk we had received from NSA – the National Security Agency. Each corner was prominently stamped in red: TOP SECRET – SPECIAL PROJECTS. A couple of temporary curtains shielded the chart table from curious eyes, and draped over the table edge was an opaque cover sheet that could be flipped over the chart when it wasn’t in use.
Our track during the night traced back to the strait we had entered on my watch several hours earlier. For the last two hours we had been angling toward the coastline. I could see that the bottom was shallowing. The Skipper wanted to remain outside the three-mile limit – just in case. We were there, three miles from the beach, three miles off the small community of Ozernovskiy. The sidescan was running. It showed the bottom about 300 feet beneath us. We were at 100 feet.
The Skipper had the Conn, while leaving the Deck in Weaps’ capable hands – Josh Friedman (Weapons Officer).
“Exactly what are we looking for, Skipper?” I asked, leaning over the chart with them.
The Skipper grinned at me. “We’re looking for a sign in Russian that is the equivalent of the signs you see all over Chesapeake Bay that say, “Don’t anchor here! Underwater cable!” The Skipper was from Tidewater, Virginia, and knew the bay like the back of his hand. “The only problem is, in the morning we’re looking east, and the sun can glint off our optics, giving us away to any observer. Nothing high-tech about it,” he said with a smile, and stepped into the Conn.
“Give me a heading, Nav,” the Skipper asked.
“Three-five-zero, Conn.”
“Contacts, Sonar?”
“We’re clean, Conn.”
“Make your depth sixty-five feet.” The Skipper didn’t want any more scope sticking out of the water than necessary.
“Mark your depth”
“Seven-five feet – rising slowly.”
“Easy, Diving Officer, easy. Up scope.” As the scope came up, the Skipper commenced a full sweep.
“Seventy…sixty-nine…sixty-eight…”
“Easy…”
“Sixty-five feet and holding.”
“Sun’s still below the peaks. One-foot waves. Bring her up a foot.”
“Sixty-four feet, Sir.”
“OK – hold that. Go down if you have to, but not above sixty-four.” The Skipper made another sweep. “Horizon clear.” Then he concentrated on the shore off the boat’s starboard side, sweeping slowly from stern to bow. Then he started back. Suddenly he flipped up the handles. “Down scope!” He stepped back from the scope as it lowered into the well. “Take her down to a hundred feet,” he ordered, and added, “Sun’s up.”
“Batman to Control,” the Skipper ordered on the 1MC.
“Yes Sir.” Lonie arrived in Control slightly winded.
“How quickly can you launch the Fish?”
“’Bout fifteen minutes, Sir.”
“OK – prepare the Fish, and let me know when you’re ready.”
The Skipper and Nav hunched together over the chart table. The Skipper was moving his finger parallel to the coast for several miles, then back. “Five knots,” the Skipper said. Nav picked up his pencil and parallel rule and laid out a series of courses. Twenty minutes later Lonie notified Control that they were ready to launch the Fish.
“Commence Fish ops,” the Skipper announced on the 1MC. “Sonar, secure the sidescan.” The Halibut’s sidescanning sonar would interfere with the higher definition, more accurate sidescan on the Fish.
As the Fish winched out from the reel in the Aquarium lower lock, an image began to appear on the monitor. We were looking for a straight line that crossed our path at right angles. The Fish also contained a video camera and a high-speed film camera, but there was no need to use either of these until we knew we had something to look at.
We sailed several miles north, and then made a slow turn so the Fish could track behind us, then moved a mile further out, and headed back south. About noon, as I was coming on watch, the Skipper ordered the sub to periscope depth again to check the position of the sun.
“We’re good to go,” he announced, and turned the Conn over to me. I had already assumed the Deck from Josh.
“Make your depth one-hundred-fifty feet,” I ordered. As we settled at depth and while the Fish was still reeling back onboard, I said to Gunty, who now had the Nav Watch, “Take me back to where we left off this morning, Nav.” As soon as the Fish was aboard, I pointed the sub in the right direction, cranked on a few extra turns, and headed for the point offshore from Ozernovskiy that we had abandoned when the sun came up. I activated the sidescan as a precaution, since we really didn’t have good bathymetric information on this area.
As we approached, I checked the contacts with Sonar, and then ordered, “Make your depth sixty-five feet.” Since I didn’t know the surface conditions, I wanted the scope as low as possible. I swept around as we came up, broke the surface, and saw nothing. I set a course parallel to the coastline and commenced a careful scan of the area from the water to the back of the beach. There was virtually nothing to see. The beach was bare, even close to Ozernovskiy. The plant life beyond the rocky beach was mostly a scrappy tundra bush not unlike sage interspersed with short, spiky green grass. It was a lot greener than I had expected.
