WesWorld

Quoted

USS CHICAGO
"Close-approach procedures," McCafferty ordered. McCafferty had been tracking a surface ship for two hours, ever since his sonarmen had detected her at a range of forty-four miles. The approach was being made on sonar only, and under the captain's orders, sonar had not told the fire-control party what they were tracking. For the time being, every surface contact was being treated as a hostile warship.

"Range three-five hundred yards," the executive officer reported. "Bearing one-four-two, speed eighteen knots, course two-six-one."

"Up scope!" McCafferty ordered. The attack periscope slid up from its well on the starboard side of the pedestal. A quartermaster's mate got behind the instrument, dropped the handles in place, and trained it to the proper bearing. The captain sighted the crosshairs on the target's bow.

"Bearing-mark!"

The quartermaster squeezed the button on the "pickle," transmitting the bearing to the MK-117 fire-control computer.

"Angle on the bow, starboard twenty."

The fire-control technician punched the data into the computer. The microchips rapidly computed distances and angles.

"Solution set. Ready for tubes three and four!"

"Okay." McCafferty stepped back from the periscope and looked over at the exec. "You want to see what we killed?"

"Damn!" The executive officer laughed and lowered the periscope. "Move over, Otto Kretchmer!"

McCafferty picked up the microphone, which went to speakers throughout the submarine. "This is the captain speaking. We just completed the tracking exercise. For anyone who's interested, the ship we just 'killed' is the Universe Ireland, three hundred forty thousand tons' worth of ultralarge crude-carrier. That is all." He put the mike back in its cradle.

"XO, critique?"

"It was too easy, skipper," the executive officer said. "His speed and course were constant. We might have shaved four or five minutes on the target-motion analysis right after we acquired him, but we were looking for a zigzag instead of a constant course. For my money, it's better to proceed like that on a slow target. I'd say we have things going pretty well."

McCafferty nodded agreement. A high-speed target like a destroyer might well head directly for them. The slow ones would probably be altering course constantly under wartime conditions.

"We're getting there." The captain looked over to his fire-control party. "That was well done. Let's keep it that way." The next time, McCafferty thought, he'd arrange for sonar not to report a target until it got really close. Then he'd see how fast his men could handle a snapshot engagement. Until then he decided on a strenuous series of computer-simulated engagement drills.

Quoted from "Brockpaine"

Sounds familiar...

Quoted from "Rooijen10"

So which side of the Ross-Ice-Shelf did they land? The safer Western side where the Chinese can count on the Mount Erebus Volcanic Observation Station as well as the Ross Ice Shelf Scientific Observation Station about 200 miles to the South of the Mount Erebus Volcanic Observation Station or the more dangerous Eastern side where they are hundreds of miles away from rescue should something terrible happen?