Show of Force (27 page)

that little fuel was expended before locating their target.
Mendel Rivers
her fish launched, turned and was already diving at the sound of the splashes, but she could not escape the torpedoes closing-in on her. The first one exploded against the sail, causing enough damage to disable and eventually sink her. But the rest of the hull was intact enough so that death would have been prolonged. The second explosion, forward of the sail, ruptured the pressure hull, mercifully making
Rivers's
final dive a rapid one.

The attack by the American submarines was quite different from that planned by Admiral Kupinsky, but the purposes were similar, to pick off as many of the forward element as possible and soften the opposition's protection of the carrier. The Soviets did not have the missiles that could be fired from underwater at as great a range as the Americans had. They did not take the chance of firing from the surface because the reconnaissance planes from
Nimitz
would have spotted them. In addition, as with the American attack, the element of surprise was crucial, especially since they would be firing from a much closer range.

Admiral Gorenko had learned a great deal from the Army during the Great Patriotic War, and one of the lessons he learned was sheer power in numbers. He built submarines as often as his budgets would allow, for he had learned that submarines were expendable and you could never have too many. There were an even dozen that attacked that morning, waiting on either side of the approaching ships, much like the American attack. One of them silently hovered at maximum depth, waiting to surface in the midst of a group of ships it hoped would be vulnerable to an interior attack. They also hoped they might be able to surprise
Nimitz.
Truxton
was the first ship to sense something ahead. The night orders from Admiral Charles warned against the possibility of a submarine attack, simply because he had planned one himself. So
Truxton's
CO had left his own night orders for sonar to switch to the passive mode every five minutes, just to listen. With the variations of water conditions and sensitivity of the new sonars, it was a wise idea, boring but wise. The first indication of something other than schools of fish off her port bow came just before 0700. The sonarman on the phones reported unidentified engine noises to the bridge.

The captain was in the wardroom, having joined his officers for breakfast, when the call came from the bridge. The OOD was ordered to signal the flagship and to sound general quarters. If the captain had been in sonar as he raced up the ladder outside the wardroom, he would have heard the telltale sound of the missile leaving its torpedo tube. Perhaps, if he had been at the top of the forward lattice mast with a pair of binoculars, he might have seen the missile engine ignite after breaking the surface. As he passed CIC, where the radar strobe was making its incessant sweep, he might have seen the approaching missile painted on the scope for the first time. By the time he arrived at the bridge, a worried OOD had already received reports from sonar and CIC and was reporting the attack on the primary tactical circuit. It was not really necessary, since CIC had already ensured that the information on the missile they were tracking was being fed into the master computer on
Nimitz.
The task force was warned.

Truxton
was not properly equipped for antimissile defense. She depended on the other ships. But this time she was alone, for a single submarine had picked her out, rather than a flight of aircraft that she could defend. Her captain turned her in the direction of the missile to present as small a target as possible. The fire-control radar did manage to lock on and her five-inch gun did fire some token shells at the intruder. But that type of defense was like throwing stones at a tank. The detonation was well behind the forward gun mount, and just under the bridge. The ship nearest to her decided that it must have hit her torpedoes. It seemed the only answer, for the explosion was so powerful that they could not tell the missile detonation from the secondary explosion of the torpedoes. The bow was left attached to the rest of the ship, but that was only visible at the waterline. She was well enough built so that her forward motion didn't rip the bow off. But her bridge was another matter. It had simply disappeared, the forward lattice mast crumpling over the side. Her nuclear engineering spaces were still intact, as was her missile launcher in the after part of the ship, but much of her crew had still been forward at the time of impact. Many of the officers and men had been on their way to general quarters. Few of them were now visible on the decks. Some were able to begin swimming, but the majority were dead before they hit the water. When the closest ship moved in to assist,
Truxton's
appearance was almost surreal. The damage was devastating, but there were almost no blood or sailors evident to show the human effects of the explosion.

O'Bannon
wasn't as fortunate. The missile that pierced the helicopter flight deck, a bit forward of her deck gun, continued down into the engineering spaces before exploding. Two of her powerful gas turbine engines were disabled by the blast, and she lost steering control. Flying metal also damaged her main electrical board, and power was lost throughout the ship. Both of the men assigned to correct such a loss were killed at the same time. To an observer, there was no smoke and little apparent damage, but
O'Bannon
was crippled.

Turner Joy
had been retained by the Admiral because of her guns. He had anticipated that her three five-inch guns might come in handy at the right time. And the Admiral had an affection for this old ship that went back more than twenty years. Howard Bivins, her gunnery officer, was a mustang, enlisted for many years before he became a commissioned officer. He had been a seaman aboard the
Turner Joy
the night she had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. The gunnery officer at the time was Lieutenant David Charles. Bivins had later served with Lieutenant Charles on the PBR's on the Mekong. When Bivins had been encouraged to apply for OCS, it was his old exec whom he had called in the middle of the night for advice. Commander Charles had written the recommendation that sent him to Newport, and it was Admiral Charles who had sent him the first letter of congratulations when he heard Lieutenant Bivins had received orders as gunnery officer on
Turner Joy.
Just as fast as her newer sister ships, but much smaller, and without the sophisticated weapons systems,
Turner Joy
was really not worth the two torpedoes that sank her. The first exploded in her hull well below the forward mount, setting off the magazine, which in turn accounted for most of her bow. Lieutenant Bivins had just been adjusting his helmet while talking with the captain, when the wall of fire from the magazine wiped out every individual in the bridge area. Neither man knew that the ship they both loved was already lost. The second torpedo, set for an even deeper run, went off in one of her fuel tanks. Very little remained between her stacks after the ensuing explosion, and the fires could not possibly be controlled.
Oldendorf
moved in as quickly and as closely as was safe and lowered her boats to recover those in
Turner Joy's
crew who were able to escape the flames.

