Seagull One One was making tracks back to Guépratte to reload when the Charles de Gaulle waved off all returning helicopters, establishing a 100km free fire zone for the CAPs and ships to engage incoming missiles.
“Sandman… Seagull One One requires a steer to the Norwegian replenishment site, our rails are Mk 50 compatible.”
“Roger One One… steer One Eight Seven and Squawk Three Nine decimal Two, their air defence is up.”
The pilot brought the aircraft round to that heading and headed toward the horizon. After thirty minutes his radar told him the rocky shores of Norway were indeed out there in darkness. The sudden appearance of flares ahead and to the left of their track startled him, but gave him a grandstand view of a Norwegian P-3 Orion coming in low across the waves. He saw the feather wake of what he took to be a periscope, directly ahead of the maritime patrol aircraft, and a Mk 50 torpedo dropped away, a small drogue parachute deploying behind it, slowing its entry into the sea. So intent was he on the torpedo, he almost missed the spear of light that rose from the waves, coming from the tip of the tiny wake. Apparently the crew of the Orion saw it too, for they banked hard right, almost digging a wing tip in to the wave tops. The small fiery object swerved to follow the fixed wing aircraft, flying into the starboard engine exhaust where it exploded and the starboard wing parted company with the rest of the airframe. With one wing gone, the Orion rolled inverted and struck the sea on its back. When he looked for the feather wake again, it had gone.
“Sandman, Sandman, Seagull One One… aircraft down, a sub just shot down an Orion with a missile!”
“Sandman, One One, say again last transmission… an Orion mid-aired with a Vampire?”
“One One, negative… Orion dropped a torp on what I thought was a periscope, but a small missile came up out of it, chased the Orion and flew into an engine. It was no mid-air Sandman!” He read off their position as shown on the GPS and brought the helicopter over the crash site, where he switched on the big searchlight mounted below the nose, and brought the aircraft to a hover.
There was a pause of a few seconds before Sandman responded.
“Roger… say status of Orion, One One.”
The aircraft’s tail section was the only part now visible, pointing toward the sky, and he circled it with the searchlight sweeping the vicinity. One crewman was visible in the water a few feet from it, arms and legs extended and floating face down in the waves. Keying the radio once more he reported on what he could see, and received a simple
“Roger,” in response. There wasn’t anything more so say, the enemy had found a way of hitting back at the previously invulnerable ASW aircraft that hunted them, and more men and women had died as a result. Returning to the original heading the French NH-90 headed for the temporary helicopter base on the northern tip of Norway.
For most of the participants of what the press would dub ‘The Third Battle of the North Cape’, it was the longest night of their lives. More missiles flew at the ships, coming from scattered sources and of differing types and abilities. Helicopters prosecuted contacts, dropped torpedoes on them and went back and forth reloading and refuelling, hunting and attacking. Three helicopters fell to the new weapon; both instances were on the landward side of the battle, as had been the downing of the Orion. Eighty-four anti-ship missiles of different varieties were fired from soviet submarines, all with conventional warheads. The exhausted AWAC operators, who had been aloft for over 24hrs, and ASWO staff were so swamped that they were slow in picking up on what the soviets were up to.
The soviets had split their submarine force into two parts, one of which was concerned solely with sinking the ships of the Task Force and keeping them and their air assets occupied, whilst the remainder pushed through between the land and the ships.
Only four submarines had the mast launched DAMs, Depth to Air Missiles, and all were old Whiskey class boats which had been used as test beds for the system which had been proven by the soviets in the eighties, but never adopted. The old Whiskey class boats were all in the southern force, providing air defence for the guided missile submarines and hunter killers intended for the Atlantic.
Bernard’s ASWO was the first one to see it, and Bernard sent the aircraft carrier Jeanne d'Arc and her escort south, to facilitate the helicopter effort. The makeshift helicopter base on the northern tip of Norway was not set up to service the needs of the aircraft recovering there, as Banak had been. Bernard had a half dozen aircraft on the beach, shut down while they awaited the armourers and fuel bowser. His helicopter assets couldn’t recover to their own ships to rearm and refuel because of the danger of becoming own goals to their own sides air defences. With Jeanne d'Arc nearer the coast they would free up the replenishment backlog. Being to the rear of the ASW line, the danger to her was less than it was for the remaining ships so Bernard pulled the Cassard off the escort. Leaving the General K. Pulaski for ASW protection and the multi role frigate Senegal, a thirty-year-old reserve fleet vessel for air defence; the trio headed south.
The first warning that the Task Force had of the enemy were getting through came when eight SS-N-19 ‘Shipwreck’ cruise missiles appeared on the AWACs screens, coming from the southwest, and 80km inside the ASW line. Senegal had her old Crotale II launcher run out over the port side, ready for threats from the east when the E-3 shouted a warning. The Crotale launcher had not been part of her original design, it was an add-on fitted several years later. Squeezed between her foc’sle and mast there was insufficient space for the launcher to simply swing around. The launch tubes rose to the vertical and the launcher pivoted through 180’. Senegal was already tracking the inbounds and she launched on them as soon as the tubes lowered to 20’ above the horizon. The Sentry took control of the Crotale as the launcher cycled the empty tubes back into the vertical, to receive four more missiles from the magazine directly below.
Two Sea Kings and a NH-90 on the carriers deck began to spool up, the carrier and the Polish frigate fired chaff bundles aloft while heeling over, the carrier turning to port, turning away from the threat and the Polish frigate turning to face it, both presenting smaller radar profiles. Senegal had no such option; she had to present a flank, going beam on to unmask her single launcher.
Lt Col Chan’s fingers were drumming out a tattoo of impatience on the sides of her keyboard as she waited for the Senegal’s schematic to indicate to her that the Crotale was ready to fire again. The side image on her monitor showed three Crotale missiles intercepting successfully whilst the fourth was a clean miss.
“Come on, come on… ” the launchers icon changed from red to amber as it lowered again into firing position, and finally glowed green.
“At last!” she growled, assigning each one to an incoming vampire. The Crotale IIs screamed from their launch tubes, three following the guidance from the AWAC, a fourth going rogue and flying into the sea a mile downrange. The noise created by the three ships screws, churning up the waves at high turn rates ruled out any possibility of the sonar operators locking down their attackers position, they could hear nothing but harsh hydro acoustic noise.
As the launchers icon turned back from red to amber, as it lowered itself to its firing position, the last three Crotales met the five incoming Shipwreck cruise missiles, whittling them down to two. Ann-Marie was about to target all four newly loaded Crotales onto the last pair, but eight more appeared on her screen from well south of where the last had come from. She sent two after the last pair of the first salvo, and two at the newcomers.