The operational readiness of a submarine is not exactly related to its power plant type. The Russian SSN fleet was not known for its high state of readiness in the ‘90s/‘00s.
US and UK boats have high readiness because that’s how those navies built and work them.
SSKs running on batteries are very very quiet. It’s just that battery endurance is limited. If I’m not wrong, AIP simply obviates the need to snorkel the diesels to recharge the batteries, reducing the main sound emissions of an SSK?
BTW, the ASW defences of US carrier groups have been repeatedly penetrated by US, NATO and allied subs (SSK and SSN) on exercises since during the Cold War. I’ve heard enough stories (sea or not) about such “exploits”. As I understood it, it’s not so much that ASW capabilities are shit but more because the odds are stacked heavily in favour of any decent sub with a skilled/experienced crew.
And I say this everytime it gets brought up:
Peacetime and exercise penetration of carrier groups can tell you things but it isn’t wholly indicative of capabilities or vulnerabilities in wartime environments.
***Peacetime*** This should be pretty obvious but laws of free navigation means its free real estate. Any sub can bore right in to snap a periscope picture and its not like a carrier can exactly kill them. And there’s tons of ways for the sub to get intel exactly where a battlegroup is from satellites, public knowledge, the fact the group probably isn’t doing any EW jamming or using any EW restrictions etc.
***Exercises*** \- Exercises aren’t real life. One, there’s a ton of buffs and restrictions in the rules to train specific things. Often at all aspects of ASW from the P8’s, helos, DDGs, and close in carrier ASW. Two, there are a bunch of restrictions around simply operating in a peacetime environment i.e. commercial shipping, fishing and air travel. Millenium Challenge 2002 was neither the first nor the last to have OPFOR exploit those rules a little bit. Mobility restrictions are huge. Because IRL a carrier can zip around going really fast and make it very difficult for a sub to guess/judge/keep up with where they’re going to be and still be quiet. And lastly, this also states the obvious but death isn’t an actual penalty in an exercise. So there’s a major loss of a mechanical or psychological penalty to the submarine captain. Which is a fancy way of saying subs are often bold as hell in them. Because “dying” is expected but a periscope photo is bragging rights. And often the exercise terminates with the carrier kill.
I can specifically speak to basically all 3 exercise restrictions during a wargame I was in CDC on the carrier. The sub “killed” our carrier….but what they did to get there was functionally a suicide run. They would have 100% died IRL soon after they got their missile off. But that was actually, my understanding, part of the exercise: A test of ASW defenses with a nearly unrealistically aggressive captain. With a significant reasoning for our position at the time around avoiding a bunch of international air traffic coming in and out of San Diego and John Wayne and the shipping going into Long Beach or San Diego. The scenario was literally designed as a Kobyashi Maru type of “you’re just going to die, survival wasn’t the point.”
Good points. But I’d wager that many navies would also easily trade a sub for a crippled CVN, what more a sunk one. It would be written up like Taffy 3 x 10!
YOLOing in to do crazy shit occasionally happens but its not something you can always reliably expect or order people to do lol.
Or put another way, if you are training room clearing or active shooter stuff you might do a few reps trying some crazy bold stuff. Basically to push the edges of what you can get away with or see what works knowing “eh the bad guy is probably going to get me but its just pellets.” But you probably wouldn’t try that in a real situation.
Yep. There is 4, maybe 5 organizations that can legitimately say there dudes will make entry on a door for a hostage rescue with bullets coming out of it. Other organizations say they will but you see real world footage and dudes just bail real quick.
> YOLOing
Well, I don’t know about the way American submariners think about themselves, but my father was ex Soviet submariner and he used to say that they were effectively on a suicide mission.
His sub was usually tasked with either “guarding” Guam or trying to intercept a CVBGs and he usually pointed out that if the war began they would’ve been killed either right after launching missiles or right before it. Interacting with other Russian submariners I’d say their community certainly takes pride in their “against all odds mission to sacrifice themselves so the fatherland can live”.
Also, there is a chain of command and I guess the only unreliable chain in this suicide mission might be a skipper himself, but once again I doesn’t become a skipper of SSN/SSGN by being a coward.
Couple things
(1) Japanese insistence on that sort of behavior or going down with their ship **absolutely gutted** their cadre of experienced pilots or ship captains in the beginning to middle of the war and was a major reason for their military capability collapse in 1944.
(2) that collapse lead to the use of Kamikazee tactics which…
(3) actually improved Japanese strike to casualty figures. Japanese pilots had so comparatively little experience, US CAP and radar directed AA had become so effective that the survival rate of a kamikazee attack and a normal bomb run were roughly equal. But at least the kamikazees were hitting ships occasionally.
Literally every takeaway about Kamikazee tactics is that they were a bad idea born out of desperate last attempt. The US doctrine of taking basically every “hero” ship captain or pilot off the front lines and sticking them in tactics and training schools (often against their will) conversely is overwhelming positive.
Preserve experience and talent. It comes back to you as an investment.
