Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the sort of job you want to be super boring.
Likely because it has the chance to be super exciting _once_.
This brought to mind this Schlock Mercenary strip[1].
Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
191–200 of 219 posts
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#192A misconception I had was that submarines fight each other under water. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-864 "It is the only documented instance in the history of naval warfare where one submarine intentionally sank another while both were submerged."
Not for nothing, but have there BEEN many submarine engagements since WWII? Is current doctrine that, say, fast attack subs would shoot at opposing boomers from underwater? I mean, it seems likely, right?
There are some suspected ones during the Cold War (the USS Scorpion and the Soviet K-129)
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#193Earlier 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.
Yes. All large ships have a theoretical wave size that will snap them in half. The bigger the ship the larger this wave, mostly beyond possible.
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#194Earlier 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…
Wait, was your dad a P-51 pilot, or a B-17 navigator? Quite different roles. I know the AAC moved people around at whim, but this seems unusual.
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Clearly the solution is to have hinges in the middle of the keel.
That is a thing. Google "articulated tug barge".
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Rampant cost cutting, outsourcing, and lack of protecting domestic production has absolutely devastated US manufacturing. This is utterly false thing that you learn if only read news articles. The value and quantity of manufacturing is now the highest it has ever been in the US. What has declined is the number of workers and the share of GDP. This applies to almost all OECD countries. As economies change from indus…
> This is utterly false thing that you learn if only read news articles. The value and quantity of manufacturing is now the highest it has ever been in the US. I've seen it first hand. I've talked with people that have been impacted by it. I've also seen the corporate slight of hand that tries to disguise it. Components manufactured in China, shipped to Mexico for assembly, then shipped to the US to have some decorat…
You’re talking about cheap consumer products that will always be made cheaply.
No one is going to make a consumer product like they used to. Take power tools and kitchen appliances for example. They don’t have to be make entirely of metal when plastic will do just fine for home use.
Like Germany we want to keep high quality manufacturing at home.
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
This reminds me a lot about the Geneva convention and how the rules of war very quickly got tossed aside during WW2. If you compare say the Battle of River Plate (1939) vs. say the North Atlantic convoy run or the siege of malta (1942), there's a dramatic difference in how war was conducted and the types of weapon systems that were most effective. River Plate was almost gentlemanly: while commerce-raiding, the Graf S…
I disagree, soldiers are conditioned to avoid hesitation, two nuclear bombs were dropped on japan,the pilots committed suicide. A soldier that would hesitate means the situation warrants hesitation. Not hesitating when you should could mean escalation of conflict. Even if you win the battle,it can cost you the war. Look at vietnam, the US lost domestic support because of lack of political support at home. You need th…
Civilians were definitely target by both side throughout WW2. From Rotterdam to Dresden, Nanking to Tokyo. Both sides indiscriminately and intentionally killed civilians.
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very tangential question. I can think of only a handful of targets that the US might want to shoot at. (I realize there might be a ton, and this is my lack of imagination). The handful I can think of, almost all of them seem like they're in the supply chain to actually build the torpedos. I'm pretty skeptical of the depth of the US stockpile. To put it another way, if there was a war so bad, the US reinstituted the d…
> To put it another way, if there was a war so bad, the US reinstituted the draft, would these tools still be relevant? The drafted people would all go to factories and boatyards to build thousands of new submarines. Each submarine would likely have no people on board, and be fully remote control. The age old problem of "you can't hide while sending and receiving data, so you can't make a drone sub" has been solved b…
That's not true. I was working on a system to do (not on subs, but the techniques are applicable) that a few years ago. With a big enough array, anything is possible, see the entire field of radio-astronomy. This includes sparse arrays, as long as you have good enough time sync to do coherent integration.
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To put it another way, if there was a war so bad, the US reinstituted the draft, would these tools still be relevant? The drafted people would all go to factories and boatyards to build thousands of new submarines. Each submarine would likely have no people on board, and be fully remote control. The age old problem of "you can't hide while sending and receiving data, so you can't make a drone sub" has been solved b…
I have read the comms channels underwater are low to very low bit rate. If true, a remote controlled sub seems unrealistic. Also a remote control sub would be continually sending data back which surely is tantamount to continually yelling "I'm here! I'm here!", so I don't really buy the RC sub theory yet. (edit: I don't buy your suggestion that it's possible to hide that. You just need to emit too much power and you…
Correct, you can’t remote control a submerged submarine, you get maybe a few characters per minute rate of transmission. There are a few ELF stations throughout the world, the US, Russia and India all having some.
Some more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_low_frequency which has my favorite quote. “ ... few nations have built naval ELF transmitters to communicate with their submarines while submerged. China has recently constructed the world's largest ELF facility roughly the size of New York City in order to communicate with its submarine forces without having them to surface. ...”
The antenna needed for these transmissions requires a lot of land.
Re: Modern submarine torpedo attacks are not like in the movies
#200Somewhat 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,…
I knew a guy who was a chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons guy in the army. He took bomb diffusal training, studied old soviet missiles, the lot. What did he do on a day to day basis? Mostly blew up grenades that didn't blow up on their own. Apparently it was super boring.
bomb guys are EOD SW, they made a movie about them a while back, Hurt Locker.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_Ordnance_Disposal_Ba...