[Captain Nemo]

Originally Posted by Frame57

Check out "Rising Tide" by Gary Weir and Walter Boyne. It is all about the Cold war Soviet boats. they spent a lot of time with many of the former soviet sub skippers to produce the book. Much of the soviet tactics they discussed are accurate, so i see no reason why one would exaggerate the test depth of a titanium alloy hull boat? If anything, I would think they would want to underestimate it, because then any adversary would not attempt to make a torpedo acheive those depths. In war time if need be our test depth was lifted from 1300 feet to 1900 feet and that is with HY-80. There is no reason to think that an alpha could not do 3000 feet. We all are entitled to our opinion and i respect yours.

I have also read this book and remember reading about the captain who took the Alfa down to 3,000 feet to out manoeurve the American LA class boats. The American boats just couldn't follow them down that deep. As Kapitan says, the Mike Class is another interesting boat that could dive deep. I believe it was classed as an 'experimental' submarine and only one was ever built. It is a shame that lack of proper maintenance and poor crew training ultimately led to it's demise by fire. It is also interesting to note that some of the crew escaped from the sinking submarine in the boats escape capsule. It was jettisoned to the surface after the boat hit the bottom (5,000 feet) due to a faulty release mechanism not ejecting the capsule earlier. Unfortunately only one of the crew of five in the capsule survived when he was blasted out of the hatch by air pressure when it was opened on the surface. The capsule quickly sank once the hatch was opened taking the other four crew with it.

Nemo