BS: Canadian Submarines

Subject: RE: BS: Canadian Submarines
From: GUEST,brucie
Date: 08 May 05 - 11:11 AM

Shanghaiceltic,

I love reading/hearing experts talk about their experiences, so please don't apologize for posting. I do have one issue to take up with you, however.

Firefighting isn't scary. It has a few dangers, but those risks can usually be managed.

But, I think the people who willingly get into a big box that has air in it and then sink beneath the surface of the sea are crazy as hell to begin with. I have never been a confined-space fan, and a submarine has to be the ultimate in confined space.

I have met two submariners in my life. They appeared normal, and I think they simulated sanity very well. In my heart, though, I know their wiring was quite different. Just thought I'd mention that to you.

Bruce

Subject: RE: BS: Canadian Submarines
From: GUEST,brucie
Date: 08 May 05 - 11:24 AM

"willingly get into a big box that has air in it"

should read

"willingly get into a big box that has a finite amount of air in it"

Subject: RE: BS: Canadian Submarines
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 09 May 05 - 09:23 AM

Shanghai
Should you be admitting that
. In the 70's and 80's the Russians did not use them in their arctic circle bases so we had better opportunities to penetrate some of the fjords leading up to their bases.    ??

Re the museum. The site is the old HMS Dolphin as in Cyril Tawney's song Diesel And Shale, "The big man at dolphin he sent for me"
Be sure to take the guided tour of the sub. A grizzled old submariner takes you around and has a story to go with each section.
You will see a big tower which is where the submariners have to practice escaping, exhaling all the way up just as in your story Robomatic, or their lungs would indeed burst.

At Portsmouth, take a harbour tour boat. The museum is one of the stops and you can use your ticket to get on another boat later.

There's a smell in the air...
Keith.

Subject: RE: BS: Canadian Submarines
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 09 May 05 - 06:16 PM

Without going into too much detail our boats were regular 'visitors' This fact has been recorded in a number of publications. The USN were also committed to testing the Russian Navy defences and capabilities.

There has been a move by the Submarine Association to get a medal struck for those people who were on active duty in the Cold War on those submarine patrols. So far it has come to nought.

I preferred the submarine escape tower to the firefighting training.

The tower is 100 feet tall and about 20 feet across. Initially you do what are called compartment escapes where the whole compartment is flooded in a controled manner while you are breathing off the air that is left inside the compartment. There is always a bubble in the top of the hull even after the pressures equalise outside and inside after the flooding.

One deep breath, duck under the escape tower cowling and away to the surfcae breathing all the way out on the way up. Divers in the water are there to stop you if you are not breathing out. The last breath you took was at pressure so the air would expand in the lungs as you ascend, hence the risk of a burst lung. Another problem is that too long at depth and the last men out stand the risk of getting a bend as they have been at depth too long.

The final escape is an assisted one. You wear a rubber suit with a hood filled with air. You climb into the double hatched escape chamber, shut the lower lid and plug a pipe running down the arm of the suit into a connection inside the chamber, this inflates the hood and allows you to breath normally. No risk of a bend as the air is at normal pressure. The chamber with two men inside is then flooded until the pressures equalise and the top lid can be opened.

It only takes about 15-20 seconds to make the ascent, and you come out like a cork out of a bottle when you hit the surface.

The escape trainers practice deep escapes every year from a live boat. The deepest escape recorded for training was from 700 feet in the Med'.

SBS (Special Boat Squadroon) were regular trainees as they used this method of leaving a boat to get ashore to be inserted into hostile territory.

As for sanity, submariners are absolute pro's when at sea, even though RN boats were wet (carried alchohol) we rarely drank if at all. However once tied up in a friendly port our behaviour often left something to be desired. The skimmers would only ever see drunken submariners enjoying the benefits of the extra submarine pay. They never thought about the weeks we were confined on patrol, often not knowing where we were (with the exception of the Wardroom, the Coxswain and navigators mate)or pretending we didi not know where we were because we felt more comfortable in pretended ignorance.

There were lighter moments. The last night of the patrol was traditionally called Channel Night, and restrictions on making too much noise were lifted. On my last boat one of the officers was a good mando player and along with a good whistle player a live concert would be broadcast throughout the boat.

Once we even had a guy who could play bagpipes, a dour engine room rating. One night while coming back off patrol the sound room picked up some strange frequencies on the passive sonar. The captain was called, course was changed to clear our stern and see if the following sound would change bearing. It did not. The skipper called for forward checks, no sources found for self generated noise. Then a smile came across his face. He asked the sound room to broadcast the sound not just check the frequencies. A rather muffled version of 'Flowers of the Forest' was heard.

The source was identified to young Buck Taylor sitting right at the back of the motor room in the sterm practicing a set ready for his stint as a pipe on the casing as we entered harbour the next day. His drones were touching the inside of the hull and that was the source of the mysterious contact.

Buck would pipe us into harbour in full kit. The hem of his kilt had been thoughtfully lined and filled with lead shot by his wife to prevent it blowing up in the breeze and giving the Flag Officer Third Submarine Squadron move of an expose than he should have got.

I had 12 years in boats and I enjoyed every minute of them. But on average submariners were not the type of people you would introduce to mother.

Subject: RE: BS: Canadian Submarines
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 May 05 - 06:43 PM

If you're in Chicago, visit the Museum of Science and Industry. You can tour the U-505, the last vessel captured by the US Navy by a boarding party (in the Caribbean, in 1945).

If you're in Groton, Connecticut, you can (or rather, could -- I suppose you can still) visit the US Navy's flagship submarine training center. You can also visit USN Nautilus, the first atomic-powered boat (and the first under the North Pole). There are also surface ships to visit there, including a sail-powered whaler. When I was there the Dutch "tall ship" used for training was in port and we got to visit her, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Canadian Submarines
From: robomatic
Date: 18 May 05 - 09:55 PM

Not related to the Canadian aspect of the thread but I didn't think it rated starting a new thread.

Shortly after the Indian Ocean Tsunami an American sub ran full-tilt into an underwater mountain or ridge which was not on the chart they had used for navigation. 98 out of 137 crew were injured, one man died.

The sub was underway at high speed following a course laid out for them and sent to them. Of course, the Captain of the ship is responsible for everything that happens, and as it happens there were other, unused, charts available, at least one of which showed some kind of obstruction or danger in the neighborhood of the mountain. Apparently they took a sounding and found the sea was 6000 feet deep which was what they expected. But it wasn't enough to keep them from a major accident and almost losing the ship.

The story turned up in today's (Wednesday's) New York Times and the Captain was interviewed on Sixty Minutes II this evening.

Here is a link to the NYT article.

Adrift 500 Feet Under the Sea, a Minute Was an Eternity

Subject: RE: BS: Canadian Submarines
From: GUEST,Guest Shanghaiceltic
Date: 19 May 05 - 01:25 AM

Thanks for that link Robomatic. This was certainly one boat that had luck on its side after hitting the seamount. The front end damage took out the fwd main ballast tanks. Luckily the collision shock did not cause the reactor rods to drop in at the same time. That could have made things worse.

Certainly seems a cock up with the charts which led to this happening.

We did one stint of operating in the Pacific and that was the only time I have ever been on a boat with active sonar being used regularly to try and spot uncharted sea mounts. The article is correct in stating that some of these areas have only ever been charted by Cook and his contempoaries.

Today we can use satellites to pinpoint things as small as 1 metre on the Earth surface, track weather systems, but we know so little still about the real terrain of the sea bed under the oceans of the world.

Sadly there was still a loss of a life and my sympathies to the young Petty Officers family. The Captain will also have this with him for the rest of his life.