The General Alarm was sounding throughout the carrier as Captain Alex Harrow slid down the ladder to 3rd Deck. Nimitz was fifty miles into the Taiwan Strait when things took a turn for the worse. At five minutes before noon, the Navigator reported all satellites had gone down—GPS, tactical links, even their communications satellites were unresponsive—leaving only line-of-sight voice, which was cumbersome at best. Moments later, the first barrage of missiles appeared on the horizon, slamming into the carrier’s escorts.
Harrow decided to swing by CDC before heading to the Bridge. He stepped into the noisy Combat Direction Center, locating the Operations Officer, Captain Sue Laybourn, huddled over the Tactical Action Officer’s shoulder. Laybourn looked up as Harrow stopped next to her, updating the ship’s Captain. “The first round of cruise missiles was targeted at our escorts. The Lake Erie and Shiloh have been hit, along with four destroyers and one frigate.”
Captain Helen Corcoran exited Air Ops at the back of CDC, joining Harrow as the three Captains examined the Video Wall on the aft bulkhead, the left eight-by-ten-foot monitor displaying a video feed of their escorts to the west. Black smoke spiraled upward from seven ships; half of their escorts had been hit. As Harrow wondered how badly they were damaged, Captain Laybourn filled in the missing details.
“Our cruiser and destroyer Aegis Warfare Systems are completely off-line. They went down just before noon, when we lost our satellites. They’re trying everything, but their systems won’t respond. It seems China fooled us into thinking we had a solution to their malware in our Aegis Warfare System, saving their real assault for now.”
“What does this mean for the strike group?” Harrow asked.
“Our escorts still have their close-in weapon systems,” Laybourn replied. “But they’re not very effective against these Chinese missiles. They’re a new variant we haven’t seen before. They travel at Mach speed and hug the ocean’s surface. They also make last-second evasive maneuvers, making it difficult for our CIWS systems to lock on to, resulting in a seventy-five percent miss rate.”
As Harrow digested the grim news, red icons began populating the right display on the Video Wall, annotating another wave of incoming missiles. Twenty-eight missiles were targeted at the seven undamaged escorts, four per ship. Harrow watched tensely as each ship was able to shoot down only one of the four incoming missiles. Harrow felt helpless as the twenty-one surviving missiles slammed into his seven remaining escorts.
Black-fringed orange fireballs billowed up from the stricken ships, and Harrow wondered how they could remain in operation. But his concern was overshadowed by another wave of red icons appearing on the display. It didn’t take long to determine that twenty missiles were headed toward Nimitz. With the carrier’s escorts unable to defend Nimitz, that task fell to Captain Laybourn. Harrow looked on as Laybourn ordered Weapons Free and put the ship’s missile and CIWS systems in auto.
With both sets of missiles traveling near the speed of sound, it took only a few seconds for the scenario to play out. Five of the carrier’s ESSM and Rolling Airframe missiles hit their targets, and the remaining fifteen Chinese missiles continued onward. The carrier’s CIWS Gatling guns activated as the missiles approached, churning out 4,500 rounds per minute. But the missiles began evasive maneuvers as they approached the carrier, veering left and right at unpredictable intervals, and only two of the fifteen missiles were destroyed by the carrier’s last-ditch self-defense system.
Seconds later, the thirteen remaining missiles slammed into Nimitz. Explosions rumbled through CDC, and thirteen sections of the Damage Control Status Board illuminated red. All thirteen missiles had impacted the starboard side of the carrier, below the Flight Deck. Two missiles penetrated the Hangar Deck, and secondary explosions rippled through the ship as ordnance staged for reloading aircraft detonated. Nimitz had well-trained Damage Control Parties, and Harrow knew they were responding quickly. But thirteen simultaneous fires, compounded with secondary explosions, would strain his crew.
Harrow glanced at the monitors, displaying black smoke rising from every surface ship in his carrier strike group. They could not continue their mission, launching sorties against targets in China and Taiwan. They’d be lucky to exit the Strait alive. His job now was to recover his aircraft and retreat to the far side of Taiwan, where they could regroup and lick their wounds.
Harrow picked up the microphone. “Bridge, Captain. Reverse course and exit the Strait at ahead flank.” He turned to Captain Corcoran. “Recover the air wing. I don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to conduct flight ops.” He followed up with an order to Captain Laybourn. “Direct all escorts via line-of-sight comms to reverse course and exit the Strait at maximum speed.”
