Posted on 11/18/2017 8:57:40 AM PST by ColdOne
Buenos Aires (AFP) - Argentina's military on Saturday were continuing the search for the submarine ARA San Juan, which has been missing with 44 crew aboard for days.
There has been no contact with the submarine since Wednesday morning, according to the navy, prompting Buenos Aires to launch an air and sea search for the missing vessel.
"We will do what is necessary to find the submarine as soon as possible," President Mauricio Macri said on his Twitter account on Saturday.
The TR-1700 class diesel electric submarine had been returning from a routine mission to Ushuaia near the southernmost tip of South America, to its base at Mar del Plata, around 400 kilometers (240 miles) south of Buenos Aires.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
Cue up Thomas Dolby song from the 80s.
In all the waters of the world there’s not one drop of mercy.
L
I hope I’m wrong but I don’t think this is going to end well. In the 21st century, naval ships don’t just go missing for days without word. Something bad has happened.
Apparently their GPS beacon has failed as well (sarc). Missing subs rarely have a happy ending. Recalling the USS Thresher and the USS Scorpion.
Sad. If the worst has happened, may they rest in peace.
Is it possible to just lose communications? I hope this somehow ends well.
The inspiration for the song was Dolby’s late uncle, who died as a submarine crewman during World War II. The submarine that his uncle served on sank due to an accident during routine manoeuvres, not combat, which according to Dolby instilled a sense of futility in his death.
Modern ships have so many redundancies and backups for communications it is hard to imagine a total blackout absent a serious accident. And there are protocols for such an event. If a sub actually does lose comms and they can’t restore it quickly they are supposed to surface and either make contact with another vessel or head for the nearest port to report their situation. Since this has evidently not happened I fear the vessel is either sunk or so badly damaged that it cannot surface.
Causes:
Fitting/pipe blew while submerged - flooded and sank;
Fire burned and sak;
While surfaced, hit by container ship which cut it in half and sank.
My Uncle was stationed on a WWII era diesel/electric sub during Vietnam. They are very useful for certain types of missions but are vulnerable to catastrophic failures from various causes.
The USS Scorpion and USS Thresher are notable because our nuclear subs are considered to be much safer than the diesel/electrics that came before them. Few remember the diesel/electric subs and their crews that were lost in previous times due to various mishaps or in action. It was dangerous duty.
One of my all-time favorite songs, from one of my all-time favorite albums.....
One Of Our Submarines
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OsZTJ5vfUs
Have you looked on the sea floor?????
The naval reserve center in our town had a diesel/electric sub that one of my classmate’s father was assigned to. When I was in elementary school we got to go on a couple of different field trips to view it. Even though we were just kids it still felt like the crew quarters and even the captain’s quarters were very small. It was nothing like what we saw on the TV show “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” which was popular on television at that time. And of course we were disappointed that it didn’t have a big window in the front of it.
;)
I don’t care if they’re Russians, Chinese, or even Norks - the idea of dying due to some failure on a sub is simply difficult to be happy about.
I remember the Kursk and how horrifying that was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Kursk_(K-141)
44 on board.
Specs. say complement of 26???
I had a former student on USS Toledo, which was supposedly monitoring the Russian’s naval exercise. There were rumors at the time that our subs were very close to the event. Naturally my student said absolutely nothing about his mission.
And on another note, it has always struck me how little depth of water can make rescue virtually impossible. Kursk sank in about 350 feet of water, the length of a complete football field, a trivial distance on land, but sure death at sea.
Prayers for the Argentine submariners.
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