John Schettler - 9 Days Falling, Volume I

Aboard CVN Washington , Tanner saw what happened, his jaw slack as the massive column of dark black smoke and fire bloomed at the center of his primary air defense escort.

“Holy God! One got through. Will you look at Shiloh!” Before he had his field glasses up there came a hard jolt and the sound of an explosion, much closer, as two windows shattered on the main bridge. Tanner whirled about to see the number one elevator forward of the island erupt in fire and smoke, an FA-18 Superhornet smashed to pieces, a segment of its wing spinning wildly along the flight deck to collide with a waiting helicopter. The damage extended into the elevator shaft and well below to the hanger decks where there was a major fire underway in seconds. Then the second missile hit, smashing into his forward deck and tearing a segment from the front of his ship near the bow. The KH-32 had penetrated three decks deep into crew living spaces, but thankfully most everyone who might have been there was at some other duty.

“Son-of-a- bitch!” said Tanner. “We should have had Antietam in tight with us. One damn AEGIS can’t handle a saturation barrage like this.”

“It isn’t over,” said XO Skip Patterson darkly. “The pickets are engaging the sea skimmers now. We’ve still got over forty vampires inbound.”

“Well have a good look at Shiloh .” Tanner gestured to the ship on his near horizon, wreathed in smoke.

“It’s up to the pickets,” said Patterson, and anything our air cover can throw at them.”

Wilbur , McCain and Fitzgerald were having a field day in the inner screen with their RIM-156 SM-2 medium range SAMs. The missiles were developed with inertial guidance so all three ships could share illumination radars to better defend against saturation missile attacks. They were Flight I construction, and did not have the enhanced Sea Sparrows that had been installed on ships beginning with Flight IIA, but McCain had been refitted with the newer RIM-174 ERAM extended range missile, sometimes called the “Standard Missile 6.”

Against the big Russian P-700s, the American missiles were more than adequate, and the three destroyers in Tanner’s inner screen were getting the job done. Excited crewmen aboard Wilbur reported one kill after another as their SAMs found and took down the lumbering missiles. But then one got through—the only one that got through out of the entire barrage of twenty-four missiles off the two Oscar class subs. One of the 25mm chain guns got a piece of it, but Wilbur got wacked with the rest. With 750 kilograms of penetrating explosive warhead at the tip of a missile over thirty feet long and weighing 15,400 pounds, the ship took a tremendous hit.

It had been a very long time since the last casualty of a sea skimming anti-ship missile against a ship of this size had been logged during the Falkland War. DD Sheffield was struck amidships, burned, and eventually sunk by an Exocet in 1982. USS Stark had also been hit by two such missiles in 1987 and managed to survive the attack. But the Exocet was a featherweight champion, weighing only 1500 pounds. The Shipwreck that struck Wilbur was a true heavyweight, weighing ten times more, with a warhead that was 4.5 times bigger and moving twice as fast. Wilbur would not survive. The hull was ripped open, flame and fire gutting the ship in an enormous explosion that sent the vessel careening onto its starboard side, immolated and shrouded in thick black smoke.

The Shipwreck had been very well named.

There was a brief interval of quiet, a precious few seconds in all, and then the alert warning was shouted again on the bridge of CVN Washington .

“Here come the Sizzlers ,” said Patterson, the Russian P-900s that Kirov had battered the navies of WWII with were now in their own league, against opponents they had actually been designed to fight and kill—and they were doing that job with lethal efficiency. There were only twenty coming in the barrage off Kazan but, after a slow, subsonic approach, they descended to the wave tops and began a dizzying dance of evasive maneuvers while accelerating to Mach 2.5.

Tanner heard the battle traffic on the radio, his jaw tight as the frantic calls came in. Lassen in the outer screen had taken a KH-32, the last to get through Shiloh’s brave defense before the cruiser was hit. It was followed soon after by a P-900, and the destroyer was down for the count. McCampbell took a Sizzler aft, its helo deck afire and inoperable now. The two destroyers had been out sprinting and drifting on ASW picket, and now that defensive line was fairly well compromised. McCampbell would survive the hit and continue providing some forward defense, but Lassen was out of the fight. McCain and Fitzgerald were both unscathed, still maintaining an adequate inner screen.

Eight Sizzlers tried for the prize and bored in on Washington , but the flattop was not without defensive teeth of its own. It fired twelve RIM-24 Sparrows, and the combined defense took down five of the eight vampires in a stunning duel off the starboard side of the ship. The RIM-116 Rolling Airframe close in missiles on the carrier got two more, but the last missile made it through the gauntlet of hissing SAMs.

Tanner saw it coming, heard the chatter of his last ditch Phalanx CWIS systems, but the missile skipped away like a skilled boxer. He was transfixed by its approach just as the British, Italians and finally the Japanese had stood spellbound by the deadly, seductive dance. Then it ended with fire. The missile struck dead amidships, penetrated the hull and started a second fire below decks near the number two elevator.

When it was finally over, ten of the seventy-four missiles had punched through the SAM umbrella, one missed, but nine others struck five ships, with the carrier taking three significant hits. Yet US carriers had been born from the cauldron of war in the Pacific long ago. Washington was a massive ship, well over a 100,000 tons, and her design drew upon the hard experience gained in WWII. All the main hangers were segmented in to three fire bays, each separated by thick steel bulkheads and fire doors that would could be closed to contain the damage in any one given area. The crews were well trained and expert at damage control. They would get the upper hand in time, and the damage to the forward deck was close enough to the bow that it would not yet impede flight operations. CVN Washington would live on to continue the fight, just as so many of her ancestors had taken hits and fought on in the last great war.

Like two men fighting a measured duel, Karpov had fired first and hit his enemy square in the shoulder, but the offensive might of the American battlegroup was already airborne before his salvos struck home, and now the Russian fleet would face the wrath of three experienced naval air strike squadrons.

It was just the beginning.

Aboard Kirov Karpov listened intently as Rodenko reported on the battle, his fist tightening with each apparent hit. Nine hits in all, he thought. Twelve percent! That was an exceptionally good tally, but he was not yet certain of the real damage he had inflicted on his enemy. His opponent’s left hook, coming in over the coast of Hokkaido, was now being engaged by his S-400 SAMs, and he hoped the new missiles would do their job.

Samsonov sent up four salvos of eight missiles each, half the entire inventory on the big long range missiles. The American planes were still in formation, cruising at about 1400kph as they made their approach. Kirov fired at a range of 450 kilometers knowing the that would diminish as the missiles and planes approached one another. The S-400 accelerated to the eye popping speed of Mach 12 in the first 22 seconds after launch. At the half minute mark they acquired the incoming strike packages and began to register and home in on targets.