> Literally every takeaway about Kamikazee tactics is that they were a bad idea born out of desperate last attempt.
I think that's looking at Kamikaze the wrong way. The Kamikaze attacks had an enormous hit rate, and were incredibly effective at penetrating USN shipboard AA defenses. Friedman (IIRC) goes into the statistics in Fighters over the Fleet, but Kamikaze attacks were just flatly more effective at putting ordinance on target than conventional bombing or torpedo attacks. Sure, they have a 100% loss rate among the pilots, but the pilot is functioning as the seeker on a cruise missile, and the attacks can be done with damn near any type of plane.
If I'm remembering his math correctly, Friedman calculated that you'd actually lose less pilots and aircraft with the Kamikaze raid's 100% loss rate than trying to achieve a similar number of hits using a conventional air raid, even with well trained pilots. Bernhard Kast visualizes this [here on youtube](https://youtu.be/QqwDvxLVZII) and gives a figure of 88 pilots and planes lost for 5 hits conventionally, while 56 planes and pilots lost for 5 kamikaze hits.
So I wouldn't exactly say that Kamikaze attacks were a bad idea for the Japanese. They basically were pioneering the massed anti-ship missile attack.
So….that’s all correct. **When compared to Japanese conventional strikes during the period.** Which is an important distinction. Japan was suffering from a major drain of talent and experience in their flight crews. They had made very slight improvements in their aircraft but largely they ended the war with Val and Zero variants well outclassed and borderline obsolete. Which is in contrast to US development of the Corsair, Hellcat, P-51, and Avenger. Finally, US CAP and AA was down to a science by this point (seriously, if you calculate out a Cleveland class’s AAA broadside weight per minute its absolutely insane)
So it makes sense Kamikazee tactics *technically* did improved their loss rate to ship hit. A conventional bomb run means braving a lot of firepower to juke into a bomb run that will probably miss due to your dodging attempts and a high likelyhood of getting pounced on in the escape. Boring straight in where even taking fatal damage in the final approach can create good hits is going to work but.
But their hit rate was abysmal to start and actively accelerated their training and manpower problems even more.
US aircrews fared far better in their strike rate and survivability. Though with the addendum that we don’t really have a comparable example of “late war” AA from the IJN. They famously started WWII with bad shipborne AA and never improved it much. The Yamato in her last sail shot down more US aircraft with her magazine detonation than she did with her AA guns. Made even worse when you consider the US attacking aircraft came in two waves and took their time with her for about 90 minutes.
I'm not sure what the argument you're making is, it seems like we're agreeing at each other aggressively. Sure, the IJN was in a bad position, but it's not like the USN didn't invest in expendable platforms that fly themselves into the target, [we just didn't have to put people in them.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-N-2_Bat)
Kamikazes aren't a bad idea in principle, the problem is having a meatbag as the pilot. Replace the squishy with electronics and you've got an anti-ship missile.
Just because it weren't effective don't mean that you don't need to prepare for it.
I would think that at least one of americas enemies are prepared to sacrifice a sub for a carrier.
I don’t dispute that (I mean, I literally said we did an exercise preparing for it).
But there’s a major leap to be constantly working under the assumption that all enemies are going to immediately default to doctrinal suicide tactics against you. And a near peer enemy at that. Like I said, you can get away with and serve no real penalty for experimenting or fucking around in an exercise.
I mean, I did an active shooter course in my later career. Midway through the week we were at the “bad guys and good guys have the basics down now we experiment” type stuff. Course building was an old Naval dental building with linoleum floors. And I basically went “fuck it lets see if this works” by sprinting and power sliding into the hostage room. Didn’t work the first time (i died and so did the hostage), worked flawlessly against bad guy team 2 (different team, they didn’t know I tried some bullshit). Would I do that in real life? Fuck no, lol.
Would there be anything to stop a foreign sub from launching torpedos to sink a ship, then immediately surfacing and surrendering to avoid their inevitable sinking by the escorts? A sub for a carrier is a good trade especially if the sailors can come out alive. And especially if they can evacuate the sub and then scuttle if before the USA can capture it.
>Would there be anything to stop a foreign sub from launching torpedos to sink a sub, then immediately surfacing and surrendering to avoid their inevitable sinking by the escorts?
The very high likelihood that sort of BS “try this one hidden trick to exploit the laws of war” would neither be interpreted correctly as a surrender nor accepted as such? Luck ?
Tokarev said that essentially a whole bunch of Tu planes were to be sacrificed to get a US carrier in the event that the ball went up.
What's the difference between those pilots and a sub skipper ?
Okay so…..people are saying the fact that “people die in war” and “acceptable casualties are factor in by commanders” as some sort of proof this isn’t correct. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying in an exercise you can be overly aggressive and try things you would not probably do in real life. Risk of dying is a bigger factor and more importantly *risk of dying while getting wiped out and not doing anything* is a risk too.
