Royal Navy fires warning shots as Spanish vessel harasses US sub in Gibraltar

Daily Telegraph ^ | 2016, 5 May | Ben Farmer, defence correspondent

[ScaniaBoy]

The Royal Navy fired flares to warn off a Spanish patrol boat approaching an American nuclear submarine off Gibraltar.

The fast patrol boat HMS Sabre fired warning shots across the bow of a Guardia Civil vessel as it twice tried to cut across the path of USS Florida during an incursion into Gibraltar’s waters.

Gibraltar says Spanish vessels regularly stray deep into its territorial waters and the Foreign Office has attacked the incursions as provocative.

But defence sources said it was rare for a Royal Navy vessel to fire flares and it had only happened a couple of times in the past two years.

[JAKraig]

That is why you should transit the strait submerged. Just find a couple of tankers going your way and slip in between them. Maybe it is hard to find a tanker these days.

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While you are correct, underwater transit is the proper way to do it and going between other ships is good camouflage, the straits are only about 200 feet deep at worst spots so that makes it somewhat tricky, or at least not routine. There are places in mid channel where the depth is several times that deep well over 1000’ but the shallowest point is what you really care about. Some tankers will have a 60’ draft. There is so much traffic in the straits that sonar will be hollering out contact information the whole passage. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for error. If another submerged object is transiting at the same time you would hate to run into them at high speed, bad enough at 3 knots. It is easiest to go through when the tide is going the same direction you are, you only have to make enough turns to give steerage, hardly anyone will hear that going through the very noisy strait at that speed.

[SubMareener]

All I can tell you is it works. It helped that we had the prototype for the secure fathometer. In fact, our INS had failed and we were navigating on bottom contours.

[Oztrich Boy]

"in perpetuity" is not a 99 year lease.

Despite the UN Colonialisation commission suggesting Gibraltar should be a Spanish ruled colony, the UK's position is that should not happen unless the inhabitants (your "vicious, nasty, Barbary Apes" - is it any wonder the3y don't want to be ruled by you Dons?) agree

[grania]

When I referred to "Barbary Apes", I hope you didn't think I was referring to British citizens of Gibraltar. What they are (I just checked) are about 300 roaming free macaque monkeys, descendants of apes left there centuries ago. They're the only monkey population on Europe. The Brits care for that population.

For the folks who live there, it's a major annoyance to have all those apes wandering around. Whenever the issue of British ownership comes up one issue is protecting the Apes. At the observatory atop Gibraltar, there was a biologist working with the apes speaking to tourists. He was really impressive; it's quite a program, nurturing those Apes.