Cassard had become ‘The thin red line’ on that part of the task force's northern flank, as the Danish corvette Olfert Fischer was down at the stern and had lost all electrical power due to flooding in the engine room. Auxiliary generators on deck were powering the pumps that kept her afloat, but they could not power her fighting systems.
Ignoring the French admiral’s orders, the Pole's dedicated anti-submarine warfare frigates Naczelnik Tadeusz Kosciuszko and General K. Pulaski had left the centre of the formation and steamed north at flank speed.
Below decks aboard the Cassard, naval ratings sweated and grunted as they manhandled missiles from makeshift stores to the magazine to keep it filled, without the additional stores the ship would have been down to its last ten reloads at this point.
The sudden lull in fire from the Danish corvette was duly noted aboard the orbiting A-50, which ordered a pair of Floggers to egress across her position after releasing Yahont-Ms at the French air defence frigate.
Only smoke from the fire on the afterworks rose from the corvette as the Floggers rolled in hot for a run at her bow. The Floggers flew in close-trail the length of the crippled war ship at a height of 300ft, releasing their iron bomb loads in a text book perfect attack. The pair of FAB-500 bombs that straddled her, stove in her thin sides but it was the second pair, penetrating the into the ships bowels and detonating in her fuel bunkers and forward magazine that blew her into a thousand fragments.
Cassard’s point defence Phalanx gun exploded an SS-N-26 a kilometre out before switching its aim to the Flogger that had released it. The Ukrainian fighter-bomber was jinking to left and right as it made its bomb run, but the gun's software had over two hundred attack profiles in its memory, it tracked the aircraft for a heartbeat before firing a twenty-one round burst… and fell silent.
Armourers scrambled to reload the weapon even as fragments of aircraft fell on the ship, the Flogger clipped the vessel's radar mast as it passed over the ship, its port wing sawn off by the single burst and crashed into the sea a hundred metres to the south.
Two more Floggers began their runs whilst the armourers strained to reload the weapon and aboard the AWAC an ‘offline’ icon appeared over the point defence system of the ships schematic.
Provided that the Mistrals took out the incoming missiles and fighter-bombers in this wave then it should not be a problem, but the defence evasion program in the SS-N-26 missiles was proving to be more advanced than NATO had allowed for.
The armourers winced as their ship released missiles at the new threat, they had loaded only a hundred rounds into the Phalanx magazine, a two second bursts worth, and shaking fingers had mis-fed one round that they were struggling to extract before they could resume loading. The senior rating had to steady himself as the ship rolled unexpectedly, if he hadn’t known better he would have said it was caused by the wash of another ship passing close by.
Naczelnik Tadeusz Kosciuszko and General K. Pulaski surged past the French frigates stern heading north, and once clear they commenced producing chaff clouds from their mortars, their only form of missile defence.
At 6,700lbs, the air-launched version of the SS-N-26 Yahont was 1,898lbs lighter than its ship launched cousin, but still so heavy that the Floggers could only carry one apiece. Both incoming Floggers released the weapons at 29 kilometres, before setting up for conventional bomb runs as the big ship killers accelerated to 1.3 Mach initially. The weapons would react to radar and IR lock-on by the defenders, varying speed between 2.7 and 1.3 Mach whilst making both dummy and radical 4g turns along with changes in altitude. Minimum engagement range for the defenders was four kilometres down-range, and this pair of missiles defeated ten Mistrals to close the range to within five kilometres of that point.
Above and to the west of the battle the AWAC’s senior controller, Lt Col Ann-Marie Chan, breathed a barely audible “Oh shit,” on seeing the ‘offline’ icon on the Cassard’s point defence system joined by another from her chaff dispensers. Just forty kilometres south of the air defence frigate lay the carriers and there was still a regiment and a half of Floggers with unexpended SS-N-26s.
Half a kilometre to the northeast of the Frenchman, the ex-Perry class frigate Naczelnik Tadeusz Kosciuszko altered course due west and her single screw whipped the sea to foam as she sought to place herself between the Cassard and the fast approaching threat. Even as Admiral Bernard ordered the air defence destroyer Duquesne north to bolster the defence lines the AWAC senior controller tried to avert disaster striking the almost defenceless Polish warship. Her captain had not made an error; he was buying the French time by offering his own vessel as an alternative.
“Jesus H… !” exclaimed Lt Col Chan. “We need to warn this guy off… hey, Kolanski… you speak Polish?”
“No offence ma’am but I’m from Sonora, Spanish is my second language, not Polack. My great granddaddy was the last in our family to speak Polish.”
Passing the magical 4000m mark, the Yahont-Ms found the target originally designated for them was being eclipsed by another, half a kilometre closer but their processors analysed it as being worthy of their attention nonetheless. The leading missile was dummied by chaff and exploded harmlessly astern of the warship, but the second popped up and dived in at an angle of forty degrees, its short stubby wings tearing off as it pierced the decking.
Aboard the French frigate they saw the Polish ship stagger, and the sound of the missile’s impact rolled across the gulf separating the two ships. Thick black smoke soon obscured the after half of the Naczelnik Tadeusz Kosciuszko. The warhead of the missile had not detonated but its rocket motor was still firing, igniting the Polish ship's fittings and even aluminium in her structure.
Turning his ship beam-on to the wind, the Polish captain attempted to lessen the spread of fire to the rest of the vessel, ringing down for a dead stop. Burning electrical insulation produced thick black sooty smoke, which quickly clogged the filters of the respirators that all but the dedicated firemen of the damage control party wore. Internal lighting failed almost immediately following the missile strike, making the task of fighting the fire doubly difficult. In the crew quarters where the missile had come to rest, the after bulkhead melted through and collapsed, allowing the superheated jet to play on what lay behind and above it, the large water main that fed the hoses.
When the mains failed the damage control parties struggled back toward the sunlight, abandoning the lower decks to the fire.
The stricken frigate's sister ship, General K. Pulaski and the French frigate Cassard closed with her to render assistance, but the seas were too high to come alongside and feed hoses over. Playing hoses on the ship’s upper works merely delayed the inevitable; the water was needed below decks.
The Naczelnik Tadeusz Kosciuszko’s captain ordered the crew to abandon ship, leaving the ship to the fire in her bowels that could not be fought.
One hour later the flames would eat through her upper hull as well as engulfing the aft part of her superstructure, a short time after that they would reach the magazine. Sixty-two souls would go to the bottom with her when she blew up, victims of asphyxia from the smoke that filled the ship within minutes of her being struck.