In The Navy (On the Boat), Part 18

With Blue Nose over, we were able to get back to the matter at hand. Only a select few crew members were briefed on what we were looking for, the rest of us found out after we found it (news like this spreads quickly on the Boat).

We first did a brief period of time actually under an ice sheet between Greenland and Canada, which was creepy. Icebergs were a concern here. You could look up through the scope when you were at 150 feet and see the ice above the Boat. Icebergs were a concern here, did I already say that? Our boat was not designed to surface through thick ice, so this must have been pretty thin. We tested some new fangled sonar equipment and I don’t know how well it performed or what it was looking for or doing. Then we were off to find our target.

We obviously had a good idea where to look and at least the officers and the Sonarmen knew what that was. We crept into our target zone; I won’t say where or when, just that we went in there really slow. The ship was rigged for quiet, which means if you don’t have to be up, get in your bunk and be quiet.

The unwritten law on the Boat is, If you make a loud noise (say dropped a large wrench on the deck), that is bad. Make that loud noise again and you are screwed. Any “transient noise” like that can travel a long way under water and once heard by a bad guy, they would listen on that bearing for more noise. If you make a second loud noise, they will likely lock in on you.

So being very quiet, we sauntered into our zone and listened. We mostly heard fish, shrimp, seals and dolphins. The “biologics” in the area were horrendous and played hell with Sonar. We finally heard a few clank-like transient noises and zeroed in on the target. It was too close for comfort, so the Captain set the Tracking Party. This brings a few extra people into the Control Room to assist with special plots (a way of recording events for historical reference).

One plot that you only see during the Tracking Party is the Contact Evaluation Plot (CEP) plot. It is just a big ass scroll of paper that you record relative bearings on, to every target being tracked at regular time intervals, 30 or 60 seconds. Fun stuff, I did it for weeks. They use it later for recreating the incident.

Part of the time, one of the Nuke ETs came up and spent his time minding the CEP plot. I trained him on how to do it and he was a bit sloppier than me, but he got the data down, which is what mattered. He was a little older than me (name was Dave, I think). We got to know each other a bit and he got me to try Snuff. It’s a nasty habit (you see it in movies depicting the “Old Colonial” days) where you take a pinch of finely ground tobacco and sniff/snort it. No straw needed like cocaine. It works well, you get a nicotine buzz, but the crap hangs in your nose, I just sneezed a lot and decided to have a smoke instead. Dave laughed at me.

We listened to our target clank and clunk along. It was basically staying submerged in one place (almost hovering) and being very quiet except for the transient noises. After a while, Sonar called out “Hull popping”. This meant the target was changing depth and the hull was creaking from the pressure change. We found out pretty fast that it was surfacing, because it started up its Diesel Engine.

A Diesel Boat has no other power than its Diesel and the Battery, when charged. When it’s running on the Battery, it’s almost invisible. When the Diesel is on (charging the Battery) it is very loud and has to come close to, or actually surface. This guy surfaced. I was tracking my first Russian Diesel Boat! It was exciting and very scary at the same time. These things are so quiet when on Battery, that you don’t know where they are and can easily have a collision.

It looked a bit like this http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/kilo/, which I can say as I was one of three people who actually saw it while surfaced.