Submarines, Part 4: Megapost

Holy shit guys, I really understimated how much y'all like this stuff. I really enjoy writing these, and it seems you sure as hell enjoy reading them! Thank you for all the support!

Part 1: https://www.imgur.com/gallery/B1ppM
Part 2: https://www.imgur.com/gallery/ydGnd
Part 3: https://www.imgur.com/gallery/G0AVD
Part 4: (You Are Here)
Part 5: https://imgur.com/gallery/zdV32
Part 6: https://imgur.com/gallery/TRgko

Today's feature is gonna be loooooong. There are a lot of things people want to learn about (and I wanna write about) that don't really fit in a specific place in my plans (I'm actually having to plan these out) for future posts. Be prepared for this one, it's gonna be jumping all over the damn place, following wherever the tangents lead it.

As always, feel free to message me or comment if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions: there are quite a few people that know more than I do that are willing to answer your questions!

Mixed news, too: I'll keep up with daily knowledge giving, but I'm not gonna be able to keep up with posts as long as previously; the good side to that is I'm working on something new that I feel like y'all will enjoy and it'll probably be ready to present in a day or two

Edit: You guys are the best! Front page with 4 posts (and 3 days) in a row! Might have to make this a full time career.

Communications: ELF/VLF (Picture is of the US Navy's ELF transmitter in Clam Lake, Wisconsin)

Submarines, by their very design and purpose, are incredibly difficult to find, and they want to keep it that way. But military operations are not carried out by single units, and having a chain of command and up to date intelligence is key to successful deployment of submarines.

No matter how you want to transmit information, you have to send out some kind of thing, whether it be matter (like a letter) or radiation (like radio). Since radio waves cannot be very easily directed to a single spot, it isn't very difficult for anyone with a radio capable of picking up the frequency of a transmission to intercept it. Due to encryption, they won't know what it is, but they'll be able to get a fix on the general area of the transmitter. Beyond this, water (where subs tend to be) is very good at stopping electromagnetic radiation, which means an antenna must generally be extended above the surface to receive messages.

In comes ELF/VLF (Extremely Low Frequency, Very Low Frequency) radio: through the use of absolutely massive waves (thousands of miles long), you can send a message that is very good at traveling through the planet itself, including the water. This means a submarine can stay deep and still receive vital communications, like intelligence updates, new orders, or a nuclear missile launch order. But ELF is a one-way affair: since radio transmitters have to be a significant portion of the wavelength (longer waves = longer antenna) in order to work effectively, submarines cannot carry a long enough antenna to transmit ELF. In fact, ELF transmitters have to use the Earth itself as part of the antenna: something a sub will have difficulty doing. This is problematic, since every transmission must be acknowledged by the recipient, which means a sub has to go shallow and use the radio antenna to broadcast a response.

The other big drawback is the datarate: ELF can only transmit a few characters per minute, meaning that messages have to be kept shorter and sweeter than conventional radio messages.

Because of the drawbacks of ELF, the US and USSR toyed with the use of a "fail-deadly" (opposite of a failsafe) on their SSBNs. Rather than a submarine waiting for a launch order, it would instead wait on an "all-clear." This works much like a suicide bomber with a "dead man switch" (press and hold the button, releasing it detonates the explosives), as a nuclear first strike very well may cause irreparable damage to the chain of command and communication facilities. If an SSBN does not receive the "don't launch" message, it is to launch its missiles. This has largely been abandoned, since targets are not predetermined, they have no way of knowing where to shoot, and a communications error could literally cause the apocalypse.

Sorry for poor quality.

A rather unique weapon system is the standoff torpedo: torpedoes are quick and have good range, but missiles are so much faster with much greater ranges. The missile is a no-brainer, right? The problem is, submarines are not known for operating in the air or on the surface, the only places missiles are good at shooting. Some engineers took the same approach to weaponry as the Soviets did to the Typhoon: take a missile, remove the warhead, and replace it with a torpedo.

Standoff torpedoes are used to varying degrees in different navies, and are generally mostly employed by surface ships. After launching one of these, it will fly to whatever target area its given and the torpedo will separate from the rest, floating down on a parachute. From there, it enters the water and activates, going around in a circle, looking for targets: with these, you can put half a dozen torpedoes on top of an enemy submarine before they can change course and pop up somewhere else. Of course, once the missile is away, there is no human intervention: the torpedo either finds something to chase, or it will run out of fuel and sink.

