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[YT Edit] Das Boot (1981)
Added 2024-06-01 21:31:30 +0000 UTCHey guys! Here is the YT edit for Das Boot, which will premiere shortly! Enjoy!
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The top speed for a U-Boat or any modern diesel-electric ‘boat’ (If the vessel only travels on the surface and is a minimum size, the Navy call it a ‘ship,’ submarines, for some reason, are referred to as ‘boats.’ It’s like, ‘don’t call a soldier a Marine and vice versa. Submariners might be mildly offended if you call their vessel a ‘ship’ and the men who crew the large fighting ships don’t take kindly to anyone referring their vessel as a ‘boat.’ Using batteries underwater, limited WWII subs to, from memory, 8nm/h or so and only for a limited time, in the less than 20 hours range. Modern diesel-electric submarines have grown faster and deeper diving but the concept of ‘slower underwater and needing to take in surface air to recharge the batteries’ still applies.
Lamar Smith
2024-06-07 20:21:08 +0000 UTCOn your torpedoes question; just as subs have gotten, faster, stealthier and deeper diving, the weapons they carried have, as well. WWII torpedoes are referred to as ‘dumb’ weapons; any weapon you throw, fire, point or release that cannot adjust its course after that gets this label. You asked ‘It takes that long….. hasn’t it moved?….’ Yes. That’s why torpedo hits were nowhere near 100% success rate. It’s, I want to say, a lot of trigonometry or, as fighter pilots call it, ‘pulling lead (rhymes with ‘steed.’),’ it means not shooting at where your target is but where it WILL be because if you shoot at where it is, you’ll miss because it’ll be gone. You’re shooting a medium speed torpedo at a slow moving target. Slow moving as it is, though, things happen. Well-disciplined convoys would frequently change course for ‘no’ reason. It made the journey slower and less efficient but marginally safer as it made accurate firing solutions more difficult. The subs mitigated this be shooting a ‘spread’ of torpedoes on slightly different courses creating a sort of fan shape. For a target to be further away from the sub meant more opportunity for one or more of the torpedos to hit something. Captains wanted to shoot at two ships in a line straight away from his tubes so if it missed the closer, it might impact the further one. From memory the torpedoes were capable of 30knots/hour and cargo ships were anywhere from 25 or so down to the 11-9nm/h. The whole convoy moved at the best speed of the slowest ship and then zig-zagged, so the U-Boats could have a week’s worth of hunting from the time they left the range for air cover from the west side of the Atlantic, to before the convoy was again under air cover, weather permitting, from the East side of the Atlantic. That’s WWII, the torpedoes fire, you’ve pre-set depth and set a range at which the torpedo will arm itself. Today, it’s classified but I’ve seen reports our torpedoes can travel 60nm/hour, quieter than the old could do 30 and leaving no tell tale bubbles to spot. The torpedoes today carry suites of sensors and can both locate its target and adjust its course and, I’ve read, are capable of turning back if they miss. I’ve read of a version of a Soviet torpedo a few generations ago that would get to where it was told to go and if it couldn’t detect a target, just circle waiting for anything to come in range. The story that an American submarine’spoofed’ the torpedo by simply shutting virtually everything down in the middle of the torpedoe’s circle and simply waited silently for the torpedo to run out of fuel and sink harmlessly to the bottom might not be entirely accurate. Attack subs, like ‘Dallas’ in ‘Red October,’ goes out to seek the enemy and destroy it. They can use torpedoes against submerged targets or surface targets because the torpedoes can adjust their course as needed. These kinds of subs can also fire missiles, ballistic or cruise, up into the air from underwater. It makes it harder for a destroyer to charge towards a sub’s location when there’s a ‘smart’ weapon heading your way. You’d dodge first, then hunt and that delay helps the sub. I apologize for the length but let me close with the idea that the ‘battle’ between subs and the various means of countering them using fast moving ships (Destroyers), planes, helicopters and other methods have also improved, like a chess game, move and counter-move: sensors have gotten better, tactics have been refined, weapons on both sides more lethal and independent.
Lamar Smith
2024-06-07 20:10:39 +0000 UTCSo, the need to surface every 8-10 hours and the limited depth they could dive to designated them, technically, as “submerging vessels,” a vessel that could go underwater to hide but really needed to be surfaced to be fully effective. For a true ‘submarine,’ a “vessel that can leave its dock, submerge and not return to the surface for months at a time until its cruise was over, we needed a form of propulsion that didn’t require air and did not put out carbon monoxide gas. Can you think of what that described? Wikipedia page for Hyman Rickover, utterly despised, ruthless, brutal, efficient and visionary and the father of the United States Navy nuclear sub program. Put a small Chernobyl inside a titanium hull and you’ve got a Russian nuclear sub. Put one of our safe reactors in, you still might have problems, cowboy captains crashing their sub into a reef or some such.
Lamar Smith
2024-06-07 19:35:32 +0000 UTCDearest Cassie, please let me make a wonkish military History distinction. The Navy distinguishes between two different solutions to moving a vessel capable of existing under the surface of the water. In WWI and WWII on every side, the subs used two different kinds of power to turn the propeller to make the sub move. These subs had both electric batteries and a diesel engine. You didn’t use both at the same time. The diesel turns the propellor faster, making the ship faster but the diesel is like an 18-wheeler engine, like Smokey and Bandit.’ It ‘breathes’ air and puts out exhaust; both problematic underwater and the engine in ‘Quint’s’ boat in ‘Jaws,’ is a marine diesel, remember how loud it was? Diesel no good for underwater. When underwater, this vessel used electric batteries to turn the prop. In both noise and speed, compare a regular golf cart against an 18-wheeler: a fraction of the speed and requires the boat to surface to recharge them but, while underwater, MUCH quieter.
Lamar Smith
2024-06-07 19:27:16 +0000 UTC
