Battlefield Taiwan

Battle in the Atlantic

The weather was terrible this time of year in the North Atlantic. The waves were larger, and the winds were stronger. The winter storms made flying nearly impossible. The constant rolling and pitching of the decks of the destroyers and icing made it difficult to run continuous anti-submarine warfare operations like they needed to. While the Allies had sunk fourteen Russian submarines in the Atlantic since the start of the war, there were three Oscar II-class submarines that were wreaking havoc on the supply convoys. The introduction of the SSN-26/P-800 “Strobile” anti-ship missiles had come as a rude shock to the US Navy.

While they had known of the missiles’ existence, they had assumed the Russian Navy would have stuck with their older P-700/SS-N-19 “Shipwreck” missiles. The older missiles carried a significantly larger warhead, but their guidance and targeting system was also easier to spoof, which was why they had been phased out. While the SSN-26s carried a smaller warhead, their hit rate hovered around 40 %, and the fact that they could engage a convoy from as far away as 600 kilometers made them incredibly hard to counter.

Following the opening salvos of the war, the three Oscar IIs had strung themselves across the most likely sea lanes the convoys would travel and then waited for their prey to arrive. When the targeting satellites identified a convoy, the Oscars would maneuver themselves to the flanks of the convoy and then engage them once they had entered the kill box. Because each Oscar could carry seventy-two missiles, they could likely score between 80 and 90 hits against the convoy. Until the Allies could increase the number of ships protecting the convoys and intercept the barrage of cruise missiles, the losses would continue. The only saving grace was the fact that once the Oscars had launched their attack, it would take them close to three weeks to rearm and get back on station to repeat the process.

As the Churchill slid down the trough of yet another large wave, Captain Gilbert expertly shifted his hand to ensure that not a single drop of his Calle San Juan Costa coffee would go to waste. Lifting his mug to his mouth as they rode the next wave up, he savored the sweet-toned Costa Rican java.

“I’m going to miss riding the waves in a destroyer when the Navy does finally retire me,” Patrick thought.

The others on the deck appeared more like they were holding on for dear life as they crested yet another large wave. At least the weather report said things should be clearing out of the area shortly; they just had to ride out a few more hours of rough weather.

After the first two NATO convoys had been savagely attacked, the Navy had seen fit to give Captain Gilbert command of twelve escort ships: seven American, one French, two Canadian and two British frigates and destroyers. Now that he had a proper security detail, he had also been given a World War II-sized convoy to protect. His twelve escorts were now protecting 107 tankers, freighters, transports and other heavy roll-on, roll-off ships, which were transporting the tanks and other heavy armored vehicles needed for the war effort. The US and NATO were gearing up for a big action in Europe, and that meant the NATO supply convoys were going to be busy.

Lieutenant Commander Tiffany Brewster, Gilbert’s second-in-command, was really looking forward to their next port of call. The end destination for this particular convoy was Antwerp, Belgium. She was bent on trying one of these famous Belgian beer tours.

“There may be a war going on, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find something to entertain ourselves with,” she thought as she entered the bridge.

She needed to speak with the captain about the approach to the English Channel. When she entered the bridge and saw the captain showing off his skills by drinking coffee on choppy seas without losing a drop, she chuckled.

“He’s such a ridiculous coffee snob,” she thought with a smile, “but at least he shares his good coffee.”

When they finished cresting the wave, she got his attention. “Captain Gilbert, we just received a message from one of the P-8s flying out of England. They said they have a possible contact at bearing 133, fifty-two miles. They are requesting that we send a ship to check it out.”

“You could have just called the bridge to let us know that; no need to make a special trip up from the command information center,” he replied.

“If I did that, Sir, I wouldn’t have been able to witness how a true coffee connoisseur balances his java between the troughs,” she replied with a wry grin. “Plus, I needed to stretch for a minute—”

As she was about to say something further, a message came in from their lone French ship, the D654 Auvergne. “Bridge, CIC. We just received flash traffic from the Auvergne of a possible underwater contact at bearing 257, ten miles from our current position,” the voice from the command information center announced.

