BBC - Nuclear subs 'collide in ocean'

[antikristuseke]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

The real drama will unfold if/when an official explanation is ever released.

The official version:
"there was no collison, there were no submarines in that sector of sea, Steed is not among us."

[Rhodes]

What is the probability of two nuclear subs collide in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? And one being english and the other french???

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Rhodes

What is the probability of two nuclear subs collide in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? And one being english and the other french???

A lot less than they were prior to the collision

@antikristuseke....Precisely

[Weiss Pinguin]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

A lot less than they were prior to the collision

:rotfl:

Regardless of how it happened, I'm sure this'll leave a big black mark in both skippers' books.

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by Rhodes

What is the probability of two nuclear subs collide in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? And one being english and the other french???

From the bbc article :

'Large ocean'

Lib Dem shadow defence spokesman


Nuclear engineer John Large told the BBC that navies often used the same "nesting grounds".

"Both navies want quiet areas, deep areas, roughly the same distance from their home ports. So you find these station grounds have got quite a few submarines, not only French and Royal Navy but also from Russia and the United States."

c'mon the ocean is big and all these guys drive the subs to same place ?
Man it must be more crowed down there than a traffic jam on the champs elysees on a weekend.

[Weiss Pinguin]

Well, in case of a nuclear attack at least they'll know where to send the fast attacks

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Letum

I bet they still practice for it tho.

Oh, I wouldn't be surprised, but considering how valuable an asset an SSBN is, you'd have thought they'd be more concerned with hiding it than having it trail someone. If either boat was trailing then that would go a long way to explaining how this happened.

Kinda reminds me of the DVD chapter on Das Boot. "In position...More or less."

[Frame57]

If one of these boats were a fast attack it would be obvious what happened but because they are SSBN's. Very very quiet ones I might add, then an accidental collision is viable.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Frame57

If one of these boats were a fast attack it would be obvious what happened but because they are SSBN's. Very very quiet ones I might add, then an accidental collision is viable.

Agreed, it's a one in a million occurance, but possible. Particularly if sonar conditions were bad.

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Oh, I wouldn't be surprised, but considering how valuable an asset an SSBN is, you'd have thought they'd be more concerned with hiding it than having it trail someone. If either boat was trailing then that would go a long way to explaining how this happened.

Kinda reminds me of the DVD chapter on Das Boot. "In position...More or less."

The BBC is now reporting that they where on unrelated operations.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Letum

The BBC is now reporting that they where on unrelated operations.

A one in a million chance then. Either that or we just declared war on France again

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Oberon

A one in a million chance then. Either that or we just declared war on France again

I dunno about one in a million.
I would expect the best hiding places to be popular, even in a global game of hide and seek.

[Jimbuna]

The first photograph of the incident to be released to the public/media

[Rhodes]

Jimbuna, as always, my reaction to your post is this:

[Skybird]

A wild guess:

maybe there were two subs of two nations, and both took interest in a third variable in their vicinity that both of them detected. I know that SSBNs are not the first choice for recce jobs since they are no attack boats, but maybe both saw themselves in a situation that left them no choice than to investigate whatever it was that caught their attention. It could have been something potentially dangerous or unknown that they could could not judge whether or not it was a threat, or something that appeared so harmless that they thought they could afford to be curious beside running their SSBN business. So both were investigating the same "variable" with one location in the ocean, and ooops.

The hypothesis that two SSBNs collide with each other in the middle of the ocean at great depth and just by chance, includes a little bit too much of random chance indeed, for my taste.

But eventually they heared each other, and manouvered to avoid or to identify the other. Just that they ran into each other blind and deaf and not knowing that something was out there - this I have a hard time to believe.