If it remained on its present course it would pass twenty thousand yards to their south, so the question was what was it stalking or was it just a forward scout for the boomer.
“Captain, aspect change on the Han, she’s slowing sir”
They listened whilst the Chinese attack boat crept up to periscope depth where it remained only briefly before returning to its former depth and speed.
“How long was his last sprint?” he asked.
“We had him for thirty-one minutes sir.”
“Okay then… let’s take us up slowly and have a look at what he sees… call out the moment you pick up another aspect change.”
“Aye, aye sir… making our depth sixty feet.”
The Hood’s ESM mast peeped above the waves to check the coast was clear before the periscope followed and the captain performed a 360 with it above the horizon in a visual check for aircraft before lowering the angle, making a complete sweep for surface craft. He did this setting the magnification at its lowest and then increasing it with each rotation, before pointing it down the bearing the Han had gone for a more detailed look. The surface of the ocean was barely moving, giving him a continuous view unobstructed by high waves but the sun was in his eyes. After observing either side of the bearing he was none the wiser as to what had caught the Han’s attention. A camera within the periscope assembly automatically recorded what the captain pointed the scope at, sending the images to videotape so that they could replay it at slow speed later on.
“Down periscope… nothing,” he told the Number One.
The video footage was played over in slow motion; digital effects enhanced the picture by filtering out some of the glare but they still saw nothing but sea and sky.
“Okay, raise the radar mast, one sweep only.”
Both officers watched the screen and saw the tiny blip, which they concluded came from a vessel just over the horizon.
“Could be the radar reflector on the mast head of a small ship?” suggested the captain before ordering the radar and ESM masts retracted.
“If… that radar trace is what they are after, and I was the Han’s captain I might be inclined to have the sun behind me when I took a closer look at it, perhaps that is what he is planning to do?”
The Han passed directly below the ketch, coasting past at eighteen knots as the speed bled off from her last sprint. Being 600’ feet down none of the occupants of the ketch were aware of her presence.
Muriel was using up the last of the bread before it went off by making what Americans called jelly sandwiches, but in the north of England they are ‘Jam Butties’.
Lt Fu Chen and Chubby were sat with legs dangling over the side as they waited for some unsuspecting sea creature to take an interest in the bait on their hooks.
Sandy, Nikki and Eric were sat in the stern chatting. None of them noticed the ESM mast and periscope break the surface 300m away, the sun's glare from that direction provided perfect cover.
“Do we have a firing solution yet?” The Hood’s captain enquired.
“Setting it up now sir… safeguards set, they won’t go active until they’ve cleared the sailing vessel.”
The First Lieutenant looked hard at his captain.
“Are you sure this is wise sir… if we track the Han it might lead us to a boomer?” They now knew that the surface contact was a ketch flying the Union Flag, having taken another look when they closed with it.
“If they do nothing other than look the ketch over then we will indeed track it, but if they open their bow doors… although that would be a criminal waste of a torpedo for them, or if they surface… then we will attack.”
The Han could mount an 18mm automatic cannon on the conning tower, if the vessel surfaced it was odds on that the ketch would be sunk by gunfire.
“Those are British citizens aboard that boat, and the last time I heard, our job was still to protect them from all enemies”.
The Hood’s bow doors had been opened whilst the Han was coming to the end of its last sprint, Spearfish within the tubes were now programmed to run dumb and at 40’ below the surface until past the ketch, after which time they would go active. The control wires would be cut immediately after the launch and the doors shut for the reloading of the tubes whilst the Hood prepared to avoid return fire from the Han.
With the wires cut the Hood would be at risk from her own Spearfish if the Han managed to avoid them first time out, because the torpedoes would manoeuvre and re-attack, anything they detected whilst they sought to reacquire would be in-play.
Two Chinese ratings lugged the 52lb cannon through the narrow confines of the Han whilst two more young ratings dragged a long ammunition box containing a belt of fifty high explosive and armour piercing cannon shells. The sound of the ammunition box being dragged across the steel deck was loud within the hull, especially when it crashed down again having been pulled through a hatchway.
The sonar men aboard the Hood heard the racket and informed the captain.
“Standby everyone… I’m not sure what this means but if she’s going to surface we’ll wait until she blows her tanks, they may not hear us.”
The Han’s periscope disappeared, to be replaced by a radar mast that immediately started radiating.
Lt Fu Chen reeled in his line and hauled aboard a 4lb fish, which he clubbed and dumped into a bucket at his side before baiting the hook and casting out his line again.
Muriel emerged from below decks and began handing out the sandwiches.
Air roared into the Han’s ballast tanks displacing seawater, which was vented back into the ocean.
Chubby and Fu Chen stood up and like everyone else on-board they shielded their eyes and squinted against the sun's glare as the sound reached them.
The sound of air filling the Chinese attack boat’s ballast tanks initiated a flurry of orders from the Hood’s captain. Officers and crewmen repeated his orders aloud as they swiftly carried them out.
“Fire one… fire two!”
“One fired sir… Two fired sir!”
“Cut the wires… flood Q… take us down four hundred feet … close bow doors and reload one and two… twenty knots!”
Great bubbles of air boiled to the surface as the big ballast tank known as the Q filled with seawater, removing neutral buoyancy.
“Q flooded sir… making our depth four hundred feet!”
“Aye, aye sir… making turns for twenty knots, aye sir!”
“Bow doors closed captain!”
“Cox’n?”
“Aye, sir!”
“Bring us round to a heading of two eight five degrees!”
“Aye, aye sir… coming left to two eight five degrees, sir.”
“Close all watertight doors… standby countermeasures!”
Heavy hatch doors were slammed closed and secured as the Royal Navy vessel began to pick up speed and turn to port.
The Han broke the surface, within moments figures appeared on the conning tower and aboard the ketch they could see her large dark shape silhouetted against the morning sun, black and shiny with seawater still streaming off her casing. They clearly heard orders being shouted and the sound of a heavy weapon being cocked.