Submarines

[Zardnaar]

From what I can find their Shang class is comparable to a Soviet era Victor 3, which was the Soviet state of the art when I was in the navy 35 years ago and made so much noise compared to a US boat then that we called them trains. Reduced acoustic signature is a very difficult science to develop, and in a submarine it is really the only thing that matters. Speed, maneuverability, depth, firepower...compared to acoustic signature and sonar capability that is all just so much lipstick...if you're a pig you're a pig.

The hardest subs for the US to detect would be UK/German diesel/electrical subs in shallow water?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The hardest subs for the US to detect would be UK/German diesel/electrical subs in shallow water?

Any diesel boat running on the battery is hard to detect, but that is made up for in range. Finding a needle in a haystack may be hard, but it is easier than finding a hammer in the woods.

In case anyone didn't follow that:

The boat on the battery is quieter, so it is the needle where the nuclear boat is the somewhat louder/larger hammer...but you only have to look for the boat on battery in the fairly small area (haystack) that it could be in since you last heard it chugging away on the diesel, while a nuclear submarine could be anywhere in the ocean (the woods).

 

[Ajidica]

Thanks. @Timsup2nothin what do you know about the new Swedish submarines using AIP/Stirling Engines? Given how much trouble the Swedish diesel-electric boats could give us, I dread to imagine what problems the Stirling Engine ones could wreak.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Thanks. @Timsup2nothin what do you know about the new Swedish submarines using AIP/Stirling Engines? Given how much trouble the Swedish diesel-electric boats could give us, I dread to imagine what problems the Stirling Engine ones could wreak.

Interesting for Baltic operations. My perspective is warped from having been in a strictly blue water navy. If you're contained by surrounding land mass that presents a whole slew of problems I'm not familiar with. My world says "if we blow something up we want to be able to expand the search area fast, before anything that can hear gets on station, then we want to continue to rapidly expand the search area by being able to continue moving at a reasonable speed even though we are on RFQ (real quiet)." In the Baltic that expanding search area is just going to run out of water and leave you stuck. Not my style at all.

Quiet is always good though. I wonder how they deal with the exhaust?

 

[r16]

submarines are death traps . Real hard to escape from them , while you can always jump off a sinking destroyer or aircraft carrier

 

[Hrothbern]

submarines are death traps . Real hard to escape from them , while you can always jump off a sinking destroyer or aircraft carrier

It's more an "all or nothing" in a submarine

Survival expectation value ?
Could very well be better than surface ships deployed at the front

Psychologically there is then, I guess, still a hurdle there

But that's where selection kicks in
Just like with tank crews
or behind enemy lines units (without choppers, standby or nearby)

 

[Zardnaar]

German Uboat service had the highest casual ty rate in WW2. Somewhere around 2/3rds died.

Russian army and Bomber Command were the other two bad ones.

IJN was probably bad as well.

 

[Hrothbern]

German Uboat service had the highest casual ty rate in WW2. Somewhere around 2/3rds died.

Russian army and Bomber Command were the other two bad ones.

IJN was probably bad as well.

yes
whereby noted:
WW2 submarines and WW2 kind of deployment and goals

 

[red_elk]

We had an urban legend about a submarine which was gifted to Egyptian navy by the Soviet Union. It allegedly sunk during an exercise for unknown reason. Investigation showed that the crew did everything as was written in the instruction manual. But the instruction didn't mention that they must close hatches before submerging...

 

[Zardnaar]

We had an urban legend about a submarine which was gifted to Egyptian navy by the Soviet Union. It allegedly sunk during an exercise for unknown reason. Investigation showed that the crew did everything as was written in the instruction manual. But the instruction didn't mention that they must close hatches before submerging...

Similar joke here but it involves the Irish. Same joke probably exists in USA with the Poles.

"Heard the one about the Irish submarine? It has wind down windows".

80's jokes for children. The other ones were an Englishman, Irishman, and Scotsman.....

Basically the Irishman is always stupid.

 

[r16]

It's more an "all or nothing" in a submarine . Survival expectation value ? Could very well be better than surface ships deployed at the front

But that's where selection kicks in Just like with tank crews or behind enemy lines units (without choppers, standby or nearby)

it's all or nothing out there , now that the water is boiling is once again and Americans , but not just Americans are to be reminded that their admirals have been "recently" ranting that they will start to fight right from the East Coast .

German Uboat service had the highest casual ty rate in WW2. Somewhere around 2/3rds died.

Russian army and Bomber Command were the other two bad ones.

IJN was probably bad as well.

ı have some "study" of mine that says the casualty rate of RAF Bomber Command was worse than Kamikazes , now that they had escorts , pathfinders and scouts to report the damage back .

We had an urban legend about a submarine which was gifted to Egyptian navy by the Soviet Union. It allegedly sunk during an exercise for unknown reason. Investigation showed that the crew did everything as was written in the instruction manual. But the instruction didn't mention that they must close hatches before submerging...

not true , because who says any Russian weapon would not come with Russian instructors ?

Similar joke here but it involves the Irish. Same joke probably exists in USA with the Poles.

"Heard the one about the Irish submarine? It has wind down windows".

80's jokes for children. The other ones were an Englishman, Irishman, and Scotsman.....

Basically the Irishman is always stupid.

any Polish submarine is oar powered ; dives real fast .

 

[red_elk]

80's jokes for children.

