Battlefield Korea

Hunting in the Atlantic

Captain Yuri Popov was sitting in his captain’s chair, taking a few minutes to read a book that his wife had given him before they left port. He was growing impatient waiting for the American convoy to head towards him, however, the latest satellite intelligence showed that the convoy had finally left New York and should transit through their ambush soon.

Captain 2^nd Rank, Mikhail Borodin, had been the executive officer of the Orel for nearly a year when they set sail three weeks ago. He glanced over at Captain Popov reading a book, and decided to pull out his textbook on naval strategy to study. “It’s such a privilege to sail under such an experienced and respected commander like Popov,” he thought as he got settled. “I’d like to get my own command in the next few years, if the Russian Navy would ever stop decommissioning the submarine fleet… it’s becoming harder to get promoted in a shrinking navy. I don’t know for sure if I will ever be able to follow in my father’s footsteps and have my own ship like he did in the Red Navy,” he lamented.

“Con, Sonar. We have possible surface contacts,” announced the sonar room, breaking up the quiet.

“If NATO knew we had stolen the blueprints to the newest British sonar systems, they would be breaking out in hives,” thought Captain Popov in amusement. The British had developed a new advanced sonar array that could detect ships hundreds of miles away; the Russians had naturally found a way to pilfer the designs rather than invent their own version of this technology. The key to this new sonar system was the intricate software that analyzed the hundreds of acoustical noises and distilled them down to determine which ones were probably manmade noises. Those noises could then be further isolated and analyzed to provide a fairly accurate assessment of what they were looking at.

Captain Popov tucked his book away in his jacket pocket, then turned to one of his officers, “Take us to periscope depth. I want as much targeting data as we can get from the Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite (RORSAT),” he ordered, and the submarine soon began to rise. A few minutes later, the submarine leveled off and the periscope began to ascend. Captain Popov squatted down and performed an awkward circling duckwalk with his eyes glued to the scope as he performed a quick 360° search of the horizon, making sure there wasn’t a ship that had somehow snuck up on them or a helicopter nearby.

Nodding in approval, he ordered, “Raise the periscope the rest of the way up, as well as the detection antenna.”

They had the scope up for less than thirty seconds, just long enough for them to see where the ships were and obtain the targeting solutions they would need from the RORSAT above them.

The captain looked at his communications officer. “Deploy the buoy,” Popov ordered. “I want as much targeting data as possible.”

The Americans and the rest of NATO had been under the assumption that the Russians had ended their RORSAT program shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. However, the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation had worked together to develop a much more accurate means for their navies to track and monitor their mutual enemies. They had even built a system that could use their data to guide their anti-ship cruise missiles to their targets, just as the Americans had done with their satellites.

The tension in the submarine mounted as the reality began to set in that they were about to attack the American Navy. This was something they had all trained for, but most honestly never thought would happen.

“Captain Popov, it looks like they have two destroyers in the lead. One is located here,” explained Captain Borodin, pointing at the location on the map board. The RORSAT had provided them with excellent targeting data. “The other is located here. Looking at the satellite images, it looks like they have one on each flank, one in the center, and one pulling up the rear.”

Popov could see that they had identified the locations of six destroyers. “Where are the Akulas on this map?” he asked.

Borodin brought up the coordinates for the Akulas’ projected locations and plotted them in relationship to the convoy and the destroyers. “They should be right here, just at the outer edge of the left side of the convoy. They are not quite in range of their torpedoes, but they are not that far outside of range either.”

“Weapons-what targeting solutions do you have for our missiles?” Popov asked his weapons officer.

The Orel was equipped with 72 SS-N-26/P-800 "Strobile" anti-ship missiles. Each missile was nine meters in length and their ramjet engines could propel them at a surface speed of Mach 2 (nearly 750 meters a second). Each missile carried a relatively small 250kg warhead, which would detonate shortly after its armored tip punctured the hull or bulkhead of a ship for maximum damage. What NATO did not know about the new Strobile (which came into service with the Russian Navy in early 2017) was that it was fitted with an improved radar homing head. The Strobile used an all-weather monopulse active-passive radar with frequency hopping capabilities, which meant it would be nearly impossible for an adversary to jam its satellite guidance system once it had been launched.

The Russians typically would have stood off and fired their missiles from a range in excess of ninety miles. However, by sneaking up on the convoy and firing them closer, there would be little chance of their missiles being intercepted before they struck their marks. They also needed to create a distraction for the Akulas to get in close and do the real damage with their torpedoes.

