Tips for Los Angeles class ship handling
 

I think it shows the depth to which subsimmers of the modern era have sunk when nobody bothers to comment on a link to an article such as this!When SCX was at its cadence this would have been treated as gold dust!

Pretty good read, nice find.

:ping:

I wouldn't look at it that way. Undersea Warfare is the navy's internal publication for the submarine and IUSS community. I doubt a lot of people here read it regularly, in part because most of it just organizational news. "So and so made admiral... the USS Tincan had a change of command ceremony..." it's the sort of stuff that's meaningless to people outside of that world. Every once in a while, they have a good one. Their latest issue is devoted to SSGN stuff. It's pretty good as well, detailing various special operations during World War II that involved submarines as well as the history of land-attack cruise missiles launched from submarines. I really enjoyed that article, actually. The Regulus program is sort of forgotten these days, but it was really pretty cool.

I read it regularly! It does have some great info. I really likes the articles they ran on the USS Albacore, the history of Periscopes, and Chinese mines. :up:

When a new issue comes up its generaly linked to on the subsim homepage. :yep:

They did a cool history of SOSUS too. I also really like their annual photo contest.

At work we get the print edition. There's also Surface Warfare and Naval Aviation, both are interesting too. Unfortunately, I don't think they have online editions. I think Undersea Warfare is still probably the best of the three, followed by Naval Aviation.

I finally read this .. great info. :yep:

Btw. any references what exacty 'torque walk' is ? I guess it has something to do with different effectivness of the screw in different depths, or when screw is partially exposed.

I'm also quite unsure with terms like fender and camel :hmm:

Fenders and camels are the items used to keep the hull from banging the pier. They are the big donut looking things you see between ANY ship and the berth they are tied up to.

Torque walking... I guess it is time to get technical again.

The screw, when near the surface will behave differently than at depth. What happens is that TOP of the screw cavitates more than the BOTTOM of the screw while on the surface. This means that you are getting more thrust off the bottom half of the screw than the top half. Think of it as more 'drag' if you will. This is going to pull the stern in the direction of the rotation because the lower blades are doing more work due to the slight depth difference.

This is normally not an issue at moderate speeds as you have the water flow over the hull acting to counter any induced side motions. However, at the extreme low speeds of docking manuevers, you cannot rely on this. In fact, you will induce more waterflow over the hull by prop wash than you will by motion of the hull though the water.

The main problem you have is momentum. Once you get it moving in a direction, it likes to keep going. Thus you have to be cognizant of the problem and be ahead of the curve. The last few feet to the berth are nerve racking, especially if you don't have a lot of tug power on hand. If you misjudge the pier and bang a stern plane or that sonar dome, you are risking shipyard time as well as mission capability. Basically, it can be just as bad as running aground career wise.

EDIT: for the purposes of any sim, torque walking dynamics would be gross overkill. I would not give it any concern.

On the other hand it's pretty simple to do. I'll ignore it for the moment, but one day I would like to try to dock a sub :|\\

It's also goot do hear about SPM on sub, since DW ignores this. Any idea how strong it is ? In 'Submarine' you can read that it can be used as only propulsion in case of main system malfunction. I guess it's electric feed, independent of main screw turbine, right ?

That is correct, it is an electric motor. It is on a hydraulic ram in ballast tank 5b I believe. It can be raised/lowered in a minute or so and has a simple on/off switch. You have a limited range of motion by rotating it. We called it 'The Outboard" and that is the actual nomenclature used to direct it usage.

It is a NOISY little devil and could be used if needed to provide some propulsion if the main propulsion train is down. Your max speed would only be 3 or so knots on a good day with no current.

great **** in love the la class better then the seawolf