Scott Carpenter (the astronaut!) wrote an interesting book called "The Steel Albatross", a techno-thriller involving, among other things, a (you guessed it!) flying sub.

In essence, it's a super-efficient underwater glider that propells itself simply by changing bouyancy. Whether ascending or descending, it's flying against the water, moving forward.

I liked it!

Interesting idea, but don't know how much merit it would have in practice - certainly not much for the long haul.

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The thought occurs to me: when an airship loses bouyancy, the crew attempts a controlled landing. When this hypothetical heavy submarine loses bouyancy ...

This very scenario is why the Deep Flight submersibles aren't heavier than water, if they loose power they simply float to the surface. A rather useful feature for what is currently at least basically a toy for rich people.

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Not for long.

Tease!

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In essence, it's a super-efficient underwater glider that propells itself simply by changing bouyancy. Whether ascending or descending, it's flying against the water, moving forward.

I liked it!

Interesting idea, but don't know how much merit it would have in practice - certainly not much for the long haul.

Actually, the idea of an underwater glider has been tested for long duration unmanned submersibles like this one. It could work for a manned vehicle as well perhaps like this one.

The thought occurs to me: when an airship loses bouyancy, the crew attempts a controlled landing. When this hypothetical heavy submarine loses bouyancy ...

It wouldn't be hard to drop some ballast in order to make the vehicle rise to the surface. Competition sailplanes carry water ballast to improve performance. A heavier-than-water submersible could have some fixed lead ballast that could be dropped by detonating some explosive bolts or some similar mechanism (non-corrosive, of course).

Well okay, the remaining Pilots and the other Officers get all loud and yell at you. It's like they had a clique or sumthin'.

Let me fix that.

So we were south of the Philipines getting ready for an upcoming missile shoot, which is something you really don't want to fail and have it be the aircrew or aircraft's fault. If it failed due to a bad missile that isn't counted against the squadron, as we don't make missiles, just fire them.

Now this was in the middle of typhoon/monsoon season and raining like hell with no break in sight, at least one long enough to preform the 28 day inspection which for my shop was a complete diagnostic of the weapons systems, the AIM-7, AIM-9 and AIM-54 missile systems, (Sparrow, Sidewinder and Phoenix missiles) to be exact plus the fire control system and radar.

Not counting the set up time, a good group of techs with a bird with no faults can do it in 3 to 5 hours. Faults have to be corrected before you can continue and some faults will require you to start all the way over from the beginning after you correct them.

So to do all this testing you have to fire up all the electronics which produce prodigeous amount of heat. In flight the aircraft electronics are cooled through the eviromental control system which in turn is cooled by ram air inlet doors that open and close as needed to cool everything down.

(Oh great! One of my fish has a shrimp caripace stuck over the end of his nose. I have to go save him before he suffocates. Ever try and catch a golden pike cichlid in a rocked up 55 gallon tank? I'm going to be busy so I'll post this and get back to you guys later. Sorry)

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

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Well, as I started to pull out all the darn decorations he startled and bumped into the side of the tank, dislodging the shell and freed himself.

Where was I?

Well, when on the ground, the aircraft is cooled by automobile sized airconditioners that are on wheels with a big tow bar on the front. Painted bright yellow. But all the airconditioners where up on the roof, (AKA the "flightdeck") and the sea state was so rough they had secured from all sponson watchs and the powers that be were not allowing any main elevator runs.The seas were so high that guys were getting seasick, which almost never happens on a Kittyhawk class carrier. It takes a lot to rock an 85 thousand ton ship that hard.

So our next best option was a bomb elevator run. Except the ship's Ordies, seeing we weren't going to go to flight quarters for several days at least, had begun extensive maintainance on the bomb elevators and they didn't want to interupt this on-going evolution. So our maintenance control people appealed to the CAG, who then appealed to the ship's Captain for a special main elevator run. And was granted permission.

Now the seas and wind were so bad they told us straight out there was no way they were going to launch either a helo OR a motor whaleboat if any of us went swimming. We would have to rely on the escort destroyers to pull us out of the water. If they could find you. It was so bad the had to keep the hanger bay door shut.

They were pretty good about pulling stray sailors out of the water, even if you didn't fall off one of our ships. I've met at least three flightdeck sailors who were rescued by destroyers after everybody else had given up on finding them, if they were even noticed falling overboard at all.

And so we had a whole big production encluding phone talkers in contact with the helmsman, two destroyers close aboard and aft and several volunteers riding the airconditioner down to the hanger bay wearing kapok life jackets, myself included. (Boredom being a very dangerous thing. It's killed more sailors than VD and butterfly knives combined.)

So what they tried to do was turn the ship sideways to the weather so we could do this and what happened was the darn ship rolled more than anybody expected and given the sea state, well, they dunked us. Trouble was I wearing a kapok life preserver and have you every tried to hang on to something against the bouyancy of one of those? Put one of those on in a swimming pool and try to submerge yourself by crawling down the ladder. Good luck with that.

So now I'm completely lifted off the elevator, feet at least a foot off the surface and I'm heading aft in a very rapid sort of way. I remember looking at my fellow squadron mates who were waiting for us down at hanger bay level and they all looked like they had just swallowed their teeth. Because of the foam and water I coundn't see any of the people behind me and only two in front of me and one of these guys, AO2 Flynn, let go with one hand while hanging on for dear life himself and grabbed my collar as I went by, he being partially sheltered from the blast of water by the airconditioner itself. Two other guys had been pulled loose as well, but where forward enough on the elevator that they were suddenly standed like fish when the ship righted. Though one guy had saved himself by hooking a tiedown chain with his foot. He did bash his face hard on the deck.

Flynn hung on to me until the ship righted and pulled us up out of the water. He was the only reason I didn't go overboard on a very, very bad day to do so.

