The Shark Mutiny

Shark, instructing the submarine to disable the Chinese warship should she fail to turn around.

Lieutenant Commander Headley read the signal, and ordered the conn to take a long left-hand swing at flank speed in order to come up on the port side of the Chinese warship. He planned to fire one torpedo, well aft of her beam from range two thousand yards. This meant, essentially, that the MK 48 would strike the stern and cripple the propulsion of the ship leaving her helpless in the water until assistance arrived.

He sent an immediate message to the Captain, who arrived in the control room at 0745. He seemed agitated, uncomfortable with the decisions, not at all eager to open fire on a major Chinese warship. He questioned the intelligence of the orders, wondering if they might not have been changed. If there had been some mistake.

Lieutenant Commander Headley brought Shark to PD once again and requested the CO take a look for himself. “The Chinese CO has ignored our warnings, no doubt about that,” said the XO. “And these orders make our duty clear. We are to cripple it, put it out of action with minimum loss of life.”

“Yes, I understand that,” said Commander Reid, declining the periscope. “But the Hangzhou is not doing anyone any harm right now, maybe just taking a look.” He repeated, absentmindedly, “Maybe just taking a look.”

“These orders don’t tell us to speculate, sir,” replied Dan. “They tell us to hit the destroyer hard when we are told to do so. And this piece of paper right here says right now.”

The Captain of USS Shark looked unenthusiastic. “It doesn’t say how long we give it to turn around,” he said. “I think we might check that with the flag, XO.”

“As you wish, sir. But I would prefer you do it, because in my view these orders are specific. The Chinese ship has been warned, it has not turned around, and I have a piece of paper here ordering us to open fire.”

“This is your watch, XO. I would like the writer to record my unease and my wish for a second opinion on the orders. But if you are certain as to the orders, you have my permission to proceed as you see fit.”

“Thank you, sir…. Now…torpedo room — XO, prepare tubes one and two…MK 48s….”

Lieutenant Commander Headley turned to Master Chief Drew Fisher, who had materialized at his side. “Check that out, Chief, will you? I’m only preparing a second tube in case of malfunction. I intend to fire just one.”

“Aye, sir.”

Inside the sonar room, the operators could still hear the steady beat of the Hangzhou’s propellers, rising and falling in the ocean swell, making the same soft chuff-chuff-chuff sound in the water, now less than 2,000 yards away, dead ahead.

Dan Headley grabbed for the periscope handles at knee level as the “eyes” of the submarine rose up out of the deck of the control room. He scanned the ocean, called out bearing, then range…“Zero-seven- zero…twenty-one thirty yards…down all masts…make your depth one hundred.”

Seconds passed, and then the sonar room operator called it…. “XO — sonar…track three four… bearing zero-six-zero…range two thousand.”

Down in the torpedo room, both tubes were loaded, and the guidance officer was in direct contact with Lt. Commander Headley, speaking quietly into his slim-line microphone.

Dan Headley ordered the Officer of the Deck, Lt. Matt Singer, to take the conn…. “Hold your speed at three knots.”

The sonar team checked the approach, calling out the details softly to the XO. The rest of the ship was stone silent as they crept forward, preparing to fire the shot that would most certainly be heard in the Great Hall of the People.

Lieutenant Commander Headley took another fast look at the screen. Then he ordered, “STAND BY ONE…stand by to fire by sonar….”

“Bearing zero-six-zero…range two thousand yards…computer set.”

“SHOOT!” snapped Dan Headley.

And everyone felt the faint shudder as the big MK 48 swept out into the ocean, making a beeline toward the Chinese destroyer.

“Weapon under guidance, sir.”

At 40 knots, the torpedo would run for less than two minutes before hitting the utterly unprepared Sovremenny-Class destroyer. And it hit in the precise spot Dan Headley had specified, bang on the stern.

It slammed into the long, low aft section and detonated, blowing the main shaft into three pieces, the propeller into the deep water and the rudder into a split and twisted mess of steel. The Hangzhou could no longer maneuver, couldn’t steer, couldn’t move. As the pall of smoke began to clear away from her stern area, she looked more or less normal, but in truth she was powerless.

Her crew could hear the ship’s tannoy blaring instructions, and the medical teams were already making their way aft to tend the wounded, but by the standards of torpedoed warships there was relatively little bloodshed.

The communications room was still intact, and the ops room was unharmed. In fury, Colonel Yang Xi was thrashing around looking for a target at which to lash back. But he could see nothing short range for well over two miles. He had missiles, shells and torpedoes, but nothing close at which to aim any of them specifically. Nor could he see what had hit his ship, if indeed anything. For all he knew, it was just an explosion. But he knew that was stretching the realms of coincidence.

Three minutes after the impact, he received yet another signal from the American carrier, again ordering him out of the area, but offering to request assistance from the Iranians if the destroyer’s comms were down.

The Colonel did not answer. Neither did he consider it prudent to open fire with his missiles, because if he did the Americans would surely sink him. In his present situation he was the epitome of a sitting duck. Instead he relayed a signal to the Iranian Naval Command at Bandar Abbas requesting assistance.

Meanwhile Lt. Commander Headley turned USS Shark around and returned to his position on station 20 miles off the port bow of the Harry S Truman.

0100. Friday, May 4.

The White House.

Admiral Morgan sat alone in his office in the West Wing. He had promised Kathy he would be home by 11 P.M., but that was before the Shark had planted a torpedo in the stern of the Hangzhou. He had been on the line to the CNO almost every moment since.

Right now the John F. Kennedy Battle Group was five days out of Pearl Harbor and making a swing to the south from her normal route up to the coast of Taiwan. Admiral Dixon had ordered her straight to Diego Garcia.

The increased tension in the Hormuz area had also caused the CNO to tell the Atlantic Commander-in-Chief to move the sixth operational U.S. CVBG, that of the Theodore Roosevelt, out of the Mediterranean and on to the Indian Ocean.

Like Admiral Morgan, he had no idea what the Chinese were up to, and he had a bad feeling about that new Chinese base on the Bassein River. Within a few days they would have four carrier groups conducting a roulement between Diego Garcia and the Hormuz Strait, with the Roosevelt free to roam the Indian Ocean, with her consorts, anywhere it looked as though the Chinese might cause more trouble.

As far as Arnold Morgan was concerned, he had seen enough. Always completely mistrustful of the men from the Orient, he now believed their true colors were being shown. They had cold-bloodedly caused a massive world oil crisis, they had caused scenes of chaos in the Gulf of Iran and right now no one dared to bring a big tanker across Jimmy Ramshawe’s line, which defined the essential contour of the minefield.

The oil market frenzy had abated slightly thanks to soothing words from the American President that free- and-clear passage through the Strait of Hormuz would soon be resumed. But Americans were paying three dollars and fifty cents a gallon at the pumps, and Texaco, along with three other U.S.-based corporations, was threatening to put the price up to four dollars next week.

The President was at his wit’s end, demanding the strait be reopened immediately, apparently unable to grasp the consequences of another tanker being blown up, and the global uproar that would surely follow if the USA had declared the route safe to resume trade.

The weekend passed more or less uneventfully. White Rajah was made the hot favorite, before losing by a half length at Churchill Downs after closing on the winner all the way down the stretch. But at 0530 (local time) on