Russian submarine collided with British warship part in rare event

[Pontius Navigator]

FD2, thank you. That suggests a wholly different scenario, and accident is not one of them.

It could have been a simple disabling operation enabling the submarine to sneak away. Perhaps less likely, but not impossible, it was to capture the array.

[Boac]

Calling on our 'maritimers' here:

1) From the short clip I have seen they appeared to be totally surprised by the impact and what they had hit. Why were they not able to track the sub and see its course change?

2) Do we know how much of the fishing line the ship lost?

3) Roughly what would be the max length of the array?

[FD2]

Afraid I know no more than that article about Type 2087. There was a basic towed array sonar about the time I left in 1977, which was unsuccessful and withdrawn from service. The only 2000 series I had knowledge of was the one fitted across the bows of the nuclear boats and has no doubt been succeeded by several versions since!

The surface ships' hull mounted sonar was Type 177 - very primitive by today's standards I suspect. It was fitted in the Type 12 and Leander class frigates. It was used in conjunction with the Mortar Mk 10 close in and Wasp for 'MATCH' attacks at greater ranges.

Agree with point in 1, and questions in 1 and 2 may be clearer when it's broadcast.

If I had to guess what the maximum length of cable stowed under the flight deck is, I'd say at least 200' to be of any use in getting down under the layer.

[Rossian]

"Some time in the past" a towed array frigate had its sensor "chopped off" by an aggressively manouvering soviet sub and having to return near to base where a support vessel met up with it and the new tail was attached "at sea", when it rushed off to rejoin the fray. If you read "The Silent Deep" (a long and detailed read) there are several instances of close encounters between subs in the deep dark waters of the north Atlantic. Being "in contact" on a towed array usually involves a radical shift of course at some stage to resolve the ambiguity of which side of the array the target is on. It is not a speedy process because usually it takes some time for the array to "settle" on the new course and produce a new bearing. ASW is a fascinating past time with a lot of "feeling in one's water" as much as science.
I flew with a nav captain who had the unrivalled ability to wipe his memory banks clean and start afresh (sometimes after several hours of gradually fading contact). He would pick up all the charts he had on the table, roll them up and stow them. Go the galley, make a cup tea, have a cigarette and return. Put down fresh chart and ask "OK what do we know for sure?"
Assemble the facts and then ask the Tac Nav to put a steer to a point he had picked (usually having had a look at the bottom contour charts) and drop 1 sonobuoy there. On more than one occasion I watched this result in a close pass from the contact and the game was back on. Pheew!!

The Ancient Mariner

[Undried Plum]

Calling on our 'maritimers' here:

1) From the short clip I have seen they appeared to be totally surprised by the impact and what they had hit. Why were they not able to track the sub and see its course change?

2) Do we know how much of the fishing line the ship lost?

3) Roughly what would be the max length of the array?

1) If the sub wants to move over to the other side of the baseline, ie the eel, it can do so undetected so long as it maintains station longitudinally and maintains the same slant range.

I'm not at all convinced that it was the sub and not the frigate which altered course. The unanimity which which the poodle media parrot the MoD line that the sub hit the array, and not the other way around, is very whiffy. It has all the hallmarks of a black propaganda op by Integrity Initiative. For example, most of the stories then go on to talk about pesky Russky subs putting monitoring devices on subsea comms cables, as if we haven't been doing that sort of thing for decades.

2) I do not. Not having seen the released version of the video in full, I don't even know that it was severed.

3) Dunno about the modern military ones, but the 3-D seismic guys use an eel about two or three miles long. It has "birds" along its length which control the depth rather like the planes of a submarine.

[Boac]

Rossian - you do occasionally get brilliance like that - some sort of innate 'feeling' for the tac picture.

[Pontius Navigator]

That brilliance was frequently demonstrated more than occasionally.
Our best bounce was getting a photograph of a Foxtrot submarine in the North Sea. He was fully submerged by the time we went on top.
Another time our search area was the whole of the North Sea to look for a frigate that might have been going north, south, or round the North Sea. We settled into our search and less than an hour in we flew right up his wake.
Another time we entered the Irish Sea after one of their AGI that was known to be off station. We had 39 radar contacts. Our target was the third but only because we investigated two contacts while heading for the 3rd.

For Rossian, that was Mr Murgatroid.

[Rossian]

It is a rare gift. Not many pilots can do it (but there are some who can carry a mental plot of where the target is in relation the sensors in the water) but there was always the occasional pilot captain who would try to run the whole show AND fly the a/c it usually didn't work out all that well. PN knows of an AWACS chap who tried to it without success (it's fully occupying 18 guys down the back full time what makes you think you can see whole the picture on the flight deck?). The Canadians had a phrase which I didn't altogether agree with "Drive the bus leave the ASW to us" and an AWACS (USAF Major) captain said to me "Aft of the fight deck door is mission crew *****" and I didn't altogether agree with that attitude either. A crew should be a crew should be a crew altogether for the same aims.

The Ancient Mariner

[Pontius Navigator]

Ch 5 tonight, Cracking programme so far. Hope they don't run out of buckets.

