Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

SEA OF SHADOWS 223
cruiser’s real acoustic signature to be distracted by decoys and tricky
maneuvers.
Ensign Cooper watched helplessly as the flashing red hostile-torpedo
symbols began to merge with the symbol that represented Antietam.
DMA37 Torpedo:
Powered by a four-stage axial-flow turbine and a sophisticated
planetary gear drive train, the German torpedo was capable of slightly over
fifty knots. And at the moment, it was using every scrap of that power to
close the range to its target.
The target was fast, but not fast enough. And it was tricky, but not
tricky enough.
Inside the torpedo’s acoustic seeker head, an array of 152 miniature
sonar transducers were bombarded by a powerful source of white noise.
Under other circumstances, the interference might have been enough to
mask the target entirely, but the target was close, and the acoustic seeker
could still detect it clearly through the cacophonous barrier of sound
energy.
The transducers detected another sonar contact, with acoustic
characteristics that closely resembled the target. For a few milliseconds,
this confused the targeting algorithm running through the torpedo’s digital
processors. Two targets to choose from, both displaying acoustic
characteristics within acceptable parameters, both easily within the
weapon’s attack envelope. It could strike either target in a matter of
seconds.
With no compelling criteria to use for target selection, the torpedo’s
computer did exactly what its programmers had intended: it locked on to
the closer of the two potential targets and started the final arming sequence
on its warhead.
Slightly less than ten seconds later, the weapon’s acoustic sensors
determined that it was nearing optimum range for detonation. The torpedo
dove to twelve meters, a depth calculated to place it beneath the hull of the
target. The algorithm’s calculations were precise; the torpedo reached the
twelve-meter mark at the exact instant that the target’s acoustic signal
strength reached its peak. The torpedo was under the target.
The warhead contained 250 kilograms of plasticized-hexite highexplosive.
It detonated with a destructive force equivalent to nearly 500
kilos of TNT.
The target was vaporized.