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

Nice story, BD, as usual.

But maybe I missed the connection to submarines?

I don't think it relates to subs directly but it does relate to storms.

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It's deleted.

I think that Don's last post should be duplicated in the Unluckiest Man Thread. Just in case someone dosent see that storytime got moved

No worries, BD - a suffocating fish is a perfect adjunct to electronics starving for cooling air.

Carry on!

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Well, as a Decky Dabtoe I would have rigged safety lines, and what was the Old Man thnking of, turning broadside in a heavy seaway? I saw a matey get his legs broken when he was swept off his feet by waer shipping onto the deck in a rough patch, he wen aft about 40 feet into a deckhouse.
We were in a fairly moderate seaway and got caught out by a freak wave.

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Freak waves are not fun and do no good at all.
Dan

I remember watching a good bbc documentary about the loss of a couple of OBOs that were put down to freak waves and unsuspected flaws in the ship design

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Yes, that was quite the program. Any ship that has the misfortune to be struck with such force may suffer the worst fate.
As we speak, there are some 16 oil workers on a helo 30 miles off Newfoudland, east, who went down. I think the water is 35 degrees F with 6 to 9 ft seas.
"Thy sea is so great and my ship is so small". This is well known to anyone who has spent enough time at sea.
Best regards,Sir.
Dan

Dan, seas that high, a lifejacket merely prolongs the drowning. I've seen that happen to men. Drown in their lifejackets. Pretty messed up I tell you true. Steph, you have to distinguish between wave height and swell height which are two different things. (Posting PWI ATM)

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

Hi, If they got into their survival suits(hopefully they were traveling in them)
they have an emergency beacon which activates on contact with water.
We will know today.
Helos are trouble. Too many moving parts, any one of which can ruin your day.
Best regards,
Dan

Before you can work in the Oil Industry in any capacity Offshore you have to do yur helicopter escape and survival training. You sit strapped into a mock up of a helicopter cabin and they dump it into a big tank upside down. You have to escape and gain the usrface.
In flight you have to wear your 'once only' dry suit and life jacket.

One went down last month, it was a good ditching and the flotation bags kept it on the surface and it was recovered. All aboard were picked up.

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I dunno, if I am going down in a chopper in the north atlantic, the suit is going to get wet more than once

Hi everyone,

Happy to see that there's a thread about submarines in here.


Here are Tim Printy's webpages about his carrer as a submariner in the US.Navy and his hobbies (astronomy & ufos).

You gonna love this guy (for the ones who did not know him yet) :
http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/Navy/Navy.htm

For people who want to learn more about submarines while enjoying ficticious modern-era war stories, I recommend any book from :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_DiMercurio


Cheers,
Buck le sauvage

Many of us do know Mr. Printy a bit. He's an active and well-respected member of BAUT.

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Hi Peter & everyone,

This is great. In the biggest french UFO & meteor-rids skeptic oriented forum, only some people know him but unfortunatly the language barrier restrain some of them to fully understand his work.

Well, talking about submarines, in my country, they still build large nuclear boats that are limited in many aspects when it comes to shallow waters. From what I know the new Virigina class subs are quiet large as well.

While France and the U.S. do not build non-nuclear boats with smaller dimensions, I was wondering if both countries adopted the same strategy for the years to come ?

Using UUV (unmanned underwater vehicles probably using AIP tech) instead of smaller subs for shallow waters to counter smaller AIP tech subs ?


Cheers,
Buck

UK only build Nuclear boats as well. Our last Diesel Electrics were sold out of service to the Canadians while they were still more or less new.

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Nuclear is the way to go with submarines, even if they were to be smaller in design. While subs have operated in shallow water, I think the detection technology is now such that it doesn't make sense to build a smaller one for that purpose specifically. But I'm not an expert by any means in this particular area.

I wouldn't like to go into shallow coastal waters agains a modern AS threat. Even back in the late 70s early 80s we would have had no problem with a sub in coastal waters.

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Hi, Part of the advantage of larger submarines is that it can present a larger platform for the sonar array. A sub is not usefull unless it has superb detection facilities. You can see 15 miles. You can hear hundreds.
Much depends on the mission statement. A DSRV operates locally, to do a job. Save people. The NR-1 is a great example of a small nuclear submarine
with unique capabilities. Deep diving, unlimited bright lights, duration..etc.
But men of war are different. Quite so.
Best regards, Dan

This thread has had me remembering my
childhood scrapbook. I started it with the
Mariner 2 articles after it reached Venus
in Dec 1962. And continued with other
interesting stuff. A schoolchum commented
"but its all missile stuff!" Not quite true.

Anyway, a Daily Mirror feature from !963 or 64,
The switches of war and Perry Como sings, by
mirror man Dixon Scott. The press had an
invitation to look over the USS Ethan Allen
commanded by Captain Paul L Lacy, Jr.
An illustration of the missile firing panel,
badly touched up to make the words clear.
(newspapers were like blotting paper back
then). The bulk of the article describes the
procedure for letting the missiles off.
Presumably to reassure the poor readers.

Alongside there is a spoiler scoop from the
Daily Sketch a few days previously. On the
sister ship USS Thomas A Edison. A shorter
feature describing the fire button as
guarded by a transparent plastic cover
locked by a padlock.

Well thats 46 years of the things poking
around under the oceans. No doubt part of
the careers of thousands of capable sailors.
A half century coming up. Then another 50
years I suppose. But hopefully reducing in
numbers to a secure "token" reality.

The boat I was on (Sam Houston) was also of the Ethan Allen class.

" So..there I was at 700 feet with all hatches open to sea and they said ...
' Allright, blow and go' and I said ' Wait a minute,...
not without my "Nutty-Buddy" '.

An old joke.... back in the day.
Best regards,
Dan