Warspite collision

[Linton]

I dont't know if any of you saw this:
http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=386249&imageindex=1
Warspite had a collision which did a lot of damage.Can any of you with information on what she hit(russian submarine) please tell me?

[Linton]

Come on somebody must know something about a collision between an RN SSn and a Russian boat!
http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=387739&imageindex=1
It would appear that various members of the crew are coming out of the woodwork!

[Drebbel]

Come on somebody must know something about a collision between an RN SSn and a Russian boat!

Yes, Colin Paton does ! :D

[Linton]

Drebbel ,thank you for your useful,entertaining and witty post.If I wasn't wearing a corset my sides would surely have split!This is obviously how you amuse yourself in the land of the tulip when you are not moderating!
You didn't look at the other link that gives the story of another crew member!I would like to hear from anybody who has knowledge of the russian side of this incident,unless it was a giant ocean-going clog they hit!!
Drebbel I think that your humour warrants the deduction of at least 6000 posts from your total!

[Kapitan]

Theory:

I think the only reason this whole incident is so covered up is because warspite was carrying nuclear tiped torpedos, plus the echo she crashed into most likely K40 (dont know yet) was also carrying nuclear tipped cruise missiles (normaly they carried only conventional).

[Linton]

Finally some common sense and informative posting rather than sarcasm.Kapitain what was the damage to the russian boat?

[Drebbel]

Yep, sometimes I feel witty. Sometimes it is appreciated and sometimes not.

I just missed your point probably because I found it somewhat strange to ask for inside info about something that secret overhere, because even most crew members kept their mouth shut, and the government does the same. But you are right, maybe someone hear did hear a rumour from the Russian side, did not think of yet.

humour warrants the deduction of at least 6000 posts from your total!

That is totally ok with me. I never understood the reason for coounting the number of posts. Is like counting the number of conversations one makes in real life, totally useless imho :-) So feel free to ask Neal to add them to your balance. :D

Drebbel

PS: This collision news was also posted at the SubSim frontpage several days ago, Seems too few people read that page :-(

[Kapitan]

Few scrapes and dents, id highly doubt anything major seeing as most echo captains never took thier boats past 10 knots because they were so loud.

Head on probably looking and a middle of the road crumple probably a tube or two sonar tips (the bits on front of boat) made useless, some damage to the sail maybe.

Hit the hull definate dent but not enough to pierce the presure hull (theres a huge gap i can stand inside them!) i suppose a loss in ballast control making the submarine list to one side a fraction, but not enough to make the submarine unable to dive.

Should collission occur the submarine would have gone straight back to port or failing that a port of friendly oragin, full inquest help with out come that captain might have been dissmissed.

Reactor damage id strongly doubt it, especialy as these submarines and all russian submarines have shock absorbers on them.

[Linton]

Drebbel ,well I suppose this is still meant to be secret but there have now been two articles about this in an english regional newspaper.The paper happens to be the one that covers Barrow,where RN submarines are constructed!
Kap,if you can find out for definite what boat it was and any other detail I would appreciate it.The damage to Warspite was mainly to the fin but it took a lot of rebuilding!
Kap,I was googling and found this:
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/wrjp1251h-ussr.html
It shows K40 as an Hotel submarine.

[Linton]

A listing of cold war submarine colissions can be found here:
http://everything2.com/?node_id=944314
Note the one in the list in 1968,I think this is the Warspite incident.

[Kapitan]

Most possibly is but warspite is a nuclear boat, so it be doubtful they would head for norway should anything like that happen.

[Drebbel]

Most possibly is but warspite is a nuclear boat, so it be doubtful they would head for norway should anything like that happen.

Right, she went to Lerwick


............Warspite barely made it back to the international harbour of Lerwick in the Shetland Islands, under the escort of an American fighter plane. Warspite suffered serious damage to her central fin, which the Russian submarine had basically ploughed through the centre of. In order to deny the Russians a chance to see the damage caused to Warspite's central fin, a Royal Naval repair team were sent out by helicopter to join the submarine at Lerwick, and overnight they hastily constructed a wooden scaffold over the damaged central fin, over which they secured a large black tarpaulin, making it seem to any passing Russian spotter plane that no damage had actually been caused to one of the few nuclear submarines Britain possessed at that time. The Warspite then made its way back to Faslane on the Clyde............

