Chapter 559: The Chase
Torpedoes? Yes, torpedoes!
Who would have thought that a German submarine would suddenly appear here? Who could have imagined that the other side had already launched its torpedoes without anyone knowing? And didn’t they say that submarines wouldn’t attack when the ship’s speed was high enough? Was this all just cheating?
With his mind full of questions, the captain of the battleship Sovetsky Soyuz hadn’t even had time to give the order to evade. The first officer, a veteran of the First World War, saw that the situation was bad and quickly shouted, “Hard to port! Evade torpedoes! Maintain full speed ahead! Hard to port! Quickly!”
The sailor at the helm, hearing this order, quickly spun the wheel hard to his left. The whole wheel spun like an electric fan. This battleship was named after the Soviet Union. If it were to be sunk… well, even if it were just damaged, it would not be easy to explain to the higher-ups.
The effect of a full-speed turn by a ship at full speed was quite significant. But no matter how fast a ship was, it could not possibly be faster than a torpedo. A destroyer couldn’t do it, and a battleship weighing tens of thousands of tons was even less likely to succeed.
Boom! With a massive explosion, the entire Sovetsky Soyuz shuddered violently. It was clear that the first torpedo had hit the hull. Now, no one held onto any illusions. All they could do was pray, pray continuously, that the warship under their feet could withstand the test of this round of torpedo attacks. Even heavy damage would be fine, as long as it didn’t sink.
The massive explosion tore open the battleship’s thick side armor, pierced the bulkhead of the compartment inside, and twisted the supporting keel structure. This was the most powerful crystallization of human chemical industry, using the most violent force of nature to simultaneously destroy the strongest and thickest fortress of the human smelting industry.
This time, it was clear that the former had won. The huge explosion destroyed the structure of several entire compartments. Seawater was pouring into the hull in large quantities, and fuel had leaked over a wide area onto the surrounding sea, looking as grim and terrifying as a pool of blood.
Of course, this was far from over. The massive explosion was not just a single one. The second torpedo quickly struck another part of the battleship. This was closer to the stern, and was also the area where the ship’s armor was originally the thickest. But unfortunately, it was too close to the area that had just been blown open by the torpedo, and the internal structural distortion caused by the first torpedo had made the nearby compartments and load-bearing structures extremely fragile.
The second explosion drove everyone to despair. This torpedo blew a gaping hole in the surrounding compartments. A dozen or so compartments were completely destroyed at once, and the influx of seawater was even faster than before. And this explosion had an even more fatal effect—the speed of the entire Sovetsky Soyuz suddenly slowed down!
And so, the third and fourth torpedoes were not wasted. They all slammed into the area near the Sovetsky Soyuz’s stern propellers. This time, it was the death knell for the Sovetsky Soyuz. Not only were the two huge propellers on the starboard side blown off, but the rudder was also completely destroyed. Seawater poured into the stern of the ship and soon merged with the water entering from the side.
Thus, just two minutes later, the hull of the Sovetsky Soyuz began to rise rapidly, bow high and stern low. The red waterline painted on the bottom of the bow was moving away from the sea surface, and the sharp bow was also being lifted out of the water at an incredible angle.
Most of the damage control personnel inside the hull had been swept away by the inrushing seawater. When the water rushed into the boiler room, the entire warship lost power. The efficiency of the water pumps immediately dropped several times, and the ship’s list became even more severe. From the moment the Sovetsky Soyuz was hit to the final failure of damage control, only a short 15 minutes had passed.
You have to marvel at the means of man. It often takes a long time to build a great achievement, but sometimes it only takes a few seconds to destroy it. It had taken a full three years from design to construction to build the Sovetsky Soyuz, but its sinking, from the moment the water began to pour in, did not even take half an hour.
The carefully designed anti-torpedo protection could not withstand the ravages of four large-caliber torpedoes, nor could the thick armor stop the rampage of the high explosives. This is the essence of war: no fortress, however strong, can forever withstand the enemy’s attack. The Great Wall is sometimes not the best choice.
The torpedoes were responsible for destroying the armor and shaking the warship’s defensive system. The seawater did the rest. It poured into the interior of the warship, pushing down the already twisted and deformed walls, passing through cracks and holes, rushing into ventilation ducts and door seams, and then occupying one after another the spaces that had originally belonged to the air. When they had squeezed a large amount of air out of the hull, the entire warship would be overwhelmed, pulling more compartments into the water, a vicious cycle that would continue until the entire ship sank to the bottom of the sea.
The thick armor that had been laid to prevent damage had, at this moment, become a cumbersome outer garment that could not be shed. Hundreds of thousands of tons of solid steel plates pulled the warship slowly down. All of human effort seemed to become insignificant at this moment.
