This is what I read in a book by the famous author tomclancy
Thomas Leo "Tom" Clancy Jr. (born April 12, 1947) is an American author, best known for his technically detailed espionage and military science storylines set during and in the aftermath of the Cold War and his video games. His name is also a brand for similar movie scripts written by ghost writers and many series of non-fiction books on military subjects and merged biographies of key leaders. He is also part-owner of the Baltimore Orioles, a Major League Baseball team. He officially is the Orioles' Vice Chairman of Community Activities and Public Affairs.
Red Storm Rising is a 1986 techno-thriller novel by Tom Clancy and Larry Bond about a Third World War in Europe between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces, set around the mid-1980s. Though there are other novels dealing with a fictional World War III, this one is notable for the way in which numerous settings for the action
So I quote from the book the chapter of attack on a carrier
"
"Contact!" the technician said over the Bear's interphone. "Signals indicate an American airborne radar
transmitter, carrier type."
"Give me a bearing!" the pilot commanded.
"Patience, Comrade Major." The technician made an adjustment on his board. His radiointerferometers
timed the signals as they arrived at antennae arrayed all over the aircraft. "Southeast.
Bearing to signal is one-three-one. Signal strength one. He is quite distant. Bearing is not changing as
yet. I recommend we maintain a constant course for the present."
The pilot and copilot exchanged a look, but no words. Somewhere off to their left was an American E-
2C Hawkeye radar aircraft. A flight crew of two-a radar intercept officer and two radar operators. It
could manage the air battle for over a hundred enemy aircraft, could vector a missile-armed interceptor
in at them within seconds of detection. The pilot wondered just how accurate his information was on the
Hawkeye's radar. What if they had already detected his Bear? He knew the answer to that. His first
warning would come when he detected the fire-control radar of an American F-14 Tomcat heading right
at him. The Bear held course one-eight-zero while the plotting officer tracked the change in bearing to
the radar signal. In ten minutes they might just have an accurate fix. If they lived that long. They would
not break radio silence until they had a fix.
"I have it," the plotting officer reported. "Estimate distance to contact is six hundred fifty kilometers,
position forty-seven degrees, nine minutes north, thirty-four degrees, fifty minutes west."
"Get it out," the pilot ordered. A directional HF antenna in the aircraft's tail fin turned within its
housing and radioed the information to the raid commander, whose Bear command aircraft was a
hundred miles behind the snoopers.
The raid commander compared this datum with that from the reconnaissance satellite. Now he had two
pieces of information. The Americans' position three hours ago was sixty miles south of the estimated
plot for the Hawkeye. The Americans probably had two of them up, northeast and northwest of the
formation. That was normal fleet doctrine. So, the carrier group was right about . . . here. The Badgers
were heading right for it. They would encounter the American radar coverage in . . . two hours. Good, he
said to himself. Everything is going according to plan.
USS NIMITZ
Toland watched the aircraft plot in silence. The radar picture from the Hawkeyes was being
transmitted to the carrier by digital radio link, enabling the battle group commander to follow
everything. The same data went to the group air defense boss on Ticonderoga and every other ship fitted
with the Naval Tactical Data System. That included the French ships, which had long since been
equipped to operate closely with the U.S. Navy. So far there was nothing to be seen except the tracks of
American military and commercial aircraft ferrying men and supplies across the ocean, and dependents
back to the States. These were beginning to swing south. Warned that an air battle was possible, the
pilots of DC-10s and C-5As were prudently keeping out of the way, even if it meant having to land and
refuel on the way to their destinations.
The group's forty-eight Tomcat interceptors were now mostly on station, spread in a line three hundred
miles across. Each pair of Tomcats had a tanker aircraft in attendance. The attack birds, Corsairs and
Intruders, carried oversized fuel tanks with refueling drogues attached, and one by one the Tomcats were
already beginning to top off their fuel tanks from them. Soon the Corsairs began returning to their
carriers for refills. They could keep this up for hours. The aircraft remaining on the carriers were spotted
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on the decks for immediate takeoff. If a raid came in, they would be shot off the catapults at once to
eliminate the fire hazard inherent in any type of aircraft.
Toland had seen all this before, but could not fail to be amazed by it. Everything was going as
smoothly as a ballet. The aircraft loitered at their stations, tracing lazy, fuel-efficient circles in the sky.
The carriers were racing east now at thirty knots to make up the distance lost during launch operations.