But signs announcing an underwater cable…nada…zippo…nothing.
By the end of my watch we had moved some twenty miles up the coast, and seen nothing. We passed the mouth of a small river, but no boats, no people, no animals, no nothing…
I got relieved from watch, decided to have some well-deserved shut-eye, and the next thing I know it was dinner time, a movie in the Wardroom, and then back on watch again. I had gotten into a routine that kept me either in Control, in the Wardroom, in the Dive Locker, or in my rack, not necessarily in that order. During afternoon hours, the Skipper let some of the senior crew members take turns on the scope. No harm done, and maybe one of them would be the hero who spotted the telltale sign.
After dark we towed the Fish, back and forth…back and forth…back and forth…
We kept up this routine for several days, and were making pretty good progress up the coast, especially since the weather had turned, and the skies were cloudy. This meant we could start scanning the beach at daybreak without fear of the sun reflecting off the periscope lens, and could continue all day. By the end of daylight on day five we were 500 miles up the coast as I took over the watch from Josh.
The seas had picked up quite a bit. Josh gave me the boat at sixty feet, because the waves were peaking at five feet or more. He told me the last hour had been pretty difficult for looking ashore, but he was certain he had missed nothing. In any case, it was getting dark, so I prepared to commence Fish runs. I took her down to a hundred feet and ordered the Fish deployed.
It started out routine, a repeat of the last four days. About an hour later I had moved a mile further out and was working on the first reverse leg. I had just commenced clearing baffles in accordance with the Skipper’s Standing Orders when Sonar called me.
“Conn, Sonar, I’ve got a contact bearing two-five-five, zero bearing drift. Designate Golf-one.”
That part about bearing drift was important. Normally, there always is some relative motion between two ships at sea. There are only three exceptions: if the two vessels are on a collision course so that their relative bearings don’t change until they slam together (or pass under and over if one is a sub); if they are opening one another on a constant bearing, exactly the opposite of a collision course; or if they are paralleling each other with identical course and speed. In every other case, the relative bearing from one to the other will change.
“Sonar, Conn. Is this guy opening or closing?” Sonar can frequently tell because of increasing or decreasing sound intensity.
“Don’t know yet, Conn. It’s pretty noisy out there with the storm and everything. He just showed up on this bearing.”
I stepped over to the chart table and examined the chart, looking at our position and the vector of Golf-one. I traced back along our track to the point where we first heard Golf-one. Sure enough, the bottom shallowed up significantly on that vector. He could have been out there for quite a while, but his sound got lost in the storm noise. The shallower water channeled the sound in our direction, so we picked him up.
“Do you know what he is, Sonar?”
“A trawler, we think, maybe pulling a net.”
“How far out, Sonar?”
“Two, three miles, maybe. With no bearing drift, it’s kinda hard to tell.”
The last thing we needed was to get tangled in a net again. “Make turns for three knots,” I ordered. I would give Sonar a bearing drift.
“Golf-one’s started to pull ahead, Conn.”
“Get me a range as soon as you can.”
“Conn, Sonar, he’s slowing – zero bearing drift again.”
How could that be? I thought about it for a bit. But just for a bit – then I got it. I grabbed the sound-powered handset and called the Bat Cave. “Shut down the Fish now!” I ordered. “Reel it in as fast as you can.” Then I called the Skipper to tell him what I was doing. It’s his boat, remember?
I checked the depth – 300 feet. That left 200 feet below our keel. I checked the chart table. In the next mile out the bottom dropped another 300 feet. I called the Bat Cave again. “When will the Fish be back on board?” I asked.
The Skipper showed up and handed me a cup of coffee. “The way you like your women,” he grinned at me.
“Thanks, Skipper. This guy’s tracking our Fish. Sonar says he’s a trawler, but I don’t know any trawler that can do that.”
I answered the high-pitched whir of the sound-powered phone, “Conn.”
“The Fish is aboard, Sir.”
“Right full rudder,” I ordered. “Ten degrees down bubble. Make your depth two-hundred fifty feet.” As the sub began to turn I said, “Steer two-seven-zero.”
As we headed out and down I told Sonar to check the depth.
“Two-hundred fifty feet, Sir.” That was our depth.
“Three-hundred feet below the keel, Sir.” That was the depth.
“Make your depth five-hundred feet.” With all the cold fresh water flowing into the Sea of Okhotsk, there simply had to be a distinct layer down there somewhere. We needed to get below it fast.
“Passing four-hundred feet.”