“Sovetsky Soyuz! Sovetsky Soyuz! You are listing! You are listing! Do you need help?” On the bridge of a cruiser behind the Sovetsky Soyuz, the cruiser’s captain was calling the battleship repeatedly on the radio.
A few minutes later, the Sovetsky Soyuz sent its first telegram after being hit. The content was also simple: “I have been hit by torpedoes. Damage control has failed. All hands, abandon ship!” And by the time this telegram was sent, the stern of the Sovetsky Soyuz had already sunk into the sea, and the huge bow at the front had been completely lifted out of the water by the immense leverage.
This was somewhat similar to the sinking of the Titanic, except that the Titanic had sunk bow first, its stern rising out of the water. The battleship Sovetsky Soyuz was the complete opposite; its stern sank due to flooding, and its bow was lifted high into the air.
“Destroyers! Search the entire sea area! Find that German submarine and sink it!” The cruiser’s captain immediately took over command of the battlefield. After a moment’s hesitation, he immediately gave the combat order. He did not want to lose another warship for the sake of rescue work, or to let the German submarine that was the culprit escape while the Sovetsky Soyuz was already sinking.
“The explosion was on the starboard side of the Sovetsky Soyuz! The submarine is on our starboard side!” the captain of the Soviet destroyer, a man with a thick beard, had rich combat experience. He had served as an anti-submarine commander in the First World War and had very skilled anti-submarine techniques.
“Hard to starboard! Full speed ahead! Prepare depth charges!” he raised his binoculars and looked towards the possible location of the enemy submarine. It was calm there, as if nothing had ever happened. But he was very certain in his heart that beneath the calm water, a submarine was accelerating in the opposite direction to escape.
“Don’t ease the rudder! Deviate from the course a bit!” the bearded commander of the destroyer said, confidently pressing a hand on the helm to stop the sailor from turning it back. The destroyer deviated from its course a little, and then, after about a minute, it returned to its original intended direction.
To chase a submarine in a straight line? What was the difference between that and suicide? If the opponent were to turn on them in desperation and fire a torpedo from its stern tubes, it would be a very tricky problem. He carefully made an evasive maneuver. Then the submarine on the other side, relying on its less-than-accurate sonar system, would not be able to easily open fire in retaliation.
Behind this destroyer, the Soviet cruiser had already reached the vicinity of the Sovetsky Soyuz and was beginning to lower its lifeboats to rescue the men. A dense mass of Soviet sailors was floating there. They would not last long in the icy water before they froze to death. The huge bow of the Sovetsky Soyuz was now almost submerged in the sea. Its powerful 381mm cannons now stood on the surface like three chimneys.
“Captain, aren’t we going to rescue them? Without us, the rescue speed might not be fast enough,” the first officer said, looking back at his comrades in the water, his tone full of anxiety. It had to be known that there were over 1,600 officers and men on the Sovetsky Soyuz. Even if half of them had been killed, there were still 800 men.
“Other ships are for the rescue! We are responsible for taking out that German submarine!” the bearded captain said stubbornly. “We can catch him now!”
“Catch him?” The first officer was taken aback, then turned and looked at his captain in shock.
“He can’t have gotten far!” the bearded man said confidently. “I will sink him!”
The destroyer under his feet was the latest type of anti-submarine destroyer, purchased from Britain. It had been completed in July 1937, so it was very new. In fact, the negotiations for the purchase of this destroyer had been very tortuous and were a small story in themselves.
This ship had originally been one of a new class of destroyers designed and built by the Royal Navy. Before it could be handed over to the navy and commissioned, the Soviet Union had deliberately leaked the “German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact.” This news had greatly surprised Britain and France, and they had been forced to free up their hands to prepare to deal with the deceptive Germany.
To thank the Soviets for their “kind reminder,” the Royal Navy had sold this new destroyer to the Soviet Union. After all, at that time, the Royal Navy had not yet been challenged by the German High Seas Fleet. And so, the Soviet Union had obtained this new destroyer, “a symbol of Anglo-Soviet friendship.”
This destroyer was equipped with a relatively new type of sonar and was one of the few professional anti-submarine destroyers in the Soviet Navy. That was why the Soviet Navy had appointed the experienced bearded man as the captain of this destroyer and had assigned it to the Sovetsky Soyuz as an escort vessel.
Now, the formal contest had begun. A single destroyer was stalking its prey. But this prey was not a cute little seal, but a steel shark that could open its bloody maw at any moment.
Published: 2025-09-05T01:19:02.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2025-12-28T17:22:14.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c559-chase-138142879
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