The weapons officer had calculated all of this into his response. “Captain, I recommend we launch our first barrage of twenty missiles at this location here,” he said, pointing to a position not far from where they were. “Then I recommend that we move to a new position here,” he explained, pointing to another position roughly thirty-five miles away. “This will allow us to fire off another volley at the American convoy as they move away from the first attack.”

Captain Popov looked at the firing positions thoughtfully. “This should still leave us plenty of time to try and evade the Americans,” he thought, “and it should enable the Akulas to get in their attack… I like the idea of repositioning for a second attack as the convoy tries to escape from the first one. The trick will be making sure that the American anti-submarine warfare helicopters and destroyers don’t find us after we launch our missiles. Once we fire, the Yankees will have a pretty good fix on where we are.”

Nodding in agreement, Popov signaled for his weapons officer to get the missiles ready for launch.

“It’s time to teach NATO a lesson,” he thought, “one they won’t soon forget.”

It took them roughly five minutes to get the ship and the missiles ready to fire. As the ship leveled off at its launch depth, the weapons officer and the captain anxiously watched the launch timer countdown. Ten… seven… four… two… launch! They both turned the launch key as the other weapons officer began to fire off the missiles, one through twenty.

The ship shuddered slightly after each missile was ejected from the vertical launch pods behind the main sail of the submarine. Every two seconds, another missile was ejected from the launch pods to the surface. As each missile broke through the water, its scramjet engine ignited, followed quickly by the nose cone’s stabilizer rockets, which leveled the missile off. The engines quickly brought each missile up to its final speed of just a little over Mach 2 as they began to head towards the convoy. In less than a minute, 20 anti-ship missiles were racing towards the freighters and American escorts, less than 35 miles away.

“Bring us down to three hundred meters. All ahead full speed!” yelled the Captain to his men. They needed to get below the thermal layer and begin to put some distance between themselves and the launch site. The Americans would have spotted roughly where the missiles originated from, and there would surely be a helicopter on its way to try and find them. Now, it was time to see if they were good enough to evade the American Navy and get in position to fire another volley of missiles off.

Captain Gilbert left the bridge to walk down to the Combat Information Center (CIC) and check in on the crew there. He was observing the men and women manning the controls of the AN/SPY-1D 3D Radar and the AN/SQS-53C Sonar Array as they diligently monitored the 3-dimentional perimeter of the convoy. These were the men and women responsible for identifying any potential submarines, air or missile attacks against the convoy, and they would coordinate any necessary defense with the complex Aegis Combat System. He was proud of how well the crew was handling their duties, knowing that a Russian submarine force might be out there, stalking them.

“Man, I wish we had a few submarines with us on this crossing,” Gilbert thought internally as he looked at the protective bubble. He saw several glaring holes in it and he knew he had no chance of patching them up.

It was roughly 1030 hours, another ninety minutes before shift change. The mess hall would start serving lunch soon for those who would be starting their afternoon shifts, while the morning crew would get a chance to get something to eat before starting their daily maintenance work and then sacking out for the evening. Today was the second day of their transatlantic journey, and so far, they had not encountered any Russian subs. Pat was not sure how much longer that would last, but was content to hope that maybe, just maybe, the Russians might not try to interdict his convoy.

Suddenly, one of the petty officers that had been manning the radar system nearly jumped out of his chair. “Vampires! Vampires! Vampires!” he shouted as the threat board on the wall of the CIC suddenly showed one, then two, then dozens of anti-ship missiles as they emerged from the sea.

“Set Condition-1! All hands, man your battle stations. Incoming missiles!” yelled a voice over the 1MC, alerting everyone on the ship that they were under attack.

“Start engaging those missiles! Get our helos airborne and heading to that point of origin now!” bellowed Captain Gilbert as he began to issue orders.

The petty officer manning the ship’s RIM-156 SM-2 missiles immediately began to target the incoming missiles.

The crew sent a flash message to the freighters, telling them to go to maximum speed and begin to take evasive maneuvers. Another flash message was sent to Norfolk, letting them know they were under attack.

As the ship moved to battle stations, the engine began to rev up to full speed as the Churchill began to make best speed towards the launch point of the enemy missiles and position themselves between the missiles and the convoy.

“Do we know what type of missiles are coming at us?” asked one of the targeting officers in the CIC.

A petty officer manning one of the radar terminals answered. “They appear to be… crap. They are the new SS-N-26 ‘Strobile’ missiles,” he said as he looked up at the officer who had asked the question.

Another petty officer explained, “The missiles are hitting their terminal speed, Mach 2. Three of the missiles appear to be heading right for the Gravely. They are engaging them with their missiles and point defense systems right now.”

“The Mahan is steaming straight for the suspected launch site and engaging the enemy missiles with their SM-2s and Close-In Weapons System (CIWS),” shouted Lieutenant Sheehan, one of the CIC battle managers.

