The sound-powered phoned squawked. I answered.
"Conn, Sonar, I've got three contacts, one due north — designate Delta-one, one to the northwest — designate Delta-two, and one due west — designate Delta-three, right at the edge of our detection." King was in charge.
Even before these contacts, the crew was running a pool on whether we would find anyone, and if so, whether they would be our old friends. It was a two-by-two matrix, and the guys got five bucks from me, but I had really no idea how it was organized.
I crept along, waiting for more information from Sonar. It was another half hour before we got anything definitive.
King chirped at me. "Delta-one's our old friend Ognevoy. Delta-two is a sub, but that's all I got right now. Delta-three is some kind of surface puke. Don't know yet."
There was, of course, no way Ivan could know we would be there, although the Whiskey skipper we had previously encountered was probably persuasive in his desire to get a picket in place just in case. And, as before, he was right… here we were.
The sound-powered phone chirped again. "Delta-three is a Kanin-class Soviet destroyer, Sir," King said. "I'll bring out the book."
King approached me with his trusty reference book depicting the Soviet fleet. He flipped it open and pointed to a black-and-white photo. "This is the Gnevnyy," he said. "It's a converted Krupny-class like the other eight Kanins."
I looked at him. "Yeah," he added, "that's Delta-three."
The King was earning his keep.
I glanced over the statistics, jotting down some notes for the Skipper.
The Kanin was 486 feet long, had a max speed of 35 knots, and was powered by steam turbines driving two shafts — she was an ASW ship, but pre-Kashin; she sported two 21-inch torpedo tubes and three RBU-6000 ASW rocket launchers, but she had only a hull-mounted sonar that was not very effective.
The RBU-6000 was essentially World War II stuff. It consisted of twelve ballistic rockets in a circular array that could be range-adjusted by tilting the array. They ranged from about a thousand feet to three miles, and were effective up to about a thousand feet down. To be effective against us, they would virtually have to make a direct hit. By herself, the Gnevnyy was no threat. She would never hear us, and even if she did, we could evade her stuff. But with the Ognevoy doing the listening, the Gnevnyy could present a genuine threat, especially when backed up by the sub.
"What about the sub?" I asked.
"She's still at the limit of our listening range," King said. "Besides, we still got that seismic noise in the background. It's masking a lot of details."
"How do you think that will affect the Ognevoy's dipping sonar?" I asked, and then I added, "From their bird."
"It'll cut their range, that's for sure," King said, "but we don't know by how much." King looked thoughtful. "They normally have a twenty-thousand-yard or so range — that's from the bird. Of course, the bird can operate twenty, thirty, even a hundred miles from home, and we got no way of knowing where it is until she pings."
"The layer's about three-hundred feet here, right?" I asked.
"Yep," King answered, "but it dips down to about five-hundred feet just over the trench and for a couple of miles on the shoreward side, because of the south flowing cold water current there."
That worked in our favor. If Ognevoy's bird was dipping outside the channel, we could avoid his detecting us on the inside. On ultra-quiet, there was little chance of Ognevoy picking us up on her towed array, and no Soviet sub had an effective ranging passive sonar. So we could avoid the sub too. On the other hand, if the bird were dipping shoreward of the trench, it would detect us for sure, if we got within its range. Question is, would he dip below or above the layer? Time to call the Skipper.
I chirped him on the sound-powered phone. I briefed him on what I knew. He said he would be out shortly.
While I waited for him, I continued to think about the problem. When the Skipper showed up five minutes later, I reviewed the Soviets' operational capabilities, and told him what I knew about the layer effect on both sides of the trench.
"What would you do as the Captain of the Ognevoy?" the Skipper asked.
"Well, I don't know anything about the sub (us), except that it's a nuke with a depth capability of somewhere between eight-hundred and two thousand feet. It has deep diver lockout capability. I know it's speed limited, but don't know why, but it's possibly due to the mini-sub on its stern. I know it's quiet, too. Of course, I know the layers and currents out here." I paused, deep in thought. The Skipper waited patiently.
"Putting the bird outside the trench is a waste. I think I would put the bird shoreward of the trench, dipping below the layer. I'd place the sub in the middle of the upper layer at a hundred feet or so — Ivan uses meters, so at thirty-five or forty meters. I'd cruise the Ognevoy parallel and as close to the islands as possible and still be outside the hundred-fathom curve. I'd park the Gnevnyy in the Krusenstern Strait, pointed eastward so she can kick it in the ass should the sub be detected trying another entrance."
The Skipper had listened intently. "Why not place the Gnevnyy outside the strait several miles to put it closer to any alternative route?" he asked. He beckoned me over to the chart and pointed at Krusenstern Strait. The current is pretty strong to the west through here — sometimes two, three knots," he said. "The Gnevnyy would have to work against that, and certainly give herself away."
I nodded. The Skipper had a point — that's why he was the Skipper.
"So, where do we place ourselves?" he asked.
"Shallow," I answered, "and use the current."
"Good. Make it so," the Skipper said, and went to his chair at the Control Station, lighting up one of his stogies.
At six knots, it would take us the rest of my watch plus some to transit the trench. Once the layer shallowed up, we wanted to get above it, and that's what I passed to Larry when he relieved me three hours later.
I got some sleep, grabbed a bite — sandwiches, did a bit of reading, and spent some time with my guys just hanging out and swapping sea stories. There was little else I could do under the circumstances.
As I came back on watch to relieve Dirk, he told me that the batteries were getting low, so we would need to bring up the plant for a while to charge them. I asked when, and he told me we had three or four more hours, so I put that a bit lower on the list. His big announcement really came as no surprise. The sub, Delta-two, was our old adversary, the Whiskey. This was the second time he had found us by using guile and submarine sense. This guy was really good, and we couldn't afford to make any wrong assumptions. The Skipper had been on the Control Station for about an hour, Dirk said. Then he left to check the plant and the condition of his guys. Ultra-quiet put them on port and starboard watches, and they were stretched.
We were at 150 feet, maintaining bare steerageway, but Parrish told me that our over-ground speed was nearly four knots. We definitely were riding the inbound current.
Sonar reported the Ognevoy underway at six knots, almost off our starboard beam twenty miles to the north, heading toward us. The Gnevnyy was eighteen miles to our stern — the Skipper had nailed that one — DIW but the plant was running, so we could hear her just fine. The Whiskey was hanging off our port quarter, but he hadn't spotted us, probably because we were outside his sonar range — he was ten miles out. From time to time, the Ognevoy's bird would fire off a ping, but Sonar hadn't picked him up for the past two hours.