But if you're a surface ship and pick up a launch transient (the sound of a sub shooting something), you can fire off a volley of standoff torpedoes where you think the enemy is, and get the hell outta dodge to try and not be sunk by their shot. Not only are they fast, but submarines can't detect them until the torpedo is in the water, unless they're on the surface or looking through the periscope and watch the missile come in. Meaning they won't know to take evasive action until the torpedo is on top of them.

"Living" conditions

Space is very much a precious commodity on submarines: they're not small, but there is so much equipment that has to be crammed inside that crew accommodations are an afterthought. In fact, there are more crew members than there are racks (beds/bunks): many personnel have to do what's called "hot racking," as the rack will still be warm from the previous occupant when you get in it. Essentially, one man gets out, the next man gets in. The only personal space you get is a locker to store uniform items. If you're carrying SEALs, it gets worse: unless it's a boat dedicated to SEAL operations (like the Jimmy Carter SSN-23 or Ohio SSGNs), things get more cramped. The SEALs have to sleep wherever there is room, often in the torpedo room.

And since food is the primary limiting factor, a lot of storage on board is dedicated to holding food: in fact, there are some places on the boat where you can be walking on food, or even compartments that are inaccessible until the crew eats through the food stored in them. Of course, food is a vital part of morale, so submariners tend to have better food (although I'm pretty sure it still is illegal to feed prisoners, as it is "cruel and unusual punishment") than skimmers.

Beyond that, submarines work on an 18 hour day, consisting of three different shifts; 6 hours on, 12 hours off. The 12 hours are not really off, though: drills, meals, rest, training, learning, and all that fun stuff during that time. Because people are usually sleeping at all times (and noise can get you killed), people rarely communicate louder than a whisper. In fact, rather than raising their voices to add emphasis (as in where an exclamation point would be), many will simply add a "dammit" to the end of a sentence. When it's night on the surface (which doesn't matter much to subs), the lights will take on a red hue. Though they're always fairly dim, because somebody is always sleeping.

This is perhaps one of the most useful additions to a submarine in history: VLS (Vertical Launch System) tubes.

Being stealthy and versatile, submarines are the perfect platform for cruise missile strikes: but there's one problem, in that missiles don't really travel well through water, and surfacing kinda ruins the whole point of a submarine.

Through a combination of encapsulation, compressed air, and rocket motors, engineers were able to devise missiles that could be launched by submarines. In the US, the focus for vertical launches was really only on nuclear weapons, with missiles being designed to be launched from the torpedo tubes. The UUM-125 "Sea Lance" standoff torpedo, UGM-84 "Harpoon" anti-ship missile, and the UGM-109 "Tomahawk" anti-ship/land attack cruise missiles have been the workhorses of the US sub-launched missile inventory for decades.

Harpoons and the UGM-109B (Tomahawk anti-ship variant, TASM) are different missiles that accomplish the same task: to sink surface ships. The Harpoon is still in service, but the TASM was retired in the 90s. Since relaying guidance information from a sub to an airborne missile is at the very least highly impractical, they have to be able to pick up and home in on targets without assistance from the boat. The only settings the submarine gives the weapon are the bearing, seeker pattern, range to enable, and range to destruct. The first one is simply the direction the missile will fly. The seeker pattern is "wide" or "narrow;" the former for single targets with imperfect solutions, the latter for targets that are not alone and have a decent firing solution. The range to enable is simply how far the missile will fly before it starts looking for a target; the range to destruct is how far the missile will fly before self-destruction (you don't want to miss and hit a friendly/civilian ship 20 miles behind your target: this will make you *very* unpopular with what's left of their crew). To acquire targets, they simply use a radar to pick up targets, and they will home in on the first thing they see. Both missiles are "sea skimmers," in that they fly very low to the water to make detection and/or interception more difficult. But advances in point defense systems like the Phalanx CIWS (stands for C̶h̶r̶i̶s̶t̶,̶ ̶I̶t̶ ̶W̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶S̶h̶o̶o̶t̶!̶ Close In Weapon System: basically fills the air with so much lead that something is bound to hit the missile) mean anti-ship missiles are used sparingly. In a wartime scenario, they would probably be used against amphibious assault ships, supply ships, or other things unlikely to have point defense systems.

In an improvement program, some Los Angeles class submarines were fitted with a dozen vertical launch tubes forward of the sail (amongst other upgrades), allowing them to save their torpedo tubes for torpedoes, and quickly launch a volley of cruise missiles at a moment's notice.

But this is the pinnacle of cruise missile boats: the Ohio-class SSGN conversion.

