Dewey nodded. It made political and military sense. That was a rarity, usually the two demands opposed and contradicted. “Very good, Seer. We’ll make it happen.” Then his face fell again as the image of the ever-lengthening lines of white crosses in the snows of Russia returned to haunt him. “You’re right, we’ve got to win something, somewhere.”
“Pickets in place Sir. We’ve got four PBJs overhead. They’re dropping sonobuoys now.”
Captain Albert Sturmer nodded. That made twelve hunting platforms gathered around the position of the Type XXID that had launched its missiles at Washington. Eight were modified Gleaves class destroyers. They had been stripped of their anti-aircraft guns and three of their five-inchers after they had been phased out of service with the carrier groups. Now, they had three Hedgehogs, a big trainable launcher in place of B gun and two smaller fixed weapons amidships. Between them, the three launchers could put down a devastating barrage of charges. They also carried an array of depth charge throwers aft and big, one-ton depth charges in their torpedo tubes.
If this had been a long-range hunter-killer group, they’d have had at least one jeep carrier with them, a CVE stuffed with Avengers and Bearcats. Instead, the PBJs overhead were the Navy’s version of the Air Force’s B-25J Mitchell. They had sonobuoys and an ASV radar, plus homing torpedoes in their bellies and rockets under their wings. For the endgame, they had their noses stuffed with machine guns; eight in the nose itself, four in packages on the aircraft side. Just in case the Germans decided not to go down with their ship.
The Type XXID had two choices. It could run as fast as it could, and the Type XXI was fast underwater. By doing so, it could clear the area and make the search area much larger. The problem with running at high speed for any length of time was that doing so depleted its batteries. Within an hour or so, it would have to charge them. Even using its snort, that would make the job of finding it easier. Worse still, running at high speed meant it was generating flow noise and that also made finding it easier. That was why the PBJs were dropping their sonobuoys. One of the things the Navy had learned from the experiments with the modified British S-boats in Bermuda was what frequencies to listen for. That and the experience of the first wave of Type XXI attacks during late 1944 and early 1945.
The other choice facing the Type XXID down there was to go slow and try to creep away. That had the advantages of extending battery endurance, to days if necessary, and cutting noise to a minimum. That would make it hard to detect. The disadvantage was that going slow meant going very slow indeed; four knots, barely more than walking pace. The missiles fired at Washington an hour ago had come from here. If the Type XXID that had fired them was going slow, it was still somewhere here, alive and well and with plenty of battery charge. If it had gone fast to clear datum, it was somewhere within a radius of 16 miles with dead batteries.
“Anything from the PBJs?” Sturmer snapped out the request. “Nothing on the buoys, Sir.”
“OK, Sweep the area, active search.” Two destroyers were sitting out on the flanks of the formation, ready to lash the water with their active sonars. The old sonars had been “searchlight” systems with a single beam. They had been fine for tracking the old, slow Type VII and Type IX U-boats but the Type XXI was fast enough to run between the sweep of the tracking beam. The current sonars had been modified and used three beams in an overlapping fan. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a good enough solution until the new generation of scanning sonars left the laboratories and joined the fleet. Whenever that was.
Still, the new sonars gave the Type XXI down there another set of choices. It could accelerate and run between the net of tracking beams but that would deplete battery life and make noise that would be detected by the passive sonobuoys from the PBJs. Or, it could keep going and try to sneak away. A third choice was to try and get to the bottom and sit there. Sturmer paced the bridge waiting for the hunting systems to tell him which choice the U-boat skipper had made.
“Contact Sir. Grayson has picked up something on the bottom.” Option Three, then, Sturmer thought. Gone to ground.
“Set up a line attack.” The waiting six destroyers were already formed into a line and they curved around to the location from their left-hand picket destroyer. They were accelerating to attack speed, a speed that left their own sonars blind. It didn’t matter. They were being coached in by the two pickets that lashed their contact with all the sonar power they had available. Earle shuddered as her Hedgehogs fired. The big bow launcher put down an eight-shaped barrage of the small charges, the two waist Hedgehogs added their circles, overlapping the center of the eight. The other five destroyers in the line laid down their own patterns. The result was a maze of intersecting circles that gave the submarine underneath little chance of escape. Even a XXI couldn’t outrun the carefully planned web that was dropping on it. The same attack pattern had driven old Type VIIs and Type IXs from the sea.
On board Earle the crew waited. Hedgehog rounds only exploded if they hit something hard enough to activate the fuze. The mud of the sea bottom wouldn’t do it. Opinions were divided about that. Some people preferred the heavy Squids carried on the Canadian destroyers, their charges exploded at pre-set depths and gave a satisfying mass of explosions. On the convoys to Russia, American and Canadian destroyers worked together; Hedgehog and Squid complemented each other. That was why not many German submarines survived to make a second voyage and very few made a third cruise.
Two explosions sent columns of water skywards. The destroyers turned to bring their depth charge throwers into action. The ten-charge patterns went over the side, covering the area marked by the Hedgehog round explosions, then Earle lurched again as her torpedo tubes fired a one-ton depth charge square over the position of the contact.
Now, they had to wait while the water cleared from effects of the explosions. Sturmer resumed pacing the bridge again.
“It’s still down there!” The voice from the sonar room was the epitome of frustration. There was no way a bottomed submarine could have survived the hammering that had just been handed out.
“Damn. Order Grayson and Mayo to drop a pair of one-tonners each on it. That should blow the damned sub apart.” Earle had the picket role now; she painted the contact with her sonar and coached the other destroyers in. Then, even her sonar picture vanished as the water was roiled by the massive explosions of the big depth charges. There was an anguished wait while the trace cleared and a sigh of disappointment. The submarine was still there.
“Sir, I’ve got an uneasy feeling about this.”
“What’s up, Nav?”
“Sir, we’re not that far from where Porter went down a couple of years ago. It’s possible, more than possible, that’s her wreck. There’s a lot of sunken ships around here, but she’s the best candidate.”
Sturmer nodded; it made sense. No submarine could take the pounding that had just been handed out. It had to be a wreck on the bottom. And that meant their real target had had that much time to get clear. In fact, the German skipper had probably chosen this point for his launch for just that reason. It was time to start over.
Starting over didn’t do any good. The destroyers and aircraft crossed and re-crossed the search area; one that was expanding with every minute that passed, and found nothing. As the night went on, the hunting group was slowly forced to accept that the Type XXID had got clean away.