Submarine Warfare
In World War II, the US led the world in submarine-chaser vessels. Most were only 110 feet long and were deployed along the US coastline. Later in the war, a bigger version, a 175-foot craft, came into service. Together these small ships took out around 67 German U-boats in the Pacific theatre alone. The Germans were winning the tonnage war, and so the Americans gained an advantage by building liberty ships faster than the U-boats could sink them. None of these brave little sub-chaser boats are used today.
Instead, all submarines, surface craft, and airplanes use a heat signature detection system called FLIR or Forward Looking Infrared Radar to pick up the locations of other countries’ nuclear submarines. The US usually knows the exact location of all of Russia’s subs at any given moment, as they most likely know in what waters the US is operating their submarines. It is said they all can be tracked by satellites. It is a comfort to have this knowledge, but by designing location systems to track nuclear subs, a far less sophisticated detection method might have been overlooked. German U-boats ran on electric systems while submerged and diesel engines on the surface. While they lay on the bottom at 150 meters and everything was silent, even the most advanced vessel might just overlook them—a mistake that might be costly. Some countries still use diesel-electric powered submarines, so the US has detection methods to find them if they are moving or not. They use acoustic and magnetic anomaly detection devices, as well as modern radar and sonar. However, if an old U-boat type lay down by a reef and no sound was coming from it—all the detection systems in the world might think it was an unfortunate old wreck sent to the bottom by a storm. This was the hope that Ali Reza El-Zein held in his heart.
*****
Captain Fred Divers paid little attention to the jokes given birth from his last name.
“Dive ’em, Divers!” “Divers-dive-dive-dive, Diver man!” “Do we dive, Divers?” “Are you a diver, Divers?”
His men didn’t tease him. It would amount to disrespecting an officer, but his fellow officers knew they would only get stern looks, and many times he laughed along with them. He had brought his nuclear submarine the USS San Diego, a new Virginia Class attack sub with the latest technology available—some available only on his vessel. It was loaded with Tomahawk cruise missiles, fly-by-wire and standard torpedoes. He could support SOF (Special Operations Forces) and lay mines if necessary. His big sub was agile, streamlined, and as modern as was possible. The USS San Diego had a champagne bottle busted on her bow just six months ago. Fred loved his boat and didn’t feel bad that he wasn’t assigned a “boomer” sub that carried nuclear warheads attached to big missiles with the ability to blow up much of the world.
During World War II, Fred’s grandfather flew in a hunter-killer squadron around convoys looking for periscopes making trails in the water. Barney Divers would swoop down and drop depth charges in their path. If he timed it to where the charges would go off before the U-boat dove out of range, he could sink them or drive them to the surface, where he could strafe their decks or release a torpedo of his own, blowing them out of the water.
Barney told his grandson Freddie that he usually ran out of gas before he finished the job. He never understood why his grandson wanted to be, and these were his words, “a goddamn sneaky-ass submarine jockey.” Fred understood his disapproval, but his master’s degree from Annapolis in Nuclear Physics caused the old man to swell with pride, regardless of the boat his grandson chose to pilot.
Fred Divers looked like the movie star who would be assigned to play his role. He stood six-foot, one inch tall, polished, shined and creased all over. His face was chiseled, with steel gray eyes and cheek bones high enough for him to claim he owned the entire Indian nation. Handsome was an understatement. Since he was the captain of one of the most expensive submarines in the Navy of the richest country in the world, the first place people would look when staring at him would be at his temples to see if there was the mandatory required gray hair. It wasn’t there, just well-trimmed, dark brown locks. “Way too young to captain this vessel,” many people said after meeting him for the first time.
What people didn’t know about Captain Fred Divers was his level of brilliance, and how quickly he had mastered the skills of his profession. He was number one in his class at Annapolis, passed Navy SEAL training and went on every Special Ops gig that he could find. He rescued kidnapped victims in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was awarded the Navy Cross for one harrowing mission where his chopper was shot down in Iraq. He saved several lives on board, taking out over twenty attackers while he sustained numerous gunshot wounds. While licking his wounds, he asked if he could enter submarine training, something he had always planned to do, and the reason for his college major. His experience in combat and possession of a master’s degree in nuclear physics allowed him to gain rank quickly—faster than anyone in history who had commanded a nuclear sub. He was only thirty-five.