Over on the bridge, LCDR Brewster was also involved in responding to this attack. From her vantage point, she could see in the distance that both the Mahan and the Gravely were firing off their missiles as quickly as they could to intercept the Russian missiles. Seconds later, she could hear the roar of their MH-60 Seahawk helicopters as they gained altitude and raced towards the location where the enemy missiles had been launched from. She assumed the other helicopters in their convoy were also converging on that point as well.

The ship began to shudder as their own frontal vertical launch tubes began to spit out a series of SM-2s from the Churchill’s forward magazine, heading straight for the incoming missiles. The Gravely was still several miles in front of their position, but they could see the enemy missiles now converging on the convoy. The Gravely’s CIWS system began to throw a wall of depleted uranium rounds at the incoming missiles, scoring a hit on two of them. As they exploded a few thousand feet in front of the ship, they sprayed the ship with a layer of shrapnel.

The third missile that had been targeted at the Gravely flew right past the ship’s 5-inch gun and plowed into the forward superstructure, one deck below the bridge. The armor penetrator on the missile combined with the super-sonic speed upon impact, forced the missile warhead to punch nearly ten feet into the ship before its 250 kg. warhead exploded well inside the ships CIC, instantly killing everyone in it.

A large fireball burst from the superstructure, and was visible several miles away from the impact. The side walls of the front superstructure exploded outwards, adding to the debris and shrapnel. Fire erupted from the various holes in the forward part of the ship as the vessel began to lose power and came to a stop, billowing black smoke and flames into the air.

LCDR Brewster lifted her hand to her mouth in shock. She couldn’t believe what she had just seen. It was too surreal. Then the loud thunderclap of the explosion rocked the Churchill, shaking it with the force of the soundwave. Another series of explosions could be seen and heard rolling in as nearly a dozen SM-2s found their marks. She looked to her left just in time to see the freighter Anne Marie take a direct hit from one of the missiles, right at the waterline. A sizable hole was punched through by the impact.

One of the officers on the bridge of the Churchill was speaking to the CIC when he suddenly yelled, “Everyone, brace for impact!”

In that second, they heard their own CIWS open fire. A loud boom echoed through the halls as fragments of the missile that had just been streaking towards them disintegrated from the hail of bullets that it had just flown into. The ship took a few minor hits from the flying debris, but it did not appear that it had caused any significant damage other than hurting the paint job.

In less than five minutes, the sudden and violent attack was over. Captain Gilbert came running up to the bridge from the CIC and immediately grabbed one of the pairs of binoculars and began to scan the horizon through the windows. He searched the horizon around them, looking to see which of the ships had been hit. He quickly confirmed what had been reported to him by the CIC; the Gravely had been hit, along with five freighters. In all, they had intercepted 14 of the incoming missiles.

The Captain grabbed one of the mics. “Sonar, Bridge. Do you have anything on sonar? There may be additional submarines out there trying to sneak up on us.”

“Bridge, Sonar. We are moving too fast to tell. If you can slow us down and redeploy the towed array, we can see if we can spot anything,” the sonar group reported.

Pat could see off in the distance that one of the helos was dipping his sonar into the water, trying to see if he could get a fix on the enemy submarine that just carried out this attack. “Slow the ships down, and get the towed array back online,” Captain Gilbert ordered. “We need to figure out if there are additional submarines in the area.”

Then he turned to his communications officer. “I want a full report from the escorts,” he ordered. “Get their helicopters airborne and start actively pinging away. We need to see if there are any other submarines nearby.” He had a sickening feeling that the attack was not over.

Five minutes later, an urgent call brought everyone back to a state of heightened alert.

“Bridge, Sonar,” came a voice over the mic. “We have contact bearing 204, eight miles, depth three hundred meters. It’s an Akula…” Seconds later, he yelled, “Torpedoes in the water! We count six torpedoes!”

Several of the officers on the bridge immediately shifted their gaze in the direction of the new threat to see what ships were over there. To their horror, they saw the amphibious assault ship, the USS Essex. The Essex was carrying 1,800 US Marines and their full complement of equipment.

“Send a flash message to the Essex and let them know that they have torpedoes in the water heading towards them,” ordered the Captain.

“Bridge, Con. We have six more torpedoes in the water. Bearing 318, nine miles out,” the CIC reported.

Captain Gilbert let loose a string of obscenities, speaking to no one in particular; he just needed to vent his anger. “Bridge, CIC. We have an anti-submarine rocket (ASROC) firing solution on one of the subs.”

The Captain nearly ripped the mic off the hook and yelled down to the CIC, “Fire now! Take that sub out!”