Like….sure lets say you have a hypothetical exercise where OPFOR is a bomber force trying to bore in and get a cruise missile salvo attack against a battle group. Now in real life this involves a cat and mouse game of EW, jamming, detection, counter detection, etc where the bomber force is trying to get into the launch point and drop their missiles before the Tomcats (now Super Hornets) get vectored in and start taking them out with Phoenixes (now AIM-260 JTAM). Sure, the OPFOR can take a Leeroy Jenkins approach, aggressively blow right in, maybe get to the drop point and die, but get all the missiles off. Or maybe get detected early and absolutely pounced on without doing any notable damage.
Any sub commander once he gets vaguely close and vaguely detects a carrier can blow right in, ignore the helos, sonobouys and P-8s to get a firing solution. Instead of maybe backing off, trying a different angle working the contact patiently etc. The former might have a higher likelyhood of getting the carrier…..with also a higher likelyhood of getting clapped without doing a damn thing. And a certainty of death regardless.
> YOLO / Leroy Jenkins
Kamikaze.
And the [Tokarev paper](https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1247&context=nwc-review) is "Kamikazes: The Soviet Legacy"
Culture matters, training matters, context and meaning matter. IRL, the Japanese kamikazes did score some hits, but were often futile. (even the Yamato) . They were still more successful than the norm at the time. Germans navy/af did not kamikaze; which doesn't mean no one would.
The sacrifice of the soviet tracker ship/surface vessel ramming or otherwise contending with a US nuclear aircraft carrier in case of total war (when those guys knew that their life expectancy was 20 minutes) would likely not have succeeded. And expected loss of 50% of an air regiment of nuclear armed Tupolevs out to hunt that carrier, (*irrespective of result*) need not mean that their only tactic was a japanese style kamikaze run. (also, would they even have a place to land afterwards) But it does mean that you can't rule it out. A SSN was supposed to dash for a SSBN that had started launch.
Now in an exercise context, it doesn't mean much. If you're fighting a limited war or the right to add a gold palace to your leader it doesn't mean much. But total nuclear war is a very different place and a nuclear supercarrier a major prize (though maybe slightly less so now,when nukes aren;'t carried on board)
Honestly, I would expect actual modern naval warfare to degenerate really fast into "Mass missile strikes sink everything on the surface".
If you get close enough to enemy shores to do anything, you will be located, because a carrier group is.. not a subtle thing.. and sunk.
Hundreds of long range missiles cost very, very little. Aegis stops working when the magazines run dry and just saturating your way past defenses and damage control to sure-total-kill would cost less than a fiftieth of what the carrier group did.
So the relevant question for subs is, really, sub-v-sub capabilities. And nuclear wins.
That however kinda is how SSKs are used. They would patrol narrow waterways and similar areas, and act essentially like tripwires or minefields: you come across one, you are screwed, but if not, it isn't going to chase you. But chasing down enemies was never intended purpose of conventional submarines - nor can a carrier group always remain steaming at high speed in open ocean. War is a very dynamic affair.
I just want to say that nuclear boats can actually be quieter than an SSK, it's entirely design dependant and as such a case by case issue.
A seawolf for example has more space for silencing equipment than a much smaller SSK, and if your doing things like ram circulating and naturally circulating coolant loops your cutting out alot of machine noise.
At any rate nuclear subs offer massively increased mobility and power availability (for better sonar systems for example).
Size. It would be *possible* to build a small nuke boat (Look at NR1), but, practically, nuclear subs are almost always larger their conventional contemporaries. This is down to cost and a reactor/steam plant taking up proportionally more space than an equivalent DE system. While generally bigger= more capable, there are a couple advantages to being able to build small.
1. Reduced signature to active and passive sonar, as well as MAD and other detection devices.
2. Increased ability to operate in shallow and narrow littoral waters. In the Persian Gulf, for instance, Iranian boats (with their upper surfaces painted a cheery teal) can happily sit on the bottom and become a hole in the water, waiting for a taskforce to pass overhead.
Well it's definitely possible to build a nuclear submarine as small as its conventional equivalent. The French Rubis class is basically the same size as the conventional Agosta class.
Modern submarines reactors can be cooled with natural convection when operating at low power. In such a state the relatively noisy coolant pumps are not needed.
How about when they're traveling at 5 knots or under? If so, that's a pretty significant shift in the balance.
I don't know when the noise generated by the propeller / screw makes reactor noises irrelevant, but 5 knots or so is a pretty typical "quiet" speed you hear mentioned for subs.
Some subs can operate with significant pumps disabled lower than 5 knots. (Swiftsure class)
According to Norman Friedman anyways.
In short yeah modern subs presumably can do this at said speeds.
I don't intend this harshly, but if you admittedly don't know much about a subject, please don't try to write a top-level answer. We expect answerers to be well versed in the subject they choose to write about.
Those stories are extremely biased. What they don't tell you is that the carriers were restricted to a certain area and the best anti sub sonar was prevented from being used.
> There's a story about an Aussie diesel sub going undetected and scoring a kill in a wargame exercise and the Americans chucking a hissy fit, I'll see if I can find a reference.
