As he approached the scene, his sonar man Chernov painted the picture for him. The British fleet had split into two groups, one on a course to Alexandria, the other heading south with Kirov. The enemy fleet he had been told to find did not seem interested in either squadron, moving east until something happened that surprised Gromyko. Chernov thought he heard a very familiar sound as he monitored the seas, and when he put his profile computer to work on it he was proved correct-a Daring Class destroyer!
That report sent Gromyko’s head spinning. What was going on here? Had they slipped again in time? Were they back in their own miserable war again? That was quickly disproved by Gromyko’s report.
“No sir,” he said, “I still have a firm hold on the ships we’ve been tracking. This new signature joined the British Squadron heading for Alexandria.”
“Daring Class? You are certain of that?”
“It sounds a little different, sir, but all my data points are very close. Give Lieutenant Gorban an antenna and he could verify.”
“Make it so,” Gromyko said to his Executive Officer Belanov. “The boat will come to periscope depth, and ahead one third.”
They had raised an antenna, and Gorban confirmed that he had readings for a SAMPSON radar on his IFF board. “It’s a British Type 45, sir, at least from the radar it’s using. And from the looks of things it’s hot in the thick of a good fight. What is this all about, Captain?”
“Signal Volsky on the secure channel,” said Gromyko, and he soon had his answer. The British ship was to be considered friendly and the Admiral was now asking Gromyko to do whatever he could to lend support.
“Do whatever?” Gromyko smiled, crumbling the message in his fist. He had his boat at a good depth for missile action, and had no worry that he might attract the attention of a deadly American attack sub. He also had sixteen supersonic Onyx missile’s ready, the system he had retained after lending Kirov the bulk of his P-900s. So he did the simplest thing he could think of-he picked his targets and fired.
Better late than never, he thought, realizing he had just become an active combatant in the middle of the Second World War.
Gromyko was going to fight this battle as he had fought the Americans in the Pacific. Kazan had been part of the three boat missile barrage that Karpov had ordered against the Washington battlegroup, and had been the only sub to escape after taking that daring risk. Russian naval tactics knew the importance of getting in the first blow, the struggle for the first salvo, and when they fired against a modern adversary, they meant business.
Now he decided that the size of the enemy battlegroup ahead needed a good strong salvo here as well, and so he committed nearly half his remaining missiles to the attack. The eight air breathing P-800s were fast at Mach 2.0. closing the range to the target in brief minutes. Nearly nine meters long, the missiles weighed 3100 kilograms, a good portion of that from the T-6 kerosene fuel, and packed a 250kg warhead. At this range the monopulse active/passive radar locked on, hopping from one frequency to another as if it were trying to spook enemy ECM jamming that would not exist for decades.
The Russian word for the missile meant “Ruby,” the red gem of wrath, and the formation of eight missiles were carrying a combined warhead weight of 2000kgs, over 4400 pounds on eight times that in the weight of the missiles themselves. With range out to 300 kilometers, they were only going to use a small portion of the kerosene fuel to reach their targets, and the remainder was going to ignite a holocaust on any ship it struck. It was a lightning fast salvo of heavy armor piercing fire bombs.
The watch on Hindenburg called out the alarm, seeing the missiles arc up in the sky and then dive for the sea like a formation of dragons. Some of the men stared in awe as the formation came in, and then slowly fanned out as the missiles began to acquire specific targets. One missile in the salvo was acting as leader, ruling on target acquisition like the chairman of the board. It had been programmed to allow no more than two missiles to lock on to any single ship. Gromyko wanted to spread the joy around.