The Marines' landing ships Saipan, Ponce, and Newport could make only about twenty knots, and were
essentially defenseless. East of the group, carrier S-3A Viking and land-based P-3C Orion antisubmarine
aircraft were patrolling for Soviet submarines. They reported to the group ASW commander on the
destroyer Caron. There was as yet nothing for anyone to direct his frustration against. The old story
known to all fighting men. You wait.
NORTH ATLANTIC
The raid commander was rapidly accumulating data. He now had positions on four American
Hawkeyes. The first two had barely been plotted when the second pair had showed up, outside and south
of the first. The Americans had unwittingly given him a very accurate picture of where the battle group
was, and the steady eastward drift of the Hawkeyes gave him course and speed. His Bears were now in a
wide semicircle around the Americans, and the Badgers were thirty minutes north of American radar
cover, four hundred miles north of the estimated location of the ships.
"Send to Group A: 'Enemy formation at grid coordinates 456/810, speed twenty, course one-zero-zero.
Execute Attack Plan A at 0615 Zulu time.' Send the same to Group B. Tactical control of Group B
switches to Team East Coordinator." The battle had begun.
The Badger crews exchanged looks of relief. They had detected the American radar signals fifteen
minutes before, and knew that each kilometer south meant a greater chance that they would run into a
cloud of enemy fighters. Aboard each aircraft the navigator and bombardier worked quickly to feed
strike information into the Kelt missiles slung under each wing.
Eight hundred miles to their southwest, the Backfire crews advanced their throttles slightly, plotting a
course to the datum point supplied by the raid commander. Having circled far around the American
formation, they would now be controlled by the strike officer aboard the first Bear to make electronic
contact with the Hawkeyes. They had a solid fix on the NATO formation, but they needed better if they
were to locate and engage the carriers. These crews were not relieved, but excited. Now came the
challenging part. The battle plan had been formulated a year before and practiced-over land exclusivelyfive
times. Four times it had worked.
Aboard eighty Badger bombers, pilots checked their watches, counting off the seconds to 0615 Zulu.
"Launch!"
The lead Badger launched eight seconds early. First one, then the second, aircraft-shaped Kelt dropped
free of its pylon, falling several hundred feet before their turbojet engines ran up to full power. Running
on autopilot, the Kelts climbed back to thirty thousand feet and cruised on south at six hundred knots
indicated air speed. The bomber crews watched their birds proceed for a minute or two, then each of the
bombers turned slowly and gracefully for home, their mission done. Six Badger-J stand-off jamming
aircraft continued south. They would stay sixty kilometers behind the Kelts. Their crews were nervous
but confident. It would not be easy for American radar to bum through their powerful jammers, and in
any case, the Americans would soon have many targets to concern them.
The Kelts continued on, straight and level. They carried their own electronic equipment, which would
be triggered automatically by sensors in their tail fins. When they entered the theoretical arc of the
Hawkeyes' radar range, transponders in their noses clicked on.
USS NIMITZ
"Radar contacts! Designate Raid-1, bearing three-four-niner, range four-six-zero miles. Numerous
contacts, count one-four-zero contacts, course one-seven-five, speed six hundred knots."
The master tactical scope plotted the contacts electronically, and a pair of plexiglass plates showed
another visual display.
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"So, here they come," Baker said quietly. "Right on time. Comments?"
"I-" Toland didn't get a chance.
The computer display went white.
"Clipper Base, this is Hawk-Three. We're getting some jamming," reported the senior airborne control
officer. "We plot six, possibly seven jammers, bearing three-four-zero to zero-three-zero. Pretty
powerful stuff. Estimate we have stand-off jammers, but no escort jammers. Contacts are lost for the
present. Estimate burn-through in ten minutes. Request weapons free, and release to vector intercepts."
Baker looked over to his air operations officer. "Let's get things started."
Air/Ops nodded and picked up a microphone. "Hawk-Three, this is Clipper Base. Weapons free. I say
again, weapons are free. Release authority is granted. Splash me some bombers. Out."
Svenson frowned at the display. "Admiral, we're coming about to clear decks. Recommend the
formation stays together now." He got a nod. "Clipper Fleet, this is Clipper Base, come left to twoseven-
zero. Launch all remaining aircraft. Execute."
On the single command, the formation made a hundred-eighty-degree left turn. Those ships that did
not as yet have missiles on their launchers rectified this. Fire-control radars were trained north, but kept
in standby mode. Thirty different captains waited for the word to activate.
