Another US mishap

[gummy]

Just read this on the BBC

South China Sea: US submarine collides with 'unknown object' - BBC News

Just wondering if they could have possibly have hit a lighthouse ? 

[Poolie]

6 minutes ago, gummy said:

Just read this on the BBC

South China Sea: US submarine collides with 'unknown object' - BBC News

Just wondering if they could have possibly have hit a lighthouse ? 

They have the strangest navigation techniques. They crash at sea quite often.

[gummy]

2 minutes ago, Poolie said:

They have the strangest navigation techniques. They crash at sea quite often.

I think they simply must use Google and as soon as they hit something they just "pin it" with a note, "don't go there again" 

[WilliamG]

From the BBC News. Love it when they tell us that 15 is more than a dozen !  555

 

 

More than a dozen US sailors have been injured after a nuclear submarine hit an "unknown object" while submerged in waters around the South China Sea.

Fifteen sailors had minor injuries when the USS Connecticut collided with the object on Saturday, US officials said.

 

[Poolie]

14 minutes ago, gummy said:

I think they simply must use Google and as soon as they hit something they just "pin it" with a note, "don't go there again" 

Probably, all while shouting 'hut, hut, hut.' Odd.

[KaptainRob]

 

This is the transcript of a radio conversation of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10-10-95.

Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.

Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.

Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States' Atlantic fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels. I demand that YOU change your course 15 degrees north, that's one five degrees north, or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

 

[gummy]

Just now, KaptainRob said:

 

This is the transcript of a radio conversation of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10-10-95.

Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.

Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.

Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States' Atlantic fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels. I demand that YOU change your course 15 degrees north, that's one five degrees north, or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

 

luv it, glad you posted that as it explained my earlier post perhaps to those that had never read it previously.

[Poolie]

1 minute ago, KaptainRob said:

 

This is the transcript of a radio conversation of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10-10-95.

Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.

Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.

Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States' Atlantic fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels. I demand that YOU change your course 15 degrees north, that's one five degrees north, or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

 

Completely believable, really.

[Marc26]

3 minutes ago, KaptainRob said:

 

This is the transcript of a radio conversation of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10-10-95.

Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.

Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.

Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States' Atlantic fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels. I demand that YOU change your course 15 degrees north, that's one five degrees north, or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

 

That's amazing 

Never heard that before   

[KaptainRob]

1 minute ago, gummy said:

luv it, glad you posted that as it explained my earlier post perhaps to those that had never read it previously.

It's an urban legend, but way back when raster scan radar sets were still quite basic it could easily have happened.

I reckon the sub could have hit a whale, anything else should have been 'visible' on sonar.

[Poolie]

4 minutes ago, KaptainRob said:

It's an urban legend, but way back when raster scan radar sets were still quite basic it could easily have happened.

I reckon the sub could have hit a whale, anything else should have been 'visible' on sonar.

Probably hit Taiwan. A whale would have the sense to move.

[gummy]

47 minutes ago, KaptainRob said:

It's an urban legend, but way back when raster scan radar sets were still quite basic it could easily have happened.

I reckon the sub could have hit a whale, anything else should have been 'visible' on sonar.

How about a stealth Chinese drone submarine  ?

[DrPhibes]

Mera: "I hate it when you swim home drunk!"

Aquaman looks in mirror: "Ohhhh, that's gunna leave a mark, hand me some aspirin will ya"

[Poolie]

48 minutes ago, gummy said:

How about a stealth Chinese drone submarine  ?

The clue is in the work 'stealth.'

However, the Chinese have been capturing American underwater thingies lately. By the dozen. Must be costing the Pentagon a mint.

[JamesE]

11 hours ago, KaptainRob said:

It's an urban legend, but way back when raster scan radar sets were still quite basic it could easily have happened.

I reckon the sub could have hit a whale, anything else should have been 'visible' on sonar.

1995 = basic RADAR? Dude!

The read-between-the-lines report update on the BBC says "One of the officials quoted by the agency said it could have been a sunken vessel or container, or other uncharted object.

Alexander Neill, a Singapore-based defence and security expert, told the BBC the number of injuries caused by the collision suggested the submarine probably 'hit something big' and was 'going really fast'".

