Fifty-Seven Mid-morning on August 7th, the Iberian Peninsula would suffer its first deaths from the ongoing fighting.
As the U.S. Sixth Fleet, joined by warships from the Spanish and French navies closed with the Russian Black Sea Fleet, on the other side of the Bosporus, Russian submarines lurked deep below the blue waters, which seemed to sparkle innocently beneath the August sun. The Russian submarine
Gepard had been waiting patiently just west of the Gibraltar Strait to carry out her mission. She was an
Akula – meaning shark – class vessel in NATO terminology, and had been in service since the end of the Cold War. The Russians would have called her a Project 971M vessel. Though not as good as the American
Virginia-class submarines,
Gepard was almost an even match even for the powerful 688/
Los Angeles-class boats which formed the backbone of the US Navy’s SSN force.
Gerpard and her crew had been at sea since March. After they had initially been surged from Arkhangelsk, her crew had taken the vessel down south past Norway, all the while playing hide-and-seek with the Royal Norwegian Navy’s submarines and anti-submarine warfare ships. She had then gone back north after passing Scotland, moving up around Iceland and through the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap, narrowly avoiding NATO’s Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) as she went. After spending some time under the ice caps of the Arctic Circle, she was ordered to head back south at the end of July. When August came, her captain was given sealed, pre-written orders that were to be opened at five in the morning Greenwich Mean Time on August 7th, 2010.
Having avoided the sonars of several Spanish ASW frigates as well as French and American maritime patrol aircraft, she prepared to launch her strike against two key NATO military installations at sunset. The first targets of
Gepard were located on the British enclave of Gibraltar. This tiny area of land was home to some 30,000 people, and despite territorial issues with Spain was firmly under the control of the United Kingdom. It was thought that closing down the port facilities located here for any period of time would significantly affect NATO’s ability to resupply its surface forces in the Mediterranean. A secondary target on the outpost was Gibraltar International Airport, which shared its facilities with RAF Gibraltar. This airstrip had rapidly become home to several Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft in the days building up to the war, and neutralising it would mean the heat would be taken off of Russian submarines throughout the region.
The second target was the United States Navy Sixth Fleet facility at Rota, in Spain. Though the base was currently devoid of ships, those having left port as the shooting started farther east, it was still a crucial supply facility to NATO naval assets in the region, and US Air Force C-17s had been spotted by an asset nearby landing at the base’s airstrip, flying in munitions which would then be moved further east to the Sixth Fleet.
Gepard was armed with what NATO called the SS-N-21
Sampson land attack cruise missile.
Coming to a complicated hover, she fired a total of twenty-one of these missiles towards Gibraltar and Rota. Though Gibraltar was thought by Russian naval planners to be the more important of the two targets, Rota was hit first due to the geographic location of the submarine when she had fired her weapons.
Spanish Army MIM-104 Patriot air defence batteries had been assembled across the country, and of the ten missiles aimed at Rota, seven managed to get through, one having crashed due to a technical failure and two more being shot down.
Those seven missiles caused immense damage.
Three of them targeted Rota’s shipyard, destroying several heavy-lifting cranes and a storage hangar, as well as starting a fire which burned throughout the night. Two hit the airfield, destroying a C-17 and cratering the southern end of the runway. One more narrowly missed the fuel dump, exploding harmlessly in a thankfully empty field. The last
Sampson did perhaps the least military damage, but caused the greatest loss of life. American civilians in Spain were being flown out on those C-17s bringing in naval munitions and other supplies, and several hundred tourists were crammed into the airport terminal by the airstrip. As Spanish radars detected the inbound missiles, they were warned to dive for cover. This did little to help when the last missile slammed into the terminal building, collapsing half of its structure and killing fifty-two American civilians as well as a dozen sailors and airmen.
Due to the direction of the inbounds, Gibraltar was not protected by those same Spanish SAM batteries. All eleven missiles passed low over the Spanish countryside before screaming in on Gibraltar.