Corcoran and Laybourn acknowledged Harrow’s orders as a bright flash lit up the Video Wall. USS Lake Erie had disintegrated in a massive explosion. The fires must have reached her magazine. A somber quiet descended upon CDC as Harrow and his crew reflected on the loss of the cruiser and the men and women aboard.
* * *
Harrow returned to the Bridge as Nimitz sped north, black smoke trailing behind the carrier. Only six of the thirteen surviving escorts had managed to keep up, black smoke likewise rising from their superstructures. As Nimitz continued north at ahead flank speed, a gut-wrenching sight greeted Harrow’s eyes. The scattered remnants of the Lincoln Carrier Strike Group were adrift, eleven of the carrier’s fourteen escorts ablaze, with three oil slicks on fire marking where the three missing warships had sunk beneath the ocean waves.
Thick, black smoke was pouring from every opening of USS Lincoln, and she was dead in the water. There were dozens of black puncture wounds in the side of the aircraft carrier where she had been struck by missiles, and the carrier’s Island superstructure was completely destroyed, reduced to a mangled heap of blackened, twisted metal. Lincoln was also listing twenty degrees to starboard. She’d been torpedoed as well. Lincoln would not survive. Without propulsion, it was only a matter of time before she was finished off.
Harrow couldn’t pull his eyes from the burning aircraft carrier. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The United States Navy was the most powerful navy in the world. Yes, a few ships would be lost in an all-out confrontation with China or Russia, but the United States would easily prevail. At least that’s what the war games had proven. Disbelief washed over Harrow.
How had they been so wrong?
The aircraft carrier’s Officer of the Deck, Lieutenant Commander Michael Beresford, stopped beside Harrow, staring at their sister ship. Harrow’s thoughts turned to the status of their aircraft when Beresford spoke. “Lincoln’s air wing has been directed to land on Nimitz.”
Harrow nodded. It looked like Captain Helen Corcoran had picked up yet a third air wing. It was going to be a crowded ship. Luckily, the fires on the Hangar Deck had been extinguished, and the elevators between the Hangar and Flight Deck were still operational.
Harrow’s thoughts returned to Lincoln, listing even farther to starboard now. Lincoln had been torpedoed, so Chinese submarines were out there, and Harrow struggled to understand where they had come from. Both strike groups had been traveling at ahead full, so whatever submarine had torpedoed the Lincoln couldn’t have snuck up from behind. It must have slipped through the fast attack screen in front. But Harrow had difficulty believing the Chinese submarines had defeated their American counterparts.
With his thoughts dwelling on the underwater threat, he glanced at the MH-60R anti-submarine warfare helicopters, hovering nearby with their sonars dipped beneath the ocean surface, searching for Chinese submarines. The carrier’s fast pace was hindering the MH-60Rs, forcing them to reposition frequently to keep up.
The first indication that Nimitz was in jeopardy was when a torpedo suddenly dropped from one of the MH-60Rs hovering eight thousand yards off the starboard bow. Harrow’s eyes followed the Lightweight torpedo into the ocean, his eyes drawn to a thin streak of light green water headed toward Nimitz. The information coalesced quickly in Harrow’s mind. The MH-60R had detected a Chinese submarine and attacked it. But not before the submarine had launched a Heavyweight torpedo toward Nimitz.
Lieutenant Commander Beresford also noticed the light green streak of water. He assumed the Conn from the more junior Conning Officer as he bellowed out, “Lieutenant Commander Beresford has the Deck and the Conn! Left full rudder!” The Helm acknowledged and Nimitz began twisting to port. After assessing the torpedo’s approach angle, Beresford followed up, “Steady course three-three-zero!”
Nimitz steadied up on its new course and Harrow watched as the torpedo traveled in a straight line; it hadn’t detected the carrier and would pass behind them. He was about to breathe a sigh of relief when he remembered the Chinese Yu-6 torpedo, when fired in surface mode, was a wake homer. It would detect the carrier’s white, frothy wake, then turn back and cross it again and again, weaving its way up the carrier’s trail.
