60's sub tactics

[Monkie]

I am fairly familiar with the tactics used by submarines from the 1980's till now but I will admit I am pretty much in the dark in regards to tactics in the 1960's.

With CW now having a 60's scenarios what exactly would a Skipjack skipper have weapon wise? Would they launch on sonar bearings with homing torpedoes or was it more of a WW2 affair needing use of the periscope to feed the TDC and using a spread?

I'm very excited to see CW letting us have a look at a mostly overlooked time period in sub games.

[Julhelm]

You get Mark 16 torpedoes for surface targets and Mark 37 for ASW work. Pretty much any nuclear sub in the game can readily outrun the 37's so tactics must be adapted accordingly.

[ikalugin]

The mainstream answer would be that in the 60s you get the sensor and stealth advantage, but your weapons make it harder for you to exploit those.

By the 80s the sensor and stealth advantage wanes but you get arguably overall better ASW weapons set up.

[Julhelm]

Well the opposition gets much better weapons in the 80's too which kind of evens it out.

[ikalugin]

Originally Posted by Julhelm

Well the opposition gets much better weapons in the 80's too which kind of evens it out.

I guess it is a matter of perspective. In my opinion western powers (ie US with mk48) got better all round torpedoes.

I am not a big fan of how UST project ended (it ended in adoption of USET80).

[Monkie]

Ok so the Mk16's have no self guidance other than a gyroscope but according to wiki:

"The Mod 0 warhead contained 1260 lb (572 kg) of TPX explosive and was the most powerful conventional submarine torpedo warhead ever used by any Navy"

So, wow that will make for some interesting times.

The Mk37 is interesting as well but seems to be slow but self guiding with a smaller 330lbs warhead.

Going to make us change up tactics considerably between platforms and eras, fantastic!

[Julhelm]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

I guess it is a matter of perspective. In my opinion western powers (ie US with mk48) got better all round torpedoes.

I am not a big fan of how UST project ended (it ended in adoption of USET80).

I was referring to how in the 80's you get stand-off ASW missiles whereas in the 60's ASW weapons are limited to RBU's and torpedoes.

What was the problem with USET-80 in your opinion?

[ikalugin]

I was talking about subs only weapons, but I see your point now.

There are several things people tend to dislike about USET80 but lets get some historic context first - USET80 torpedo was the result of the UST program to develop a general purpose/multirole torpedo. Back when that program was conducted two things contributed to it's outcome - the fact that a single organisation had a strong monopoly on torpedo R&D and the fact that Soviet naval theorists believed that the sub to sub combat would occur on the depths greater than 600m. This lead to the "Гидроприбор" desighn (due to the lobbey power of it) and the electric propulsion (which has superior transport characteristics that is speed/range at the depths of 600-1000m when compared to the fuel torp) being selected.

Those decisions meant that:
- USET-80 had poor wire guidance.
- USET-80 had a poor seeker up to (and according to some accounts including) the USET-80K.
- USET-80 could not be used in the regions with low salininty (battery uses seawater as electrolyte).
- USET-80 has low speed/range for it's class at the normal combat depths (less than 600m).

In retrospect we really should have went for the combustion engine desighns, as those were competing in all the calibres (there was for example a general purpose torpedo being developed for the 650mm TTs).

[Julhelm]

So USET-80 does have wire-guidance? The sources I have conflict on this to some extent, but Polmar has USET as wireguided and I tend to trust written sources over online ones.

[ikalugin]

Originally Posted by Julhelm

So USET-80 does have wire-guidance? The sources I have conflict on this to some extent, but Polmar has USET as wireguided and I tend to trust written sources over online ones.

There were several mods, some had wireguidance, some didnt. Original desighn had wireguidance. If I remember it correctly wireguidance was removed at some point and replaced with extra batteries. For simplicity sake I would suggest using TEST-71 series as the primary Soviet wire guided torp.

Note that many desighns (ie Kilo class) had limited ammount of TTs adapted for wire guided torps (2 out of 6 in case of Kilo class).