Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: pauk

I as Japan player didn't sink a single one sub after the last patch (to be honest, there wasn't many sub actions, but ....)

on the other hand, Allies can sink japs subs but they need more attacks then before. I guess that die roll is important - one of my sub was hit with 6 DC i think (all of them were "fire" hits shown on CR) but flooding stopped at 67 and my sub survived....)

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ORIGINAL: herwin

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ORIGINAL: spence

I think a single hedgehog projectile was 24 lbs of explosive...a hit by one of those was very often lethal. I think the 300 lb depth charge the Allies started the war with had about the same lethality as a hedgehog if it exploded within 10 feet of the hull of a sub.

(Source: Morse and Kimball) A bomb hit on a sub was rarely lethal as most of the blast was vented to the atmosphere. Depth charges were fused to explode at a specific depth, so they had higher lethality and could kill the sub at a distance, but their lethality wasn't that high. During 1944, the ASW escorts used about 700 ahead-thrown charges and 614 depth charges to kill 1.25 subs a month in the Atlantic. The hedgehogs were contact-fused, which meant that they wouldn't explode during the attack unless they contacted something. Since depth charges were guaranteed to explode and disturb the track on the sub, battle damage assessment was very hard to do.

Basically, the value of ASW weapons was in keeping the subs occupied, not in killing them except by rare accident.

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ORIGINAL: Terminus

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ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

Actually El Cid isn't far wrong this time. The outer hull was whatever shape the designers decided on but the pressure hull (inner hull) of most WWII submarines was round or oval shaped. Basically all the ballast piping and fuel cells were located between the hulls. Most designers did create somewhat oval outer hulls for improved seakeeping abilities when on the surface.
Chez

My problem is the "a submarine can withstand a nuclear pressure wave" claim...

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ORIGINAL: herwin

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ORIGINAL: Terminus

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ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

Actually El Cid isn't far wrong this time. The outer hull was whatever shape the designers decided on but the pressure hull (inner hull) of most WWII submarines was round or oval shaped. Basically all the ballast piping and fuel cells were located between the hulls. Most designers did create somewhat oval outer hulls for improved seakeeping abilities when on the surface.
Chez

My problem is the "a submarine can withstand a nuclear pressure wave" claim...

The water pressure at maximum diving depths is rather impressive. If the sub is at half its maximum depth, it has a lot of spare capacity. To overwhelm the pressure hull of a sub, a small nuclear burst has to be almost in contact. Most of the damage would be due to shock, not static overpressure.

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ORIGINAL: herwin

You're asking for classified information.

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ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

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ORIGINAL: herwin

You're asking for classified information.

hmmm - not sure if you are implying that such data exists, or not...

Anyway - subs, despite the immense stresses that they are built to withstand, are amazingly delicate. Some years ago (5 or 6, iirc) i went through various sources and tried to find all subs that had been involved in "bumping" incidents - generally US subs and Russian subs grazing each other while underwater, generally at pretty low relative speeds.

IIRC - every one of these subs either never sailed again, or was retired very soon.

i am not sure about some of the more recent collisions - where the one sub hit the seamount while traveling at high speed, etc.

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"Crazy Ivan!"

The Soviet and American submariners played grab ass throughout the Cold War. Not much of that ever got reported.

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ORIGINAL: Terminus

I'd prefer to have a modern AIP diesel-electric to a nuc boat. They're stealthier.

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ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

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"Crazy Ivan!"

The Soviet and American submariners played grab ass throughout the Cold War. Not much of that ever got reported.

Yeah, it was kinda tricky finding all that stuff and trying to put it together.

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It's awfully easy to get it wrong.

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ORIGINAL: herwin

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ORIGINAL: Terminus

I'd prefer to have a modern AIP diesel-electric to a nuc boat. They're stealthier.

And slower. YMMV.

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Modern nuclear boats of all navies are built to be quiet. That makes them vulnerable to shock.

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ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

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Modern nuclear boats of all navies are built to be quiet. That makes them vulnerable to shock.

Actually, just the opposite, Herwin. Because most things in US subs are sound-isolated from the hull, they are better able to absorb shock. Think of the sound isolators as being giant shock absorbers. Doesn't mean they are invulnerable, just a little more resistant.

