>>6106010“Prinz Eugen, take evasive action but maintain heading!” you instruct your injured fleetmate. “I’m vectoring ASW aircraft your way!”
“Roger!” Then, a moment later, “I’ve lost contact!”
It had probably gotten below the thermocline, then, or gone far enough in the opposite direction to get out of range of her sonar. “Keep going. My planes will be there ASAP.”
Already fuelled and armed with a pair of Mk 54 torpedoes each, your two readied Vikings are able to scramble off the deck with all haste. The four Romeo helicopters will take longer to get there, but will have the advantage of low speed chasing and hovering, and you have more Romeos available than S-3s at any given moment.
“That,” you tell Nagato once your birds are away, “was *not* a normal submarine.”
“An unfamiliar model?”
“More like a coal-fired sea serpent. That thing looked alive. And not the way we are, I don’t think. Unless, Nagato, you’re actually a dragon, and haven’t told us yet?”
“I am not, I’m afraid to report.” She considers the notion. “Though, I suppose a battleship is long, armless, scaly, and fire-breathing, after a fashion.”
You blink. “Was that a joke?”
“Perhaps it was not a good one?”
“No, no, just… unexpected.”
And so you find yourself settling in to wait. Again. A submarine’s greatest weapon after stealth was patience; chasing them down was a matter of relentless scouring over hours or days. It was never easy. There were some facts that worked in your favour, at least: it was air-breathing, for one, not a nuke boat, that was clear enough, so it would have to surface eventually. It was unlikely to have most modern quieting methods, although if it was a monster it might have some kind of sound-absorbing blubber. It was unlikely to be able to dive as deep as modern boats, but that wasn’t certain. It wouldn’t be fast, at least not for long, on batteries. It had needed - or at least it had chosen to - attack Prinz Eugen from the surface, so hopefully it would need to do so to attack again, even if it was somehow able to keep pace while undetected. It seemed to be firing comparatively limited torpedoes with trails clearly visible from the surface, and Prinz Eugen was not without passive structural defences against such weapons.
The biggest problem was probably going to be lack of noise. It had no screws that you could see, and neither you nor your fleet-mates made any machinery noise except heartbeats; it stood to reason this thing might not either. Prinz Eugen said she could hear it, but there was no way to know how much noise the fucker did or didn’t make normally. If it were confident that it could stay safe by staying still, then like a modern diesel or AIP sub it could easily remain submerged until after you were in Honolulu.
A difficult but not limitless enemy, this one.
