“Like bloody Clapham Junction,” said one Nimrod bombadier after the fourth sub had gone down. Neither the Turkish nor Greek NATO radar operators, two nationalities that normally would never share the same console, had heard of the British Rail choke point in London that was notorious for terrible train crashes. But both Turk and Greek operators knew what he meant. Carnage. It was on a scale predicted by only a few of the sonar experts who, in the not-so-cold war, had gone hunting, “pinging” the Russians until they withdrew in confusion because of inferior sonar.
The public relations assistant to CINCHAN — Commander in Chief Channel Forces in Northwood, U.K. — handed Admiral Newsome the information in a jubilant mood. “It’s all coming home to roost, sir.”
“What is?”
“Soviets’ deficiencies. We knew their sonar was bad, but-well, no matter how many SSNs they have, subs aren’t much use to them if they don’t know precisely where we are.”
The admiral knew this and he also knew the other Soviet deficiencies: inferior repair facilities and not nearly the same number of overseas bases or coastal listening stations as the Americans had. The admiral also knew that the NATO forces had been lucky; the absence of large numbers of Russian fighters due to Soviet “surge” tactics now being used on Germany’s central front had allowed the British Nimrods and American Vikings to go about their sub killing unmolested, the Russians having concluded, correctly, that if they won Western Europe quickly enough, the NATO sea lines would be rendered useless. Consequently, the admiral did not share his aide’s mood of exhilaration.
“We can both see and detect one another’s battle groups from four hundred miles away,” the assistant was explaining to a member of the press, admitted only on the understanding that all details of the battle would then be quashed. The admiral’s assistant was explaining to the newspaperman that while both the Soviets and Americans at times did have comparable early-warning radar on their fixed-wing planes and helicopters, the American carriers were so potent in terms of air cover that they could search four times the area as their Soviet counterparts “in any given time frame.”
It was an enormous advantage. And it now became clear to CINCHAN, in Northwood, and ACNE — Allied Commander Northern Europe — in Kolsas, Norway, why in the prewar years the Soviets developed an obsession with shadowing any Allied ship they could, often using their fishing trawlers. It had been an attempt to make up for their lack of bases on the continental shelves, which the Americans possessed. The Soviets had been shadowing the NATO ships in those years not just for information about size and armament but really operating as seaborne early-warning stations in the event of war.
“Yes,” conceded the admiral, looking over at the chart of the North Atlantic. “They’ve taken a drubbing, all right, but that doesn’t preclude a trap. They know they have inferior search capabilities. Question is, gentlemen, what do they have in mind to compensate for it? What are they up to?” He reached over the broad map of the North Atlantic, his hand brushing the 170-mile-wide Iceland-Faeroe Gap. Had the Russians feinted here on the western flank while using the unusually extended summer ice sheet as a roof to slip their best subs through the Greenland-Iceland Gap to the west? NATO’s bombs and torpedoes couldn’t penetrate the ice, other than by blowing holes in it, which pack ice quickly refilled. “Using one choke point to take punishment, one to slip their right flank past us, dividing our force.”
“Rather a bad mauling for a trap, I should think,” suggested Newsome’s PR assistant, a commander who, rumor had it, had risen very quickly because he’d married another admiral’s daughter. The commander glanced at the tally sheet. Of the eleven nuclear subs sunk, nine were Alfa II-class nuclear attack boats out of Leningrad’s Sudomekh yard. With titanium alloy hulls for deep water, a submerged speed of over forty knots, and fifteen thirty-mile homing torpedoes, the Alfa II was the “Rolls-Royce” of the Russian attack boats. The commander was telling the reporter that the Alfa could dive below the crush depth of most other subs, including many of the Americans’.
“Does the depth make that much difference to a torpedo?” asked the reporter. “I thought those Mark-48s could get anything.”
“They can, old boy. Problem is, if you get deep enough, you’re much safer. At three thousand feet they can even beat our Caesar network.” He meant the North Atlantic section of the SOSUS network, and Admiral Newsome was getting tired of him. Perhaps he was promoted because he was married to an admiral’s daughter. God help us, thought Newsome, if he gets to flag rank.
The officer of the day walked in, and the PR commander gave him the tally sheet with the same bonhomie with which he’d been nattering away to the reporter. “Bloodied their nose a bit!”
The admiral was frowning, still looking worriedly at the GIUK Gap, eyes flitting back between the shallow shelf about Iceland and down toward the deeper Labrador and Newfoundland basins. A lot of water to hide in there.
The OOD looked down the score sheet, letting out a low whistle, joining the commander’s spirit of celebration. It was as if they’d both sunk the lot themselves. “Seventeen!” he said. “I say, Freddie. Well done!”
“Yes,” said the admiral, without looking up. “That only leaves a hundred and thirty-six.” The two commanders looked at each other abashedly as the admiral continued. “You mustn’t get caught up too much in the numbers, Freddie. Don’t want to damper your enthusiasm. I understand — it’s a good start. Eleven nuclear subs would mean crippling the U.K. fleet, or any other European power, for that matter. But remember the Russians lost twenty million in World War Two, a colossal number of tanks and ships — mainly given them by the Americans, of course. Point I’m making is, it’s a big country. An enormous country. It can absorb big losses. What we have to worry about is those blighters who got through here under the ice.” The admiral told the reporter he’d have to excuse them. When the reporter had gone, Newsome asked the OOD to tap in the intercept vectors, given the Soviet subs’ average rate of speed, forty-two knots for the SSNs, seventeen for the diesels. “Let’s have a vector first for the nuclear subs alone.”
“Nuclear subs…” The OOD entered the information into the computer. “East of the Labrador Sea — approaching the edge of the basin. Five hundred miles south of Greenland’s Kap Farvel.”
“English designations?” said Admiral Newsome. He was a stickler for the use of English in NATO — some horrible mistakes had been made because of similar-sounding names.
“Ah yes, sorry, sir. That’s five hundred miles southeast of Cape Farewell.”
“Yes… well, I just hope it won’t be farewell for our first convoy,” said the admiral. “Let’s have the vector for the diesels, will you?”
Behind him he could hear the array of computers and telexes as the NATO commands were feeding in not only results of the naval battle at the Iceland-Faeroe Gap but the SITREPs in Western Europe. Fourteen Soviet-Warsaw Pact divisions had broken through on the North German Plain and were now attacking the low countries into Belgium toward the channel ports. If they weren’t pushed back, where the hell would the NATO convoys from the United States dock? France still hadn’t come in.