[Kapitan]

Not bad for an educated guess!

[Linton]

Kap,have you had chance to ask any of your friends about this incident yet?Do you know when they started crazy ivans?Was this one or was the RN skipper getting too ambitious?

[Kapitan]

So far nothing you see accidents like these have a tendancy to be forgotten and dissmessed so dont count to much on anything, my personal view would be this:

Warspite captain wanted to get in close to moniter and track the soviet submarine, however warspite became very ambitious and lost the contact for a few hours, in which time the warspite franticaly searched for it again only to collide with it.

(he must have been doing a fair rate of knots to make such damage)

[lesrae]

Theory:

I think the only reason this whole incident is so covered up is because warspite was carrying nuclear tiped torpedos, plus the echo she crashed into most likely K40 (dont know yet) was also carrying nuclear tipped cruise missiles (normaly they carried only conventional).

I'll defer to your knowledge on the Echo, but the Royal Navy has never (to my knowledge) used nuclear tipped torpedoes. Nuclear depth charges used to be carried by the skimmers but I've never head of nuclear tipped torpedoes on the boats.

[Kapitan]

The it leads me to believe that she might have been in russian waters.

[lesrae]

The it leads me to believe that she might have been in russian waters.

Interesting idea, how do you deduce that?

[Kapitan]

No admiral president prime minister or premier would ever admit one of thier submarines had entered "forign waters" its common that western boats faked thier charts one instance the Skipjack was acctualy inside murmansk close enough to snap pictures of crews standing on the piers.

So to make this seem likely i say this:

Warspite enterd russian waters track this soviet boat got into a collission, pulled off to cover up the incident they sent repair crews to the boat at sea.

This raises some questions.

If she was so badly damaged why not go to norway afterall its a friendly port? (most likely something to hide and also wanting to make out that warspite had been some where else and had no involvment with the collision at all)

Why cover up the damage at sea ?(again some thing to hide?)

Why did the submarine make for port and also why did she not surface earlier ?

How comes this incident magicaly dissapears for this long when alot worse incident have happend?

So i do speculate with good reason that the warspite was in russian waters at the time of collission, and to cover up that she didnt go to norway otherwise it would have been too obvious instead she made for home.

This is just my logical theory on how i can see things in this.

[Kapitan]

Oh yeah forgot this bit:

If she isnt carrying any nuclear torpedos then why didnt she make for norway?, why didnt she surface earlier?, why did she barrel out of there?

So she was doing something "illigal" so as i said above i speculate she may have been in russian waters.

[lesrae]

Fair enough Kapitan - I wasn't being critical - it's like they used to say at school 'you get more marks if you show your working out'. ;)

[iwragg]

I dont't know if any of you saw this:
http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=386249&imageindex=1
Warspite had a collision which did a lot of damage.Can any of you with information on what she hit(russian submarine) please tell me?

echo 2 in barents sea october 1968. phone 07712 050655 for more info.

[iwragg]

it was in the evening about 1745hrs I had just had my evening meal and was taking a cup of tea up into the control room.
I had the last Dog on the propulsio0n panel and was just checking the present goings on.
As I reached the top of the control room steps, the tea went one way and I careered down the control room steps.
We had been following this Echo 2 and the Skipper Tubby Squires wanted to get some more info. I think it was carrying a rudimentary cruise missile.
The Echo stopped one engine and probably did a u turn and we collided.
I think we were at about 300 feet.
The boat ran above us and there was a great screeching of metal and we listed to starboard aboutb 90 degrees.
Someone pulled the surfacuing lever and we pushed the offendibng boat upwards to a great screeching and distress of metal.
When we tried to open the conning tower hatch there was a problem and we eventually opened the torpedo forward hatch.
Someone said, it's like Blackpool Iluminations up here and we immediately dived.

There was some problem with the steering and the masts would not raise.
The Russians were very angry and we eventually left the area for sanctuary in the Shetlands.
Although it was contained and there was no loss of life this could have been very different if the Russians had located us.

Regards

Ian Wragg

[iwragg]

managed to correct myself, amazing what you can do when you have your glasses on

ian