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Originally Posted by Kapitan
I did see pictures of the San Francisco its bow was eventually cut off and replaced with an older laid up 688 that's what i heard not sure on the truth of it, but yes the damage was immense to say the least only pictures i've ever seen with that much damage came from the Kursk in 2000
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Bandit
Yep, as far as San Francisco goes, again I think that some of the other factors at play were the reactor. She had just been refueled (plus they had USS Honolulu to get parts from), I'd be willing to guess if she was due for a refueling she'd have most certainly been retired. That's also what I read written on USS Miami, more than likely she would have been repaired if they had a retired sub that they could have sourced some of the parts from, but as the only other 688s to be retired are all older (pre-688I) this was impossible.
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WRT the SAN FRANCISCO, her entire forward compartment WAS removed and replaced by the forward compartment of the USS HONOLULU (In the fleet, she is often referred to as either the HONOFRISCO or the SANALULU). Shipkiller may have been on the pier in Guam when she got back, but I was in Bremerton when they did the work - it was a rather big deal for the area, to say the least.
WRT the MIAMI, she was originally going to be repaired. However, as the initial clearing of damage revealed even more damage, and cost estimates continued to spiral upward, the decision was made that it wasn't cost effective - it got to the point where a new sub was going to be cheaper. MIAMI was already in Portsmoth Naval Shipyard up in Maine, and they don't keep mothballed ships up there, so that MAY have factored in as well, but that wasn't the read the sub fleet had at the time.
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Originally Posted by ollie1983
The Alfa class were very noisy. The fact they could dive deep and had a high top speed, yeah and? You don't think NATO could build a submarine out of titanium if they wanted to?
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ALFAs were loud... comparable to the NAUTILUS when she launched in the 50's. Her prop was only part of it - her reactor was the bigger problem. Go take a look at that thing... it was amazing, I'll admit that, but the problems in how it was designed and implemented made it less than stellar for submarine use. And, of course, there is the problem of her nuclear shielding. What nuclear shielding, you ask? Exactly...
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Originally Posted by shipkiller1
It is a fallacy that the bow was cut off and replaced. Sections were removed and replaced. The pressure hull had MAJOR damage. It was a miracle that we did not lose the boat.
I was standing on the pier in Guam when they limped back in....
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Sorry, Senior. Not a fallacy. I was in Kittery at PNSY when the collision happened, but I went to IMFPACNORWEST shortly afterward, and that project was a big one. I never was involved in it directly, but I talked to a lot of people who were.
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Originally Posted by shipkiller1
The US Navy experimented with putting a 5-bladed screw on a 688. Fast as an Alpha, and as noisy... Pulled the damn thing off rather quickly.
Fast forward 20 years and now you have Seawolf (SSN-21 class). As quiet at 20 knots as a 688i is at 5 knots... and faster than a 688. How much, I will not say.
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To amplify this, and augment a few other comments, the Russians were very diverse in their submarines, yes... and for good reason. As I pointed out way back, they knew that their ability to tactically engage the US in ASW was not good. They knew we were quieter and had better sensors, but until ol' Johnny Walker came along, they didn't know why... so they experimented. There is a reason that the VICTOR II class had 4-, 5-, 6-, and eventually tandem 4-bladed props. If they could think of a thing, they tried it, jus to see if it would work. Sometimes it did, other times, not so much. That said, hats off to them for trying... even if it did take a traitor to show them the way to do business.