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Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

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Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#171

Post by AngryData »

dylan604 wrote: post #87
magicsmoke wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article's description of submarine warfare is surprisingly similar to how modern air combat is supposed to play out, and parallels modern artillery's shoot and scoot philosophy as well. Hide, find, hit, and hide again.

Long gone are the days of the British soldiers taking a knee in formations to shoot their muskets. Essentially expecting to take turns with the enemy trading shots. Never did understand that mentality at all.

Because if they split up they would be easily overwhelmed from a concentrated charge from the other side and split apart and sent running, especially if they had any horsemen. And during a rout is when the majority of casualties would happen.

Also being in formation helps stop people from running. If all your guys are spread out in the woods, more than a few might take that chance to 'disappear' from the battle if not from the entire military. It is a lot harder to do that in a tight formation and you would easily get called out, or even potentially shot in the back, for deserting.

Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#172

Post by saalweachter »

nabla9 wrote: post #163
evgen wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are going to be two effects. The first is a very large upward moment directly beneath the ship at the point of explosion, followed soon after by a downward moment when the explosion void is filled by the water and everything around it is pulled inwards to fill the vacuum. The upward hit should actually be easier for a ship to resist because there is only air above the ship and it is “relatively” easy to lift th…

The way I was taught this is that the strongest force and impulse (integral of a force over the time interval) is upwards after the explosion. The ship is already structurally destroyed at this point. Nothing works even if the ship does not immediately sink. When the ship falls donwards is when the keel breaks, hull breaks and water gets in. Any subsequent oscillation can cause more damage.

I know this is actually very important and interesting in the context of understanding how to build better ships/torpedoes, but I'm just imagining two seamen clinging to debris arguing on the exact mechanics by which the torpedo blew up their ship.

Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#173

Post by dsfyu404ed »

willvarfar wrote: post #104
goatinaboat wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top Gun was created in response to heavy losses in Vietnam That in itself is a crucial piece of historical context. The MiGs of the day were better than contemporary American fighters such as the F-86. They operated at altitudes the Americans couldn’t reach and shot downwards. One reason America was in Vietnam in the first place was a genuine fear that the Soviet system was actually better! It was the Sidewinder miss…

The F86 was on a rough par with the MIG15 in Korea. Yeager's assessment was that it was all about pilots, not the planes. Trivia: the Soviets eventually recovered an intact downed Sabre and shipped it to Russia for evaluation. They copied from it, including the Sabre's gun-sight that later fitted out the MIGs in Vietnam. Did the F86 ever serve in the Vietnam war?

>Did the F86 ever serve in the Vietnam war?

No. The National Guard had them through the 1960s but jet fighter technology was moving so fast at the time that they were not in front line service by the time the US had any involvement in Vietnam.

Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#174

Post by bregma »

tra3 wrote: post #17

Never occurred to me that torpedoes can be battery powered. Any idea what kind of cells they have? I got confused by the dual units here: > 65cm torpedoes have enough fuel to travel in excess of 100 kilometers at 50 knots for just over an hour. Turns out 1 knot/hr is nearly 2km/h so that checks out. Weird nautical units.

> Turns out 1 knot/hr is nearly 2km/h so that checks out.

I think you meant to write 1 knot hour is nearly 2 km -- a weird way to compare distances, but hey, the math works.

Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#176

Post by dddddaviddddd »

magicsmoke wrote: post #5
neurobashing wrote: post #3

Somewhat related, my uncle was a “Phantom driver” (F4 Phantom II) in Vietnam. Flew a bunch of missions of varying types. So Top Gun comes out, and my mom points out he had graduated Fighter Weapons School - my uncle is a real Top Gun! So I asked him for tales of dogfights, war stories. He had exactly one: “they’d send us out to fight some MiGs, and as soon as we got in range and turned our radar on to start shooting,…

The article's description of submarine warfare is surprisingly similar to how modern air combat is supposed to play out, and parallels modern artillery's shoot and scoot philosophy as well. Hide, find, hit, and hide again.

Recently read this blog post that discusses the focus on concealment and cover and why fixed weapons platforms can be difficult to rely on in a modern context: https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...

Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#177

Post by jki275 »

_8j50 wrote: post #85
jki275 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making an interesting argument, but one that was rendered obsolete a long time ago. We've used beyond line of sight weapon systems on massive scale for at least 40 years, and weapons like the Tomahawk and JSOW have taken things completely out of the realm where such an argument can be taken seriously. The decisions you talk about are probably valid doing close air support in something like a helicopter where t…

Good point,and drone strikes are being used as well. Some is vastly different than all. There hasn't been a major war where most or majority of kills happened remotely yet. I think either wars will be very short or exremely long if it was mostly done by unmanned operators and it will mean more civilians and less soldiers will die.

I think the most recent wars we've been involved in have been very tilted towards standoff weapon strikes. I suspect, although I don't think there are real numbers to really look at, that the vast majority of deaths over the last few years in wars the US has been involved in have been from weapons where no pilot was physically in danger.

To your last point, I think we've reduced the civilian death toll greatly by use of precision weapons. Compare what we do now to what was done in WWII or even Vietnam to an extent.

Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#178

Post by angry_octet »

magicsmoke wrote: post #57
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #39

I rip on surface fleets as being floating reef fodder that would be sunk almost immediately against any modern power, either because of the sophistication of submarines, the rise of cheap drones winning the economic exchange, or death-from-above missles and ICBMs that are basically undefendable. But against subs I'm surprised there aren't plans for a drone-net that surrounds a fleet or high value ship that can detect…

Smaller drones have weaker propulsion and can't keep up with the ship its supposed to provide a detection bubble around. Being underwater and having to deal with additional drag also doesn't help. The large size of an aircraft carrier belies the fact that it is the fastest ship in the carrier group and can outrun all of its escorts. Larger ship = more space to pack powerful engines. That's also a major issue for a lo…

Agree that power is the biggest limitation on drone/swarm concepts. Small engines / rotors are just not as efficient.

It is interesting to consider the change in tactics and design once you consider the fighter expendable. You don't have to turn away once you get shot at in-range -- you can keep flying and shoot at the point of maximum impact. The aircraft might only be designed to last for 10 combat hours, or to have a poor safety record. For example, in aircraft the design margin is ~1.5 (vs >2 for surface); for unmanned it might be ~1.1.

The drone-vs-human tactics will persist until both sides have competent drones, at which point they might evolve to look more like human-vs-human tactics: protect your high value assets, imperil theirs.

Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#179

Post by NickNameNick »

WalterBright wrote: post #109
avar wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Wikipedia's article on the P-51[1]: > Bomber escort defenses were initially layered, using the shorter-range P-38s and P-47s to escort the bombers during the initial stages of the raid before handing over to the P-51s when they were forced to turn for home. So it sounds like even if the Germans knew it wouldn't have mattered much, and even then these planes were taking off from Britain for the most part.…

The Luftwaffe even in 1944 was known to sneak through Allied defenses and shoot down B-17s. My father served as a B-17 navigator in 1944 and heard a Luftwaffe fighter shoot two bursts and bring down 2 B-17s in the landing pattern. The B-17s were caught by surprise cleaning their guns and never fired a shot back. The Luftwaffe could have taken out a squadron of P-51s with just a handful of fighters. This would have re…

That's not how aircraft aerodynamics work.

Tail heavy aircraft turn faster than nose-heavy aircraft. With the centre of aerodynamic pressure in front of the centre of mass the wings contribute extra turning force whenever the aircraft isn't facing exactly into the airstream.

If the centre of mass is too far behind the centre of pressure the aircraft becomes unstable - continuously trying to snap around and fly backwards.

Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies

#180

Post by koheripbal »

amelius wrote: post #132
sandworm101 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More wrong stuff... "It is best if the weapon detonates within a meter of the hull, but a contact detonation can have devastating effects against even the largest warships." Torpedoes targeting ships definitely do not want to hit anywhere near the hull. They explode well beneath the target, tens of meters below. They don't try to directly damage the target. Their explosives create a large void of gas, a hole, under t…

But this would mean the ship also breaks when hit by two normal sea waves with the right spacing between them.

Yeah, this explanation doesn't seem right. I suspect there is a strong component of direct damage to the hull involved.

It is pretty common for ships to have sections of it suspended in air in high seas.

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