aseymayo
Sorry, chick. Life is disappointment.
Oh, dear, is it? I thought it was a pigeon flying in through an open window, or perhaps something to do with underwear, and now you tell me it isn’t. That is disappointing…hey! you’re right!
Who wants ice cream?
Well, Admiral Richard O’Kane, who served as Executive Officer of the Wahoo and commanded the Tang (and was one of the few survivors of the circular torpedo run that destroyed it) subtitled his book describing his service on the Wahoo, “The Patrols of America’s Most Famous World War II Submarine.”
According to the U.S. Navy Website:
“WAHOO was one of the Submarine Force’s most valuable units during her six patrols, and her feats have become submarine legend. She sank 27 ships, totaling 119,100 tons, and damaged two more, making 24,900 tons, in the six patrols completed before her loss,” and she was awarded one presidential unit citation.
“In her five patrols, TANG is credited with sinking 31 ships, totaling 227,800 tons and damaging two for 4,100 tons. This record is unexcelled among American submarines.” She was awarded two presidential unit citations and her captain, O’Kane, received the Medal of Honor and two Navy Crosses for his service.
Both ships were tremendously successful and justly famous and decorated. I strongly recommend O’Kane’s books which vividly describe the exploits of these ships.
For all you WWII sub buffs-in the movie “DAS BOOT”, there is a scene where they take a deep dive (the depth gauge reads in the RED zone. At this great depth, they hull starts making creaking noises as it contracts under the pressure-then you hear sounds like rifle shots-the bolts securing the hull plates to the frame start shearing off-is this true? I’ve never heard of any WWII submariner reporting such a thing-seems to me that this the last thing you would hear before the sea rushed in!
The movie is either called Up Periscope or Down Periscope. In one scene they rest on the bottom and one guy makes whale noises so the other sub goes away. And in another scene, they put a light on the top of the periscope and surface, so they look like a sailboat, and then they sing Louie, Louie.
Amusing, yes. But a classic?
Well, I talked with my brother the S-3B pilot last night and he gave me the following regarding MAD and the Soviet Alfa.
The titanium hub helps, but that by itself isn’t enough.
Modern sub hulls are periodically degaussed, and this helps more than anything else in avoiding MAD detection. (I’m not sure how often they are degaussed, he didn’t say)
The biggest advantage to the Alfa’s hull is that it can dive really friggin deep.
Thanks. I’ve also heard that the Alfas were theoretically capable of withstanding a lot of torpedo hits. Never got tested, though, I suppose. How much does that much titanium cost?
By the way, kudos to Boris for those sources on early towed sonars.
De-gaussing is done on most modern warships as well as subs.
The system comprises a few turns of very heavy duty electrical cable laid inside the vessel but in a loop.
Replacing this cable when idiot dockyard welders cut through them is not a job to be envied as it is physically heavy stuff and it is generally not very accessible.I know all about it.
To get rid of the magnetic signature of the vessel which increases over time as electrical equipment is used a direct current is passed through the coils .It is ramped up to full current, since it is current that is responsible for magnetic fields and not voltage, and then ramped down again.
This is done periodically and is often part of the operational training trials where the vessel is taken across an area where there are instruments in the sea bed designed to detect the magnetic signature.
Actually de-gaussing is done right before your very eyes, your monitor has de-guassing coils in it. They are designed to prevent the shadowmask just behind the screen front being magnetised as this would affect the colours displayed.
A phenomenal (fictional) book on subamarine warfare is Neal Stephenson’s latest novel, “Cryptonomicon”. I was stunned when “U-571” was released a few months after the book hit the shelves - it’s basically the same story! How the allies got the “enigma” code from the Germans. It’s a long book, and the author sometimes bogs down in esoteric cryptology mathbabble, but there are plenty of nail-biting combat scenes and underwater dramas, and you not only get to view WWII in the European, but also in the Pacific theatre. It’s a real feel-good WWII action drama, sort of a cross between all three of the hottest such screenplays lately: The Thin Red Line, Saving Private Ryan, U-571.
