Scorpion in the Sea

SIXTY-THREE

Despite the air conditioning, it was becoming hot in the Combat Information Center. Mike sat in his Captain’s chair near the central plotting table, surrounded by almost two dozen men at their various general quarters stations. Everyone was wearing battle dress, which included fully buttoned, long sleeved shirts, trousers tucked into their socks, gas masks in their hip pouches on one hip and a CO2 inflatable lifejacket on the other, protective flashburn hoods and gloves, and steel helmets. The extra gear made it awkward to move around the crowded CIC, especially with all hands present. The men were quiet but alert, doing their surveillance jobs with an intensity Mike had not seen before in Goldsborough.

The operations officer perched on his stool at the head of the plotting table, while the trackers plotted a radar contact closing them from the southeast.

“What do you think, Ops,” asked Mike from his chair. There was no room for him at the plotting table.

“It could be him, Cap’n,” replied the operations officer. “The radar contact on the Raytheon display is big enough, and he’s coming in at about twenty knots. But ESM isn’t holding anything out there but a commercial surface search radar. No TACAN, no GCA radars, no nothing that indicates an aircraft carrier. Passive sonar says it’s big and moving down the highway, but can’t give any other clues. Right now he’s out there at twenty two miles, so we’ll get a look at him pretty soon. The lookouts have been alerted, as has the bridge watch.”

“OK. If it is the Coral Sea, we’ll come up to fifteen knots, turn around and parallel his course, and open up the active sonar. We’re far enough out now that I think the best ambush area is west of us, towards Mayport.”

“Yes, Sir, we’re ready with search plans. The PC indicates that that submerged ridge line is about ten miles back to the west, so we’re in good position.”

Mike nodded, and reached down for the intercom unit to the bridge, customarily called the bitch-box.

“XO, Captain.”

“Yes, Sir, Cap’n,” replied Farmer.

His GQ station was on the bridge when the Captain came into CIC. His primary duty was to take over command if CIC were knocked out, and to act as general maneuvering safety officer if things got hot and heavy during an action. He was supported on the bridge by a full GQ watch team, which included an Officer of the Deck, Junior Officer of the Deck, a tactical communicator, three quartermasters, a bosun, a messenger, three additional phone talkers and three lookouts.

“XO, this big radar contact continues to close from the southeast. Keep a sharp eye for a visual ID; we need to know if it’s Coral Sea.”

“Aye, aye, Sir. Bit early, though, isn’t it?”

“Yes it is, and no corroborating ESM, either. May be a big merchie. He’s going twenty knots.”

“Sounds more like a Toyota carrier than a Navy carrier,” said Farmer. “Those guys haul ass.”

“Yeah, well, anyway, keep your eyes peeled. What’s the weather?”

Mike had been in CIC all morning. He could walk twenty feet out through the front door of CIC and see for himself, but did not want to lose his red lighting adaptation.

“Bright sunlight, light high clouds, sea state zero, wind calm, temp is hot, sweat is everywhere,” said Farmer.

“People pay money for cruise conditions like that, XO; enjoy.”

“XO, aye.”

Mike punched out the intercom buttons. They waited.

Fifteen minutes later, the lookouts on the signal bridge, one level above the pilothouse, spied the oncoming ship low on the horizon. He called the description down to the CIC via the sound powered phone circuit.

“Looks big and looks like a box,” relayed the operations officer.

“OK, that’s probably a merch; XO was right, I’ll bet it’s a Toyota boat.”

Ten minutes later, the lookouts and the Exec confirmed that the contact was one of the big automobile carriers. Shaped like a shoebox with a narrow bow, a squat, overhanging stern, 100 foot high slab sides, swing ramps at the stern, two small stacks at the very back, and a pilothouse built into the front of the box over the bow, the 850 foot long car carriers transported over 2000 new automobiles on seven drive-through decks. They were modern, fin-stabilized, and fast ships especially designed and built to feed America’s unrelenting appetite for high quality Japanese cars and trucks.