“Conn, Sonar. We’re passing through a very distinct layer. We’re talking about a ten-degree temperature gradient here.”
And that was a good thing. It probably was caused by the river run-off from the Kamchatka coast. The cold fresh water would tend to float on the saline seawater. The temperature and density difference at the interface would act very much like a mirror, reflecting sound back in the direction from which it came. This meant that I could get the Halibut under the layer, and our sounds would tend to remain below the layer. Since the other guy was on the surface, the only way he could hear us would be to lower hydrophones below the layer. He could do it, of course, but it would take time. That would allow me to get sufficiently far away that he would be unlikely to hear me, even with hydrophones below the layer.
So I cranked it up a bit, added a few turns, and took her down deep. The skipper arrived in Control as I settled back to evaluate the situation.
“Conn, Sonar, we’ve got a pinger out there; active sonar, characteristic of a Soviet destroyer. Bearing two-eight-zero.”
I turned to the Captain. “He’s going to have trouble finding us with this layer, Skipper, if he doesn’t get too close.” I walked over to the chart table and pointed to the northern end of Kamchatka, just south of the Gulf of Shelikhov. “I recommend we high-tail it up here, and work our way back south.” I pointed across the narrow neck that separated the Sea of Okhotsk from Shelikhov Bay. “You said the cable probably crosses here, so maybe we can save some time while we get out of this guy’s back yard.”
The Skipper spent some time at the chart table laying out possible courses with Larry Jackson. After several minutes he returned to his stateroom.
Larry looked up from the chart table. “Recommend a depth of six-hundred feet, and a course of three-two-zero,” he said, putting me on the track he and the Skipper had worked out.
We cruised at 600 feet for about a half hour. Suddenly Sonar announced, “Conn, Sonar. We got the pinger again. It’s somewhere in the baffles.”
“Left twenty degrees rudder,” I ordered immediately. “Make turns for five knots.” I could feel the boat slowing right through the deck plates.
“I got him, Conn!” The Sonar Tech sounded excited. “Right behind us…I mean, right behind us on our old course. That’s one-four-zero, Conn.”
“Rudder amidships,” I ordered, “What’s your heading?”
“Steering two-three-five, Sir,” the helmsman said.
“Steer two-three-five,” I ordered. “Sonar, Conn, what is this guy? I don’t think he’s a trawler.”
“He’s starting to look like a Kashin-class destroyer, Sir.”
That was good news or bad news, depending on how old he was. Most of these ships had been built about ten years ago, in the early sixties, which made them pretty new and effective by any standards. The older ones are pretty basic, gas turbine powered, missile-firing warships. A couple of years ago, however, the Soviets upgraded about half of this class. The newer ones had the latest towed array sonar and an anti-submarine helicopter with dipping sonar – definitely bad news for us. The towed sonar array is basically a towed cable containing a hydrophone every few yards. It’s a passive device, but because of its long baseline and distance from the tow ship’s noise, it can get very good range information. The variable depth or dipping sonar allows the ship to place its active transducer below the layer, which would make us a sitting duck.
“Captain to the Conn!” I announced on the 1MC, “Captain to the Conn!”
The Skipper showed up shortly. “What is it, Mac?”
I briefed him on the situation, reminding him that this guy could have towed sonar and an anti-sub chopper.
“Captain has the Conn,” he announced. And on the 1MC, “Rig ship for ultra quiet.”
This meant that if you didn’t have anything important to do, you got in your rack. All work stopped except what was absolutely essential.
“Shift to the battery,” the Skipper ordered. “Make turns for bare steerageway.”
The Skipper was serious. In less than two minutes steam was no longer driving the turbines, because Maneuvering had shut down the whole steam cycle. The reactor was still critical, but it was in idle, and was no longer making steam. Silent electric motors took over the task of turning the screws, and they were barely turning. Throughout the sub lights dimmed, leaving only essential lights lit.
I told the Skipper, “I’ll step into Sonar to check this guy out.” He nodded his assent.
The Skipper donned a headset with a boom mike. “Sonar, Conn. What’s the status?” he asked, not wanting to make any noise by using the intercom system.
I stepped into the Sonar Shack. Senior Chief Travis Barkley ran the Sonar gang, but he had the Dive this watch. Petty Officer First Class Royal Bennett – “King” to everyone – was the Sonar Supervisor. “What’s up, King?” I asked him.
He handed me a headset with an earpiece turned outward. I put it to my ear and listened as the operator on the console centered on the contact. I could hear the relatively faint double screw sound, interrupted by a periodic faint ping. I donned a boom-mounted headset and listened to King brief the Skipper. He explained that the pinger had been masking his screws, in order to sound like a trawler.
