“I need a course!” Ryan said.
“Jonesy, give me a bearing!” Mancuso shouted.
“Three-two-zero, sir. Two fish heading in,” Jones responded at once, working his controls to nail the bearing down. This was no time to screw up.
“Steer three-two-zero, Ryan,” Ramius ordered, “if we can turn so fast.”
Thanks a lot, Ryan thought angrily, watching the gyrocompass click through three-five-seven. The rudder was hard over, and with the sudden increase in power from the caterpillar motors, he could feel feedback flutter through the wheel.
“Two fish heading in, bearing is three-two-zero, I say again bearing is constant,” Jones reported, much cooler than he felt. “Here we go, guys…”
Her tactical plot showed the
“Can we shoot?” the exec asked.
“At the
The two Mark C torpedoes were charging at forty-one knots, a slow speed for this range, so that they could be more easily guided by the
“Okay, coming through three-four-five, easing the rudder off,” Ryan said.
Mancuso kept quiet now. Ramius was using a tactic that he didn’t particularly agree with, turning into the fish. It offered a minimum target profile, but it gave them a simpler geometric intercept solution. Presumably Ramius knew what Russian fish could do. Mancuso hoped so.
“Steady on three-two-zero, Captain,” Ryan said, eyes locked on the gyro repeater as though it mattered. A small voice in his brain congratulated him for going to the head an hour earlier.
“Ryan, down, maximum down on the diving planes.”
“All the way down.” Ryan pushed the yoke to the stops. He was terrified, but even more frightened of fouling up. He had to assume that both commanders knew what they were about. There was no choice for him. Well, he thought, he did know one thing. Guided torpedoes can be tricked. Like radar signals that are aimed at the ground, sonar pulses can be obscured, especially when the sub they are trying to locate is near the bottom or the surface, areas where the pulses tend to be reflected. If the
“Target aspect has changed, Comrade Captain. Target is now smaller,” the
Tupolev considered this. He knew everything there was on Soviet combat doctrine — and knew that Ramius had written a good deal of it. Marko would do what he taught all of us to do, Tupolev thought. Turn into the oncoming weapons to minimize target cross-section and dive for the bottom to become lost in the confused echoes. “Target will be attempting to dive into the bottom-capture field. Be alert.”
“Aye, Comrade. Can he reach the bottom quickly enough?” the
Tupolev racked his brain for the
Ryan cringed each time the sonar lash echoed through the double hull. “Can’t you jam that or something?” he demanded.
“Patience, Ryan,” Ramius said. He had never faced live warheads before but had exercised this problem a hundred times in his career. “Let him know he has us first.”
“Do you carry decoys?” Mancuso asked.
“Four of them, in the torpedo room, forward — but we have no torpedomen.”
Both captains were playing the cool game, Ryan noted bitterly from inside his terrified little world. Neither was willing to show fright before his peer. But they were both trained for this.
“Skipper,” Jones called, “two fish, bearing constant at three-two-zero — they just went active. I say again, the fish are now active — shit! they sound just like 48s. Skipper, they sound like Mark 48 fish.”
Ramius had been waiting for this. “Yes, we stole the torpedo sonar from you five years ago, but not your torpedo engines.
In the sonar room, Bugayev had powered up the acoustical jamming gear as soon as the fish were launched. Now he carefully timed his jamming pulses to coincide with those from the approaching torpedoes. The pulses were dialed into the same carrier frequency and pulse repetition rate. The timing had to be precise. By sending out slightly distorted return echoes, he could create ghost targets. Not too many, nor too far away. Just a few, close by, and he might be able to confuse the fire control operators on the attacking
“Damn! He’s jamming us.” The
“You see?” Tupolev said to the
“Ryan, all up on planes!” Ramius shouted.
“All the way up.” Ryan yanked back, pulling the yoke hard against his belly and hoping that Ramius knew what the hell he was doing.
“Jones, give us time and range.”
“Aye.” The jamming gave them a sonar picture plotted on the main scopes. “Two fish, bearing three-two- zero. Range to number one is 2,000 yards, to number two is 2,300—I got a depression angle on number one! Number one fish is heading down a little, sir.” Maybe Bugayev wasn’t so dumb after all, Jones thought. But they had two fish to sweat…
The
“Sonar, ping the sonuvabitch! Max power, blast the sucker!”
The
“Any time now — one of the fish has capture, sir. I don’t know which.” Jones moved the phones off one ear, his hand poised to slap the other off. The homing sonar on one torpedo was now tracking them. Bad news. If these were like Mark 48s…Jones knew all too well that those things didn’t miss much. He heard the change in the Doppler shift of the propellers as they passed beneath the
The second Mark C torpedo was cutting through the water at forty-one knots. This made the torpedo-target closing speed about fifty-five. The guidance and decision loop was a complex one. Unable to mimic the computer homing system on the American Mark 48, the Soviets had the torpedo’s targeting sonar report back to the launching vessel through an insulated wire. The
