The uninvited guest: The Chinese sub!

"beat that problem in WWI"

Ah, that would explain how the Germans ended up winning the war.

 

Ya Dayton... cause you can win a war with U-Boats alone.

 

In World War II, after the convoy system was introduced the U-Boats were massacred.

 

That doesn't make your statement about the German's winning the war any more accurate. And I know you were being sarcastic, I'm just saying that your sarcasm didn't really fit.

 

If I were a sub driver, I'd park where I knew the carrier had to pass (due to navigational issues or whatever), go quiet and wait.

Unless the escorts use active sonar and really beat the bushes for me, I'd say my chances are pretty good.

Of course, once I let fly with the torpedos, I'm pretty much screwed.

 

As were the sailors and soldiers in those convoys. Same for the Nips in their convoys and battlegroups. Technology advances and tactics change to defeat the bad guy's tech while emphasizing your own. Why can't you grasp that fact?


In the old days, before radar, they'd spot smoke on the horizon, run at high speed parallel to the convoy on the surface, turn perpendicular to the convoy, run in, dive, and wait, thus putting them abeam of the ships as they passed.

Today, an off-board sensor, any off-board sensor, be it a plane, satellite, UUV, or another sub can act in the same capacity as the look outs of old, or did you think this sub ended up at the right place at the right time 'cause it was beamed there?

Chances are, the Chinks had been tracking the battlegroup's rough position for days and put subs all along it's path. This one just got the lucky shot of being in the right patrol zone.

 

You would position yourself upwind.

Because a carrier conducting flight ops always goes into the wind.

But in any kind of high tension situation with China, wouldn't the carrier escorts be "beating the bushes" using active sonar?

 

Only if they want to die. Why give the enemy exact range and bearing figures on your ships? As an enemy submariner, it can be even doubly worse because you can use those known ranges and bearings over time to paint a picture of that whole section of ocean for you and you've not done a damn thing.

 

But can you reasonably hide the sonar returns from a carrier and her escorts?

No surface ship at 25 knots is going to not be detected on passive sonar.

So why not light up the ocean ahead of you?

With active sonar, you'll detect an enemy submarine while it is well out of torpedo range. And you'll force them to either retreat or launch a cruise missile attack from the outer envelope of their range. Meaning more time for missile defenses to deal with them.

You could have your escorting SSN hang back well behind the CBG and watch for any submarines trying to overtake the group or move up for an attack abeam.

 

Active sonar can be heard and used by the enemy a lot farther than it can be used by you. Let's just say that an Arleigh Burke class Destroyer's active sonar has a maximum detection range of 17 miles (roughly 30,000 yards). An enemy sub can hear that up to 50 miles away (or further, even entire oceans away, if the water is just right). If multiple ships are banging about, you're giving him a nice firing solution and he's had to do nothing. Oh, and then you've got to figure in the presence of any thermal layers, which if the sub is below, renders your active sonar pretty much worthless and it looks even worse when you figure in the 20+ mile range of modern torpedoes.

That's why they started strapping sonars to helicopters and starting moving the transducers closer to the bad guys in the first place.

 

Thanks for the information.

But would an enemy submarine really be able to close to effective torpedo range with active sonars banging the water.

I've read that the effective range of the most advanced U.S. submarine launched torpedo is on the order of ten miles.

An enemy submarine would thus have to close well within the range it could be detected by active sonar to effectively fire.

 

I love it when people state things that are common knowledge as if it's some kind of revelation.

Why engage a high-speed target? Set up someplace where the carrier has to pass by at a slower speed.

If my torpedos have a longer range than active sonar will reach, that won't matter much.

That being said, I have no idea of what the practical ranges are for active sonar or Yu-4 torpedos.

And who says they'd wait until a "situation" develops? If they were to try and sink a carrier, I think it'd go down a lot like what happened to Kitty Hawk: A shot out of nowhere.

 

Yeah, and the Seawolf's top speed is 20 knots and a Nimitz class carriers top speed is 30 knots... What the ships and weapons can do and what the Navy will allow to be printed about them are two very different things.

Hell, the old Mk 8 steam powered torps from WWII had a range of nearly 9 miles at 33 knots. I think we've made significant improvement in the last 60+ years.

 

Seawolf does way more then 20 knots, our old swiftsure class subs do 27+ knots.

 

Everything I've read is that the three Sea Wolf subs are slower than the Los Angeles class subs.

The 688s were designed to be fast submarines so they could escort CBGs.

Which is why their hull isn't as thick as originally designed and they can't dive as deep as the two more modern designs or as deep as Russian subs.

 

Even if that were true, which it's not, you completely ignore the rest of my post?

 

Not really worried about subs so much.

Could you imagine the damage a couple of old Silkworms placed at the Straights of Hormuz could do?

 

I am laughing at Dayton in this thread.

 

Actually that was only a small part of the massacre as it allowed more defenders to be in one area so U-Boats could not pick ships off one by one.

The three biggest things that were killers for U-Boats:

1. Radar. Surface radar picked up the sub and the sub usually didn't know it until the Airplane was right on top of it.

2. Radio direction finding - works wonders when you can zero in on general areas where U-boats are operating in.

3. The biggest thing that totally killed U-Boats: Cipher Codes. Since the German navy never bothered to change them and the codes were broken it was just a matter of time hunting them down and killing them.

As for modern torps....There is no doubt in my mind that if that Chinese sub had decided to shoot four torps that carrier would be on the bottom right now. Modern torps are fast, very fast and this sub was in close. The carrier might not have had time to react to four incoming torps.