USS NIMITZ
"Admiral, something is wrong here," Toland said quietly.
"What might that be?" Baker liked the way things were going. Enemy bomber tracks were being
wiped off his screen just as the war games had predicted they would.
"The Russians are coming in dumb, sir."
"So?"
"So this far the Soviets have not been very dumb! Admiral, why aren't the Backfires going supersonic?
Why one attack group? Why one direction?"
"Fuel constraints," Baker answered. "The Badgers are at the limit of their fuel, they have to come in
direct."
"But not the Backfires!"
"The course is right, the raid count is right." Baker shook his head and concentrated on the tactical
plot.
The second squadron of fighters had just launched. Unable to get a head-on shot, their missile
accuracy suffered somewhat. They killed thirty-four targets with forty-eight missiles. There had been a
hundred fifty-seven targets plotted.
The third and fourth Tomcat squadrons arrived together and launched as a group. When their
Phoenixes had been fully expended, nineteen targets were left. The two fighter squadrons moved in to
engage the remaining targets with their cannon.
"Clipper Base, this is SAM Boss. We're going to have some leakers. Recommend we start lighting up
SAM radars."
"Roger, SAM Boss. Permission granted," answered the group tactical warfare coordinator.
NORTH ATLANTIC
"I have air-search radars, bearing zero-three-seven," the Bear ESM officer noted. "They have detected
us. Recommend we illuminate also." The Bear lit off its Big Bulge look-down radar.
USS NIMITZ
"New radar contact. Designate Raid-2-"
"What?" snapped Baker. Next came a call from the fighters.
"Clipper Base, this is Slugger Lead. I have a visual on my target." The squadron commander was
trying to examine the target on his long-range TV camera. When he spoke, the anguish in his voice was
manifest. "Warning, warning, this is not a Badger. We've been shooting at Kelt missiles!"
"Raid-2 is seventy-three aircraft, bearing two-one-seven, range one-three-zero miles. We have a Big
Bulge radar tracking the formation," said the CIC talker.
Toland cringed as the new contacts were plotted. "Admiral, we've been had."
The group tactical warfare officer was pale as he toggled his microphone. "Air Warning Red.
Weapons free! Threat axis is two-one-seven. All ships turn as necessary to unmask batteries."
The Tomcats had all been drawn off, leaving the formation practically naked. The only armed fighters
over the formation were Foch's eight Crusaders, long since retired from the American inventory. On a
terse command from their carrier, they went to afterburner and rocketed southwest toward the Backfires.
Too late.
The Bear already had a clear picture of the American formations. The Russians could not determine
ship type, but they could tell large from small, and identify the missile cruiser Ticonderoga by her
distinctive radar emissions. The carriers would be close to her. The Bear relayed the information to her
consorts. A minute later, the seventy Backfire bombers launched their hundred forty AS-6 Kingfish
missiles and turned north at full military power. The Kingfish was nothing like the Kelt. Powered by a
liquid-fuel rocket engine, it accelerated to nine hundred knots and began its descent, its radar-homing
head tracking on a preprogrammed target area ten miles wide. Every ship in the center of the formation
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had several missiles assigned.
"Vampire, Vampire!" the CIC talker said aboard Ticonderoga. "We have numerous incoming missiles.
Weapons free."
The group antiair warfare officer ordered the cruiser's Aegis weapons system into full automatic mode.
Tico had been built with this exact situation in mind. Her powerful radar/computer system immediately
identified the incoming missiles as hostile and assigned each a priority of destruction. The computer was
completely on its own, free to fire on its electronic will at anything diagnosed as a threat. Numbers,
symbols, and vectors paraded across the master tactical display. The fore and aft twin missile launchers
trained out at the first targets and awaited the orders to fire. Aegis was state-of-the-art, the best SAM
system yet devised, but it had one major weakness: Tico carried only ninety-six SM2 surface-to-air
missiles; there were one hundred forty incoming Kingfish. The computer had not been programmed to
think about that.
Aboard Nimitz, Toland could feel the carrier heeling into a radical turn, her engines advanced to flank
speed, driving the massive warship at over thirty-five knots. Her nuclear-powered escorts, Virginia and
California, were also tracking the Kingfish, their own missiles trained out on their launchers.
The Kingfish were at eight thousand feet, one hundred miles out, covering a mile every four seconds.
Each had now selected a target, choosing the largest within their fields of view. Nimitz was the nearest
large ship, with her missile-ship escorts to her north.