A second later, the ASROC fired and began to head towards the direction of the submarine. Off in the distance, they saw several additional ASROCs fire from the other escort ships. Two of the helos also dropped their own ASW torpedoes.

LCDR Brewster turned to look at the Essex in time to watch two of the torpedoes impact against the side of the ship. A huge geyser of water shot up in the air, intermixed with heavy black smoke and flames. She could see the ship rock slightly from the impact; then it began to lose speed and started to list to one side. Dark smoke and flames continued to billow forth from several areas of the ship.

The Anne Marie, which had already taken a hit from one of the anti-ship missiles earlier, was also struck by a torpedo. The ship had already starting to list slightly from the previous blow; now it began to tilt more heavily to one side as water began to rush into the new whole, courtesy of the Russian Navy. The Anne Marie was starting to go down quickly.

“Bridge, Sonar. We can hear multiple impacts against a sub’s hull. We are hearing crush sounds. We got them!” they yelled excitedly.

No one on the bridge felt excited though. As the officers and enlisted men and women looked out the bridge windows, they saw nearly a dozen ships had smoke billowing from them.

“Order the helos to begin rescue operations. Deploy our own rescue boats and let’s start to get our people out of the water,” the Captain ordered.

The other two amphibious assault ships had thankfully survived unscathed, and immediately began to deploy their helicopters to the Essex to try and help the men evacuate off the ship. In the meantime, the crew of the ship desperately tried to save her from sinking; the vessel continued to list to one side, but was still level enough for its helicopters to operate.

Captain Popov was both elated at the success of their attack and disheartened at the loss of both Akulas. After they had launched their cruise missile attack, the American destroyer escorts had come after his ship with a vengeance. They probably would have been caught had the Akulas not launched their attacks. However, once the Americans realized the two Russian subs had snuck up inside the convoy, it was too late to stop them.

When the Orel raised his communications buoy to the surface twenty minutes ago, they received a burst message from their RORSAT, providing them with a detailed view and disposition of the NATO convoy. They could clearly see one of the American amphibious assault ships had been heavily damaged; a guided missile destroyer was also heavily damaged, and so were two other freighters. From the images, and what their sonar was able to piece together, they were able to determine that seven freighters had been sunk by the Akulas torpedoes, while two others had been sunk from their own cruise missile attack.

Thinking for a minute on how to proceed next, Popov looked at the map of the north Atlantic. They had three options: they could make their way back to their home port and take on supplies and rearm, they could move to a better position and try to attack the convoy a second time, or they could move towards New York Harbor and launch an attack on the shipping along the US East Coast.

Tracing his fingers across the map to a point not far from their current location, he ordered, “Let’s reposition here. This places us roughly 60 miles from the three damaged ships, and 72 miles from the rest of the convoy. If we launch a barrage of twenty missiles at those damaged ships, we should be able to sink them. We can launch the remainder of our missiles at the rest of the convoy. The Americans only have five escort ships left that can engage our missiles, so more of them should get through this time.”

One of the weapons officers asserted, “I know this is risky, but I believe we should raise our targeting radar mast before we launch. This way we can get a positive lock on the critical ships in the convoy and then target our remaining missiles to attack them.”

Captain Popov also raised an eyebrow at the suggestion. “Please elaborate,” he asked.

“Captain. The convoy has four large medium-speed roll-on/roll-off ships, which are most likely transporting main battle tanks and other heavily-armored vehicles to Europe. I recommend that we focus a large number of our missiles at these ships. They also have several large dry cargo transport ships with the fleet, along with two additional Wasp class amphibious assault ships. My point is, there are a lot of cargo ships and freighters in the convoy, but some of them are a lot more valuable than others. It is my recommendation that we focus our attack on the high value ones Captain,” the young targeting officer explained.

As the Captain and the XO listened to him talk, they could see his idea had merit. They could not stop the convoy. With the loss of both Akulas, this was probably going to be their best chance at hurting NATO. They were not likely to get replacements for the two Akulas that were lost. Most of the fleet’s submarines were in the North Sea, preventing the Americans from moving a carrier battle group into the Baltic Sea.

The Captain nodded his head in agreement.

“OK. We’ll move forward with your plan. How long will you need the radar operational to identify, and target the specific ships you mentioned?” asked Popov, hoping they would not need it up very long. Once they activated their radar, the Americans would be able to zero in on them quickly.

“Operating in conjunction with the RORSAT, we shouldn’t need more than one pass. Once the coordinates are locked in, the RORSAT will help guide them to the targets,” the targeting officer said with confidence.

The group of officers smiled at the thought of being able to sink a few more ships.