Nimitz
had also been launching aircraft at the time of the submarine attack, and her helos were vectored toward the underwater contacts that the forward ships found all around them. One of the pilots watched fascinated as he saw missiles breaking water in two locations. Helpless, he watched their flight paths approach two of the forward ships. The first descended between the stacks of
Mahan,
but there was no explosion. Later that day he ferried two weapons demolition experts back to
Mahan
to defuse the warhead nestled in the after officer's head.

As he gave orders to his crew chief to release the sonobuoys along a line his copilot had devised, he watched the cruiser
Gridley's
close-in weapon system bring down a missile bearing down on her with a shower of rapid fire 20-mm. shells.
Gridley
then swung to starboard and raced directly down a torpedo wake. The fish passed down
Gridley's
port beam at approximately the same time the pilot heard the positive contact report on the attacking submarine.

Almost mechanically he swung the helo toward the drop point, still in awe of
Gridley's
luck in surviving both a missile and a torpedo attack. His copilot's arm, in the air with fists clenched until they reached the right spot, dropped. The pilot released the homing torpedo, feeling his craft lurch up and sideways from the sudden loss of weight. They were close to the water and went into a hover at two hundred feet, hoping for evidence of a hit. It was not long in coming. The high-speed torpedo had found a slower conventional sub, likely the one that had fired the fish at
Gridley.
The sonobuoys recorded the explosion, probably at a depth of 250 feet or more. It took longer than they had expected for the oily, roiling waters to begin bubbling to the surface, discharging those remains that had not followed the sub to the bottom. The pilot swung his craft back toward
Gridley,
hovering near her bridge for just a moment, exchanging the thumbs-up signal of victory with her captain.

The frigate
Barbey
had been well to the north of the other ships, positioned there for early warning and a first line of defense with her Harpoon missiles if Soviet ships attempted to swing north. One well-placed torpedo was all that was required to immobilize her. It hit aft below her helo flight deck. The attacking submarine then .moved in slowly like a cat to position itself for a second shot that would sink
Barbey.
The torpedo was fired, and it did break
Barbey's
back, but the Soviet captain's mistake was to take too much time in preparing a perfect solution for his second torpedo.
Meyercord,
five miles astern of
Barbey,
had launched her LAMPS helo at the first indication of submarine attack. When the pilot sighted the first explosion in
Barbey's
hull, he had flown directly north of the damaged ship. The sonar contact that
Meyercord
located and fed to her pilot was confirmed by his MAD detector, and his Mk-46 homing torpedo hit the water less than five-hundred yards from the Russian craft.

The Russian attack from the flanks had been moderately successful, considering that the Soviet subs had to fire from a much shorter range. The fact that Admiral Charles assumed his counterpart might plan the same type of attack provided enough warning to prevent more damage than occurred. The forward element was now scouring the ocean for the remaining attackers with both LAMPS and
Nimitz
helos.

What they had not anticipated was the Soviet attack submarine
Frunze
surfacing in the middle of the screen between the cruiser
Belknap
and the guided-missile destroyer
Joseph Strauss.
Both ships had been tracked for long enough to plan an effective attack. The captain of
Frunze
had decided to fire his forward torpedoes point blank at
Belknap,
since he would be only five-hundred yards off her beam. No console solution would be required. The after bank of tubes had two torpedoes reserved for
Joseph Strauss.
Frunze
maintained absolute silence, hovering below a temperature layer that protected her from the searching sonar of her quarry. When he knew the two ships were close enough so that the sound of water escaping his tanks would cause confusion rather than evasion, he drifted up to one-hundred feet, firing first at the larger cruiser, then at the destroyer.

The first indication of a submarine in their midst was
Belknap's
sonar. The operator couldn't believe the sudden strong return from the object off his starboard bow. He was alert enough to punch the contact alarm, but waited for three successive echoes before classifying it as a submarine.

It was too late.
Frunze
shuddered as it fired first two torpedoes from its forward tubes, and then two more from the stern. The running time to
Belknap
was insignificant. The two explosions, one following the other by only seconds, shook the already diving submarine as it maneuvered under the roiling waters around
Belknap.
The cruiser was aflame aft and fore. Fires astern quickly found the magazines below the after gun mount. The water invading the forward engineering space brought on a rapid list. Damage-control parties were too late to keep the rushing water from buckling weakened bulkheads. The ocean advanced too rapidly. She was sinking.

On
Joseph Strauss,
the damage-control party was checking watertight fittings in the forward section when they heard the sharp explosions roll across the sea. They turned in unison to stare, horrified by the water spout from the first torpedo, already higher than
Belknap's
bridge. Some of the men may even have seen the spout emerge from the second one. Openmouthed, they watched in silence as the flames followed, billowing clouds of Hack smoke and flame engulfing the cruiser. There were a few muttered comments about the chances of the crew of the other ship, then more about how lucky they were to be on the right ship. They were moving aft when
Joseph Strauss
took the first torpedo slightly forward of midships. Her commanding officer had been on the same side of the ship, his binoculars on
Belknap.
He had briefly noted his DC party on the main deck just before his own ship had been hit and he had been thrown backwards. When he got up from the deck after the blast, his first thought was to look over the side to see what had happened to those men. He saw only a hole in the deck where he assumed they had been. As the spray settled, he saw two motionless forms near the torn metal of the deck. None of the others seemed to exist.

The torpedo hit was shallow, causing more damage above the waterline than below. The second torpedo for some reason veered away from the ship as the first detonated, running its fuel out and sinking. The ship was able to drop back, and her damage-control parties found they could minimize the amount of water entering the boiler room. Welders from one of the larger ships joined them to prepare a patch that would suffice until they could get back to port.