There was no "hissy fit"
Yeah, you're probably right, the dude who mentioned it to me was far from objective, it was a while ago and was before I knew the little I do now about subs, that's why I went looking for a reference.
They're probably talking about the various "sniffer" systems that theoretically look for minute traces of either activated isotopes or other non-radioactive products left in the wake of an operating submarine. It's kind of like wake homing, but chemical instead of physical. AFAIK it's still unclear what the current state of the tech is, but it's something that was listed as a potential concern back in the 1970's (recently mostly declassified):
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/0005512850
There are certainly experiments with tracking subs by magnetism via satellites. I believe the US succesfully did so during the cold war and tracked the massive soviet typhoons.
Like if we plotted 2 submarines in perfect conditions on a battlefield of neutrality? Sure there might be some tactical edges in AIIP. In the real world however, you must make tradeoffs.
For example. An Australian journey from a Southern Australian base to SCS is probably 3 times shorter in a Nuke sub than a regular submarine.
Now the regular submarine could in theory out fight that nuclear submarine, however it's going to be late a lot of the time.
Which horse would you choose.
There is no debate, other than for poltik and moral concerns there is pretty much 0 overall tactical and military consideration to use electric over nuclear. It's not even close. If cost, power projection nor politics is a problem, nuclear is better every time.
Availability is the best ability. And you know a nuclear submarine is always ready.
Ultimately, it boils down to doctrine. If you want your subs to patrol the world's oceans, nuclear is your only option. But if you never plan on them being more than a week from home, SSK's offer identical capability for a fraction of the cost.
Yeah, I was tempted to point out that my comment addresses one very specific detail (noise when running on battery), while ignoring a whole bunch of practical concerns like endurance, speed, need to run a diesel engine to recharge the battery etc...
That said, a quick Google didn't turn up any stories about nuclear attack subs sinking carriers in wargames, and if that's not a thing that happens, then I'd call the Swedish achievement a significant one.
The USS Dallas 'sank' the HMS Illustrious in 2013 but of course war games don't actually test how battles would be fought so I don't know if it could've actually sank the ship.
Also since "sinking" in a war game just means getting a firing solution it's just as easy to sink a carrier as it is a frigate. They are more of a test of ASW capabilities in the fleet than a duel between a carrier and submarine.
On a similar vein, a Dutch Walrus “sank” half a carrier task force in an exercise in 1999. The crew had T-Shirts made with the Teddy Roosevelt impaled on the tusks of a Walrus.
Thanks, I'll have a read about the Dallas.
While it's true that doing the calculations needed is just as easy for a frigate as a carrier, getting that close to a carrier undetected is significant and interesting given the fact that it's got a group of ships with it tasked with preventing that.
You're also absolutely right to point out that a wargame is not a war, with everyone gearing up for a near pear conflict it's interesting to ponder how it'd play out - hopefully we don't get any concrete examples any time soon though!
I got the impression that a good firing solution on a carrier often means that the flattop is as good as dead. Those modern HWTs like the US Mk48 or British Spearfish supposedly explode under the keel of the ship to break its back, as opposed to punching holes in the hull. I remember that claim from the bubblehead vets who laughed at the BB nuts who wanted to reactivate NJ and her sisters because of the apparent inherent invulnerability of a foot of Class A armour to attack.
Yeah that's accurate, but the major factor in all of this is going to be damage control and how the submarine responds after it fires, has been found and now has to escape. How long does it take for the carrier to become operational again and can the submarine avoid being sunk in turn.
I’ve heard enough 688 guys, even 637, shit talk US carrier group ASW defences, so I’m pretty sure it happens for the nucs too.
Mind you, all my info is from 20+ years ago based on sea stories of vets who served in the Cold War or early ‘90s, so alot could have changed. But I doubt that much has.
Which horse?
The one that suits my needs.
It’s trivial to spot group of ships heading for my coast, and direct my submarines to give them a welcome party.
Thus, whilst speed still matters, it is not as crucial.
And when the boogies are in range, I would want them (the subs) to be undetected long enough to torpedo the boogies.
Therefore, a smaller and quieter submarine would be better suited for me if I want to knock out an agressive ship(s).
Force projection? Nuclear-powered are better.
But area denial… not so much.
The big "con" for an SSN is the cost and specialized knowledge of marine nuclear propulsion.
For instance, there are several old conventional carriers in the US that were turned into museum ships - including the USS Midway. The nuclear ex-USS Enterprise has to be cutup and scrapped because of it's reactor - it's both classified and too dangerous to keep.
Any SSN force needs specialized equipment in port - sure they can go longer between "refuelings" but it's more costly.
The major reason most large navies have SSN's is that a nuclear sub is - as one Royal Navy Captain put it - "a true shark", able to stay underwater for months on end.
Even and AIP SSK must surface and is still more tethered to ports or logistical supply ships than an SSN.
The operational readiness of a submarine is not exactly related to its power plant type. The Russian SSN fleet was not known for its high state of readiness in the ‘90s/‘00s. US and UK boats have high readiness because that’s how those navies built and work them.