Tico launched her first quartet of missiles as the targets reached a range of ninety-nine miles. The
rockets exploded into the air, leaving a trail of pale gray smoke. They had barely cleared the launch rails
when the mounts went vertical and swiveled to receive their reloads. The load-and-fire time was under
eight seconds. The cruiser would average one missile fired every two seconds. Just over three minutes
later, her missile magazines were empty. The cruiser emerged from the base of an enormous gray arch
of smoke. Her only remaining defenses were her gun systems.
The SAMs raced in at their targets with a closing speed of over two thousand miles per hour, directed
in by the reflected waves of the ship's own fire-control radars. At a range of a hundred fifty yards from
their targets, the warheads detonated. The Aegis system did quite well. Just over 60 percent of the
targets were destroyed. There were now eighty-two incoming missiles targeted on a total of eight ships.
Other missile-equipped ships joined the fray. In several cases two or three missiles were sent for the
same target, usually killing it. The number of incoming "vampires" dropped to seventy, then sixty, but
the number was not dropping quickly enough. The identity of the targets was now known to everyone.
Powerful active jamming equipment came on. Ships began a radical series of maneuvers like some
stylized dance, with scant attention paid to station-keeping. Collision at sea was now the least of
anyone's worries. When the Kingfish got to within twenty miles, every ship in the formation began to
fire off chaff rockets, which filled the air with millions of aluminized Mylar fragments that fluttered on
the air, creating dozens of new targets for the missiles to select from. Some of the Kingfish lost lock
with their targets and started chasing Mylar ghosts. Two of them got lost, and selected new targets on
the far side of the formation.
The radar picture on Nimitz suddenly was obscured. What had been discrete pips designating the
positions of ships in the formation became shapeless clouds. Only the missiles stayed constant: inverted
V-shapes, with line vectors to designate direction and speed. The last wave of SAMs killed three more.
The vampire count was down to forty-one. Toland counted five heading for Nimitz Topside, the final
defensive weapons were now tracking the targets. These were the CIWS, 20mm Gatling guns, radarequipped
to explode incoming missiles at a range of under two thousand yards. Designed to operate in a
fully automatic mode, the two after gun mounts on the carrier angled up and began to track the first pair
of incoming Kingfish. The portside mount fired first, the six-barrel cannon making a sound like that of
an enormous zipper. Its radar system tracked the target, and tracked the outgoing slugs, adjusting fire to
make the two meet.
The leading Kingfish exploded eight hundred yards from Nimitz's port quarter. The thousand
kilograms of high explosive rocked the ship. Toland felt it, wondering if the ship had been hit. Around
him, the CIC crewmen were concentrating frantically on their jobs. One target track vanished from the
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screen. Four left.
The next Kingfish approached the carrier's bow and was blasted out of the sky by the forward CIWS,
too close aboard. Fragments ripped across the carrier's deck, killing a dozen exposed crewmen.
Number three was decoyed by a chaff cloud and ran straight into the sea half a mile behind the carrier.
The warhead caused the carrier to vibrate and raised a column of water a thousand feet into the air.
The fourth and fifth missiles came in from aft, not a hundred yards apart. The after gun mount tracked
on both, but couldn't decide which to engage first. It went into Reset mode and petulantly didn't engage
any. The missiles hit within a second of one another, one on the after port corner of the flight deck, the
other on the number two arrestor wire.
Toland was thrown fifteen feet, and slammed against a radar console. Next he saw a wall of pink
flame that washed briefly over him. Then came the noises. First the thunder of the explosion. Then the
screams. The after CIC bulkhead was no longer there; instead there was a mass of flame. Men twenty
feet away were ablaze, staggering and screaming before his eyes. Toland's only thought was escape. He
bolted for the watertight door. It opened miraculously under his hand and he ran to starboard. The ship's
fire-suppression systems were already on, showering everything with a curtain of saltwater. His skin
burned from it as he emerged, hair and uniform singed, to the flight deck catwalk. A sailor directed a
water hose on him, nearly knocking him over the side.
"Fire in CIC!" Toland gasped.
"What the hell ain't!" the sailor screamed.
Toland fell to his knees and looked outboard. Foch had been to their north, he remembered. Now there
was a pillar of smoke. As he watched, the last Kingfish was detonated a hundred feet over Saratoga's
flight deck. The carrier seemed undamaged. Three miles away, Ticonderoga's after superstructure was
shredded and ablaze from a rocket that had blown up within yards of her. On the horizon a ball of flame
announced the destruction of yet another-my God, Toland thought, might that be Saipan? She had two
thousand Marines aboard . . .