[Boac]

One would have hoped a ship would not leak?

I will be interested in the opinions of our maritimers on the way that tracking was conducted.

[Pontius Navigator]

First question had to be how they knew. The depiction was this was a race to get 'there' first. The cable could have been cut by the Russians any time any where.

My second thought was the Vigil was more realistic. In one the captain wore a crisp white shirt, in the other a simple T Shirt.

I saw the captain wore dolphins so very much poacher turned game keeper.

The glimpses of the waterfall and the plot looked right though we didn't have it explained. Clearly a lot harder than with a Nimrod as both sub and ship are moving.

In terms of scenario though, Rossian will remember the cable - break ops of 50 years ago. After the reported break the SAR Nimrod would be scrambled and on site within 2-3 hours of the break. A surface search of the furthest on circle would commence looking for any suspicious Soviet trawler.

[Boac]

I didn't really understand much of that reply! Waterfall?

First question had to be how they knew.

How they knew what? Are you referring to the 'expected' cable break? Two possible answers there -

1) it was a TV programme so expect distortion of facts
2) it is just possible there was a real threat and that it might have come from int. sources?

Mind you, how a (?single) T23 was going to 'defend' the cable...........?

From what little I can glean from the TV programme, I suspect the Russian sub may just have gone 'silent' and listened to all the ship's tannoys about equipment failure and buckets (hence 'contact lost') and when they had finished laughing .........................

Next question - who designed a gun turret that fails in heavy seas?

Colour me unimpressed with the RN.

Command of Northumberland changed around Christmas I think.

[Pontius Navigator]

Waterfall

There was a quick shot of a VDU showing various vertical lines, mostly noise. From left to right is a frequency scale from around 0 Hz upwards in the audio range. The Y axis is time with typically T0 at the top.
As noise on different freqs is received a plot appears at each frequency along the Y axis. When a mechanical sound source occurs and continues the plot develops with coherent lines at the base frequency and harmonics there of. The appearance is of a Waterfall. The VDU was common from the late 70s. In the early 70s the Mk1 Nimrod used paper.

Where the relative doppler between ship and target remains constant the sound line will be straight. As one or the other manoeuvres there will be a frequency shift. This can be measured possibly down to 0.5 Hz or less.

We had it easy with one or more static sonobuoys in contact. How they do it when they have a moving sensor I don't know.

The intensity of the lines gives a rough indication of range.

[Undried Plum]

Classic warmongering anti-Russian propaganda video!

The Russians are a threat, just like when they were imminently going to charge through the Fulda Gap and we should expect a fur-hatted Cossack soldier with snow on his boots to knock on the door and demand accomodation

A Russian sub has been observed "closing in" to above a WorldWideWibble cable.

Our Arctic, not their's

Therefore, the world is threatened by Russia, especially by that Russian sub.

Specifically, as well as generically, that sub on the surface in Arctic waters. How dare they?

Its intention must surely be to cut the UK/NATO off from the rest of the world. And therefore Russia from the rest of the world. As they would.

Clever bit of pscho ops, there.

Implant the idea of the "threat" of the enemy to cut a cable.

Then .....

A Russian submarine collides with the ship.

Ferfuxake!

Integrity Initiative certainly earned their monkeynuts for this one.

Nicely produced.

I particularly liked the sequence of the wee blonde girlie, whose immediate Royal Navy antecedent had fought in Afghanistan, asking the way to go to where she could get seasickness pills.

[Pontius Navigator]

But bailing out with a dust pan and a hole in the gun mantle cover, oh dear. Did it not occur to anyone to turn the turret aft?

[k3k3]

Waterfall

There was a quick shot of a VDU showing various vertical lines, mostly noise. From left to right is a frequency scale from around 0 Hz upwards in the audio range. The Y axis is time with typically T0 at the top.
As noise on different freqs is received a plot appears at each frequency along the Y axis. When a mechanical sound source occurs and continues the plot develops with coherent lines at the base frequency and harmonics there of. The appearance is of a Waterfall. The VDU was common from the late 70s. In the early 70s the Mk1 Nimrod used paper.

Could one say that Waterfall is a moist Jezabel?

[Pontius Navigator]

One might . I meant to say that I think modern displays might even have been in colour but I was abruptly stopped.

[Undried Plum]

But bailing out with a dust pan and a hole in the gun mantle cover, oh dear. Did it not occur to anyone to turn the turret aft?

Who'da thunk of that?

Must Pusser think of everything?

It was Sea State 5, going on 7, fer fuxake. Not the end of the Earth!

A bust garter. Couldn't possibly be planned for.

Bastards Russians. What will will they threaten us with next?

[Boac]

Colour me unimpressed with the RN.

Sorry, we cannot go to war with that ship - it leaks. For heavens sake.

[4mastacker]

But bailing out with a dust pan and a hole in the gun mantle cover, oh dear. Did it not occur to anyone to turn the turret aft?

Apparently, the missile silo right behind the gun prevents that option. That option and the vulnerability of the barrel shroud is discussed over on Arrse.