“Merde… the weapon has turned the wrong way… and they have heard it, noisemakers in the water!” He frowned deeply as he listened.
“Pilot, they have only accelerated to twelve knots.” The Victor III was capable of 30knots, and yet they were not using that speed to get well clear before the torpedo heard the commotion and homed on the noise. As it stood, the weapon would probably go for the noisemaker first and then hear the Victor as it emerged out the other side of the cloud of gas bubbles it was producing. After two minutes only, the submarines speed dropped off rapidly. The pilot was cursing the weapon, and the fact he had no more until they reloaded, when the first anti-ship missile broke the surface.
Pressing the transmit button on the side of the cyclic he put out the warning
“Vampires! Vampires! Vampires!..all ships, this is Seagull One One, sub launched vampires are in the air!”
“Seagull One One this is Sandman… can you identify type of missile launched?”
“Fast and big Sandman!” The sarcasm was thick in the young pilot’s voice; he reigned in his frustration though and transmitted again. He could see the first missile climbing at about a 45’ angle; accelerating fast and the glare of the rocket motor left him blinking to clear the after-image etched on his retinas. Two, three, four, a fifth and finally a sixth burst out of the sea, a protective shell falling away as the rocket motor fired.
“Sandman, Seagull One One… it’s too dark and the rockets are blinding me, the first went up at a steep angle but not vertical.”
The E-3 Sentry had them now and began assigning ships air defence missiles, and at the same time trying to identify the missiles. So far, a solid fuel booster had fallen away from each and they were still climbing and accelerating. The ships all switched their radars to standby but the missiles trajectories did not waver a jot, until the first missile came within 40km of the Danish long hulled corvette Karl Jung, well east of the ASW line and searching for downed aviators who were still unaccounted for.
Sea Sparrow missiles roared from the Karl Jung’s vertical launchers and her Phalanx gun began tracking the high altitude, inbound missile.
A great deal of research and thought had gone into the SS-N-27 AFM-L Alfa, it was built initially to take advantage of the Phalanx systems main flaw, and then given the legs, and smarts, to get past the other air defences in order to exploit that weakness. The first Alfa was at 28,000 feet and travelling at 2.8 Mach on a flat trajectory with its stubby wings extended when its downward looking, multi frequency radar swept over the corvette. The missile banked towards the Swedish warship and was already locked on when the same radar detected two pairs of Sea Sparrows climbing to intercept it. Its electronic brain increased the burn rate of the second stage to produce a less fuel economic 3.4 Mach and it began to nose over. Twenty-seven seconds later it separated from the still firing second stage and accelerated to 3.9 Mach, its dive increasing as it did so. The first pair of Sea Sparrows impacted with the tumbling second stage, and as designed, the second stage body fragmented like a grenade, creating a big, hot, radar and IR target for any other missiles.
The second pair of Sea Sparrows tore past the final stage and warhead, plunging into the debris cloud and detonating.
Karl Jung launched another pair but it was too late, the final stage of the Alfa was travelling vertically downwards at four and a half time the speed of sound and they detonated in its wake. One second later the corvette was struck by the titanium cased missile, which actually entered the top of her superstructure and travelled straight through, tearing away her keel before exploding fifty feet under her. The corvettes Phalanx gun had not fired a single round, because it didn’t have the elevation to engage targets coming from directly overhead.
Karl Jung’s back was broken and the pressure produced by the explosion beneath the vessel played on that break, lifting it in the middle. The corvette broke in two, and sank with all hands a little over one minute later.
The Victor launched six SS-N-27 Alfas from its forward 533mm torpedo tubes, and ejected two more noisemakers as it tried to build up speed and avoid the MU90 torpedo, but the weapon had learnt from its previous encounter with a noisemaker, and it was having none of it.
The warhead on the torpedo was small, even for a lightweight/air-droppable weapon. Its small warhead ruled out a proximity fuse so the makers went for maximum impact. They weren’t thinking along the lines of a massive Hollywood-style-spectacular-explosion, but more of a train wreck at depth concept. The MU90 was doing 50knots when it impacted the pressure hull, just aft of the port ballast tank. Had it happened below 300 feet, the hit would have been instantly fatal to the vessel, but they were at 64 feet and the tremendous pressures on the hull were not present. Slamming into the Victors flank, the torpedo first pierced the rubbery, anti-hydro acoustic coating and then the outer pressure hull, the shaped charge warhead went off against the inner hull, sending a jet of white hot metal and super-heated gas into the engineering spaces, igniting anything flammable.
Inside the submarines engine room, those crew members not killed or rendered unconscious by the torpedo strike dragged crewmates towards the pressure door set in the forward bulkhead, but choking smoke and seawater were quickly filling the compartment. The Victors captain initiated a crash-surface and the helicopter crew witnessed the vessel emerging from the deep, already stern heavy. Its externally mounted propellers, set on stern planes were still working the vessel up to its maximum speed as the sea had not yet drowned the steam turbines that powered them. The crewmen appearing out of hatches onto her casing could not launch life rafts or jump over the side, one man who slipped and fell over the edge of the casing disappeared into the maelstrom created by the threshing screws, and he did not re-emerge.
Standard 2 missiles and air launched AMRAAMs accounted for three of the remaining Alfas but the fourth and fifth began their terminal dives at the French air defence destroyer Duquesne.
Duquesne was travelling at flank speed when they put the wheel hard over, her port rail was awash as an Alfa, unable to keep itself centred on the vessel due to the speed it was travelling, missed the vessel by twelve feet. The air crackled with the electro-static charge caused by its passing, a plume of water rose sixty feet and the smell of ozone lingered. Duquesne answered the helm gamely as the wheel was next thrown to starboard, seeking to out-manoeuvre the last missile as they had its predecessor. High above the conflict Lt Col Ann-Marie Chan was talking directly to the English-speaking TAO aboard the destroyer when a high pitched shriek in the ear-pieces made her gasp and she whipped her headset off. The E-3 Sentry’s pilots saw the cloud layer below them briefly illuminated from beneath, by the glare resulting from the detonation of a warships magazine. Duquesne had lost the race.
Ann-Marie had to turn toward the bulkhead at her side momentarily, embarrassed that anyone should see the moisture in her eyes. When she turned back to her console she was all business again, entering the information the TAO had given her she quickly got a match.
“Okay people, those missiles were SS-N-27s, bad news kit but the silver lining is that production of them was halted early on through lack of funds. Vector anything with AMRAAMs onto anymore they may have in the first instance, and Standard 2s from the task force after that.” She sent a priority email off requesting an intelligence estimate of how many weapons existed, but no sooner had she pressed send, when more ‘vampires’ were being called in.