"Get forward, you dumbass!" a firefighter yelled at him. Another man emerged to the catwalk.
"Toland, you all right?" It was Captain Svenson, his shirt torn away and his chest bleeding from a halfdozen
cuts.
"Yes, sir," Bob answered.
"Get to the bridge. Tell 'em to put the wind on the starboard beam. Move!" Svenson jumped up onto
the flight deck.
Toland did likewise, racing forward. The deck was awash in firefighting foam, slippery as oil. Toland
ran recklessly, falling hard on the deck before he reached the carrier's island. He was in the pilothouse in
under a minute.
"Captain says put the wind on the starboard beam!" Toland said.
"It is on the ******* beam!" the executive officer snapped back. The bridge deck was covered with
broken glass. "How's the skipper?"
"Alive. He's aft with the fire."
"And who the hell are you?" the XO demanded.
"Toland, group intel. I was in CIC."
"Then you're one lucky bastard. That second bird hit fifty yards from you. Captain got out? Anyone
else?"
"I don't know. Burning like hell."
"Looks like you caught part of it, Commander."
Bob's face felt as if he'd shaved with a piece of glass. His eyebrows crumpled to his touch.
"Flashburns, I guess. I'll be okay. What do you want me to do?"
The XO pointed to Toland's water wings. "Can you conn the ship.? Okay, do it. Nothing left to run
into anyway. I'm going aft to take charge of the fire. Communications are out, radar's out, but the
engines are okay and the hull's in good shape. Mr. Bice has the deck. Mr. Toland has the conn," XO
announced as he left.
Toland hadn't conned anything bigger than a Boston Whaler in over ten years, and now he had a
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file://C:\DOCUME~1\PTLKH~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\55C51E2M.htm 11/9/2005
damaged carrier. He took a pair of binoculars and looked around to see what ships were nearby. What he
saw chilled him.
Saratoga was the only ship that looked intact, but on second glance her radar mast was askew. Foch
was lower in the water than she ought to have been, and ablaze from bow to stem.
"Where's Saipan?"
"Blew up like a ******* firework," Commander Bice replied. "Holy Jesus, there were twenty-five
hundred men aboard! Tico took one close aboard. Foch took three hits, looks like she's gone. Two
frigates and a destroyer gone, too-just ******* gone, man! Who fucked up? You were in CIC, right?
Who fucked up?"
The eight French Crusaders were just making contact with the Backfires. The Russian bombers were
on afterburner and were nearly as fast as the fighters. The carrier pilots had all heard their ship go off the
air and were consumed with rage at what had happened, no longer the cool professionals who drove
fighters off ships. Only ten Backfires were within their reach. They got six of them with their missiles
and damaged two more before they had to break off.
USS Caron, the senior undamaged ship, tracked the Russians on her radar, calling Britain for fighters
to intercept them on the trip home. But the Russians had anticipated this, and detoured far west of the
British Isles, meeting their tankers four hundred miles west of Norway.
Already the Russians were evaluating the results of their mission. The first major battle of modem
carriers and missile-armed bombers had been won and lost. Both sides knew which was which.
The fire on Nimitz was out within an hour. With no aircraft aboard, there were few combustibles
about, and the ship's firefighting abilities equaled that of a large city. Toland brought her back to an
easterly course. Saratoga was recovering aircraft, refueling them, and sending all but the fighters to the
beach. Three frigates and a destroyer lingered to recover survivors, as the large ships turned back toward
Europe.
"All ahead full," Svenson ordered from his seat on the bridge. "Toland, you all right?"
"No complaints." No point in it, the ship's hospital was more than full with hundreds of major injury
cases. There was no count of the dead yet, and Toland didn't want to think about that.
"You were right," the captain said, his voice angry and subdued. "You were right. They made it too
easy and we fell for it."
"There'll be another day, Captain.,,
"You're Goddamned right there will! We're heading for Southampton.
See if the Brits can fix anything this big. My regulars are still busy aft. Think you can handle the conn
a little longer?"
"Yes, sir. "
Nimitz and her nuclear escorts bent on full speed, nearly forty knots, and rapidly left the formation
behind. A reckless move, racing too fast for antisubmarine patrols, but a submarine would have to move
quickly indeed to catch them.""""
