Chapter 219 - 135: The Erratic Water Mine (Second Update)
Chapter 219: Chapter 135: The Erratic Water Mine (Second Update)
“Tsk, so many ships.”
Su Jie watched the dozens of vessels making up the transport convoy ahead, pulled out the Ten Thousand Soul Banner from within his clothes, and touched the head of the thousand-hand centipede wrapped around his arm.
“Xiao Qian, go, let me see what dropping dumplings into boiling water looks like.”
“Sizzle.”
The thousand-hand centipede hissed and crawled down from Su Jie’s arm, plunging into the nearby sea.
Gurgle!
In the water, the thousand-hand centipede bubbled as it swam, its pale corpse hands detaching on their own, flitting through the water, burrowing into the mud, and finding the preplaced magnetic water mines.
The pale corpse hands, ten to a group, quickly approached the United States Bay of Bengal Expeditionary Fleet, clutching the magnetic water mines.
Water mines are known as the sea battle artifacts of poor nations, with even ten-thousand-ton warships taking severe damage if hit by just one, but because of their sit-and-wait nature, they can only remain stationary, waiting for ships to collide with them.
However, modern sonar technology has become very advanced, making water mines easy to detect and clear away with minesweepers.
But Su Jie’s use of water mines was different; he wasn’t playing the waiting game, but rather, he launched an active assault.
…
Aboard the Wichita Coastal Combat Ship.
Emra Abudula, who was working in the sonar room with ear protection, suddenly caught strange acoustic feedback in the hydrophone.
“Fish schools, dolphins, or something else, wait, this is the feedback from mines…”
At first, Emra paid little attention, but upon detecting the sonar signature of the mines, she was so startled she nearly jumped, hurriedly passing the information to the captain.
The pale corpse hands, formed of Spiritual Power, were incredibly strong. Ten arms would clutch a mine, moving their limbs in a fin-like motion, and despite pushing the heavy mines, they moved through the water at a surprisingly rapid pace.
Passing information takes time, making critical judgments and issuing orders takes time, but Su Jie didn’t plan to give the fleet much time at all.
…
The United States Bay of Bengal Expeditionary Fleet was completely unaware of the imminent danger. The sailors were preoccupied with preparing to port, many United States Marine Corps soldiers walked onto the deck, chatting and joking about the upcoming battles.
Nadaya Herbert stretched lazily, looking at the land slowly coming into view, and said to her friend beside her, “Blais, do you think those rumors about Super Soldiers are true? Just yesterday, the commander called us for a military seminar specifically to deal with those little Supermen.
“You’re scared now, if you’re scared you can shrink back into the cabin.”
Blais chuckled, leaning on the railing enjoying the sea breeze.
“Bullshit, how could I be scared? Even if someone stuck a gun barrel up my ass, I wouldn’t frown. I don’t believe the enemy is really impervious to bullets and blades, maybe it’s all exaggerated propaganda. If the generals don’t exaggerate the enemy’s strength, how can they get more military funding from Congress?”
Nadaya smirked, not quite believing in Super Soldiers; she trusted her own rifle more.
“Don’t worry about it, there are so many tanks over there, and we have aircraft support from the Amphibious Assault Ship behind us, we’ll make them cry for their parents.”
Blais pointed to the tank landing ships and the military roll-on/roll-off vessels nearby that were carrying tanks, armored vehicles, and military Humvees.
“When the time comes, I will…”
Just as Nadaya was about to speak, she suddenly saw the bow of the tank landing ship lift high, a violent explosion throwing up a water column tens of meters high, ripping a massive ten-meter gash in the bow as water poured in frantically.
Onboard, the heavy main battle tanks shook with the explosion, their securing straps snapped, and they tumbled around in the cargo hold.
Several sailors on the ships were crushed to a pulp by the tumbling thirty-ton main battle tanks.
“What’s going on here? What is this?”