With the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (START) came massive reductions in the amount of nuclear weapons that the USSR (and now Russia) and the US could have at any point in time, and with that came limits on submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and SSBNs in general. But the US had 18 shiny new Ohios, of which it could only keep 14; rather than let the boats go to waste, four (the Ohio, Michigan (pictured), Florida, and Georgia) were converted to carry cruise missiles instead of being decommissioned. Rather than two dozen Trident missiles, each of these big motherfuckers can carry 154 Tomahawk land attack missiles (that is about as many as an entire surface action group), while comfortably accommodating over 60 SEALs, and also able to serve as home UAVs, mine detecting equipment, sensors for intelligence gathering, and a whole host of other things that the public doesn't know about.

These behemoths are, somewhat counterintuitively, the kings of long-duration, long-range littoral (coastal) operations.

There is a touch of pirate in every man who wears dolphins.

Submarines have never really been well-received by those going up against them, and with good reason. The practice of flying a "jolly roger" originated within the Royal Navy in/around WWI, when Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson said that submarines were "underhanded," "unfair," and that submariners should be hanged as pirates. Of course, anyone that knows anyone in the military knows that saying shit like this has the opposite of the intended effect: rather than retaliate, submariners embraced the description and the jolly roger came into its own.

Pictured is the USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23), flying a jolly roger alongside the American flag after a return from a (presumably successful) patrol in which they did things that anyone in the general public alive today will likely never know about.

A more "fun" one that popped up in WWII with American submarine forces is the flying of a broom: when a boat would sink every ship it engaged during a patrol, it would fly a broom when returning to port to signify a "clean sweep." This is still seen today, as well: the USS Cheyenne (SSN-773) flew a broom after firing off all of her cruise missiles without a dud or miss during Operation Iraqi Freedom; many submarines fly a broom after successfully completing sea trials, as well.

Thank god it's on our side

This is the beginning of my section on modern submarines from across the planet, including those of smaller navies.

This picture of a Gotland class SSK, a really scary submarine. Whereas standard diesel boats are quite limited in the amount of time (and the speed) they can spend between recharges, the Gotland really isn't. Through the use of Stirling engine technology (actually really old, based on heat differences: one part is hot, one part is cold), it can stay submerged for weeks, and run dead silent that entire time. Through heavy use of automation, advanced technology, and lots of smart engineers, the Swedes have developed one of (if not the) most capable submarine on the planet.

To put things in perspective, the US Navy (generally regarded as one of the best, in terms of submarines) worked really hard to try and get their hands on one of these things: after NATO exercises in 2000, where the Gotland "sank" a Spanish naval fleet, French SSN, and an American SSN, the US saw the need to train against these bad boys, because they are the future of submarines for many navies. In October 2004, Sweden granted the request of the US to rent a Gotland, complete with crew and command, for a year. The US liked it so much, that the Gotland did not go home until July 2007.

If Sweden decided it wanted to go around sinking aircraft carriers, nobody would know who the hell was doing it, let alone be able to detect or counter them. I'm grateful that the Gotland is operated by a friendly nation.

Fair winds and following seas, shipmates.

This boat is being included for a few reasons: in memory of those that were lost with her, to remind everyone that submarines are pretty damn common, and to remind everyone that disaster can strike even in peacetime.

This is the ARA San Juan (S-42), a TR-1700 class diesel boat built by Germany specifically for export purposes; on 15 November 2017, she was declared missing. It was later found that seismic sensors detected a high-energy, non-natural, non-nuclear acoustic event in the area where she was around the time contact was lost: an explosion (or possibly implosion). She was declared lost with all 44 hands.

Many were surprised to see in the news that Argentina even had submarines, let alone that one went missing. Submarines are, as stated in part one, very important to any navy that wants to be able to fight above its weight class.

It is important to remember that submarines are pretty safe, but even the slightest misstep or issue can quickly become a tragedy. The San Juan took some water in through the snorkel, not really a big deal. But it sparked a battery fire, which is a *very* big deal (batteries burn hot enough to melt the hull). On a submarine, problems compound each other and grow in severity very quickly. I won't speak about my opinions on the response to the loss, I don't want to turn this into another Kursk rant.

This is soooo Wes Anderson, just like everything else in this sub! /s

450 Feet of Freedom

This is the USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23), a unique submarine; although based on the Seawolf class, it is a different design in that it is designed to do different duties to other SSNs. 100 feet longer than the other two Seawolf boats, it is reported to be able to do a multitude of espionage and other clandestine and testing operations: tapping undersea cables, deploying UUVs or UAVs, deploying special operations forces, minelaying, signal interception and intelligence: if it's something the government wants to know about any country or ship, the Carter can find out.