So the US sub was operating at high speed within a few meters of the bottom. Testing, what exactly?

 

[gummy]

6 hours ago, JamesE said:

1995 = basic RADAR? Dude!

The read-between-the-lines report update on the BBC says "One of the officials quoted by the agency said it could have been a sunken vessel or container, or other uncharted object.

Alexander Neill, a Singapore-based defence and security expert, told the BBC the number of injuries caused by the collision suggested the submarine probably 'hit something big' and was 'going really fast'".

So the US sub was operating at high speed within a few meters of the bottom. Testing, what exactly?

US stupidity perhaps ?

[Rain]

13 minutes ago, gummy said:

US stupidity perhaps ?

A naturally inherent characteristic. 

[gummy]

3 minutes ago, Rain said:

A naturally inherent characteristic. 

Of course the next laugh will be the official excuse. Can't wait for that one. Perhaps right now some absurdity is being compiled by the same people who convinced only themselves that Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction.  I bet the entire Chinese population are having a good belly laugh at the expense of the US.

[kerryd]

19 hours ago, KaptainRob said:

This is the transcript of a radio conversation of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10-10-95.

Urban legend that's been floating around since the early days of radio (at least). It's always a huge American ship with a haughty captain and an inanimate object (like a lighthouse). 
Seems the earliest version may have been a cartoon in a newspaper back in 1931.

Couple years ago I tried to track down the original version but it's gone through so many changes over the years as it gets passed on over and over again. Sometimes it's a heavy missile cruiser, sometimes it's an aircraft carrier. There's a version where it's a battleship (despite the last one being decommissioned almost 30 years ago).
There's actually a wiki page dedicated to this urban legend:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_and_naval_vessel_urban_legend


The sub was in the South China Sea as a part of a naval exercise aimed at showing China that they don't own international waters (despite their claims).

Modern subs actually travel faster underwater than they do on the surface. The Sea Wolf class that this sub belongs to can do 65 km/hr underwater (max speed) and even when "running silent" can still do 37 km/h. Meanwhile it apparently is only capable of about 33 km/h when on the surface.

No doubt the Chinese were also keeping a very close eye on that exercise and no doubt they too had subs in the area.

I suspect that there may have been a Chinese sub (or half a dozen of them) sitting very quietly (as in running "silent") and recording things like sound signatures from ship's propellers (which they use to identify the ships) and any other subs in the area.

The American sub was probably flying from one location to another, providing cover for the fleet and possibly rammed a Chinese sub by accident. 
If there was a Chinese sub (or a few of them) in the area, they wouldn't have wanted to make any noise or manoeuvre too much as that would give their position away to the Americans (who were probably expecting there to be Chinese subs in the area anyways). 

The ocean is a huge place, but when you put a bunch of ships in a small area and then a bunch of subs, suddenly it starts getting crowded.

When I was on an exercise with the US Marines back in 1982, we were sailing to the Aleutian Islands to re-enact the Devil's Brigade landings in WW2. I was in the USS Bristol County (a "tank landing ship") and we were in the center of a fleet of escort ships.

A couple days before we got to the islands, some of the escort ships started sounding alarms. I was up on the "flag deck" of the ship when 2 destroyers, one from the West and one from the East side of the fleet,  turned and made a bee-line straight for us. They actually criss-crossed a couple hundred meters behind us and then spent some time "running around in circles".

Found out later that day that a Russian sub had been sitting on the bottom, keeping very quiet. They knew the general direction we were sailing and positioned themselves ahead of us and then just waited.

When the fleet started passing over it, it started to quietly rise from the bottom. Then all hell broke loose as it was detected. It surfaced behind us briefly (basically just the periscope above the surface) and then did a crash dive back down before the destroyers got close enough to ram it (which was their intent supposedly).

The Russians apparently did that to "remind" us that we were in their backyard and if we strayed a little too far to the West, we'd be in their waters.
(Kind of like how the Americans and/or Russians scramble jets to "escort" bombers from the other side that get a little to close to their own airspace. Testing each other's response capabilities and reaction times I suspect.)