Lieutenant commander Brewster immediately turned around and ran back to the CIC. Captain Gilbert turned to the watch officer and ordered, “Set Condition One! Man battle stations for possible underwater contact.”

A couple of the destroyers and frigates nearby converged on the possible enemy contact.

A few seconds later, Captain Gilbert heard LCDR Brewster’s voice over the intercom. “Bridge, CIC. We have multiple torpedoes in the water. Auvergne has reported they are engaging the underwater contact.”

On the K-560 Severodvinsk, Captain Rubin Malahit’s hand involuntarily shook a bit from nerves as the NATO convoy continued to approach their ambush. Two days ago, the joint Russian-Chinese RORSAT had tracked the projected path of the convoy, giving a high probability of crossing their current positions. Russian naval command had immediately looked at the current locations of their submarine force and begun to move the various subs into place to maximize their chances of really hurting NATO. The Severodvinsk had immediately been ordered to trek 243 kilometers to the position they currently found themselves in.

Looking at the map of the current NATO positions, Rubin could see the hour of attack was nearly upon them. He looked up briefly and saw his executive officer approach him.

“Sir, the other submarines should be in position to launch their attacks shortly,” he said, confirming what the captain already knew.

Several Akula submarines would attack the convoy escorts to distract and move the escort ships towards them, while Captain Malahit and the captain of the other Yasen-class submarine were ordered to slip inside the convoy and begin to deal the real damage. Of course, the attack was also supposed to be coordinated with the Oscar ships that were also operating nearby.

“Everything sounds good on paper, until you actually have to coordinate things,” Malahit thought.

Just as he was about to issue a set of orders, one of the sonar operators yelled, “Torpedoes in the water!” In that instant, everyone turned to look at him to determine if the torpedo was heading towards them or another target.

“It’s from one of the Akulas. They’re engaging a destroyer,” he explained.

A string of obscenities jumbled in Malahit’s head. “I knew this was going to be impossible to coordinate,” he cursed inwardly. “The Akula engaged the escorts far too early. The other submarines are not in position yet, and my boat is still too far out to penetrate the convoy’s protective perimeter.”

The captain turned to face the bow of the ship. “Helm, move us ahead two-thirds. Make our depth two hundred meters.”

Then, he turned to face his weapons officer. “Find me targets. We’re only going to get one shot at the enemy, and I want to make it count.”

A flurry of activity both above and below the waves played out as numerous Allied warships started to head in the direction of the Akula, which was now acting as bait. Twenty minutes went by… more torpedoes were launched by both sides.

An American submarine joined the fray and appeared to have a torpedo with a solid track on the Russian sub. Then, a second Akula launched a pair of torpedoes at the American sub, which forced them to shift their focus from hunting to evading the new threats heading towards them. While the waters churned with activity, the Severodvinsk moved in for the kill.

“How far away are we?” the captain inquired.

“Sir, we’re now less than 3,000 meters from the first group of transports, with the nearest potential threats over 15,000 meters from our current position,” one of the sonar operators responded.

“It’s now or never,” Captain Malahit thought. He turned to his weapons officer and issued the final order. “Fire torpedoes one through six!”

As soon as the sub had rocked with the launching of the torpedoes, the captain turned and yelled, “Increase speed to 20 knots and drop us down another 100 meters! Let’s put some more distance between us and the launch point of the torpedoes!”

Silently, they tracked the torpedoes as they moved towards their targets. The captain had only held two of their torpedoes in reserve, in case they encountered a threat that would require them to engage. The remaining six torpedoes sped towards their unsuspecting targets. After a breathless wait that felt like forever, the torpedoes homed in on their prey. One by one, they exploded against the hulls of the freighters and tankers that had been delivering the much-needed supplies to NATO.

