Submarines - where??

[Alicatt]

You've now put a cartoon in my head of a submarine playing peekaboo with an ais buoy bobbing up and down in different places....

Whack a sub - new game available at all good SEAways

 

[Minerva]

I had a novice crew out sailing a handful of years ago. They were looking at the charts and noticed the purple zig zag lines denoted “submarine cables”.

Them : what are they?
Me : Submarine cables.
Them : aye, but what are they?
Me : cables to power the submarines!
Them : eh?
Me : well, the subs are under water. You can’t expect them to run diesels engines - where would they get the air for combustion?
Them : really?
Me : aye, they’re electric after all - nice and quiet.

Had them going for quite a while!

 

[The Q]

When I lived on Benbecula there was often a USSR / Russian trawler parked in the Atlantic just off the South Usit Rocket Range.. it nets were always neatly stored and there was a large amount of mysterious aerial's on board...

 

[Tamar]

WW2 subs could receive radio programmes at pericope depth in home waters

 

[ducked]

There was a suggestion a few years ago that NATO deployed a ' Watcher Fleet ' of extremely quiet ( maybe electically powered for stealth mode ) grp pretend fishing boats with all the latest sonar gear, presumably including towed arrays.

If I was a boss in NATO, that's certainly what I'd do, though they'd be very vulnerable in a shooting war.

Even in WWII some British MTB's and American PT Boats had quiet ' crawler engines ' for low speed stealth, but that was mainly for simple noise above the surface.

Somewhere I've seen mention of the Japanese using hard to detect small sailing junks, armed with a light AA gun, in this way, to engage allied submarines on the surface at night. Might have been in my fathers patrol diary. Also minisubs in Japanese home waters.

 

[ducked]

I had a novice crew out sailing a handful of years ago. They were looking at the charts and noticed the purple zig zag lines denoted “submarine cables”.

Them : what are they?
Me : Submarine cables.
Them : aye, but what are they?
Me : cables to power the submarines!
Them : eh?
Me : well, the subs are under water. You can’t expect them to run diesels engines - where would they get the air for combustion?
Them : really?
Me : aye, they’re electric after all - nice and quiet.

Had them going for quite a while!

Sort-of-related, but real: turn of the century cable driven steerable torpedoes, mentioned as "dirigible torpedoes" ïn Riddle of The Sands, possibly the first guided missile.

These were deployed in shore batteries rather than shipboard.

I've seen a small exhibit that appeared to be about defensive topedo batteries somewhere in Japan (can't remember where) but couldn't read the captions, so they might have been conventionally powered unguided ones. There's a similar-looking mysterious tower at the cliff-base waterline on Chijin Island at Kaohsiung in Taiwan that I suspect might have been control tower for such a battery

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Sort-of-related, but real: turn of the century cable driven steerable torpedoes, mentioned as "dirigible torpedoes" ïn Riddle of The Sands, possibly the first guided missile.

These were deployed in shore batteries rather than shipboard.

I've seen a small exhibit that appeared to be about defensive topedo batteries somewhere in Japan (can't remember where) but couldn't read the captions, so they might have been conventionally powered unguided ones. There's a similar-looking mysterious tower at the cliff-base waterline on Chijin Island at Kaohsiung in Taiwan that I suspect might have been control tower for such a battery

Brennan torpedo - Wikipedia

 

[nevis768]

Like the other poster from Helensburgh, close proximity to Faslane means you see them regularly and various other nation's warships, and get called on the VHF if you are in the restricted channels when they are about. Great to see, and the escorts always very polite.

 

[Alicatt]

First encounter with a submarine was on an adventure experience canoeing in Loch Goil with others from my school, we had got to the Gare Loch when a submarine was transiting on the surface towards Faslane, I remember the bow wash was massive compared with the little canoe but at least it was a smooth wave with no break, we rafted up while waiting for the wash to dissipate. We were quite close, maybe only 150m from the submarine. This would be around 1971 or so, no fast ribs to shoo us away everything was a bit more relaxed.

Had other encounters in Loch Fyne where the perishers were on exercise, quite a common occurrence there. The usual question was on spotting something on the surface "Is it a basking shark or a perisher taking a bearing?" seen a lot of snorkelling in Loch Fyne and the boats moored up to large mooring buoys not far from where we had our caravan.

 

[Hermit]

WW2 subs could receive radio programmes at pericope depth in home waters

Well of course - periscope depth means they are near the surface to poke a periscope mast above the sea which would have a radio antenna on. Its not like that is something we have lost!

 

[S04]

Well of course - periscope depth means they are near the surface to poke a periscope mast above the sea which would have a radio antenna on. Its not like that is something we have lost!

Periscope and radio masts are separate on any boat I've been on. To receive the submarine broadcasts while dived we would deploy a buoy antenna on a long cable. Rather like an underwater kite. Reception was certainly not limited to home waters.

 

[Hermit]

Periscope and radio masts are separate on any boat I've been on. To receive the submarine broadcasts while dived we would deploy a buoy antenna on a long cable. Rather like an underwater kite. Reception was certainly not limited to home waters.

OK, the point I was trying to make is that submarines can still get radio transmissions at PD and it is not as if we have gone backwards from the 1940s.

 

[Slahm]

To state that "radio" will work underwater or not is a bit misleading.
"radio" is the same stuff as light, Xrays, ultra-violet and infra-red. Would anyone claim that light "doesn't work" under water?

Its quite reasonable to say that AIS does not work underwater. There's no secret method to make it work, it's not an official secret, just a pretty well understood and researched bit of physics.

I agree with this, but it should really be stated 'through' water, light works 'underwater' but does not work all that great 'through' a long distance of water... Same with radio waves.

 

[Tamar]

Well of course - periscope depth means they are near the surface to poke a periscope mast above the sea which would have a radio antenna on. Its not like that is something we have lost!

That's not how it worked, no antenna on the scope.

 

[Tamar]

OK, the point I was trying to make is that submarines can still get radio transmissions at PD and it is not as if we have gone backwards from the 1940s.

No one was suggesting that we have, I was just saying that WW2 subs could pick up football matches over the radio whilst at periscope depth whilst watching enemy occupied harbours in Europe. I wasn't trying to prove a point or be clever