We found the pilot, floating like a baby in a tiny life raft, and pulled him safely aboard. All we found of his weapons officer was an empty helmet. Supposedly, the pilot had been in the water for 20 minutes when we got to him. His remark to the Chief that winched him out of the sea was “What kept you?”

We were within easy artillery range of the beach. As soon as the man was safe aboard the lights from our ship and our aircraft went out, as if someone had thrown a switch. A sailor with an M1 sank the raft so the enemy would have no trophy and we steamed back out into the dark at flank speed.

It might be difficult, however. For example, anti-submarine weapons are designed to locate and severely disable or damage a maneuvering submersible. I can’t think of anything (short of a nuke) that can eliminate every single chip and integrated circuit, or stealth composites.

Surely the Navy can figure something out, but probably not before a rival could locate and retrieve the wreckage. Probably the best weapon would be an old-fashioned WWII depth charge, lowered on top of the wreckage and remotely detonated. But I can’t think of anything in the arsenal today which could do that. Depth charges today are designed to be delivered by missile and parachute to targets many miles away. I don’t know if they could be adapted to go after this wreck. And of course, locating it is something else alltogether. Although there are deep spots in the S China Sea, much of it is really shallow.

Here is an example of a nuke depth charge…

My ship in the Navy was equipped with an ASROC (Anti-Submarine Rocket) battery with 8 missiles, including both depth charges and homing torpedoes. But it was the most secret weapon we had aboard. I knew absolutely nothing about it. It was never fired while I was aboard.