Two crocodiles rest on the Nile riverbank.
"This river Nile is so good!" says one.
"Yes. But Volga is better, really comrade colonel!"

 

[Zardnaar]

Two crocodiles rest on the Nile riverbank.
"This river Nile is so good!" says one.
"Yes. But Volga is better, really comrade colonel!"

Heh. Bomber command lost about 1 in 3 iirc. They got 20 flights but with a kill rate approaching an average of 3-5% and a high of close to 10% the odds of surviving were not great. At least as a full crew.

Roll a 20 sided dice 20 times. Roll a 1 you died.

Worst jobs in WW2.

German U boat crew
Bomber Command crewman.
T-34 crew.
Seaman on the Murmansk run.
Luftwaffe pilot trained 1944/45.
Sailor in Japanese capital ship.
German or Soviet punishment battalion.
Death camp corpse burial.

 

[Zkribbler]

Worst jobs in WW2.

German Chancellor.
Italian Duce.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

submarines are death traps . Real hard to escape from them , while you can always jump off a sinking destroyer or aircraft carrier

The violence of a torpedo or missile strike is so intense that there isn't a lot to jump off of when a modern ship is lost in combat. I guess if the ship is lost to the more typical 'lost the war with the ocean' type causes...

But for me personally, there was this lesson:

Before I could ever be assigned to an actual ship I had to complete "prototype training." I was sent to a place far out in an already inhospitable desert where the earliest nuclear propulsion plants had been built and tested, and subsequently used for training. My prototype was a mock up of one engine room from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (the ship had four), with two reactor compartments and all the associated support and propulsion equipment. So you have this chunk of aircraft carrier sitting there with buildings grafted onto it. The main building was three stories high, and on the third floor it connected to "in hull" at a deck that coincidentally had a small marker plate that indicated the water line. This made clear to me that whether I was on a surface ship or a submarine my particular job would always have me underwater, and from the engine room of the actual Enterprise there would be no doors to a training building so the only way out would be six decks up. Maybe there would be people who could jump off, but I was never gonna be one of them.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Same joke probably exists in USA with the Poles.

These types of jokes specifically about Poles really isn't a thing in the US the way it is in the UK/EU. Maybe in a couple of cities with high Polish populations it's different but I'd say cultural awareness/memes about Poles here mostly come from the internet and not real life. I have never personally heard a single Polish joke in real life, good, bad or indifferent.

missile strike is so intense that there isn't a lot to jump off

Not for many of the non-nuclear ones. Missiles generally don't dive under the waterline so they don't get the back-breaking-bubble effect of torpedoes. They can do massive damage but I do not think they usually outright break and immediately sink a ship - even volleys of missiles don't guarantee a kill the way I imagine a direct torpedo hit does. But idk much about naval warfare.

 

[Hrothbern]

I have never personally heard a single Polish joke in real life, good, bad or indifferent.

Me neither
For the kind of jokes like with a submarine, Dutch people prefer to use Belgians

 

[Timsup2nothin]

These types of jokes specifically about Poles really isn't a thing in the US the way it is in the UK/EU. Maybe in a couple of cities with high Polish populations it's different but I'd say cultural awareness/memes about Poles here mostly come from the internet and not real life. I have never personally heard a single Polish joke in real life, good, bad or indifferent.

Not for many of the non-nuclear ones. Missiles generally don't dive under the waterline so they don't get the back-breaking-bubble effect of torpedoes. They can do massive damage but I do not think they usually outright break and immediately sink a ship - even volleys of missiles don't guarantee a kill the way I imagine a direct torpedo hit does. But idk much about naval warfare.

You're too young. Polish jokes were common when I was a kid, but they were fading out. The jokes didn't change, the Poles were just replaced with Mexicans.

Missile strikes don't sink a ship as fast as a torpedo, but even the non nuclear ones will clear the decks. They make it very hard to get out and over the side, from what I understand.

 

[Truthy]

These types of jokes specifically about Poles really isn't a thing in the US the way it is in the UK/EU. Maybe in a couple of cities with high Polish populations it's different but I'd say cultural awareness/memes about Poles here mostly come from the internet and not real life. I have never personally heard a single Polish joke in real life, good, bad or indifferent.

I second this. I never hear Polish jokes in the US, other than people occasionally dissing Poland for being militarily weak, similar to France. But they could be more common in places with a lot of ethnic Poles, like the Midwest and I imagine they were common during the 20th century (edit: Tim seems to confirm this).

As far as I know, because of the high migration from Poland to the UK since the EU was formed, the UK has lots of jokes about Poles, Polish maids, Polish plumbers, and so on. But those aren't a thing in the US.

Polandball spawned its own wave of internet jokes about Poland. But that's all confined to the internet.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I second this. I never hear Polish jokes in the US, other than people occasionally dissing Poland for being militarily weak, similar to France. But they could be more common in places with a lot of ethnic Poles, like the Midwest and I imagine they were common during the 20th century (edit: Tim seems to confirm this).

I think it had very little to do with immigration. It was more a generational thing related to WW2. My parents grew up with WW1 as their immediate history, and it left that sense of "the trenches" and wars being these long protracted standoff affairs where the front really never moved. When the blitzkrieg folded Poland in a matter of days there was less inclination to recognize that the Germans had adopted a revolutionary form of warfare than there was to just blame it on some inherent flaw in the Poles.