All the subs we have can get to all the lakes. The problem is that none of them can get into any lake without thousands of people knowing about it. There are only a few trenches in the lakes, so once an enemy knew which lake a sub was in, they could simply nuke the one or two available trenches and the sub would implode.
Tom~
Greetings from Groton, the world capital of them there nuclear subs.
How long can they stay under before they come up for fuel -> more than a dozen years.
Food all depends on how much they bring. If it’s a long mission, when they leave every available space is filled with boxes of food. They make their own water and air, so that’s not an issue.
Probably the one supply that causes them to come up the quickest is a lack of movies. They only bring so many with them and how many times can you watch “Die Hard” anyhow.
How long can submarines stay submerged? A long damn time. The normal cruise is 3 months (or it used to be) but I don’t believe the sub is generally submerged the whole time. I think the U.S.S. Nautilus circumnavigated the globe in the 1950s without surfacing.
Those interested in the diesel submarines built at Manitowoc, Wisconsin, during WWII should visit http://www.geocities.com/~ss245/cobia.htm These subs did not sail down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. They were apparently carried on specially designed barges and floated across the Illinois Waterway and down the Mississippi. It may be the locks of that era between Lake Ontario and Montreal were not big enough to handle them, but I don’t know.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes. (Oscar Wilde)
Of course, the main reason that we don’t have any modern subs in the Great Lakes is, as many folks have said, that there’d be no reason and little point in doing so. if I may offer another possible factor, however, I had heard sometime in my youth in Cleveland that the U.S. and Canada are limited by mutual treaty to having no more than five (?) commissioned warships in the Great Lakes at any given time. Can any of you Navy folks confirm or deny?
Also, there is at least one military submarine permanently in the Lakes; the USS Cod, a WWII shipkiller, is set up as a floating museum on the North Coast.
“There are only two things that are infinite: The Universe, and human stupidity-- and I’m not sure about the Universe”
–A. Einstein
Thing1 is right when he says the range of the Trident missile is limited. At the rating of 4000 nautical miles, Moscow is at the very limit of the range from the Great Lakes. Moreover, at the height of the Cold War, when our best sub-based missiles were the Polaris and the Poseidon, a sub in the Great Lakes would have been unable to hit any target outside North America and the Carribean.
Crew of Ohio-class (“Trident”) ballistic missile submarine: 155 including officers. More info: http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/ships/ship-ssbn.html
Crew of Seawolf-class attack submarine: 134 including officers. More info: http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/ships/ship-ssn.html
Work is the curse of the drinking classes. (Oscar Wilde)
Yeah, what they said.
Submarine technology has gotten do advanced that we’ve out engineered humans. What I mean to say is, the limitions imposed on a submarine’s length of cruise or submergence is a factor of the performance of the crew.
Being locked up in a steel tube, away from sunlight and beer, decreases a crew’s efficacy. Once their efficiency starts to suffer, it’s best to bring them home, switch crews and send the sub back to sea.
Fed – Any country with satellite surveillance would know when a sub made the transit to the Lakes – and for that matter, when it left. If they don’t have the satellites, they could purchase the information from a country that does. It’d be much easier to hide a sub in the open ocean than it would in one of the Great Lakes.
Homepage: http://www.bigfuckinboatwithbadassplanes.mil
Occupation: Swabbie Pounder, First Class
Location: Anywhere you feckless landlubbers ain’t.
Interests: Navy Chow, Port of Call, The Head, Air Superiority
ICQ Number: CVN69 – An UncleBeer Profile
“Avast and ahoy, landlubbers! Shore leave’s in August. Hide your women.” – A WallySig
I seem to remember reading the British did have a sub in Lake Ontario to train commandos in WW2.