No problem, we’re only start to enforce this recently.
Serious question (But I suspect the answer is no): Does a submarine generally announce itself and offer surrender before firing?
I mean, it seems like a good way for the enemy to get off the first volley.
The question is about the second ship that asked Sri Lanka for refuge, not the original ship that was sunk. It’s asking why they don’t surrender to the US instead of hiding in a neutral port.
Subs usually don’t announce themselves.
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Ah, I see. Teach me to read the OP more carefully.
I agree the Iranian Navy probably prefers martyrs.
Hopefully the Captain and other Officers prefer surviving the war.
It’s not like the Iranians can go down heroically fighting.
They’re just a floating target against a modern submarine.
Nevertheless, the question is inadvertently germane. Rhetorical question: How does one go about surrendering to a submarine at sea? I remember Iraqis surrendering to a drone off the USS Missouri during Desert Storm, but (being a former submariner) I can’t think of a practical means for a ship to surrender to a submarine, especially if it is unlocated. Pulling into a neutral port and negotiating terms might be the only reasonable means of surrender. Whether that was the Iranian captain’s intent, I have no idea, but it seems plausible.
The Iranians can use their radio.
Maybe use Sri Lanka as a third party contact to US officials?
The ship might have useful intelligence they can offer.
Maybe a stupid question but can they do something like wave a giant white flag indicating that they are ready to surrender to whomever? (There is no way that this ship will do that)
There are many flag calls design for said and they can radio over their surrender.
Navy Flag signals:
I am sure that there is some diplomacy going on between Sri Lanka and the US as to what the US might do if they give the ship refuge. Would the US Navy blow up the ship if it was in a port there?
2 years ago, absolutely not. Today, I no longer know.
A submarine would never acknowledge either of those methods because doing so would compromise their position. As would the act of sending over a boarding party to accept the surrender.
Agreed, I thought I was answering a different question, not sub related.
Well, assuming that the IRGC is still in power when the ship is allowed to sail again, they will make life hell for the captain, the first officer and a couple of others too, I would suppose. But for that to happen the IRGC would have to stop or even beat the USA, which does not look probable right now.
As far as I know when a military ship seeks refuge in a neutral port during wartime it has to stay there after 72 hours until the war is over. At least that is what happened to the Admiral Graf Spee in WWII (see in particular the section: Scuttling):
Under Article 17 of the Hague Convention of 1907, neutrality restrictions limited Admiral Graf Spee to a period of 72 hours for repairs in Montevideo, before she would be interned for the duration of the war.
BTW; The Hague Convention of 1907 is interesting for this thread in its own right:
I guess it has been amended and extended since, but I suppose it still the base for assesing many situations at sea during wartime.
I hope Sri Lanka gets involved and negotiates a resolution with the US State Department and Military
Too many people are senselessly dying already.
They might do that to punish them for sitting out the war in Sri Lanka anyways, if they survive.
It seems there’s a minor similarity to a naval encounter in the South Atlantic in 1939:
In that case, the ship trapped in port (Admiral Graf Spee) was ordered to leave in 72 hours by the neutral nation of the port (Montevideo in Uruguay) and the commander opted to scuttle rather than either surrender to internment or go out and face near-inevitable defeat by a large Royal Navy task force waiting for them.
I wonder if Sri Lanka would behave any differently. A warship belonging to a belligerent can only take very brief refuge in a neutral port. If the neutral nation exrends that, rather than insisting the warship either leave or surrender to internment, the neutral risks becoming a co-belligerent.
Yes, what I linked to three posts up. I maybe should have added this quote to make the situation clear:
Langsdorff was unwilling to risk the lives of his crew, so he decided to scuttle the ship. He knew that although Uruguay was neutral, the government was on friendly terms with Britain and if he allowed his ship to be interned, the Uruguayan Navy would allow British intelligence officers access to the ship.
They just have to survive, and every bomb the US drops makes them that much stronger politically. That’s how nations tend to react to bombing campaigns.