Submarines have been used a few times in the post-war period. Famously by the British during the falklands war, and as Tomahawk missile platform in recent American wars IIRC.
In that time has anyone actually tried to sink one? A huge amount of money has been spent on anti-submarine warfare (and a whole arms race with decades of submarines and anti-submarine weapons trying to get the better of each other). But has any of it ever been used?
I have something of a philosophical question. The Falklands War was – as the name implies – a war. So how can it be considered part of a “post-war period”?
Yes, in the Falklands.
More of a very serious warning: Both Sweden and Finland have dropped depth charges nearby unidentified submarines in the past.
https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+drop+depth+charges+on+unidentified+submarine&rlz=1CATTSD_enUS774US774&oq=sweden+drop+depth+charges+on+unidentified+submarine&aqs=chrome..69i57j33.23197j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
In the UK at least, ‘post-war’ refers to a date after VE Day ( 8 May 1945)
Because the term specifically refers to WWII. It’s obviously not meant to be a literal semantic thing.
Yeah I suspect I am dating myself as someone who grew up in the UK during the “post war period”. When I grew up in the 80s and 90s referring to post war was universally understood to mean post 1945. Not just in military history, economics, sports, politics would all use the term to mean the “modern era after WW2”. And of course prior to 1939 would have meant post 1918 after WW1.
I’ve not thought about whether it’s universally referred to as that in other countries or if it’s still commonlyused that way (possibly “after the fall of the iron curtain” has replaced it somewhat as an indicator of the modern era)
Oh wow yeah, there was pretty active anti submarine warfare. The sister ship of that one would probably be more well known if they hadn’t installed the torpedoes incorrectly.
The loss of PNS Ghazi seems like a possibility. Or it just blew up like so many other submarines have done, e.g., Kursk
The linked upthread APA San Luis hunt is just amazing to read. 50 Mark-46s got dropped, and no dead sub? Hell of an expensive way to go whaling…
Did the Soviet Union feel a bit better after seeing that?
You’d like to think so… OTOH, you can’t kill something that isn’t there, and it sounded like the RN ASW screen was shooting at anything that moved. Jeez, they must have really wanted that sub dead, and were really confident that Conqueror, Spartan, or Splendid weren’t in that OpArea.
Incredible that improper torpedo maintenance caused those warshots to not work.
Assuming the engineers/designers knew of the possibility, there should have been a ‘forcing function’ to prevent the reversal of the polarity of the power cables (or even color-coding for godsakes). And if they didn’t know about it, improper maintenance wasn’t the problem.
Yeah for all the supposedly darwinian evolution of submarine/anti-submarine warfare in the intervening four decades, anti-submarine action in the Falklands war went down exactly how anti-submarine action went down in WW2.
Yes, the Ghazi was probably an accident. During the same war the PNS Hangor was subjected to heavy attack by the Indian Navy ASW assets after her attacks on INS Khurki & INS Kirpan and only just got away…and its only been recently that it has emerged how she escaped, by turning back into Indian waters.
A lot of submarine operations remain classified to this day, even from decades ago. Royal Navy submarine operations in the Korean War have only just been declassified and only some. Their operations off Indonesia during the Malayan Emergency remain so, only coming to light since an Indonesian Admiral recently wrote about them in his memoirs.
One of the few conspiracy theories of any type that has merit is that the USS Scorpion was sunk by the Soviet Navy.
North Korea has been involved in submarine attacks in the last years - one of their subs sank a S Korean warship in 2010.
They also lost a sub in 2016 - but no-one seems to be saying how it happened, I would not be surprised if there had been other incidents that have not been publicised due to the inconvenience of publicity to either side.
Not 2 Sept. 1945?
Not really - As any veteran of the war in the Pacific would ruefully confirm, the general population considered that once Germany surrendered the war was over.
When I wrote my comment I knew that someone would probably bring VJ day (15th August 1945) up, but as I say, most people were not really aware at the time that we were still fighting on the other side of the world.
I don’t think that’s true at all. Clearly the European theater was much closer to everyone’s heart for a whole bunch of reasons (the British population actually living in it for starters). But there were enough British troops (my grandfather included) and British interests at stake for most people to be aware there was still a war going on in the far east, even if it was way down on everyone priority list after the war in Europe.