Quote:
Originally Posted by ZenGum
When submarines dive in the movies, the hull makes groaning sounds as the pressure builds up. Do they really do that, or is that just Hollywood being dramatic?
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True with old submarines, less so with modern ones. They're built with better materials. And don't forget that the objective is to stay as silent as possible.
In another area, the Concorde plane when flying at Mach2 was known to elongate by 28 centimeters (nearly a foot) due to speed friction and less external pressure.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZenGum
In movies, we often see a submarine hiding below while a destroyer lobs depth charges at it. Why can't submarines strike back? They could push mines out through the torpedo tubes which would float to the surface and endanger the destroyer. There could even be a special vertical launch torpedo they could fire. Why not, huh?
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From the pictures, you can imagine that space is at a premium. You have to put in that tin can over a hundred men,torpedoes, engines, computers for detection, targeting firing, counter-measures, communications.And everything to keep them going for a minimum of three months. And I nearly forget, ballistic missiles when the sub is a boomer. My brother served for 3 year on a Nuclear Attack Submarine. He told me that, at the start of the missions, cans of food were stacked everywhere. He also told me that an active submarine smell of, I quote, "death, unwashed bodies and beer".
Also, letting a mine float up to the surface is fine... but to be effective, the ennemy ship has to be more or less at the exact vertical of the sub. And just the sending of the mine will create a noise giving the sub's position to the ennemy.
Same problem with trying to escape at full speed, you create noise due to the
cavitation of the propeller. Even worse, the performance of detection systems are so degraded that the sub is nearly running blind. Since the major risks of detection are in coastal areas, it's like going full speed on a highway with Steevie Wonder at the wheel.
Nowadays, subs can be very fast, at least nuclear ones, and can outspeed most anti-submarine ship. But torpedoes can do the job nicely, can be launched from a chopper, and some of those fuckers are real fast.