NATO Bombed Soviet Submarines With Tiny, Annoying Magnets

War Is Boring ^ | 7/9/`7 | Steve Weintz

[Eric in the Ozarks]

A St. Paul did 11 years on a sub tender at Holy Loch. 12 years after Larry D. left the Navy and was working for my coal company, he and his wife received an unexpected knock on the door following Sunday diner.

The visitor was a young lady from Scotland with a 11 year old boy along side. The boy looked just like Larry...

[BuffaloJack]

Another engineer and I designed these annoying magnets back in the 70s. They consisted of a bar magnet and a non-magnetic bell clapper on a hinge in the middle of the magnet. The magnet would clank from water currents. The sub would have to surface to remove them. They did no damage to the sub, but could be heard for miles under water.

[Sequoyah101]

After much consideration and experience I have concluded that family are sometimes nice to have around at Christmas and Thanksgiving but are otherwise like Mountains and best enjoyed from considerable distance.

[Sequoyah101]

The Soviets didn’t have titanium hulls on at least some submarines?

I can see those things being dumped by the thousands with little pingers on them. They would have to die sometime though since if they didn’t the ocean would have to be littered with little pingers. Clappers and simple and cheap though.

[Sequoyah101]

That was a strange movie.

[Sequoyah101]

You’re the man to ask this question then:

The Soviets didn’t have titanium hulls on at least some submarines?

I can see those things being dumped by the thousands with little pingers on them. They would have to die sometime though since if they didn’t the ocean would have to be littered with little pingers. Clappers and simple and cheap though.

What did the Soviets do, if anything, to counteract these things? Did they dump them on our boats?

[cornfedcowboy]

Nana gets around. First two things I saw were Toughy’s Draft and a Vegas magnet. Probably coolest grandma ever.

[BwanaNdege]

That magnetic attraction can get a submarine(r) in a lot of trouble!

[Lower Deck]

The Soviets didn’t have titanium hulls on at least some submarines?

A few and long after this experiment. I joined the Air Force in 1973 and this was the stuff of legend in the ASW community long before then.

[elcid1970]

Read somewhere that a Navy destroyer pinged a Soviet sub and then crewmen wrapped toilet paper around hand grenades & pulled the pin. Dropped into the sea, the TP dissolved, the grenades exploded & the deafening noise drove the Reds to surface.

What happened after that I don’t recall reading.

[BuffaloJack]

What did the Soviets do, if anything, to counteract these things? Did they dump them on our boats?

I worked for a military contractor at the time.
I don’t know if the Rooskis used them on us, but at under $10 per clapper, you literally drop a few hundred at a time. Any that went to the bottom of the ocean were just the cost of doing business. It’s like shooting a machine gun, you know most of the rounds aren’t hitting the target, but one hit is all you need.

[TXnMA]

"I believe North Korea has as many subs as we do."

You may well be right... Here's a single cove on an island just off the peninsula on the northeastern Nork coast where they launch some of their missiles:

I count at least six (6) Type 33 "Romeos" docked -- and one putting out to sea -- plus several of their "midget" submarines. And that doesn't count the underground sub pens or the nearby cove with the drydock where there's usually one or more subs getting their anechoic coatings refurbished...

Oh -- and, docked over on the adjacent mainland shore, the last time I looked, their new, modern, "Sinpo" development model was being provisioned for its sea trials...

[Sequoyah101]

That would be about the only thing DoD ever bought for us for $10 that effective.

[Snickering Hound]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa-class_submarine

Alfa (Project 705) submarines had titanium hulls.

And were outrageously expensive for the Soviets to keep up.

They were all gone by the mid-90’s.

[NonValueAdded]

Bravo Zulu

[BuffaloJack]

Almost forgot. We painted them the same color as the Russian submarine hulls. They’d surface, send out a bunch of guys to pull them off and throw them in the drink and then submerge, only to find that there was still one or two that they missed because they looked the same color as the rest of the sub.