“Sandman this is Pointer!” She waited for a reply and cursed as another ships icon on the line flared red and disappeared. Inside the Sentry’s long cabin her operators were grim faced as they fed in mid-course corrections to defending missiles in flight, assigned new ones and sent vectors to the sub hunting helicopters, Nimrods, and P-3 Orion’s.
“Sandman, Sandman, this is Pointer… do you copy?”
“This is Sandman, Bernard speaking… go ahead Pointer.” Ann-Marie’s eyebrows rose when she heard the accented voice. Since when did the French Admiral speak English? Her fingers flew over her keyboard as she ran an analysis on the transmissions origin, and it had not come from overhead, from a satellite or from the warship, but from the Murmansk area of Russia.
Shit, shit, shit. Turning to the pad beside her terminal she ran a finger down the list of codewords relating to communications security.
“All stations, all stations Crap Game! Crap Game!” At the height of the fighting and they had to instigate compromised security procedures, altering encryption programs that took up time that they could not spare. She returned control to Senegal and got busy; the enemy was jamming out the Task Force’s voice communications, perhaps even the data link feeds too, so they had no option but to change everything. She was not blind to the distinct possibility that only voice communications had been effected, and the enemy had let her know this to cause disruption in command and control. She got the correct identifiers from Charles de Gaulle with her next try; they had received the communications security message via satellite and switched over to the next prearranged settings.
“Sandman this is Pointer?”
“Go ahead Pointer.”
“Pointer, at least two missile boats have gotten through to the south. Senegal is coping at the moment. Jeanne d'Arc is launching helos as we speak.”
“Sandman… ..we have nothing to send, we are barely holding our own against the attacks. We are beating on those still east of our ASW line, but any that get through will have to be dealt with by someone else, we are fully committed.”
If a pint pot holds a pint, then it’s doing the best it can, thought the American air force officer.
For an old ship crewed mainly by reservists the Senegal was doing outstanding work, although admittedly the attackers were using equally old ordnance. Only three of the second incoming wave had so far avoided destruction as the frigates launcher lowered once more into firing position. Her own CIC still had control and her TAO finished designating targets for the Crotales, the launcher moved fractionally as it tracked the targets, but before it could fire the frigate staggered with the impact of a torpedo blowing off her bow. The forward twelve feet from the waterline was ripped open by the explosion, exposing the ships interior with only flooding proof bulkheads to keep the sea at bay. Senegal was travelling at 24 knots, her gaping wound scooped up the seas which piled against the first bulkhead, and it gave way with a shriek of tortured metal. Like a pack of cards the bulkheads gave way, one after one and the sea began filling her innards. The frigate's bridge disappeared beneath the waves and then the rest of her superstructure, as her engines drove the vessel beneath the surface. In less than a minute, only oil, floating wreckage, bodies and a handful of shocked and floundering crewmen marked where a warship had once been.
From below the cold water layer a Russian Sierra class had fired a spread of four torpedoes at the charging frigates, one malfunctioned, one scored on the French frigate, and the last two passed the Poles stern, unseen by any of her crew.
Unchecked, the remaining cruise missiles locked on to the helicopter carrier and Polish frigate, but neither vessel carried anything more than chaff as counter-measures. The SS-N-19 that acquired the Polish ex-Perry class frigate General K. Pulaski started to analyse the ships electronic emissions and its control surface’s twitched as it adjusted its lines of flight, lining up on the frigates CIC. From an altitude of eight feet it popped up to one thousand, and then dived at a 45’ angle into the ships superstructure, penetrating to below the waterline before exploding.
Jeanne d'Arc sounded collision alarms and her crew braced themselves for the impacts that were inevitable. An SS-N-19 detonated in the chaff cloud above her stern, sending red-hot shrapnel outwards in all directions. An unserviceable Sea Harrier and three troop-carrying NH-90s upon her flight deck exploded as their fuel tanks were ruptured. The last cruise missile dove into the flight deck alongside the carriers offset island and penetrated the steel decking to explode inside the hangar deck. There were only two aircraft below decks, both were being serviced and their fuel tanks had been drained, but there was no shortage of flammable material.
The General K. Pulaski was dead in the water, listing over on her port beam and fires burned in a dozen places throughout the vessel. Struggling to keep from falling over the side, crewmen removed the fuses from her depth charges and threw them over the side, lest they go off when the ship went down, killing survivors in the water above. Her engineer was trying to restore electrical power and the surviving senior ratings and officers were organising damage control parties to fight the fires when the Sierra fired another torpedo at her.
Confident that all the helicopters were to the west of their position, hunting the missile firers, the Sierras captain then brought the hunter/killer up to periscope depth so he could view his handiwork.
Directed west of the line by the Charles de Gaulle’s ASWO, an RAF Nimrod got an indication on its MAD equipment, short for Magnetic Anomaly Detector, it looked for hiccups caused to the planets magnetic field, such as that of a large metal submarine near the surface.
The Nimrod circled back on itself, firming up its contact before dropping two Mk 50s on its contact. Both entered the water 300m off the Sierras starboard quarter and went active immediately. The Sierra had no time at all to react, and was struck in her portside ballast tank and forward torpedo room. The ballast tank absorbed the damage from the shaped charge, the pressure hull remained intact but air boiled from the ruptured ballast tank, and the submarine began to cant over at an ever-increasing angle. The forward torpedo room however was breached, and the white-hot jet and gases ignited combustibles in the compartment. The Sierra broke the surface with a 30’ degree list to port and her hatches opened to crewmen who emerged and slid down the casing into sea, forced out by the press of bodies behind. Only half a dozen had escaped the vessels confines when the first torpedoes warhead exploded, cooked off by the fire. The remaining eighteen followed in rapid succession, shattering the hull forward of the conning tower; what remained slipped back beneath the waves.
The torpedo the Sierra had launched lost guidance from the vessel and switched to its own passive sensors, it could hear the Polish frigate; even dead in the water noise emitted by the warship exceeded the background. However, the sensors detected a more enticing target and accelerating to its maximum cruise speed it tore past the frigate, heading east toward the louder source.
Jeanne d'Arc’s hangars sprinkler system was fed from two different water mains via four networks of pipes, in full appreciation that at least one matrix of pipes would be rendered by an attack in time of war. With the ships pumps forcing the water along the mains, and from there to the two complete and one partially functional network, the sprinklers were fogging the interior of the hangar with a mist of water vapour, which lowered the temperature and robbed the fire of oxygen. Fire-fighting foam had covered the floor of the compartment before the sprinklers engaged, preventing the fire spreading via burning petrochemicals, but with the deck being buckled downwards by the blast, they had pooled and were not a danger at present. The main danger to the vessel lay behind the aft bulkhead, peppered by shrapnel, as had all the bulkheads, the storage tanks of aviation fuel were exposed. Constructed of rubber so as to be self-sealing, the 5000-gallon fuel cells were coated with a fire retardant layer which was a safety measure, rather than a guarantee, eventually the rubber would burn after prolonged exposure to a direct flame.