Nuclear Sub Crash

[NukeNub]

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2240543.ece

Never thought I'd read about two missile boats colliding, especially between allied naval forces.

[BoilerHP]

That is just amazing.... shows just how scarily good anti-sonar technology is!

[Samabby]

It wasn't a collision, it was an incident. 

[Duke Nuker]

Now we know what actually goes bump in the night!

[vagabond]

That's crazy!  For those that missed one reader's ace comment: 

"Is it true that the French surrendered immediately following this incident?"

LOL  It's funny because it's strue!

[Gamecock]

That is just amazing.... shows just how scarily good anti-sonar technology is!

-or-

...how woefully poor the English and French Sonarmen are at detecting a potential contact.

[BoilerHP]

-or-

...how woefully poor the English and French Sonarmen are at detecting a potential contact.

OUCH!

Any one on the forum used to do sonar and can maybe explain exactly how easily or hard it is to detect other vessels?

[RDTroja]

"Is it true that the French surrendered immediately following this incident?"

Now, that's funny.

[number41]

I admittedly stayed out of Conar...... I mean Sonar when possible; I just can't imagine not hearing the thing when you're close enough to run into it!  5000 yds away, maybe, but run into it?  I just don't know. 

"It's an absolute one in a million chance that the two submarines were in the same place at the same time," said Lee Willett,

Anyway, cue the typical beaurocratic B.S. to not accept that something/anything should have been done to prevent this from happening and blaming it on "chance."  It just makes them look more incompetent in my mind to not admit that they should have done a better job and that some new measure of coordination would be implemented.  I guess that my first clue should have been that the guy was from a "military think tank."  Last time I checked, "military" and "think" are mutually exclusive!
One other thing,

"There is no precedent of an incident like this — it's a freak accident," he said.

Makes me wonder how the USN managed the cold war years without a SINGLE incident of this nature HA!

[HydroDave63]

One other thing, Makes me wonder how the USN managed the cold war years without a SINGLE incident of this nature HA!

You mean SSBN-598, the only boomer with tonnage? ;(

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_George_Washington_(SSBN-598)

9 Apr 81

[deltarho]

and you can't ask a skimmer, they can hardly spell SONAR much less find anything with it,....

Hey, we found a whale with our SEWNAR--killed it as the dome slammed down on its back.

[atomicarcheologist]

I remember hearing stories from the hole borers about chasing the soviet subs around.  Maybe the continental types are finally learing to play It Tag?

[Marlin]

I remember hearing stories from the hole borers about chasing the soviet subs around.  Maybe the continental types are finally learing to play It Tag?

Somehow I don't think that either the Brits or French are in the habit of doing a "Crazy Ivan".

[psmarz]

Either anti-sonar technology is good, or detection equipment was bad, or no one was paying attention.  Most likely some combination but I bet it is mostly human error....

On a side note...

Last year, Jose Sanchez-Dehesa and Daniel Torrent, physicists at Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain, presented a design that would allow a cloaked submarine to hide from sonar.

There was a neat article in Jan 2009 Discover magazine on cloaking.  http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jan/007/?searchterm=Cloak

[HydroDave63]

Seems they (both) had the 'cloaking device' ON. 

Or, 'their ears' OFF!  Which in effect would be a great (and cheaper) cloaking device. 

The Brit sonar operator were probably playing The Sims on their PSPs

The French sonar operator probably had one too many cognac at lunch (yes, the enlisted DO have a wet bar aboard, at least the Suffren did)

Quiet screws, anechoic tiles, make things quiet and initial contact close, but they both FAIL, as that basically they were in their patrol box (note the low collision speed), no escort screened for the other contact.... the sub you just hit could just as well have been the K-328 "Leopard" Type971U of Severnaya Flot.......or one of her 26" torpedoes on swimout!

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/971-list.htm   video here

[Marlin]

The French sonar operator probably had one too many cognac at lunch (yes, the enlisted DO have a wet bar aboard, at least the Suffren did)

This is a bit dated but during NATO ops the French were by far the best SONAR operators, of the nations participating.

I would hope they had their "cloaking devices" (quiet ops) on as both seem to have been on strategic patrol. I would think that if they did hear each other it may have been to late to react, 10,000 ton submarines do not turn on a dime. There may have been thermals involved which can mask an awful noisy boat.

[135i]

From what I've heard it's very very unlikely that they didn't hear each other.

I think human error is much more likely.

[HydroDave63]

Well that's not surprising, when you are genetically predisposed to surrender at the faintest sound of gunfire, it only falls to reason you would be a good sonar operator,.....

       

I blame Napoleon....he got the good fighting men killed off at Borodino and the frozen retreat west. Back in Charles Martel's day, the Franks were fearsome to behold! In 732, Charles the Hammer and the Frankish Army were the only thing stopping the Moslems from reaching Paris and beyond...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours


On-topic: I can understand they are both slow and quiet in the same layer. But neither navy had at least 1 escort to sweep the area, to preclude my earlier scenario? Somewhere an admiral needs spanked!

[AFT21]

Repost with more vagueness:

I was standing watch in control when we were playing games with another boat.  We were driving right at each other at different depths.  By the time we would hear each other, a collision would have been likely at the same depth.   And we were going faster than a boomer normally does when she's hiding.

MM1/SS

[War Eagle]

Repost with more vagueness:

I was standing watch in control when we were playing games with another boat.  We were driving right at each other at different depths.  By the time we would hear each other, a collision would have been likely at the same depth.   And we were going faster than a boomer normally does when she's hiding.

MM1/SS

Modern submarines are very hard to detect even when you're at battlestations looking for them.  If these two subs were routinely patroling, I'm pretty sure the sonar techs weren't exactly glued to their screens.  I can see it happening even on our boats.

[Marlin]

   Our boats have hit other subs, freighters, fishing boats, buoys, underwater mountains, and run through fishing nets dragging their poor fishermen along with it. Secracy of operations tend to keep these out of the news but a lot of them become public knowledge. Most of them are unavoidable with just a couple exceptions such as the Japanese trawler off of Hawaii. One of my boats drug a French fishing trawler backwards for a couple of miles, 50 tons of trawler don't put much of a drag on a 7000 ton submarine and we didn't really know what happening at first other than our planes were temporarily jammed, our XO picked up on it right away and we shook off the net and came to periscope depth to make sure the fishermen were OK. We did not surface as the boat was intact and the fishermen were standing on the rails with rifles, I still wonder what was going through their minds.
   Most of these collisions have mechanisms to help avoid them but the very nature of submarine operations would seem to make an occasional collision inevitable.