The USS San Diego found that the Pacific entrance to Balboa harbor and directly out from the entrance to the Miraflores gates were extremely congested. All the big ships were looking for shallow water in case their vessels were blown up by munitions overlooked by the bomb crews. Their deep drafts against a shallow bottom left little room for Fred’s submarine to maneuver. Forced to deeper water, a patrol perimeter was set up in waters about 80-to-150-feet deep. All devices on board were turned on to look for an old Whiskey Class Russian sub inspired by the Nazis and spirited into use by Stalin himself. The US sub directed much of its search at the sandy bottoms between coral heads. It was a good plan, but they wouldn’t find it there. Ali Reza was much too clever to be found in such an obvious spot.
*****
Submarine battles have been the topic of many movies and books. The truth is that it has only happened twice in the history of the submerged vessels. Once in World War I, a German U-boat took out a British submarine while both were submerged, and in World War II, a British sub took out a U-boat crippled by a noisy diesel engine. The German sub had gone to snorkel depth to replenish the air supply and charge its electric batteries. It dove, but not quickly enough as it switched from diesel to electric, giving the torpedo enough time to find its mark before the evasive maneuver could take place. The German sub was on a mission to take jet engine parts to Japan for their research in designing a new fighter plane. Because the Nazi enigma code had been broken, the British were aware of the mission and went after the U-boat. There are numerous cases of submarines taking on others while on the surface, but underwater, the use of hydrophones, sonar, and other new sophisticated detection systems makes it unlikely they will get in each other’s way while submerged. Submarine commanders have many other weapons coming at them from the air to worry about instead of easily detectible submarines.
Ali Reza El-Zein had read every book he could lay his hands on about submarine warfare and felt sure his nemesis aboard the attack submarine had as well. He had just heard the monstrous vessel go right over his U-boat. After searching the waters outside the Port of Balboa for many weeks, he had found what he needed for his sub. It had appeared on his radar screen and was confirmed by his crew who had donned scuba gear and gone down 100 feet to verify the site.
Most coral heads rise from the bottom of the ocean, usually only twenty or thirty feet, and are covered in sponges, sea fans, and colorful varieties of coral. Most are somewhat rounded on top and taper down to sandy valleys between them. A sub lying in the sand might appear to be an old wreck, but a good sub captain would certainly check it out anyway. Ali Reza had found a glory hole. Scooped out much like a banana split bowl was a large opening perfect for dropping a small 270-foot-long sub into, concealing it except for the conning tower and snorkel. Not a real target for sonar and almost impossible to see even in line of sight. It was just a matter of time before the big, stealthy American submarine would come overhead and downstream from the U-boat.
The American sub was longer than the U-boat by 100 feet and fourteen feet wider, not nearly as large as the boomer subs, but not at all tiny. There are no portholes on either ship, so both have to depend on what equipment they have aboard to detect each other. Up close, both vessels’ sonar readouts have a baffle or blind spot that requires they move out of a straight line sporadically to clear it.
Ali Reza’s equipment was a hodgepodge of retrofitted electronics, and some actually worked, while others only came on if a big wave hit the side of the craft and jarred the needles loose for an infrequent reading. It was a tribute to Ali Reza’s genius that anything on the scrap yard boat worked at all.
Ali Reza El-Zein lost his parents in a bomb strike by an Iraqi warplane in 1988 as the Iran-Iraq war was coming to a close. He was passed around to relatives from the age of four until he finished high school at age 15. He was the brightest and most gifted student in his high school. After applying to King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia, he was offered a full scholarship to study at the university considered the best in the Middle East. Since only males were accepted at the university, he had no distractions from his studies.
At age 23, Ali Reza became the youngest student to ever earn a PhD in chemical engineering. Teaching wasn’t what he wanted to do, but he accepted a position at the university for a while—until the Iraq war dragged on and on. It bothered Ali Reza that Americans had been in Iraq longer than they should and much longer than he could tolerate. It would seem he wouldn’t want to defend a country that had killed his parents, but this was larger than two Muslim countries fighting each other; it was Western infidels trampling on sacred soil. He had to intercede.
Ali Reza left the university and joined a group of militants fighting the US and their coalition forces in Iraq. At age 33, he was piloting an antique submarine against the most elite underwater vessel on earth, but he felt he could win. He didn’t look the part. He was about five feet, five inches tall, with a stomach that looked like he had swallowed a pillow. He had a beard, but it was short and stubby and didn’t appear it would ever bust out and become a majestic, long growth that could be a source of pride. As a grown man, he was the polar opposite of an athlete, but his brain was superior to almost anyone he had ever met, and there was no question of his bravery. He was willing to die and take as many people as possible with him.