Hijack in progress…
Huh… and here I thought the DEG button was just there to make the screen go all wavey and the colors mess up for a few seconds. Scared the hell out of me first time I pressed it.
I’m not in the SS (although a friend is leaving for it tomorrow), but I’ve read enough Clancy to know it’s mainly for strength.
Costs a lot. In fact, that’s the only reason they make their boomers out of steel i/o titanium–too expensive for a 900 foot missile boat. IIRC, Clancy mentioned that fact in either Hunt for Red October of SSN.
Just a minor point. Ballistic missile submarines are not 900 feet long. This from the U.S. Navy website:
Okay, speaking as a military guy, and an engineer, I’d like to offer a few hints:
- Every deck / surface / panel / doohickey is insulated against sound.
- Even under general quarters and battle stations, the Skipper still has to give orders. You’ve also got regular boat functions (like torpedo loading and such) going on which generally make more noise than talking.
- Sound may travel through water well, but remember that it has a refraction through the air/insulation, insulation/metal, and metal/water surfaces first. It’s kinda like light. Stuff gets dampened and attenuated.
- Whispering is still a mental response to the situation.
Just my $0.02
Unclebeer, the Russian boomers are larger than American boomers, though I’m not sure how much longer. I do know that one Russian boomer actually has a swimming pool in it for the crew…Why? I have no idea.
Tripler, even with all the baffling, modern sonar mikes still have a pretty decent chance of picking up the spoken word. And the sound of the torp room is one of the things they listen rather attentively for. 
Are you sure it’s not a pool/nuclear coolant tank?
“Very good, comrade. That extra eye will let you watch for capitalist spies.”
I served aboard an Ohio class ballistic submarine (USS Henry M. Jackson) for 5 years so this subject is near and dear to me. First of all, during normal submarine operation, the boat is in “quiet” mode. The crew is allowed to go about business (talk, watch movies, play the stereo, run on the treadmill, etc.) normally. Loud noises such as dropping hatches, or banging on the hull will get you an ass ripping, but activity is pretty normal. If the order is passed to rig for “ultra quiet”, then all extraneous activity is ceased. Off watch personel lie in their bunks, and all communication is done through sound powered phones. Specific arrangements of machinery is run in order to give a different sound signature (i.e. running the turbine generators at 59.5 Hz instead of 60 Hz).
All in all, Tridents are the quietest subs out there. I knew several sonar operators (sweater girls) who said that in order to find a Trident, they would look for a “hole” in the ambient noise. If they were real lucky, it might be a Trident.
It is true, as well, that the screw is the biggest noise maker on a boat. One of the reasons we were so quiet is that our screw was machined out of a solid piece of brass, instead of cast. The technology capable of machining something so large and precise, was supplied by Toshiba in an exclusive deal with the U.S DOD. Toshiba, in a fit of greed, in turn sold this technology to the Soviet Union. The Soviet subs became alot quieter all of a sudden, making our ability to find them more difficult. Toshiba later appologized, but I’m not buying it. In fact, I don’t buy anything that Toshiba manufactures.
A few comments on a number of the "sub"topics I’ve followed in this thread:
brad_d’s discussion of the bias of subs toward passive sonar and surface ships toward active covered the topic pretty well, but it’s probably worth stating specifically that anyone using active sonar has to have passive sonar in order to hear the results of their pinging, especially back in WWII and before, when they didn’t have computers to do the interpreting for them. It was an art rather than a science, but there was a fair amount of information that could be gleaned by listening to hydrophones, above and beyond the mere presence of the enemy: Prop speed and engine noises could tell whether the sub/ship was going slow or fast, and potentially whether it was a merchant or warship. Subs could indeed hear the splash of depth charges, and ships might hear an oncoming torpedo (though their own noises could make this difficult, and certainly not something to rely on). A sinking ship would groan as its hull buckled, thus giving a destroyer some hint of whether it had killed a sub, and letting a sub know whether its first torpedo had done the job, or whether it needed to finish off its target.