Named for President Jimmy Carter, the only US President to have served on a submarine, her missions are almost certainly so secret that the public (at least everyone alive today) will likely never learn about them.

The Seawolf class as a whole was designed at the tail end of the Cold War, intended to be the end-all be-all attack submarine for blue water (open ocean) operations: capable of "greater than 25kts" and running dead silent at a significant portion of that speed, and diving deep enough, they are awesome. Combined with highly advanced equipment (including the WAA, a passive sonar array that can give range), these bad boys were built with no expense spared. Unfortunately, with the Cold War over and the massive price tag ($3bn for the first 2, $3.5bn for Carter), only three were built of the originally planned 29.

A Steep Cost

Moving onto the history of submarines, we come to WWII, where they truly came to their own. Virtually everyone has read about the successes of German U-boats in the Atlantic, exercising essentially total supremacy for a good portion of the war and sinking hundreds of thousands of tons of Allied shipping nearly unopposed, the history books gloss over the role of Allied submarines in the Pacific.

The Attack on Pearl Harbor of 07 December 1941 crippled a good portion of the US Navy: namely the loss of 4 battleships (and the other 4 damaged), the most important ships to navies at the time. The Imperial Japanese Navy was far stronger and more capable than the US Navy, and liberating the Pacific would take a bloody toll on both sides.

Despite accounting for less than 2% of the US Navy, the submarine force sank over half of the total tonnage of the entire US Navy during the entire war. But it was at a great cost: around 25% of sailors that served on submarines during the war did not live to see the end of it.

-------

For a bit of humor, here's how submariners could get creative with tactics to compensate for how shitty their torpedoes were:

The USS Wahoo (SS-238) was on her third patrol, a rather successful one, too. However, she was out of fish (torpedoes), and came across a convoy; spotting a tanker having trouble keeping up with the escorts, they hatched a "brilliant" plan: surface near the convoy to cause them all to scatter, then use the deck gun to sink the tanker and dive outta there.

This actually worked, almost. Before the Wahoo could start shooting, a destroyer appeared on the scene, steaming towards the Wahoo. Out of torpedoes, the Wahoo was forced to dive and run like hell, unable to sink their target. After the destroyer fired its guns at the Wahoo and dropped half a dozen depth charges (none came close), the CO transmitted the following message to the COMSUBPAC (COMmander, SUBmarines, PACific; man in charge of sub operations in the Pacific): "Another running gun battle today. Destroyer gunning, Wahoo running."

Jumping back damn near a century, we have the Hunley: the first submarine with a kill.

In the fire of the American Civil War, the rebels constructed this thing, which, interestingly enough, sank itself more times than it sank anything else. Of course, subs are technically designed to sink; but it legitimately sank three times, killing a total of 21 men over the course of its short career.

40 feet long, seven and a half tons displacement, a crew of 8, and a top speed of 4kts, it was actually quite advanced for the time. Its main armament was a "spar torpedo," essentially a spear with an explosive charge and a fuse, which it would stick into the hull of an enemy vessel and then retreat and detonate.

It was only used in combat once, against the USS Housatonic, a 1240 ton warship taking part in a blockade outside Charleston. Although little is known about this engagement, we know that it successfully deployed the spar torpedo and sank the Housatonic, and that sometime between then and when it was supposed to return to port, it sank with all 8 hands aboard.

Although it probably wouldn't have changed the outcome of the Civil War, this thing definitely could have made a huge impact on the war if it didn't sink. For 1863, this thing was beyond cutting edge, and it definitely would've struck fear into sailors on the other side. At least, I'd be scared shitless if I heard my enemy had a ship that could sneak up on mine, without ever being seen, and sink it and run the hell away unscathed.

Sorry to be cutting this one shorter than intended, I know there are still a lot of things that people want me to touch on that I didn't get to in this post. But don't worry, Part 5 will still come tomorrow (this picture is a little teaser; Part 5 should be another big one), and the project I'm gonna work on after I post this will (hopefully) please a lot of you. Again, thank you all for the support and suggestions! Thank you for reading this! Stay tuned for Part 5, coming tomorrow!

Part 1: https://imgur.com/gallery/B1ppM
Part 2: https://imgur.com/gallery/ydGnd
Part 3: https://imgur.com/gallery/G0AVD