Nadaya shivered, staring wide-eyed at the tank landing ship that was taking on water, helplessly sinking slowly, her mind a blank.
“Are you kidding me? Hit by a mine? What on earth are the sonar operators doing?”
Blais took a sharp intake of breath, this was the Chan Country’s naval port—could it be that a submarine had secretly come here to lay mines?
But that did not make sense! Weren’t they just dealing with a warlord? Where could he have gotten a submarine from?
As the tank landing ship struck the mine, the sailors of the expeditionary fleet immediately tensed up, realizing that these were indeed heavy water mines. If their own ship were to be hit like that…
In the command room of the amphibious assault ship still drifting at sea, David received the news and his face changed color dramatically, issuing commands rapidly, “Order the fleet to halt their advance immediately, retreat from the minefield. Dispatch minesweepers to clear the mines, and deploy anti-submarine helicopters to intensify sonar searches to locate the water mines. The enemy’s submarine might still be hiding here; find it.”
One must admit, David’s orders were not wrong—if these were ordinary water mines, at most they would lose a ship.
But this time, these water mines were powered by biological kinetic energy.
Above the sea, following the explosion of the tank landing ship, the United States’ transport fleet immediately slowed down.
Fortunately, because the fleet was preparing to dock, their speed had already been reduced, which was good, as large ships don’t stop immediately like cars do—not just with a touch of the brakes.
Several frigates and destroyers immediately turned on their active sonar, operating at full power.
Anti-submarine helicopters took off from the flight deck, releasing sonar buoys, initiating surface search radar, and lowering dipping sonars for comprehensive monitoring of this sea area.
“What… fuck, what the hell are these things, water mines? Active water mines are not that fast!”
Inside the cockpit of an anti-submarine helicopter, the pilot nearly popped his eyes out upon seeing the information detected by sonar.
The sonar confirmed they were water mines, but why were these mines moving through the water erratically and at such a great speed, as if they were fitted with a hundred and eighty boosters, and even faster than the Maozi’s straight-running, ultra-high-speed torpedoes.
The pilot was not unfamiliar with active-trigger mines, which can sense changes in magnetism, sound, and pressure in the water, and would automatically activate and head towards a target from a distance away.
But those mines were much slower and their active target-searching range was very limited, thus posing a minimal threat to warships.
Below the surface, a magnetic water mine pushed by pale hands moved toward a high-speed troop transport ship.
The transport ship, now slowing down and turning around, was an easy target, with no chance of evading.
Once the magnetic water mine approached the bottom of the ship, the mine’s collision mechanism activated, and these devices contained several hundred kilograms of high explosive, causing a massive blast.
Boom!
The high-speed transport ship’s keel rose upwards sharply as the mine detonated, creating a high-temperature, high-pressure air mass. The air mass expanded and contracted several times underwater, causing repeated violent attacks.
From afar, the transport ship looked like a toy broken by a mischievous child—steel ripped and twisted, the ship’s body fractured into two from the middle.
The hundreds of United States Marine Corps soldiers onboard met a tragic end.
Many were killed instantly by the blast’s shockwaves, and more soldiers clung to the broken ship, falling into the sea one after another like dumplings.
A transport ship was not a combat vessel after all—it was typically thin-skinned and big-bellied, and the water mine’s charge was up to six or seven hundred kilograms.
In comparison, a 155-millimeter artillery shell’s charge is around ten kilograms, and the famous Harpoon anti-ship missile only carries about two hundred kilograms of explosives. One can imagine the destructive power of this mine’s explosion.
Not to mention that the mine detonated underwater—water, being an excellent medium for energy transmission, greatly increased the impact of the explosion.@@novelbin@@
It was visible to the naked eye that this high-speed transport ship, 103 meters in length, 28.5 meters in width, with a full load displacement of 2,400 tons, could not withstand the blast and broke directly into two parts. The bow and the stern rose high, as it sank into the icy depths of the ocean.
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