More specifically, the Mark 60 CAPTOR mine
Posted on 09/02/2014 6:53:51 AM PDT by C19fan
A photo depicting an American nuclear-powered submarine poking its periscope above the waves—within shooting distance of a British aircraft carrier during a war game—is a useful reminder of one of the most important truths of naval warfare.
For every sailor who’s not in a submarine, submarines are real scary.
Stealthy and heavily-armed, subs are by far the most powerful naval vessels in the world for full-scale warfare—and arguably the best way to sink those more obvious icons of naval power, aircraft carriers.
(Excerpt) Read more at realcleardefense.com ...
Yes, the equivalent of having air superiority.
The Brits got rid of all their Nimrod ASW/Patrol aircraft.
I read an article a few years back about the Model 214 (I think it was in Proceedings). Very impressive.
What is “base denial”?
Over here...
See post #24... I meant to post that to you.
The Skvall was also designed to carry a nuclear warhead.
One does not need a skin on skin torpedo hit to really ruin a carrier’s day.
Crater the runway so enemy aircraft can’t use it.
Burn any remaining fuel, knock down the tower, raze the buildings, sabotage the ground vehicles...
What really killed the wolf packs was code breaking.
Once we broke the German submarine code the Germans told us where their submarines would be and our navy met them and killed them.
Yes the aircraft and ASW ships were important but it was the code breakers that made them truly effective.
My brother was on a fast attack sub and he said there are only two types of naval vessels:
submarines and targets
That means you destroy everything to deny its utility to your enemy.
If a war breaks out where our CVNs can be threatened, the last place they’ll be is in an enclosed body of water like the Persian Gulf or Taiwan Strait.
We only send them into those places as peacetime shows of force, to increase sortie rate by decreasing distance to target and to mask just how far a carrier can be from a target in order to strike it effectively.
Our carriers can operate far out. VERY far out. Enemy subs will have to travel distance to get to them. Diesel boats will be limited by range and speed, nuke boats by noise. Plus other things ... ;-)
More specifically, the Mark 60 CAPTOR mine
Very good point...however, it wasn’t until we captured U-505 off Africa (in the spring of 1944) that we could break the coordinate code and do a better job of pin-pointing the location of wolfpacks.
Before that, we had a general idea of where they were (thanks to ULTRA), and steered convoys away from those areas, while sending air patrols and ASW task forces into know operating locations.
I don’t know; some of the new ant-ship missiles are wicked bad.
Durandal munitions, or the cruise missile variant that drops "bomblets", basically land mines all over the runway and tarmac.
Here is a picture after IDF used Durandals on the Beirut Aiport:
Note: Every RAF Tornado lost in Gulf War I was due to them flying straight down the runway and delivering munitions. Iraqis placed their ZSU-23-4 and ZSU-57s at the end of each runway and lit the Brits up.
Yes
Well, that photo does show a submarine at “attack distance” ... back in WWII with WWII un-guided torpedoes shot 3 and 4 at a time at each target, hand-calculated firing solutions using slide rules from WWII visual sights through a light-only periscope.
Today, the torpedoes are individually guided by sonar at the tip of each torpedo, are shot while still deep underwater using sonar and sound-ray traces from beyond-horizon distances, are tracked using computers and sonars with no periscope visuals needed at all. One torpedo, one target, one dead engineroom in that target.
Concur with your observation about “non-glamor” promotions.
Until the shit-hits-the-fan.
WWII “excellent” submarine skippers (killers) sunk 100,000 tons in an entire career. 3 or 4 torpedoes aiimed ateach, with “maybe” one actually hitting the target.
Today, one shot -> sinks/destroys/disables a 100,000 ton ship with one torpedo! And the submarine has 23 left to go after the next merchant.
Can they out run a torpedo? The Skvall goes 200kts.
But it cannot turn to follow a moving target. The sub has to get very close.
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I don’t know who told you that torpedoes can’t turn but they were wrong. Even the super cavaitating torpedoes the Russians have can modify their course just not nearly so well as other fish, but then again at 200 knots with a nuclear warhead they only have to get close. Modern non-supercavitating torpedoes not only can turn and be guided by a trailing wire from miles away, but if the wire is severed or the range gets too far the torpedo can go into search mode on its own to find and re-engage the target. These torpedoes in slow mode are quiet and have a very long range.
With small thermonuclear warheads they don’t have to get as close as they used to. The tidal wave from one weapon can take out the whole task force.
Submarines have their own problems, once found they can be destroyed. The Russians used to try to follow us out of port and stay with us to know where we were so that in the event of hostilities they could destroy us quickly. Once we got lost in the deep water with a variety of different temperature layers it was much harder for them to keep track of us.
The speed of submarines is great for transiting, but you seldom use speed tactically, speed means noise. The submarine service is called the “silent service” for good reason. On patrol we seldom exceeded 5 knots and usually ran at about 3 knots. The screw turned slow enough that there was no cavitation at all, all the noise generated was generated by systems connected to the hull.
In those days we were considered quiet, very quiet but we didn’t compare to the new electric boats. They have sound dampeners on the shaft so that even the bearing noise of the electric motors is not transmitted into the water. While we had a water dampening system in the old days it was not nearly good at keeping the turbine noise out of the water as the new electric boats keep shaft noise out of the water. The skin of the new boats are covered in rubber, the decks are mounted on thick sound absorbers. Now even the shapes of boats from design on has only one thing in mind, don’t make or reflect sound.
USS Patrick Henry SSBN 599(N)
“...knock down the tower, raze the buildings...”
Wait... was the assumption that a war in Europe would be lost? How can you fight a successful campaign if you’ve just destroyed your own means of fighting?
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