“Contact is tracking 285 at twenty-two knots,” reported the surface supervisor.

“Pretty good for a single screw ship,” remarked the operations officer.

“Especially one that displaces around fifty, sixty thousand tons,” said Mike. “Leave it to the Japanese to make a ship as modern as their cars. Tell sonar what the classification is, and tell the bridge to keep us in this general area, five knots, random course changes every ten to fifteen minutes.”

As the operations officer passed the word down to Linc in Sonar Control, Mike decided it was time for a tour of the ship. His large body was never meant to sit for hours on end even in the comfort of the Captain’s upholstered chair. He left CIC, and headed down the interior ladder to the 01 level, one deck below the bridge. He walked aft past radio central and his own cabin, and out through the watertight hatch onto the midships deck area. Bright sunlight reflecting off an aquamarine sea dazzled his eyes, and it took him a few minutes to get his full vision back.

He walked aft past the after deckhouse with its gun director perched on top, and came around the corner by the boat decks to Mount Fifty Two. The mount’s two steel doors were open, and the amplidyne motors shut down to prevent overheating. A gunner’s mate was sitting in each door. They got up as the Captain approached, and Mike motioned for them to sit down again.

“How’s GQ treating you guys,” he asked as he walked up to the big gun mount.

“OK, Cap’n,” replied the senior gunner. “We’re just waiting around to shoot somebody.”

Mike could see the brass fuse tips on the five inch shells gleaming in the transfer trays. The big gun’s automatic machinery could load and shoot forty two rounds of five inch diameter shells in one minute, and Goldsborough sported three of these mounts.

“Well, hopefully, you’ll get your chance, if this bad guy comes up on the surface.”

“You really think there’s a A-rab submarine out there, Cap’n?” asked the gunner’s mate.

“We think there’s a chance, gunner, just a chance. All of this may be for absolutely nothing, but as long as there’s a chance, it’s our job to try to get in his face and prevent an attack on Coral Sea.”

The gunners nodded.

“When’s the carrier coming?” asked the younger one.

“We expect the carrier to pass through this area on the way into Norfolk around 1600. But the submarine might be here right now, for all we know. We have to sit here quietly so’s we don’t spook him out to someplace where we can’t get at him; when we see the bird farm come over the horizon, we’ll come up active and go looking.”

“So he could be drawin’ a bead on us right now, for all we’d know it,” observed the senior gunner, looking anxiously at the horizon.

“Well, he could,” replied Mike, “but if he took a shot at us before the carrier got here, it would reveal that he was here, and that would warn off the carrier. He’s only going to get one opportunity, and he’s not here to get a tin can. Way we see it, he has to wait, just like us.”

Both gunners looked around nervously at the calm, pristine sea.

“Sure hope you’re right about that, Cap’n,” said the senior gunner.

“Well, once the carrier comes over the horizon, we’ll probably find out. That’s when I’ll need all the eyeballs that are topside looking for periscopes, feathers, or torpedo tracks. If it stays flat calm like this, you guys will be as valuable as radar.”

Mike left them thinking about that, and headed aft down the ladder to the main deck. He continued aft along the main deck, glancing himself at the horizon, walking past Mount Fifty Three, greeting its gunner’s mates, and stopping at the depth charge racks. The racks were cleared for action, with each of the 500 pound depth bombs fuzed with bright brass fuse rings, and the stainless steel caps of the power supplies and depth sensors inserted. The two sonarmen who operated the rack stood to attention as Mike walked up. They were both dressed out in full battle gear, with one man wearing an oversized helmet to accommodate his sound powered phone circuit.

“At ease, Guys,” said Mike, taking in the dark patches of perspiration in their battle gear. It was hot back here on the fantail in the bright sunlight. “Got these hummers ready to go?”