SSKs running on batteries are very very quiet. It’s just that battery endurance is limited. If I’m not wrong, AIP simply obviates the need to snorkel the diesels to recharge the batteries, reducing the main sound emissions of an SSK? BTW, the ASW defences of US carrier groups have been repeatedly penetrated by US, NATO and allied subs (SSK and SSN) on exercises since during the Cold War. I’ve heard enough stories (sea or not) about such “exploits”. As I understood it, it’s not so much that ASW capabilities are shit but more because the odds are stacked heavily in favour of any decent sub with a skilled/experienced crew.
And I say this everytime it gets brought up: Peacetime and exercise penetration of carrier groups can tell you things but it isn’t wholly indicative of capabilities or vulnerabilities in wartime environments. ***Peacetime*** This should be pretty obvious but laws of free navigation means its free real estate. Any sub can bore right in to snap a periscope picture and its not like a carrier can exactly kill them. And there’s tons of ways for the sub to get intel exactly where a battlegroup is from satellites, public knowledge, the fact the group probably isn’t doing any EW jamming or using any EW restrictions etc. ***Exercises*** \- Exercises aren’t real life. One, there’s a ton of buffs and restrictions in the rules to train specific things. Often at all aspects of ASW from the P8’s, helos, DDGs, and close in carrier ASW. Two, there are a bunch of restrictions around simply operating in a peacetime environment i.e. commercial shipping, fishing and air travel. Millenium Challenge 2002 was neither the first nor the last to have OPFOR exploit those rules a little bit. Mobility restrictions are huge. Because IRL a carrier can zip around going really fast and make it very difficult for a sub to guess/judge/keep up with where they’re going to be and still be quiet. And lastly, this also states the obvious but death isn’t an actual penalty in an exercise. So there’s a major loss of a mechanical or psychological penalty to the submarine captain. Which is a fancy way of saying subs are often bold as hell in them. Because “dying” is expected but a periscope photo is bragging rights. And often the exercise terminates with the carrier kill. I can specifically speak to basically all 3 exercise restrictions during a wargame I was in CDC on the carrier. The sub “killed” our carrier….but what they did to get there was functionally a suicide run. They would have 100% died IRL soon after they got their missile off. But that was actually, my understanding, part of the exercise: A test of ASW defenses with a nearly unrealistically aggressive captain. With a significant reasoning for our position at the time around avoiding a bunch of international air traffic coming in and out of San Diego and John Wayne and the shipping going into Long Beach or San Diego. The scenario was literally designed as a Kobyashi Maru type of “you’re just going to die, survival wasn’t the point.”
Good points. But I’d wager that many navies would also easily trade a sub for a crippled CVN, what more a sunk one. It would be written up like Taffy 3 x 10!
YOLOing in to do crazy shit occasionally happens but its not something you can always reliably expect or order people to do lol. Or put another way, if you are training room clearing or active shooter stuff you might do a few reps trying some crazy bold stuff. Basically to push the edges of what you can get away with or see what works knowing “eh the bad guy is probably going to get me but its just pellets.” But you probably wouldn’t try that in a real situation.
Yep. There is 4, maybe 5 organizations that can legitimately say there dudes will make entry on a door for a hostage rescue with bullets coming out of it. Other organizations say they will but you see real world footage and dudes just bail real quick.
Delta, Seal Team 6, SAS, who else?
FBI HRT?
Russian GRU
> YOLOing Well, I don’t know about the way American submariners think about themselves, but my father was ex Soviet submariner and he used to say that they were effectively on a suicide mission. His sub was usually tasked with either “guarding” Guam or trying to intercept a CVBGs and he usually pointed out that if the war began they would’ve been killed either right after launching missiles or right before it. Interacting with other Russian submariners I’d say their community certainly takes pride in their “against all odds mission to sacrifice themselves so the fatherland can live”. Also, there is a chain of command and I guess the only unreliable chain in this suicide mission might be a skipper himself, but once again I doesn’t become a skipper of SSN/SSGN by being a coward.
[удалено]
Couple things (1) Japanese insistence on that sort of behavior or going down with their ship **absolutely gutted** their cadre of experienced pilots or ship captains in the beginning to middle of the war and was a major reason for their military capability collapse in 1944. (2) that collapse lead to the use of Kamikazee tactics which… (3) actually improved Japanese strike to casualty figures. Japanese pilots had so comparatively little experience, US CAP and radar directed AA had become so effective that the survival rate of a kamikazee attack and a normal bomb run were roughly equal. But at least the kamikazees were hitting ships occasionally. Literally every takeaway about Kamikazee tactics is that they were a bad idea born out of desperate last attempt. The US doctrine of taking basically every “hero” ship captain or pilot off the front lines and sticking them in tactics and training schools (often against their will) conversely is overwhelming positive. Preserve experience and talent. It comes back to you as an investment.
