Close encounter - with a submarine......

Might have been one of your practice torpedos that I remember being washed up on the beach at the south end of Bute. I was about 7 or 8 at the time and staying on my auntie's farm when we found it. I remember being quite excited at the time. Must have been late 70's or early 80's. Used to see subs running up and down between Bute and Arran all the time back then.
 
pau1gray said:
Our company can now track all sorts of stuff with Sonar, that I had not seen whilst in the RN. One of our products can actually track the wash of a yacht, which hangs around for about 3-4 minutes once the vessel has passed - I thought the engineers were taking the p*** when they first showed me but I can confirm that it could be done.
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interesting. any more info?

what i forgot to put in my original post is about all the other folk who have hit whales etc, and (assuming) that nature would be unlikely to be inferior to what we can do. but maybe that's a wrong assumption!
 
torpedos:
there is the tale of a loch long (one design day boat) being sunk by a torpedo that was test fired down loch long from the test range near Arrochar. Apparently the boat was repaired and a plaque attached to bear witness to the event. Gourock/Cove sailing club members should be able to confirm or dispell this one

Sub Hunting:
South Rock race in the early 80's. coming back across the north channel on a Sat afternoon/night, sunday morning. lots of grey funnel line craft scooting around and Seaking heicopters hovering with sonar buoys pinging away. Didn't bother most of the boats, but the guys on an aluminium ex admirals cup boat couldn't sleep because of the continual pinging. Great visual interest during a quiet crossing.

Sub Maintenance:
US sub limping back to the holy loch with lots of unusual extra activity all around and looking a bit down by the stern.
The story goes that they were going through their angles & dangles caibration and when bottoming out of a shalow dive, the skipper asked for a few revs of astern to slow the descent. As the prop shaft hadn't been secured correctly, it pulled itself out of the sub leaving a large hole for water to flood in (good story this one but I'm not convinced of the truth of it!).

Sub related story:
Inshore finshing boat sinks. Luckily one of his mates was close by and rescued the two on board, despite a lack of lifejackets & raft (early 80's so regulations etc were different).
Given the sub traffic and security concerns, the clyde is systematically surveyed using sonar to ensure that no devices were put in place to be detonated under the military boats the use the river. Lo and behold, once a new "wreck" was discovered, in a deep cut at the mouth of the Holy Loch, the Navy decided to recover it.
No sign of damage to the hull so the insurance company was contacted and a surveyor duy dispatched to estabish the cause of the sinking:
All electronincs & engine missing, all fittings of value removed & seacocks open. ...... jail time for defrauding his insurance company for the ex skipper.
If you are going to deliberately sink a boat, don't do it in a narrow channel where nuclear subs regularly pass!
 
gardenshed said:
torpedos:
there is the tale of a loch long (one design day boat) being sunk by a torpedo that was test fired down loch long from the test range near Arrochar. Apparently the boat was repaired and a plaque attached to bear witness to the event. Gourock/Cove sailing club members should be able to confirm or dispell this one
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Must have been pretty strurdily built then to be repairable after being hit by 2 tons of torpedo running at 40 knots, and had a big enough draft to be caught by one running a minimum depth, 8 feet.

Of course they may have just sailed into one floating at the end of it's run.

I heard quite a few stories from the range when I worked there but never that one.
 
Keeping watch for subs

It's become a bit of a tradition with some friends of ours, if we're ever sailing back into Haslar Marina with crew new to the area to tell them to keep watch out for subs - given that it's a busy naval area etc.

We then generally get a beating when we point out that they've failed to spot the whacking great big sub in the marina, that now serves as a submarine museum...:D
 
I also thought it was....

haydude said:
I thought it was 20Hz to 20KHz, obviously depending on age.
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I also thought it was that, until someone said that it was 16hz – 16khz… or is it 16hz - 20khz. :confused:

I also think you are right about age and condition…. like most things I suppose. :rolleyes:
 
pau1gray said:
Our company can now track all sorts of stuff with Sonar, that I had not seen whilst in the RN. One of our products can actually track the wash of a yacht, which hangs around for about 3-4 minutes once the vessel has passed - I thought the engineers were taking the p*** when they first showed me but I can confirm that it could be done.
Click to expand...

One of the failings of stealth aircraft is that modern radar can quite cheerfully detect wakes. All you have to do is look for one that doesn't have an aeroplane at the business end ...
 
Ubergeekian said:
One of the failings of stealth aircraft is that modern radar can quite cheerfully detect wakes. All you have to do is look for one that doesn't have an aeroplane at the business end ...
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Very many years ago - 30 or so - I was at a dinner at Churchill College, Cambridge, where the guest of honour was an officer from HMS Churchill. At that time, I had a friend who was involved in the mathematical analysis of internal waves (that is, waves occurring at the interface between water of different temperature or salinity). I was also aware that these waves were clearly visible on satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems. None of this work was classified; most of it was common knowledge to people involved in the types of research I was doing.

Anyway, during the after-dinner drinks, I happened to get talking to the officer, and I politely asked his opinion of such things. You've NEVER seen someone clam up so quick in your life! For, of course, a major cause of unusual internal waves in oceans is the movement of nuclear submarines. There is an apocryphal tale that the satellite that first observed these internal wakes (SeaSat) was deliberately disabled after a lifespan much less than it was designed for. I don't believe it - the satellite was the first of its kind, and the electronics were on the fragile side, with components that frankly did well to survive launch (they included a travelling wave tube) - but you can see why the story did the rounds!

Surface wakes are EASY-peasy for a SAR; they show up like a sore thumb, and you can even estimate the speed of the vessel from a single image.

Another point worth mentioning is that you can't maintain secrecy over natural phenomena, no matter how much the various Armed Forces would like it!
 
Spot thesubmarine...

Can anybody see it? Now we really ARE going off topic!
Pole.jpg

(Picture taken in May 1988 from a latitude of 89degrees 59.8minutes north - looking North...)
Answer - its behind you; but it could quite easily be directly underneath you...
 
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A1Sailor said:
Can anybody see it? Now we really ARE going off topic!
Pole.jpg

(Picture taken in May 1988 from a latitude of 89degrees 59.8minutes north - looking North...)
Answer - its behind you; but it could quite easily be directly underneath you...
Click to expand...

Interesting thing about this picture is that 400 yards in front of you you're looking south...
 
Not far from the North Pole

Woodlouse said:
Interesting thing about this picture is that 400 yards in front of you you're looking south...
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Quite so!!
Two "problems" that stopped us mounting an expedition further North:
1. (Hungry) Polar Bears
2. Transport home might have had to leave unexpectedly! No point in contacting ABTA for a refund!
 
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