“Yes, Suh,” replied the petty officer in charge, in a deep drawl. “You git us on top of that gomer, and we’ll open his ass up to underwater southern living.”

Mike smiled, These guys were ready to believe there was a submarine out here.

“That might be hard to do, guys,” he said. “The submarine isn’t going to just sit there while we drive over top of him.”

“We kin allays roll one or two if he’s nearby; guys at school say that sceers the shit out of ’em, and sometimes screws up their machinery to boot.”

“You ready to set fuzes quick-like?” asked Mike.

“Yes, Sir,” said the other petty officer, brandishing the Y-shaped fuse wrench.

Each depth charge had to be set by hand for the detonation depth, which ranged from 50 to 500 feet. The fifty foot setting had to be set twice, because a detonation at that depth would likely damage the ship dropping the depth charge. As a matter of course, the charges were all pre-set for 200 feet; that way, if the men on the fantail were incapacitated, the bridge could operate the release machinery remotely, drop them and get some effect. The rest of the Navy had long since given up depth charges, because they required the destroyer to maneuver right on top of the submarine. With the advent of high speed nuclear submarines, it was now the submarine that could out-maneuver the surface ship, thus making the depth charge attack almost impossible. Most ASW experts, however, still yearned for the depth charge capability, if only for the psychological effects of a five hundred pound bomb going off at depth, down there where the submarine lived. Very few submariners alive had ever been subjected to the sheer terror of depth bombs.

“We may have to do some fancy setting this afternoon,” said Mike. “The water depth here is around 300 to 350 feet, and this is a diesel boat we’re after. He can ride down to the bottom if he wants to, or be operating at sixty foot keel depth. But remember the basic rule, if I say roll one now, I mean now, and don’t take time to change the standard setting — just roll that bastard and assume the position.”

They grinned at him. The “position” was a deep knee bend held in the flexed position — a depth charge at 200 feet could still hammer the stern hard enough to break legs if the ship had not moved far enough away.

“Won’t be using any torpedoes at all, Cap’n?” asked one of the petty officers. He was a sonarman, and thus was privy to the weapons briefing conducted the night before.

“We might,” replied Mike. “Chances are the fish would acquire the bottom and attack that before it acquired the pigboat. But if we set it too shallow, it might acquire us instead of the pigboat — we’re the bigger target in the eyes of its sonar. I know they’ve got the fifty foot lockout but I wouldn’t want to bet my ass on that feature, not after that one jumped out of the water at a helo about ten years back. But I still might use one, especially if he shoots a fish at us — I’d fire back down the bearing of the incoming fish and let him take his chances while I try to get out of the way of his screamer. Either way, you can count on our using these beauties back here to get his attention away from the bird farm, if he shows up. So you guys be ready; from now until about 1800 is the attack window.”

They assured him that they and their deadly charges would be ready. Mike walked forward up the port side to the forward breaks, the weather shield structure underneath the pilothouse that protected the main decks from waves coming over the forecastle. He climbed a short, vertical ladder to the port torpedo platform, finding it harder to keep his balance with the steel helmet on. On the platform he found two torpedomen waiting for him at attention. He smiled mentally. The word was getting around the sound-powered phone circuits that the Old Man was making a tour; the torpedo decks had obviously been alerted.

The two torpedomen saluted Mike as he climbed through the chains at the top of the ladder. Mike returned their salutes and talked to them for a few minutes, answering questions and exhorting them to be on their toes for this afternoon’s possible engagement. Mike found out that one of the air flasks had a slow leak, and that the torpedo decks were having a problem getting 3000 pound air from the forward engineroom. Nothing beats personal reconnaissance, he thought, making a note of the problem.

One of the men pointed over towards the starboard side. The Toyota car carrier was steaming by, carving a creamy wake some 6000 yards away. Mike decided to get back up to the bridge and CIC. He’d yell at the snipes about the HP air. It was getting on to noon. He wondered briefly what Diane was doing.