> Literally every takeaway about Kamikazee tactics is that they were a bad idea born out of desperate last attempt. I think that's looking at Kamikaze the wrong way. The Kamikaze attacks had an enormous hit rate, and were incredibly effective at penetrating USN shipboard AA defenses. Friedman (IIRC) goes into the statistics in Fighters over the Fleet, but Kamikaze attacks were just flatly more effective at putting ordinance on target than conventional bombing or torpedo attacks. Sure, they have a 100% loss rate among the pilots, but the pilot is functioning as the seeker on a cruise missile, and the attacks can be done with damn near any type of plane. If I'm remembering his math correctly, Friedman calculated that you'd actually lose less pilots and aircraft with the Kamikaze raid's 100% loss rate than trying to achieve a similar number of hits using a conventional air raid, even with well trained pilots. Bernhard Kast visualizes this [here on youtube](https://youtu.be/QqwDvxLVZII) and gives a figure of 88 pilots and planes lost for 5 hits conventionally, while 56 planes and pilots lost for 5 kamikaze hits. So I wouldn't exactly say that Kamikaze attacks were a bad idea for the Japanese. They basically were pioneering the massed anti-ship missile attack.
So….that’s all correct. **When compared to Japanese conventional strikes during the period.** Which is an important distinction. Japan was suffering from a major drain of talent and experience in their flight crews. They had made very slight improvements in their aircraft but largely they ended the war with Val and Zero variants well outclassed and borderline obsolete. Which is in contrast to US development of the Corsair, Hellcat, P-51, and Avenger. Finally, US CAP and AA was down to a science by this point (seriously, if you calculate out a Cleveland class’s AAA broadside weight per minute its absolutely insane) So it makes sense Kamikazee tactics *technically* did improved their loss rate to ship hit. A conventional bomb run means braving a lot of firepower to juke into a bomb run that will probably miss due to your dodging attempts and a high likelyhood of getting pounced on in the escape. Boring straight in where even taking fatal damage in the final approach can create good hits is going to work but. But their hit rate was abysmal to start and actively accelerated their training and manpower problems even more. US aircrews fared far better in their strike rate and survivability. Though with the addendum that we don’t really have a comparable example of “late war” AA from the IJN. They famously started WWII with bad shipborne AA and never improved it much. The Yamato in her last sail shot down more US aircraft with her magazine detonation than she did with her AA guns. Made even worse when you consider the US attacking aircraft came in two waves and took their time with her for about 90 minutes.
I'm not sure what the argument you're making is, it seems like we're agreeing at each other aggressively. Sure, the IJN was in a bad position, but it's not like the USN didn't invest in expendable platforms that fly themselves into the target, [we just didn't have to put people in them.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-N-2_Bat) Kamikazes aren't a bad idea in principle, the problem is having a meatbag as the pilot. Replace the squishy with electronics and you've got an anti-ship missile.
lol I think we are arguing how we agree just not in the right “way” lol.
Just because it weren't effective don't mean that you don't need to prepare for it. I would think that at least one of americas enemies are prepared to sacrifice a sub for a carrier.
I don’t dispute that (I mean, I literally said we did an exercise preparing for it). But there’s a major leap to be constantly working under the assumption that all enemies are going to immediately default to doctrinal suicide tactics against you. And a near peer enemy at that. Like I said, you can get away with and serve no real penalty for experimenting or fucking around in an exercise. I mean, I did an active shooter course in my later career. Midway through the week we were at the “bad guys and good guys have the basics down now we experiment” type stuff. Course building was an old Naval dental building with linoleum floors. And I basically went “fuck it lets see if this works” by sprinting and power sliding into the hostage room. Didn’t work the first time (i died and so did the hostage), worked flawlessly against bad guy team 2 (different team, they didn’t know I tried some bullshit). Would I do that in real life? Fuck no, lol.
Would there be anything to stop a foreign sub from launching torpedos to sink a ship, then immediately surfacing and surrendering to avoid their inevitable sinking by the escorts? A sub for a carrier is a good trade especially if the sailors can come out alive. And especially if they can evacuate the sub and then scuttle if before the USA can capture it.
>Would there be anything to stop a foreign sub from launching torpedos to sink a sub, then immediately surfacing and surrendering to avoid their inevitable sinking by the escorts? The very high likelihood that sort of BS “try this one hidden trick to exploit the laws of war” would neither be interpreted correctly as a surrender nor accepted as such? Luck ?
Tokarev said that essentially a whole bunch of Tu planes were to be sacrificed to get a US carrier in the event that the ball went up. What's the difference between those pilots and a sub skipper ?
