Sea of Shadows

“I’ve done a little math here. And based on the timing of the various sightings and skirmishes with the submarines, I calculate that they are covering an average distance of 13.5 nautical miles per hour. Although they are undoubtedly traveling at a higher rate of speed, the deceptive maneuvering they’re using has reduced their actual speed through the water. All that zigging and zagging slows down their progress. If they continue their deceptive maneuvering, I estimate that the subs won’t reach the choke point until some time after 1700 this evening. As I say, the SAU will be in position by 1020 hours, just in case the Germans decide to forgo their tricky maneuvering routine, in favor of achieving maximum possible speed through the water.”

She looked around the table. There were no questions, so she continued. “We want our setup to duplicate our previous deployment of forces as closely as possible.” She pointed to the Arabian Gulf chart again. “I recommend we put Benfold and Ingraham here and here, Spaced at eighty percent of their predicted sonar ranges, just like before. They’ll use the same locked-step zigzag pattern that we used before, forming a two-ship version of the moving barrier. Last time we used three ships in the barrier, but the Germans know that we are down a ship, so they’ll expect our formation to be one ship short.”

The Combat Systems Officer, Lieutenant Sikes, tapped a pencil against her palm. “When do we pull the rabbit out of the hat?” she asked. “So far, this looks like what we did when we got our butts shot off.”

Chief McPherson grinned. “That’s exactly how we want it to look, ma’am. The good old U.S. Navy, too dumb to learn from its mistakes, trying the same old plan — even after it’s fallen on its face.” She pointed to a spot on the chart, behind the formation. “The Germans will assume that Towers is back here in the Pouncer position, running behind the advancing barrier — ready to charge around the end of the formation at the first sign of trouble.” She moved her finger to a different point on the chart. “This is where the rabbit comes out of the hat. Because Towers will actually be way down here, in front of the formation, where they won’t be expecting her.”

Ensign Cooper furrowed his brow. “It won’t matter what the Germans are expecting. They’re going to see us. One peep through a periscope, and they’re going to know that we’re not on the back side of the formation.

The jig will be up long before those subs are within weapons range.”

The chief waved a hand toward the Operations Officer. “Sir?”

Lieutenant Nylander stood up. “Thank you, Chief.” His eyes traveled from face to face. “Chief McPherson and I have worked this out. The Germans will not see us, because we’re going to make the ship invisible.”

The Combat Systems Officer waved her pencil around in circles like a wand. “See? I knew there was some hocus-pocus in here somewhere. Rabbits out of hats, invisible ships. Maybe we should levitate the Chief Engineer as a finale.”

“Watch it,” the CHENG snapped.

“Patience,” the captain said. “There is a method to this madness.”

The Combat Systems Officer caught herself before another quip left her mouth.

“Thank you, sir,” the Operations Officer said. He looked around the table again. “What’s the best way to hide a cat?” he asked.

“Stick it in the microwave,” the CHENG said softly.

The Combat Systems Officer elbowed him in the ribs.

“Close,” said the Operations Officer. “You put it in a room full of other cats.”

“The Straits of Hormuz is a major shipping lane, and dozens of oil tankers go through every day, in both directions. If we want to disappear, all we have to do is become a tanker.”

“Child’s play,” the Operations Officer said. “We rig deceptive lighting, so we look like an oil tanker in the dark. We secure the SPY radar and every other piece of electronics that transmits anything on military frequency bands. That still leaves us the Furuno radar, for safety of navigation, but Furunos are carried by two-thirds of the merchant ships in the world. The Germans will expect a tanker to carry a Furuno, or something like it.”

The Chief Engineer was nodding now. “We can configure the engineering plant for turn-count masking. If we run one engine a little faster that the other one and offset the difference in thrust by angling the blades of the propellers differently, we’ll get a loud, mushy blade signature. With a bit of experimentation, I’ll bet we can make ourselves sound like an old tanker with a poorly maintained screw.”

Ensign Cooper tugged at his lower lip. “This is all well and good, as long as the subs show up in the evening, at or after sunset. What if they turn up at lunchtime? By the chief ’s calculations, that could happen if they run at high speed. We might fool them with tricky lighting after dark, but no amount of fan dancing can make a destroyer look like a merchant ship in broad daylight.”

“It’s a risk, sir,” Chief McPherson said, “but a calculated risk. Once they make it out of the straits and into the gulf, it’s going to be a hell of a lot harder to find them. They’ll have a lot more room to maneuver, and a lot more places to hide. Our best chance is to bottle them up before they get out of the straits, and they know that as well as we do. They’ve got to be expecting us to try for a choke point at the northern end of the straits.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Ensign Cooper said. “But what’s to stop them from running the choke point at high noon?”

“Sub skippers don’t like to attack when visibility is good,” the chief said. “It’s too easy for a lookout to spot a periscope, or for an aircraft to see the silhouette of the sub’s hull through the water. Given the choice, a submarine commander will either attack after dark, or as close to sunrise or sunset as he can get. The human eye has trouble picking out detail under changing light conditions.”

Ensign Cooper nodded. “They hit the Brits after dark, and they hit us after dark. When did they hit the Kitty Hawk?”

“Just as the sun was coming up,” the executive officer said.

“So they’ll probably try to run the choke point after the sun goes down?” the ensign asked.

“That’s what we’re hoping, sir,” the chief said. “As I said, it’s a calculated risk. If they decide to crash the party early, we shoot about a dozen ASROCs in their general direction to keep their heads down, and we run like hell.”

“Fair enough,” the ensign said.

The Combat Systems Officer looked thoughtful. “We should lay a sonobuoy barrier to the south,” she said. “Passive buoys only, so the subs won’t be able to detect them. The subs will have to pass through the barrier to transit the straits, and we’ll see them coming.”

“We’d need to launch a helo to monitor the buoys,” the XO said.

The captain shook his head. “Negative. No helos. The Germans have displayed an excellent ability to localize low-flying aircraft from the sound of their rotors. I don’t want to take a chance at tipping our hand. One sniff of a helo and those subs will be alerted.”

“What if we don’t launch it?” the Operations Officer asked. “If we’re in the mood to be tricky, why don’t we leave the helo on deck, lights out, and rotors not turning? The flight crew can sit in the helo and monitor the buoys in the dark, right from the flight deck. If they keep their engines spun up for a rapid launch, they could still be at Ready-Five.”

“Yeah,” said the CHENG, “but they’ll be burning fuel the whole time they sit there. What if we have to launch, and the helo’s nearly out of gas?”

“We could hot-pump the helo,” Ensign Cooper said. Hot-pumping was a method of refueling helicopters on deck, with their engines running and their rotors still turning. It was a technique most often used when a helo needed to land, take on fuel, and get back into the air as quickly as possible. “The rotors are usually spinning when we hot-pump a helo,” he said, “but there’s no reason that they have to be.”

“Good point,” the captain said. “We’ll keep their tanks topped off constantly. If we do have to launch, they’ll have a full bag of fuel.”

* * *

The discussion continued for another fifteen minutes before it became clear that they were rehashing the same ideas. The captain looked around the table. “Anybody see any good reasons why this plan won’t work?”

No one said a word.

“Does anyone have a better idea, or a refinement that we haven’t discussed?”

Again, no one had anything to say.