Chapter 71 Heavyweight Torpedo

“Turn the power of the active sonar to the maximum!” Carnegie stared hard at the screen. Both parties were releasing interference signals, and the entire screen looked as if there were numerous elves dancing on it.

“Helmsman…Helmsman.” Carnegie turned his head and said to the operator, “Make use of the chance now to raise the submarine up by twenty meters in a horizontal position, and then use the front sonar to do an extensive search.”

“Yes!” The operator replied and then quickly lifted the water tank control levers at the two sides, using the compressed air to expel the seawater.

Dong… Dong.

Chen Fan realized that the Virginia-class submarine rose up twenty meters, but the Seawolf-class submarine suddenly turned off its active sonar and left only its underwater noise jammer functioning.

“Don’t tell me that the Seawolf-class submarine is gonna betray the country, and the Virginia-class submarine is here to destroy it?” Chen Fan did not dare breathe too heavily. It wouldn’t be fun if the sonar mistook him for a submarine and shot him with a torpedo.

“Officer, the ’shark’ turned off the active sonar. The acoustic interference is too strong now, and we are unable to determine its location.” The sonar operator shouted.

“We’ll shut off immediately, maintain the submarine’s horizontal angle and then fire two underwater decoys!” The entire submarine was filled with noises from the jammer and the active sonar. Carnegie had no choice but to shout at the top of his voice. The underwater decoy was to fire simulated ship echos or propeller noises in order to trick the other party’s sonar and sound-controlled torpedo into making the wrong decision.

Bang! Bang! Looking at the torpedoes at the two sides of the Virginia-class submarine eject white waves from their emission pipes, Chen Fan’s heart almost popped out. It was only until he realized that they were not torpedoes that were fired from the emission pipes that he felt relieved. The volume produced by these two underwater decoys was much smaller. Chen Fan would not have heard anything if not for the electric eel’s better sense of hearing.

“Brothers, please get lost, you’re not welcome here.” Chen Fan felt terrible being stranded in the middle of the two submarines. He even had the impulse to slip away.

The Seawolf-class submarine suddenly sprouted a few jets of water from its two sides before slowly rising to a horizontal level of over twenty meters. After releasing a few noise jammers into the surrounding area, the pump jet propulsion on its back suddenly turned, pushing the submarine to move toward the right.

The sonar operator quickly reported, “Officer, the ’shark’ released another three interference decoys!”

“Move fifty meters forward immediately, get out of the high interference area, and then monitor the passive sonar carefully!” Carnegie touched his chin as he spoke into the receiver.

Ten minutes later…

“Officer, we’ve managed to monitor the ’shark’s’ vortex shedding two thousand meters ahead!”

“Haha, follow its vortex wave blind zone closely, and fire a torpedo when there’s a chance!”

Within the next few seconds, a series of deafening alarm sounds came from inside the Virginia-class submarine. There were only two situations where the submarine would have produced such a horrifying alarm sound; a nuclear leak or being targeted by a torpedo. “The torpedo room, quick! Release the torpedo decoy now.” The terrified Carnegie did not care if his loud voice would be detected by the other party’s active sonar anymore.

“Helmsman, incline forty-five degrees to the left!” Seawolf-class submarines were usually equipped with MK48-5 heavyweight torpedoes. As long as this type of “beast” got within ten meters, the base control room would give you an immediate failure.

——–

“They are gone, finally gone!” Chen Fan looked at the submarines going away toward the south and felt greatly relieved. It didn’t matter as long as he was not being targeted. Whether the other party was betraying the country had nothing to do with him.

“Ahh…” Chen Fan who had planned to stay for a while suddenly started trembling and his eyes opened wide. The instinct deep inside him was shouting out to him,

“I’m gonna die!”

The electric eel was in the water and danger was approaching. A super torpedo, six meters in length and fifty-three centimeters in diameter, with a red cap and green body was shooting toward Chen Fan at a speed of fifty-five knots, dragging long watermarks at its end. The 1.5 ton MK48-5 torpedo was a newly equipped heavyweight torpedo used by the United States Navy. They were mostly used on nuclear submarines to attack submarines and medium and large size surface ships. The warhead of the torpedoes was charged with 100 to 150 kilos of explosives. A single torpedo can send a large size submarine or a medium size surface ship to the bottom. There was no hesitation and also no time to think! The fifty-meter long electric eel jumped up from the soft sand bed and then went in the opposite direction as the torpedo.

The torpedo’s speed was fifty-five knots, and the eel’s fastest was five knots higher, but its endurance was thirty minutes less than the torpedo. The red-capped torpedo was fired by the Seawolf-class submarine. Its target was originally the Virginia-class submarine, but it avoided the submarine when it was ten meters away from it under the instruction of Carnegie. The torpedo which had lost its target and got out of control, moved aimlessly forward in a straight line.

How fast was sixty knots? This speed was equivalent to a big train traveling at 110 kilometers per hour.

Not daring to turn its head back, the electric eel shot toward the submarine from the seabed like an arrow leaving its bow. It was hard to imagine what it was like being chased by a torpedo weighing over a ton. It was a hundred times more horrifying than being caught by the fish net the previous time.

The eel swam wildly at a speed it had never swum before for around eight minutes until he could no longer hear the sound of the torpedo. Chen Fan looked behind him with fear still lingering but it was a great relief that the torpedo could no longer be seen.

“It shouldn’t be like this…” After a long while, Chen Fan finally calmed down. If the torpedo was really attacking its target, it would explode immediately when reached a probable range even if the target was not found. It would try its luck to see if it could use the enormous pressure from the explosion to destroy the submarine’s pressure hull within a close distance.

But the torpedo did not… Could the two submarines just be having a drill? Chen Fan came up with this possibility after some pondering. After analyzing this in detail, Chen Fan still felt that it was highly possible that it was just a drill. It would be breaking news if a submarine wanted to revolt. The United States might even declare war with another country because of this submarine.

“This is really exciting!” Shaking the eel’s head, Chen Fan decided to put his doubts aside for now and continue to swim toward Japan.

“Eh?” After swimming about two nautical miles forward, Chen Fan suddenly saw bright green dye underneath the eel spreading slowly upward. And the culprit was the torpedo which scared Chen Fan out of his wits just now.

“It’s really a drill torpedo!” Looking at the torpedo slowly floating toward the water’s surface, Chen Fan finally affirmed that the two submarines were just having a drill. Torpedoes used in drills were not filled with explosives, but eye-catching dyes. After the torpedo hit its target or traveled its maximum range, it would float to the water surface with its own buoyancy. Helicopters or speedboats would recover the drill torpedoes, and they would be used again after inspection and loading.

Looking at the slowly rising torpedo, a bold and exciting idea came to Chen Fan’s mind, and then exploded.

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