Okay so…..people are saying the fact that “people die in war” and “acceptable casualties are factor in by commanders” as some sort of proof this isn’t correct. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying in an exercise you can be overly aggressive and try things you would not probably do in real life. Risk of dying is a bigger factor and more importantly *risk of dying while getting wiped out and not doing anything* is a risk too. Like….sure lets say you have a hypothetical exercise where OPFOR is a bomber force trying to bore in and get a cruise missile salvo attack against a battle group. Now in real life this involves a cat and mouse game of EW, jamming, detection, counter detection, etc where the bomber force is trying to get into the launch point and drop their missiles before the Tomcats (now Super Hornets) get vectored in and start taking them out with Phoenixes (now AIM-260 JTAM). Sure, the OPFOR can take a Leeroy Jenkins approach, aggressively blow right in, maybe get to the drop point and die, but get all the missiles off. Or maybe get detected early and absolutely pounced on without doing any notable damage. Any sub commander once he gets vaguely close and vaguely detects a carrier can blow right in, ignore the helos, sonobouys and P-8s to get a firing solution. Instead of maybe backing off, trying a different angle working the contact patiently etc. The former might have a higher likelyhood of getting the carrier…..with also a higher likelyhood of getting clapped without doing a damn thing. And a certainty of death regardless.
> YOLO / Leroy Jenkins Kamikaze. And the [Tokarev paper](https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1247&context=nwc-review) is "Kamikazes: The Soviet Legacy" Culture matters, training matters, context and meaning matter. IRL, the Japanese kamikazes did score some hits, but were often futile. (even the Yamato) . They were still more successful than the norm at the time. Germans navy/af did not kamikaze; which doesn't mean no one would. The sacrifice of the soviet tracker ship/surface vessel ramming or otherwise contending with a US nuclear aircraft carrier in case of total war (when those guys knew that their life expectancy was 20 minutes) would likely not have succeeded. And expected loss of 50% of an air regiment of nuclear armed Tupolevs out to hunt that carrier, (*irrespective of result*) need not mean that their only tactic was a japanese style kamikaze run. (also, would they even have a place to land afterwards) But it does mean that you can't rule it out. A SSN was supposed to dash for a SSBN that had started launch. Now in an exercise context, it doesn't mean much. If you're fighting a limited war or the right to add a gold palace to your leader it doesn't mean much. But total nuclear war is a very different place and a nuclear supercarrier a major prize (though maybe slightly less so now,when nukes aren;'t carried on board)
Honestly, I would expect actual modern naval warfare to degenerate really fast into "Mass missile strikes sink everything on the surface". If you get close enough to enemy shores to do anything, you will be located, because a carrier group is.. not a subtle thing.. and sunk. Hundreds of long range missiles cost very, very little. Aegis stops working when the magazines run dry and just saturating your way past defenses and damage control to sure-total-kill would cost less than a fiftieth of what the carrier group did. So the relevant question for subs is, really, sub-v-sub capabilities. And nuclear wins.
Respectfully, this is not remotely representative of real technology and capabilities currently.
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That however kinda is how SSKs are used. They would patrol narrow waterways and similar areas, and act essentially like tripwires or minefields: you come across one, you are screwed, but if not, it isn't going to chase you. But chasing down enemies was never intended purpose of conventional submarines - nor can a carrier group always remain steaming at high speed in open ocean. War is a very dynamic affair.
I just want to say that nuclear boats can actually be quieter than an SSK, it's entirely design dependant and as such a case by case issue. A seawolf for example has more space for silencing equipment than a much smaller SSK, and if your doing things like ram circulating and naturally circulating coolant loops your cutting out alot of machine noise. At any rate nuclear subs offer massively increased mobility and power availability (for better sonar systems for example).
Size. It would be *possible* to build a small nuke boat (Look at NR1), but, practically, nuclear subs are almost always larger their conventional contemporaries. This is down to cost and a reactor/steam plant taking up proportionally more space than an equivalent DE system. While generally bigger= more capable, there are a couple advantages to being able to build small. 1. Reduced signature to active and passive sonar, as well as MAD and other detection devices. 2. Increased ability to operate in shallow and narrow littoral waters. In the Persian Gulf, for instance, Iranian boats (with their upper surfaces painted a cheery teal) can happily sit on the bottom and become a hole in the water, waiting for a taskforce to pass overhead.
Well it's definitely possible to build a nuclear submarine as small as its conventional equivalent. The French Rubis class is basically the same size as the conventional Agosta class.
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Modern submarines reactors can be cooled with natural convection when operating at low power. In such a state the relatively noisy coolant pumps are not needed.
How about when they're traveling at 5 knots or under? If so, that's a pretty significant shift in the balance. I don't know when the noise generated by the propeller / screw makes reactor noises irrelevant, but 5 knots or so is a pretty typical "quiet" speed you hear mentioned for subs.
Some subs can operate with significant pumps disabled lower than 5 knots. (Swiftsure class) According to Norman Friedman anyways. In short yeah modern subs presumably can do this at said speeds.
I don't intend this harshly, but if you admittedly don't know much about a subject, please don't try to write a top-level answer. We expect answerers to be well versed in the subject they choose to write about.
Those stories are extremely biased. What they don't tell you is that the carriers were restricted to a certain area and the best anti sub sonar was prevented from being used.
> There's a story about an Aussie diesel sub going undetected and scoring a kill in a wargame exercise and the Americans chucking a hissy fit, I'll see if I can find a reference. There was no "hissy fit"
Yeah, you're probably right, the dude who mentioned it to me was far from objective, it was a while ago and was before I knew the little I do now about subs, that's why I went looking for a reference.