*****
The San Diego moved slowly across the bottom of the Balboa’s outer harbor area. Captain Divers knew the U-boat was hiding among the coral, and it would be their move first. The bigger attack sub would act as a decoy until Ali Reza fired on them. Fred Divers felt their countermeasures would be comprehensive enough to handle WWII torpedoes. His assumption would soon be tested.
With all the sonar and acoustic devices searching in a 360-degree area, an alarm was sounded when Ali Reza’s sub rose from its hiding place in the coral almost directly behind the San Diego. When it had leveled off, a full six torpedoes rushed out two at a time, spaced only by about ten seconds a pair. The nuclear sub spotted them immediately and launched underwater sputter drones which went starboard and port away from the vessel. Three of Ali Reza’s acoustic torpedoes followed them. They were designed to veer off in a straight line, move downward, and take the torpedoes into either the bottom or a coral head. It worked perfectly. The big sub was now running silent, so its own props would not attract the incoming torpedoes.
One torpedo was on a heading that would take it dead center of the large conning tower, since the sputter drone sent for this underwater missile malfunctioned and merely floated silently in space. Just seconds before the conning tower was struck, one of the torpedoes on the starboard side of Fred’s sub exploded against a nearby coral formation, sending a shock wave that both rocked the conning tower momentarily out of the path of the torpedo. As the conning tower rocked back in place, it struck the torpedo on its long body sending it towards another coral head nearby. The resulting blast sent people flying around in the sub. Divers was knocked to the floor and slammed against the bottom of the chart table.
Ali Reza knew the sub would try to lock on a firing solution for him, so he tried an old trick. Spotting what looked like a Navy cruiser heading in to help, he swung his sub directly underneath the large ship and tried to match its speed. The noise of the cruiser would mask out the sub’s diesel engine sounds. This method of almost shadowing a ship to get in a harbor undetected was used a lot in WWII until the sonar started looking for ships that appeared to have drafts of 50 or 60 feet. The term of hiding under ships was called the “tethered goat” maneuver, and Captain Divers and his crew spotted it quickly and set up a firing solution.
“This guy is trying everything he’s read in a book or seen in a movie. Set a firing solution for directional fire-by-wire torpedoes. Fire sets of two, each five seconds. Depths of thirty, forty, and fifty feet. Warn Cruiser to stay pointed at us and to be alert for runaway ordnance,” Divers said, and watched his sonar screen as the six big fish blew out of the tubes. Now it was a video game for the San Diego. The controllers used joy sticks to counteract anything the U-boat might do.
Ali Reza headed his boat towards the surface as fast as possible. If the torpedoes weren’t “smart” ones, he would be okay. If they were, he didn’t stand a chance. As he watched his screen, he saw the jerky motion of the torpedoes moving and correcting as he tried to maneuver his craft out of their direction. He only had time to empty his six bow tubes before the San Diego’s modern torpedoes slammed into him. The boat lifted out of the body of water, exploded, caught on fire, then sank in about eighty feet of water.
Six more torpedoes were headed toward the San Diego. “Six fish! Hot and heavy! Countermeasures now!” Divers fired six intercept torpedoes which had been loaded as soon as the one that brought the U-boat under were fired. Fred had guessed these latest rounds would be proximity torpedoes and would go off when the timing device triggered it. Again, five of these intercepts worked and destroyed their targets, but the sixth just grazed the old submarine underwater rocket. It was still on course and was aimed about 20 feet above the conning tower—and that’s where it exploded.
The snorkel, periscope, and antennas were ripped off. It took a while for the crew to gain access to the conning tower once they surfaced. They worked on it from both sides, having come up through the deck hatches. Finally, it was freed, but all the equipment was unusable. Captain Divers assessed the damage and received orders to go to the nearest submarine base for repairs. The San Diego cost $3 billion to build, and it was almost done-in by an old sub designed about 70 years ago and purchased mostly for scrap.
“To the crew, listen up! It’s the captain speaking. We are lucky to be alive. If it was not for your brave actions, we would be in an untimely watery grave. We met a worthy opponent who pushed us to our limits. We discovered that we have flaws in our systems that need to be corrected. Stopping five out of six torpedoes means we have work to do. We’ll go in for repairs, and you men will get a little R&R. Thanks to all of you. Captain out.”