Modern Sub warfare and torpedo tactics.
 

I have been doing some reading about the 688 boats and the differences between life as a modern submariner and the WWII counterpart is striking. It seems that the best offense is a good defense in a 688. The sub who is detected first is at a HUGE disadvantage. Thats sub vs sub however. Sub vs surface fleet is another matter.

How would a successful 688 skipper attack a well guarded convoy? Your best bet would be to use standoff weapons like the Harpoon or something but getting close enough to launch a torpedo seems like suicide. Now dont get me wrong, the MK84 ADCAP is an awesome weapon. Wire guided, and then passive or active homing at any depth is something only WWII skippers could dream of. However once launched you would be immediately detected. With all the helos with dipping sonars, air launched homing ASW torpedoes, MAD equipped aircraft, etc. how would you evade successfully?

So how is it done? I've never played Dangerous Waters so maybe I am missing something here.
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It is definitely not suicide. You risk more from a missle launch. Way easier to detect. But as for a fish bieng easy to track, not if you fire, drive the fish deep to reducs cavatation and be below the thermocline if possible, and dogleg(steer) the fish so you dont give the target a real easy bearing on you. The thing is wire guided for a reason. As long as you dont lose the wire, and its in passive mode, you can be very sneaky with a M-48adcap.

As to dipping helos and such, they can drive you off, they can sink you, but it is harder to pick up a 688 than you would think. The things are made to be not found. A black hole in the ocean. There are lots of things easier to do, and i have sat the stacks and tried. You have to be really close in.

As to how I would try and get inside on a gaurded convoy, it would entirely depend on what the screen was and where, convoy compisition, and how much advance notice I had. The more time to work the problem the better. I would not want to chase a convoy. The same rule would apply as to WW2. Lay in wait. If you have to chase them, you trade your main asset, which is stealth. Why would you do that. That is what keeps you safe. When I went through boot, my cheif(ICC Smith) asked the submariners to stand up. If i remember correctly, I think there were only 3 or 4 of us. He told the rest of the guys in the devision to be afraid of us. He said that it is one thing if you can track it, know its coming, and you can deal with that. The submarine was the one that would give you nightmares. You dont know its there till its to late.

As to your point for a sub versus sub, you are right, the first one to pick up the contact most likely will win.

A Harpoon is much easier to shoot down than a torpedo is to evade. Surface ships only have 2 dimensions to evade. If the escorts fire anything at the sub, it has three dimensions to evade with. Plus, the torpedoes pack a much larger explosive than a missle does, so you could do much more damage.

The biggest advantage that modern subs have over their WWII counterparts is their range of operation. They can dive much deeper and go much faster than the DBF boats could. That gives you the ability to outrun a torpedo that is chasing you and allows you to evade using several different thermal layers if necessary.

One 688/Seawolf/Virgina class boat back in WWII could have practically single handedly wiped out the entire Japanese navy.

Chuck

Let's hope no-one builds a time-machine then.

You don't even need the deep-diving capabilites of the subs. The only way a WWII escort is going to hurt you is via depth charge, which means that they have to be practically right on top of you in order to attack. Modern nuclear submarines are capable of 30+ knots submerged and have near limitless range, even at that speed. An SSN skipper could just cruise around at periscope depth at a flank bell, and with his active on, shooting until either he was out of ordnance or the enemy was no more. There wouldn't be a thing that the enemy could do about it. Of course, that's what you get with 40 extra years of technology behind your weapons and systems.

I took it as a modern convoy being attacked by the sub. If its in the WWII era why even waste a torp. We would just drop the bomb since we clearly get to have all the goodies of the modern era. End the war before it realy gets goin. Stop the cold war possibly too :) Hell, a boomer 1 missle launched, game, set, match.:rock:

Well hell, don't stop there, we could go foward in time, pick up some phased plasma rifles in the 40 W range from 2150, then go back in time to Bunker Hill and invade Britain using a teleporter and kill King George.

Actually, torpedoes are the present-day favored weapon for anti-surface warfare and it's actually not that different from how a WWII sub skipper would do it, except that you don't necessarily have to use the periscope. I still would, just as a last-minute check, but you can use your sonar and ESM to build your firing solution in advance.

Torpedoes are potentially a lot more accurate at long ranges, for sure, but depending on the acoustics, detection ranges are variable, more so than they were in WWII. In the right environmental conditions, it's unlikely that weapons would be employed at any better ranges than was typical in WWII.

MAD can only sense targets a short distance. Dippers can only see a short distance.

Evasion is just a matter of making the potential area where you could be large relative to the area covered by an enemy's search sensor.

Although you're right in a certain sense. One way to use standoff weapons is as a way to increase survivability. If a target is TOO heavily defended to make a torpedo run, a massed, coordinated cruise missile raid from max range might be the way to go because it means the enemy is unlikely to be able to localize you. That was how the Soviets planned to deal with US carrier battlegroups. By the time they get a helo or MPA out to you, you could be anywhere. On the other hand, sometimes if the enemy has a really good air defense, it makes sense to use cruise missiles close in, because it means fewer opportunities for the enemy to shoot at your cruise missiles, so they're more likely to be effective. It all depends. That's all a part of the calculations that go into planning one's tactics.

Modern subs never have to use periscope to prosecute attack.

It's all done via passive sonar and TMA conducted with that information.

The Mk 48 torpedo has a "swimout" capability, it doesn't need to be ejected noisily from the sub.

You can drive it out of the tube stealthily, dogleg/offset it from the boat and drive it in towards the target. (Or you can detach an "Aurora" from the boat and drive that in if the target is in shallow waters.)

You then can just let it passively home in at close range.

Mk 48 has 10Nm+ range.

All periscopes are used for primarly is non-essential visual information. Completely not required for an attack of any sort.

Totally incorrect. Mk48's can be deployed with uncanny accuracy out to and beyond 10nm.

FYI, I'm former USN and my Brother is an officer in with SUBDEVRON 12.

Harpoons have pretty much been retired from sub-service. Tomahawk is the AP cruise missile.

Well, we played the aggressor boat at times. We were a James Madison class boomer. In one exercise we got in close enough that you could zoom the scope in and read the CALL SIGNS ON THE AIRCRAFT that were on the carriers deck. Had pictures to prove it. They never knew we were there during the exercise.

We had an F-14 from my squadron once spot a periscope trailing the carrier TF...........ASW Tomcat!

That has me wondering, why use the periscope at all . . . why not have a sensor that your can pop up to the surface that has a visual sensor on it that can look around . . . and once it has done its job, reel it back down and retrieve it for later usage . . . or cut it with a small explosive charge to have it self destruct. Why put your boat so close to the surface and in effect make it so vunerable?