However, shock can be a major mission kill component. You don't have to hard kill a sub to make him ineffective. You just have to deliver a big enough shock to uncage his gyros. Without gyros, the boat loses all navigational and targeting ability. A SSBN is expecially vulnerable to this. Once the gyros have been uncaged, it takes some time to realign them and the new position is likely to have some induced error... at least until the boat can come close enough to the surface to obtain a sat fix. If the gyros have been damaged, its pretty much game over as the boat will have no attitude information when submerged.

Terminus, you are correct. A modern diesel boat tends to be much quieter than a nuc when submerged though with the advances being made in sound quieting, nucs are pretty much "in the grass" also. The diesel is perfectly suited to shallow areas such as the Baltic, the Med and the Sea of Japan whereas the nuc is much better suited to the open ocean. A diesel sub is a much more difficult beast to locate in shallow water than a nuc in the deep ocean.

rtrapasso: In my ASW years, I was privvy to many of the reports concerning collisions with USSR subs and our own subs and ships. Some of them made for great reading, others were in the "OMG, what were they thinking/" category. The two best public ones IMO were the collisions between the USS Voge and an Echo II SSGN in the Med and the Kitty Hawk and a Victor SSN in the Sea of Japan.

The Echo II was trying to cut the towed array cable on the Voge and was running with just part of the sail awash when she cut astern of the Voge. Unfortunately, the Sov sub miscalculated and rammed the stern of the Voge who lost her prop. The Sov sub immediately surfaced and deep gashes on her hull was visible. The sub claimed the Voge cut across her bow but the entire sequence was filmed from the Voge and it was obvious what had happened.

The Victor had the misfortune of trying to surface in front of the Kitty Hawk in the Sea of Japan and got run over by the carrier. The sub was actually relatively undamaged from the actual collision with the exception of some major dents. The real damage occurred when the sub rolled 360 degrees as a result of the collision and the carrier's wake. Most of the sub crew was injured and the reactor automatically scrammed. It was damaged enough where the boat spent quite a bit of time in the yards for recoring.

One other Soviet sub incident I personally witnessed was with a Juliett SSG near the Straits of Gibraltar in 1980. We had intell that a Juliett was operating in the Alboran Basin and may attempt to transit the straits. We were flying a night FLIR/ESM mission investigating all surface contacts in the area. As the Soviet diesels tended to operate on the surface at night, we were covert (no lights, radar, radio, etc). About 2 hours into the mission, we detected 2 sweeps of a Snoop Slab radar on our ESM equipment and immediately began a run in down the line of bearing. We were at 300 feet and identified the sub about 5 miles ahead on the FLIR (infrared). We we were coming up the stern so our mission commander decided to do a simulated attack. We opened the bomb bay doors (they were empty) and deployed a SSQ-47 (active sonar)sonobuoy from the belly just as we marked on top the sub.

The sub was taken completely by surprise (he would have been dead if we had been at war) and attempted a crash dive. As we came back around, we could see the bow of the sub go under very fast but the stern lifted clear of the water and we could see the two 5-bladed props spinning in the air. The boat hung at about a 60 degree down angle for several minutes before finally sliding under. I can only imagine the pandemonium that must have occurred on that boat! Given that the water is only about 300 feet deep there, I always wondered whether he struck bottom or not. This whole sequence was caught on film also. I wish I had a copy of it.

We did end up pounding his butt until we ran out of active buoys. BTW, the first SSQ-47 we put on top of him didn't yield contact for several minutes as the sub was within the buoy's cone of silence (<100yards). Plus it didn't help that only half of the sub was underwater!!!

These were my favorite type flights.. the ones where you found a sub that nobody knew about or ones where the sub hadn't been actively prosecuted in awhile. When we were "flapping" (round-the-clock ASW ops), it could actually become boring tracking the Soviet SSBNs as they normally transitted at a set course and speed and seldom deviated from it. Those were the times I tell my Sensor 2 to take over while I grabbed some shut eye. The SSNs however were a little less obliging and would often pull a course change just to keep me awake!

Chez

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The Akula class - I hated them. How were they rated as far as you know?

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ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

The part of your earlier statement that I disagreed with was the part where you said sound isolation on modern nuclear boats makes them vulnerable to shock damage. The implication I got was that they were more vulnerable to shock damage than were boats without sound isolation. Maybe I read too much into it, if so please accept my regrets.

I do agree that there is a finite limt to just how much shock they can handle before damage is incurred. It probably doesn't provide a great deal of protection but some is better than none.

It's a similar principle to earthquake "proofing" a building by putting it on rollers and shock absorbers as opposed to a building that has none.

Chez