As warinner pointed out, a number of subs were sunk by other subs in WWII. The British did indeed make it something of a priority, and sank several German and Italian boats (including, if memory serves, an Italian sub sunk off the coast of Malaya, while trying to haul rubber and other strategic commodities from Japanese territory back to Europe). Other nations also scored sub vs sub kills, including a Soviet sub mistakenly torpedoed by a Japanese sub a couple of years before the two countries got around to going to war. Almost all of the subs sunk in these engagements were hit while running on the surface, but the British hold the distinction of the only submarine kill of a submerged sub in history. Not quite the “luckiest shot in the world” cited by Jeff_42, but still pretty impressive, the Brit fired at a U-boat running at periscope depth which it had just seen submerge.
brad_d also mentioned the US Navy’s magnetic exploder fiasco, which famously stalled our waging of effective submarine warfare in the Pacific. The Germans actually experienced similar dificulties at the beginning of the war (in their case, the defect was exacerbated by peculiar magnetic conditions due to iron deposits in the region of the North Sea and coast of Norway. Though they dealt with the problem more quickly than did the US, German subs apparently “counted coup” with dud torpedoes on several British Battleships and Carriers in the opening months of the war. It’s been suggested that the abrupt loss of several British capital ships at that early stage might well have altered the course of the war.
Interestingly, while the Germans successfully used a primitive acoustic-homing torpedo in WWII (successful until the Allies found that floating a jackhammer in a liferaft behind a ship made an effective decoy), to my knowledge the only sinking of a ship by a submarine since WWII (the Argentine Cruiser General Belgrano, ex-USS Phoenix, by HMS Conqueror in the Falklands) was done with unguided torpedoes, due to technical problems with the new model homing torpedoes the British were trying to bring into service.
I’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to visit a number of the WWII-era subs on exhibit around the US (Pearl Harbor, San Francisco, and Philadelphia). Cramped as they are, the hatches are relatively large, and they feature a lot of stainless steel, white paint, and light-colored linoleum in their interiors to try to “open up” the space. I’m not sure whether they looked the same way in WWII, or whether such fixtures were part of the “Guppy” refits that many of these subs underwent immediately after the war. In any event, its a wonderful contrast with the U-505, on display in Chicago, which is appropriately dark and menacing throughout. The hatches are small and round, and topped by “swing-through” bars, though larger portals have been cut through the bulkheads in deference to us lazy American tourists. The only sort of decor in evidence amid the dark functionality of it all, is in the Captain’s bunk area. While not a proper cabin, it is fitted out with dark wood furnishings and polished brass fittings. Such are the privileges of rank.
The Belgrano was sunk using the old mk6 torpedoes but the modern Tigerfish had first been fired and they missed.
The problem was down to the control wires that are trailed from the newer torpedoes, these wires are extremely fine and have to be palyrd out at just the right speed.
If you ask most submariners which subs are the quietest they will usually say the diesel/electric types, especially when dead in the sea submerged.
On one of the major exercises that takes place most years, Northern Wedding, a favourite ploy for the sub is to hide just below and behind a surface vessel where it is often only chance that the sub is detected at all.
It alway dissapointed me when I saw the size of the underwater missiles that subs use against us ‘skimmers’ when compared to the little things we had to fire back.These babies are big like 28 feet long and anti-sub one are around 7feet long. Seemed pretty unfair to me!
Umm, good point, Narile. I guess I forgot to consider the Russkies. That’s what happens when you’re a jingoist.
Anyway, from this page, http://www.armscontrol.ru/atmtc/Arms_systems/Navy/Submarine/Submarines_table_base.htm we find:
[ul]
[li]the Typhoon class is 175 meters, or 573 feet long[/li][li]the Delta IV class is 167 meters, or 548 feet long[/li][li]the Delta III class is “similar to the Delta IV class but slightly longer”[/li][li]the Oscars, or Cruise Missile Submarines are 143 to 154 meters long[/li][/ul]
Still, nothing approaching 900 feet. While Tom Clancy is a pretty fair novelist, The Hunt for Red October is still a piece of fiction.