There was no point in launching torpedo decoys. As a wake homer, the Yu-6 was programmed to ignore acoustic decoys. As the light green trail crossed the carrier’s wake, Harrow watched the torpedo turn toward Nimitz, beginning its snakelike approach, weaving back and forth across the carrier’s wake, slowly gaining on them. Their only hope was to confuse the torpedo by maneuvering the aircraft carrier back across its own wake, forcing the torpedo to decide which way to continue. However, Harrow was no ship-driver; like all aircraft carrier commanding officers, he was a pilot. To evade the incoming torpedo, he would have to rely on the experience of his General Quarters’ Officer of the Deck, Lieutenant Commander Beresford.
“Left full rudder!” Beresford called out. The Helm complied and the hundred-thousand-ton carrier tilted to starboard as the pair of twenty-by-thirty-foot rudders dug into the ocean. Beresford kept the rudder on as the carrier circled around. Beresford was conducting an Anderson turn, a complete circle. As the torpedo followed behind them, once Nimitz crossed its wake where they began their turn, the torpedo would be forced to choose which wake to follow. Hopefully, it would choose the wrong one.
Nimitz crossed its original wake a minute later, the torpedo not far behind. “Shift your rudder!” Beresford ordered, “Steady course north.”
Beresford was steering the carrier off on a thirty-degree tangent to their original course, hoping the torpedo chose the wake heading to the left rather than the right. All eyes on the Bridge turned aft, watching the snaking torpedo reach the two intersecting wakes. Harrow momentarily lost the torpedo’s light green trail as the torpedo traveled into the intersection of the wakes, his hope rising each second the torpedo failed to reappear. Finally, a light green trail emerged, snaking along the starboard wake.
The torpedo hadn’t been fooled.
By now the torpedo was a thousand yards behind Nimitz. Harrow estimated they had less than a minute before it reached the carrier’s stern, the last place he wanted to get hit by a torpedo. It would destroy the rudders and propellers, reducing the carrier to a drifting hunk of metal, awaiting the coup de grâce. As the torpedo steadily gained on Nimitz, Harrow glanced forward. One of Lincoln’s escorts, USS Bunker Hill, with black smoke billowing upward from fires raging inside the cruiser, was adrift just off the port bow, five hundred yards ahead.
“Head for Bunker Hill!” Harrow shouted to his Officer of the Deck.
Beresford looked ahead, quickly deciphering Harrow’s plan. “Helm, come left to course three-five-zero.”
The Helm complied, and Nimitz steadied up on its new course, headed toward Bunker Hill. The Helmsman turned to the ship’s Officer of the Deck, looking for a new Helm order.
Beresford replied calmly, “Steady as she goes.”
Lieutenant Commander Beresford had maneuvered the carrier perfectly. They would collide with the cruiser in a glancing blow just before the torpedo reached Nimitz. As Nimitz passed by Bunker Hill, the expanding wake would encapsulate the cruiser, and it was possible the torpedo would detonate on Bunker Hill instead of the carrier speeding away. Harrow had no idea if it would work. But it was a plan that offered hope.
Hell, it was his only plan.
Beresford took station next to the Helm, talking quietly to the nervous Helmsman as he maintained Nimitz on the ordered course, speeding toward the cruiser. Returning his attention to the torpedo chasing them, Harrow watched it slowly close on the carrier’s stern. The torpedo was now centered in the carrier’s wake, only two hundred yards behind. Harrow shifted his gaze from the torpedo chasing them to the cruiser they were about to ram. Counting down the seconds, Harrow braced himself for impact.
A screech of metal tore through the air as the starboard side of the carrier’s bow collided with the cruiser. Nimitz listed slightly to port as the cruiser scraped down the starboard side of the carrier, sparks flying. Nimitz rolled back to even keel as Bunker Hill cleared the carrier’s stern, and Harrow stared aft at the torpedo chasing them. Bunker Hill was now encapsulated within the carrier’s wake, and the torpedo veered toward the cruiser, exploding a second later.
A two-hundred-foot-high plume of water jetted into the air, whipsawing Bunker Hill like a rubber toy, breaking the cruiser’s keel, splitting the ship in half. The two halves of the cruiser started taking on water, the stern and bow tilting upward as Nimitz sped away with a new lease on life.