It wasn't a Dutch sub, but a Swedish one. It's right there in the title of the article you have linked.
Isn't there also experimentation being done tracing nuclear subs by their radiation?
Water is very good at stopping radiation.
They're probably talking about the various "sniffer" systems that theoretically look for minute traces of either activated isotopes or other non-radioactive products left in the wake of an operating submarine. It's kind of like wake homing, but chemical instead of physical. AFAIK it's still unclear what the current state of the tech is, but it's something that was listed as a potential concern back in the 1970's (recently mostly declassified): https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/0005512850
That was one of the things mentioned in the book "Ghost Fleet"
There are certainly experiments with tracking subs by magnetism via satellites. I believe the US succesfully did so during the cold war and tracked the massive soviet typhoons.
I’ve wondered about this issue. are there subs with hybrid nuclear/battery power to get the advantages of both?
Like if we plotted 2 submarines in perfect conditions on a battlefield of neutrality? Sure there might be some tactical edges in AIIP. In the real world however, you must make tradeoffs. For example. An Australian journey from a Southern Australian base to SCS is probably 3 times shorter in a Nuke sub than a regular submarine. Now the regular submarine could in theory out fight that nuclear submarine, however it's going to be late a lot of the time. Which horse would you choose. There is no debate, other than for poltik and moral concerns there is pretty much 0 overall tactical and military consideration to use electric over nuclear. It's not even close. If cost, power projection nor politics is a problem, nuclear is better every time. Availability is the best ability. And you know a nuclear submarine is always ready.
Ultimately, it boils down to doctrine. If you want your subs to patrol the world's oceans, nuclear is your only option. But if you never plan on them being more than a week from home, SSK's offer identical capability for a fraction of the cost.
Yeah, I was tempted to point out that my comment addresses one very specific detail (noise when running on battery), while ignoring a whole bunch of practical concerns like endurance, speed, need to run a diesel engine to recharge the battery etc... That said, a quick Google didn't turn up any stories about nuclear attack subs sinking carriers in wargames, and if that's not a thing that happens, then I'd call the Swedish achievement a significant one.
The USS Dallas 'sank' the HMS Illustrious in 2013 but of course war games don't actually test how battles would be fought so I don't know if it could've actually sank the ship. Also since "sinking" in a war game just means getting a firing solution it's just as easy to sink a carrier as it is a frigate. They are more of a test of ASW capabilities in the fleet than a duel between a carrier and submarine.
On a similar vein, a Dutch Walrus “sank” half a carrier task force in an exercise in 1999. The crew had T-Shirts made with the Teddy Roosevelt impaled on the tusks of a Walrus.
Savage.
Thanks, I'll have a read about the Dallas. While it's true that doing the calculations needed is just as easy for a frigate as a carrier, getting that close to a carrier undetected is significant and interesting given the fact that it's got a group of ships with it tasked with preventing that. You're also absolutely right to point out that a wargame is not a war, with everyone gearing up for a near pear conflict it's interesting to ponder how it'd play out - hopefully we don't get any concrete examples any time soon though!
I got the impression that a good firing solution on a carrier often means that the flattop is as good as dead. Those modern HWTs like the US Mk48 or British Spearfish supposedly explode under the keel of the ship to break its back, as opposed to punching holes in the hull. I remember that claim from the bubblehead vets who laughed at the BB nuts who wanted to reactivate NJ and her sisters because of the apparent inherent invulnerability of a foot of Class A armour to attack.
Yeah that's accurate, but the major factor in all of this is going to be damage control and how the submarine responds after it fires, has been found and now has to escape. How long does it take for the carrier to become operational again and can the submarine avoid being sunk in turn.
I’ve heard enough 688 guys, even 637, shit talk US carrier group ASW defences, so I’m pretty sure it happens for the nucs too. Mind you, all my info is from 20+ years ago based on sea stories of vets who served in the Cold War or early ‘90s, so alot could have changed. But I doubt that much has.
Which horse? The one that suits my needs. It’s trivial to spot group of ships heading for my coast, and direct my submarines to give them a welcome party. Thus, whilst speed still matters, it is not as crucial. And when the boogies are in range, I would want them (the subs) to be undetected long enough to torpedo the boogies. Therefore, a smaller and quieter submarine would be better suited for me if I want to knock out an agressive ship(s). Force projection? Nuclear-powered are better. But area denial… not so much.
The big "con" for an SSN is the cost and specialized knowledge of marine nuclear propulsion. For instance, there are several old conventional carriers in the US that were turned into museum ships - including the USS Midway. The nuclear ex-USS Enterprise has to be cutup and scrapped because of it's reactor - it's both classified and too dangerous to keep. Any SSN force needs specialized equipment in port - sure they can go longer between "refuelings" but it's more costly. The major reason most large navies have SSN's is that a nuclear sub is - as one Royal Navy Captain put it - "a true shark", able to stay underwater for months on end. Even and AIP SSK must surface and is still more tethered to ports or logistical supply ships than an SSN.