The CIC of the Churchill was abuzz with activity as Captain Gilbert looked at the map of the battlespace and had that sickening feeling that, once again, he would be the commander of yet another ambushed convoy. As his lone French destroyer took off after an Akula submarine, one of his own American destroyers chased down a second one. Then, the radar screen began to populate with over 200 anti-ship missiles flying in towards them from three different angles. While his destroyers and frigates were attempting to prosecute and hunt down three underwater contacts, they now had to deal with a massive missile raid.

The Churchill shuddered several times as the vertical launch systems spat out the ship’s 60 RIM-66 SM-2 standard missiles at the incoming threats. Five other destroyers in the convoy fired off their own SM-2 missiles in an attempt to swat as many of the threats from the sky as possible.

“How many torpedoes are heading towards the convoy?” Captain Gilbert barked at one of his battle managers.

Not taking her eyes off the screen she was monitoring, the young officer replied, “Ten torpedoes heading towards the convoy. They’re going to start hitting ships in the next couple of minutes.”

“We have to thin out of those incoming missiles or they’re going to finish off the convoy,” Gilbert realized.

He looked to one of the weapons officers. “How soon until our interceptors start hitting the enemy missiles?”

“They should start reaching the incoming missiles in the next minute or so—”

As the officer was relaying the information, the ship rocked hard to port, almost throwing the ship completely onto its side before it righted itself in the water. The power briefly flickered out before coming back on again, and everyone looked around trying to figure out what had just happened. They obviously hadn’t been hit.

“What the hell just happened?” the captain yelled.

“CIC, this is Bridge. One of the LNG tanks just took a torpedo hit and was vaporized. We got hit by the blast wave of the explosion — I’m also seeing nearly a dozen other freighters and transports heavily damaged and on fire. A couple of them look like they’re going down,” Lieutenant Commander Brewster reported. She and the captain had switched positions once it had become apparent that the Russians had laid an ambush for the convoy and it was not just a lone Russian submarine they were dealing with.

“Get me a status report on those incoming missiles now!” the captain demanded of his lead weapons officer.

“The missiles are engaging the targets. The number of incoming threats has dropped from 216 to 61. They are now coming into range of our 5-inch guns and the CIWS systems,” the officer replied.

“That’s still too many missiles for them to handle,” Gilbert realized as he ran the calculations in his mind.

As the remaining missiles streaked in at Mach speed, the convoys close-in and point defense systems began to take over and started to thin out the incoming threats, but a large number of the missiles still got through, causing considerable damage among Gilbert’s convoy.

When the attack finally ended, Patrick headed back to the bridge so he could see the state of his convoy for himself. Grabbing a pair of binoculars, he saw that the damage was obviously extensive. Pillars of black smoke billowed into sky from several ships that had been hit; one of the ships was clearly actively in the process of sinking.

Thankfully, the storm that had been regaling his ships prior to the attack had given way, which would make recovery of the sailors floating in the dozens of life rafts a lot easier.

“Order the helicopters to get airborne and start recovery operations,” the captain ordered. “We need to get the survivors pulled from the water before they freeze to death.”

After many hours of recovery operations, the captains of the remaining escort ships compiled their battle reports and a full assessment of what happened began. Reviewing the initial battle accounts, Captain Gilbert found some consolation in the fact that this attack had not been an entirely one-sided event. His escorts had managed to sink three Akulas and one of the newer Yasen submarines.

However, what angered Gilbert most was that no one, including the P-8 Poseidons, had spotted or sunk any of those three troublesome Oscar-class submarines until it was too late to counter their attack — all three had escaped the conflict unharmed.

During the attack, the lone French destroyer assigned to his fleet had been sunk, along with two more American destroyers. Both British destroyers had sustained damage but were still operational. The one bright spot was that the Canadian destroyer had not only survived the attack unscathed, they had scored two of the enemy submarine kills. It was a tough loss, but the convoy would continue, and most of the much-needed supplies would make it to the front.

Sighing as he looked over the results, he moaned to himself, “This was not how I wanted to end my naval career — as the NATO convoy commander who had two of his convoys mauled by the Russians.”