One missile with a faulty guidance system slammed into a housing estate, killing fourteen Spanish civilians as it approached the rock.
Five more inbounds struck the airport. Two, which hit the runway, were loaded with delayed-action munitions, cratering the airstrip with dozens of bomblets that would have to be cleared before aircraft could safely fly from their once again. The remainder targeted two aircraft hangers, causing both buildings to collapse. Another four hit the shipyards. Though they were not, in fact, empty as those in Spain proper had been, no ships were destroyed by the four missiles. However, several pallets of munitions being unloaded caught fire and then exploded, sending shards of burning metal scattering for hundreds of yards. This whole incident was filmed by a cowering civilian with a mobile phone and would make its way around the internet. The last missile, thankfully, was also faulty; it slammed into the Mediterranean Sea, causing no casualties. Even so, the attack had been a dramatic success. Flight operations at Rota were hampered and on Gibraltar they would be an impossibility for the foreseeable future. Seventy-two Americans, forty-five Spaniards, and twenty-five Britons, both civilian and military, had perished in the attack. Added to that number would be the one-hundred-thirty strong crew of
Gepard as she ran into an American counterpart during her escape.
USS Hawaii killed the Russian submarine with a Mark-48 torpedo before the fires had even been extinguished. The American skipper had been directed to head towards the location of his Russian counterpart after the Spanish had spotted the missiles roaring out from beneath the pale blue ocean. He’d dropped his vessel in behind
Gerpard and fired two torpedoes for good measure; the Russians never had a chance.
*
Shortly after the attacks on Gibraltar and Rota, the first military engagement of the war would take place in the Pacific. An abundance of relatively small-scale engagements would take place across the world’s oceans on that first day of fighting, although many much larger naval battles would follow on in the coming days. The government of Australia was due to hold a Parliamentary vote on whether or not to enter the war – the result of which was already predetermined – that night, but until that happened, US forces in the Pacific would be on their own. Pacific Command under Admiral Robert F. Willard had jurisdiction over both the Third and Seventh Fleets of the US Navy as well as US Air Force, Army and Marine Corps units based in Japan and the Republic of Korea. Both of those countries appeared to be remaining neutral at least for the time being, limiting Willard’s ability to utilise his land-based airpower. There were plans for an offensive against the Russian Far East and these would be carried out, but it would be some time yet before the forces were in place to do this.
The naval engagement which took place in the Pacific Ocean that day involved submarines. US Navy submariners were relatively confident in their ability to avoid detection and get the upper hand on their Russian counterparts, but they were not cocky or overconfident; that would be careless. The crew of the USS
Jimmy Carter, one of only three
Sea Wolf-class submarines in existence, got into a sub-surface duel with a Russian
Sierra-II submarine right up in the North Pacific off of Juneau. The name of that submarine was
Pskov; it was suspected that she was attempting to land
Spetsnaz teams somewhere on the coastline of Alaska, although this couldn’t be proven. The Russian skipper detected the
Jimmy Carter and turned to engage her.
The American fired first…
…And missed.
Pskov was a good submarine; she was inferior to the
Sea Wolf-class, but she was a good boat nonetheless. Her crew were well-trained and experienced, just like the Americans. It was anybody’s game. The fear was palpable in the stale, recycled air aboard both vessels. Nervous sweat dripped down faces; some sailors thought of loved ones back home, but most focused on nothing other than doing their duty.
Pskov manoeuvred to take a shot back at the American SSN and then launched a
Shkval torpedo.
Carter broke hard to starboard, dispensing countermeasures much like a jet in a dogfight. The Russian torpedo missed just like that American Mark-48 had done less than a minute beforehand.
The do-or-die engagement drew to its awful close. The captain of the
Jimmy Carter managed to get his boat in behind the
Pskov when the Russian skipper made a crucial mistake in turning away and exposing himself to the Americans as a target; a final Mark-48 was launched. This time, the torpedo hit. A brief explosion shook the waves and then
Pskov and her crew drifted down to a dark, icy underwater grave.