* * *
Nimitz’s six escorts had fallen far behind by now, struggling to keep up with the speedy aircraft carrier. There wasn’t much Harrow could do for his escorts. Nimitz would remain at maximum speed. Now that they had successfully evaded the torpedo, he could return to base course and initiate flight operations, retrieving the air wings circling above. Due to losses sustained to date, Nimitz’s and George Washington’s air wings were about half-strength, with Lincoln’s around eighty percent. It was going to be a crowded carrier. They were going to have to pack them in tight on the Hanger and Flight Decks.
Harrow was about to issue orders when the Tactical Action Officer’s report blared across the Bridge speakers. “Torpedo in the water, bearing zero-four-zero relative!” Harrow looked up through the Bridge windows.
Forty degrees off the starboard bow, a light green trail had appeared in the water, streaking toward Nimitz. Before Beresford could order evasive maneuvers to the west, the TAO reported, “Torpedo in the water, bearing three-zero-zero relative!” Another light green streak appeared just off the port beam.
Two other Chinese submarines had joined the hunt for Nimitz, bracketing the carrier.
There was nowhere to turn. Reversing course wasn’t an option, with the first submarine following behind. Turning to port or starboard wouldn’t work either, with torpedoes closing from both sides. Harrow evaluated the options, eventually deciding to maintain course. Maybe, if Nimitz was able to increase speed, the carrier could thread the needle between the two torpedoes. But Nimitz was already at ahead flank. Harrow needed more speed, and the only option was increasing reactor power above the authorized limit. Harrow had done it successfully once. Perhaps he could do it again.
Harrow picked up the 23-MC, issuing orders to DC Central. “RO, Captain. Override reactor protection and increase shaft turns to one hundred twenty percent power.”
The Reactor Officer acknowledged, and Harrow felt vibrations in the deck as the main engines began straining under the increased steam load. Nimitz surged forward as the carrier’s four propellers churned the water, and Harrow watched his ship increase speed, first one knot and then another. Stepping close to the forward Bridge window, Harrow studied the trajectory of the incoming torpedoes. Both torpedoes were continuing in a straight line, and just when it looked like there was a chance the torpedoes would pass astern of the carrier, first one, then the other torpedo veered toward Nimitz. Both torpedoes had been wire-guided toward the carrier.
A few seconds later, the first torpedo hit Nimitz. An explosion on the starboard side of the ship rocked the carrier, and a geyser of water jetted a hundred feet above the ship, falling down upon the Island and Flight Deck like rain. A moment later, a second deafening explosion rocked Nimitz, this time on the port side.
The Flooding Alarm sounded, followed by emergency announcements, reporting flooding in both Engine Rooms. He could feel his ship begin to slow, and a glance at the ship’s speed displayed on the Voyage Management System confirmed that Nimitz was coasting to a halt.
The aircraft carrier’s fate was sealed.
Without propulsion, the ship no longer had its most important asset—speed. It would be a sitting duck, waiting to be finished off by however many torpedoes it took. And there would be no place for Nimitz’s and Lincoln’s air wings to land. There was a bitter taste in Harrow’s mouth as he turned to his Officer of the Deck. “Order the air wings to land on one of the carriers to the south.”
Lieutenant Commander Beresford stared at Harrow in silence. The blood had already drained from Beresford’s face and it seemed to pale even further after Harrow’s order. Beresford stuttered as the words tumbled from his mouth. He started over, and Harrow soon realized the reason for his OOD’s ashen features.
“Sir, the Stennis and Vinson have been sunk. CDC reported the loss of both carriers a half-hour ago.”
Harrow had been preoccupied, focused on saving his ship and hadn’t taken the time to get an update on the other carriers. As he contemplated the fate of the six thousand men and women on each carrier, as well as the air wings that had nowhere to land, the TAO’s voice boomed across the MC speakers again.
“Torpedoes in the water!”
Six more torpedo trails had appeared, three approaching from the port side of the ship and three from starboard. As the torpedoes raced toward Nimitz, Harrow realized there was nothing more he could do. He dwelt at first on the fate of his crew—the men and women who would not return home. But then his thoughts turned to the carriers they’d lost—George Washington, and now Lincoln, Stennis, and Vinson, with Nimitz soon joining their fate. Only now did Captain Alex Harrow appreciate the enormity of the Pacific Fleet’s defeat.