The ship turned as Danny had ordered, and the towed array behind her became unstable. As they knew it would, the trace of their target disappeared. They only hoped this time, as the towed array stabilized, it would reappear. With a few seconds to wait, Danny looked at the screen in front of him trying to glean what historical information he could. Michaels tapped the screen.
“That her?” he said, pointing to the faintest of white lines.
“That’s it,” said Danny.
The sonar supervisor had made his way to control. “I listened myself before we turned. I definitely heard propeller noises.”
“Very well,” said Danny, peering at the screen. While sonar was sound, outside the sonar room it was most often converted into a visual display, lines whose brightness varied with the intensity of the volume. The trace they were all studying intently was barely visible before they turned, and had now disappeared entirely. Danny was quietly worried that they would lose their target while turning, as they’d done twice before in the last day.
The helmsman spoke. “Sir, ship is steady on zero-three-zero.”
“Very well,” said Danny. They waited for the sonar array behind them to straighten out and stabilize so they could see once again.
After what seemed like an eternity, an amplified voice from sonar: “Sir the towed array is stable.”
“Very well.”
As Danny stared at the screen, the captain stared over his shoulder, so close Danny could smell the coffee on his breath.
“That’s it,” they said at the same time, tapping the screen. The trace had reappeared off their port bow, incrementally louder as they were closer.
At least three people in the control room ran a calculation based on the submerged contact’s change in bearing rate with the
“Two thousand yards?” said Michaels.
“Looks like it,” said Danny. He was picturing the sub in front of them.
“Conn, Sonar, we’re starting to pick it up on the sphere.”
Danny turned a switch on the display and they could see. The spherical sonar array was a fixed ball of hydrophones on the very front of the ship, encased with an acoustically permeable fiberglass dome. It couldn’t see as far as the towed array, or see behind the ship at all, but it also didn’t get unstable every time the ship moved, and when it gained contact, it provided more precise data. More importantly, the target’s visibility on the sphere confirmed that they were getting closer to each other.
“Sonar conn, coming left to continue to close range.”
“Conn sonar aye.”
Danny gauged their closing speed in his mind. “Left five degrees rudder, steady course zero-zero-zero.”
“A thousand yards,” said Michaels. “That’s what we are shooting for.”
“A thousand yards, aye sir.”
They watched the estimate of the sub’s distance decrease, and the growing brightness of the signal in front of them.
Danny counted off the range in his head, using the three minute rule. If they were closing at three knots, they would close at 300 yards every three minutes. One hundred yards every minute. That meant on current course it would take roughly… nine minutes to close to nine hundred yards.
It seemed like forever.
They stayed the course, watching as the signal grew stronger and clearer on their screen. Finally Michaels stood up straight and shouted out to the crowded control room.
“Everybody ready?!” He turned to the XO who now held the stopwatch in his hand.
“Go, Danny.”
Danny looked up to microphone above his head. “Fire water slug from tube one!”
The torpedo room acknowledged the order and instantly Danny felt the force of the shot in his feet, and his ears popped with the change in pressure.
The XO clicked his stop watch and waited. “Ten seconds!”
“Fire water slug from tube two,” said Danny. Again the order was instantly acknowledged and carried out.
“Ten seconds!” said the XO again after a brief wait. Danny picked up the microphone for the underwater telephone and read from the laminated sheet in his hand.
“
Several seconds passed before they heard the garbled message return to them, a sound like a drowning man. “
“That’s what we’ve been waiting for!” shouted the captain, and the control room cheered.
The captain looked at Danny. “Good job, Danny.”
“Thank you sir.”
“I guess that completes our training phase.”
The XO had made his way toward them. “Just in time — they only gave us twenty-four hours. We should get our final orders when we get to periscope depth.
“Then away we go,” said the captain. “Let’s the three of us go debrief in the wardroom,”
Danny poured himself a cup of coffee and watched the XO fidget with his stopwatch.
“Well that was fun, wasn’t it?” said the Captain.
“Yes sir.”