The US won't say exactly where the sub was and if it did hit a Chinese sub, you can bet the Chinese won't admit it either.

I'm curious as to the general area it may have been in.  The articles say the "South China Sea" so I suspect they were probably not far from the Spratly Islands The Chinese have been building up atolls in the area, tiny bits of rock and coral that barely break the surface of the ocean. They've built up some of them enough to construct airfields on as a way of claiming that portion of the ocean.

Who knows what they've been doing under the water in the area. If it's shallow enough, I wouldn't put it past them to try and "build" some new islands or build up some existing atolls by placing concrete footings into the sea floor. Kind of like how offshore oil rigs plant themselves before they  start drilling.

Note the "dashed line" off the coast of Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. China is claiming all that water as their territory. 
Note how the other nations are only being granted (by China) a tiny "territorial" section off their coasts while China is claiming almost the entire sea as their "territorial" waters.

Edited October 9, 2021 by kerryd

[KaptainRob]

7 hours ago, JamesE said:

1995 = basic RADAR? Dude!

I am not a dude.  And yes, in 1995 radar systems were still quite basic, even on US warships.  AIS type A was only in development or testing around that time or even later and certainly not integrated with radar nor were transceivers fitted to shore based stations.

By mid 2000s AIS transceivers were fully integrated with ships radar and plotter displays but still not common on most commercial or private ships.  Now its mandatory and able to be tracked via satellite with shore based stations, lighthouses, weather buoys etc also providing fixes and other data.

[JamesE]

2 minutes ago, KaptainRob said:

I am not a dude.  And yes, in 1995 radar systems were still quite basic, even on US warships.  AIS type A was only in development or testing around that time or even later and certainly not integrated with radar nor were transceivers fitted to shore based stations.

By mid 2000s AIS transceivers were fully integrated with ships radar and plotter displays but still not common on most commercial or private ships.  Now its mandatory and able to be tracked via satellite with shore based stations, lighthouses, weather buoys etc also providing fixes and other data.

Apparently not...

I had a sailboat with a mid-90s radar set and it could see a steel pole coming out of the water 2 miles away. AIS and RADAR have exactly nothing to do with each other so I'm not sure why you introduced that. I would guess that the "basic" RADAR sets on the problematic aircraft carrier were capable of seeing the lighthouse from 10 - 20 miles away even back in the previous millennium.

[KaptainRob]

15 minutes ago, JamesE said:

Apparently not...

I had a sailboat with a mid-90s radar set and it could see a steel pole coming out of the water 2 miles away. AIS and RADAR have exactly nothing to do with each other so I'm not sure why you introduced that. I would guess that the "basic" RADAR sets on the problematic aircraft carrier were capable of seeing the lighthouse from 10 - 20 miles away even back in the previous millennium.

I'm not getting into an argument James, however radar systems did not advance much until integration with AIS and that was a gamechanger, mid 2000's, for all large vessels,

I'd been delivering vessels all round the Australian coast, new powerboats mainly, since mid 80's and most were fitted with what was then state-of-the-art equipment.  Radar range was never an issue but identification of distant targets was very difficult, especially in rough seas, until AIS painted the data on-screen ... my last 2008 command had twin (redundancy) Furuno radar/plotters with AIS and it made navigation a breeze especially on long night-time ocean passages around PNG and Indonesia where commercial and naval traffic is heavy.

[kerryd]

On 10/9/2021 at 8:06 AM, KaptainRob said:

....it made navigation a breeze especially on long night-time ocean passages around PNG and Indonesia where commercial and naval traffic is heavy.

A lot of pirates in those waters as well if I recall correctly.

[gummy]

4 minutes ago, kerryd said:

A lot of pirates in those waters as well if I recall correctly.

But possibly not hovering just above the seabed to unexpectedly get hit by a US submarine.

[KaptainRob]

3 minutes ago, kerryd said:

A lot of pirates in those waters as well if I recall correctly.

Mainly in the South China Sea, Singapore and Malacca Straits.

Around Indonesia there's potential for petty theft when at anchor, especially in the Java/Sumatra region.  From Bali eastward to Timor, in the Java Sea, there's not a lot of shipping, slim pickings and far from major ports.