[HN Gopher] Norwegian fishermen hunting for halibut caught a US ...
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Norwegian fishermen hunting for halibut caught a US nuclear sub
Author : marban
Score : 111 points
Date : 2024-11-15 15:21 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| bell-cot wrote:
| But it was not _this_ nuclear sub -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Halibut_(SSGN-587) - which
| would have been a far more interesting tail.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Man this makes me wish it had been this sub haha
| arethuza wrote:
| This kind of event be pretty nasty - 4 fishermen were killed by a
| Royal Navy submarine in 1990:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FV_Antares
| gadders wrote:
| Russian subs get caught as well: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
| northern-ireland-32333336
|
| I seem to remember this happening quite often (yearly, maybe?)
| during the Cold War in the North Sea and around Norway.
| mmooss wrote:
| A US submarine surfaced under a tourist boat near Hawaii; many
| died iirc. I think it was around the 2000s.
| olejorgenb wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehime_Maru_and_USS_Greeneville.
| ..
|
| > In a demonstration for some VIP civilian visitors,
| Greeneville performed an emergency ballast blow surfacing
| maneuver. As the submarine shot to the surface, she struck
| Ehime Maru. Within ten minutes of the collision, Ehime Maru
| sank. Nine of the thirty-five people aboard were killed: four
| high school students, two teachers, and three crew members.
| krisoft wrote:
| If you are thinking about the USS Greeneville colliding with
| the Ehime Maru 10 miles (16 km) off the coast of Oahu, then
| that ship was a training ship not a tourist boat.
| pmezard wrote:
| And possibly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugaled_Breizh as
| well.
| jillyboel wrote:
| Kill four innocent civilians and all that happened was one of
| the killers was "severely reprimanded"
| crmd wrote:
| I'm surprised Virginia didn't hear the ship's motor from miles
| away and kept its distance. I wonder if there will be any
| disciplinary actions.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| They for sure heard the motor, a lot harder to hear the net
| though.
|
| As for keeping their distance... well, they _are_ a nuclear
| submarine, why should they be polite?
| gregoriol wrote:
| They maybe would not like to kill civilians, nor would they
| like to be detected so easily.
| crmd wrote:
| As a civilian I'm in no position to critique the CO's
| decision making. However it doesn't seem unreasonable to
| assume a SONAR contact classified as a fishing boat may have
| a net deployed posing a hazard within a certain radius.
|
| I assume Aaron Aamick (Sub Brief) and H.I. Sutton will make a
| video about this incident in the coming days, and we'll get a
| credible answer to whether there's any fault here on the part
| of the sub crew.
| mmooss wrote:
| > As a civilian I'm in no position to critique the CO's
| decision making.
|
| To nitpick, you absolutely are. The military reports to the
| civilians; that is who they are accountable to.
|
| That said, I don't know anything about submarines. But it
| has nothing to do with being a civilian or military. It's
| the trick of management, oversight, responsibility - we
| need to oversee and make responsible decisions for things
| where we lack expertise. I need to hire a plumber even if I
| know nothing about plumbing. Other people need to hire IT
| professionals, and IME some of them know nothing about IT!
| devilbunny wrote:
| > The military reports to the civilians
|
| Yes, they do, but we don't want the civilian leadership
| criticizing captains for their operational decisions.
| Strategic, yes, absolutely. "Do we do this mission or
| not?" is absolutely up to civilians (Secretary of the
| Navy, Secretary of Defense, President) to decide. A
| captain making in-the-moment decisions about the running
| of the boat or ship can be handled by the military - up
| to and including loss of command or even court martial.
| If they are operating within their orders and official
| regulations, civilians should stay out of it or risk
| having a military that doesn't work when we need it.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >well, they are a nuclear submarine, why should they be
| polite?
|
| Because you'll fight like you train. Accidentally snagging a
| trawler in unfriendly waters after having just tapped a
| seabed cable would be a problem.
|
| That said, there's a fine line between maintaining good
| standard procedure and getting absurd with it.
|
| Dodging a trawler in the middle of nowhere, fine. Dodging a
| trawler in a crowded channel, probably not worth it.
| otikik wrote:
| Not "polite". But, you know, professional. You are supposed
| to be the ultimate stealth ship. Act like it. A fish boat
| shouldn't be able to detect you, especially if all it takes
| is a slight twist on the joystick.
|
| It's like a ninja being seen by a guy taking a piss in the
| three he's hiding at. That's a shitty ninja.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| Not hard to notice the net on the sonar or passive listening
| devices surely. And they were in an area where encountering a
| fishing boat and its nets is an everyday occurrence. Someone
| onboard should be reprimanded.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Not hard to notice the net on the sonar or passive
| listening devices surely.
|
| Are you saying that because you know that the net makes
| noise?
| keybored wrote:
| To not inconvenience the natives? Seems obvious.
| rchowe wrote:
| I heard a story of a fishing boat in the eastern US that was
| "fighting a fish" for miles but could never get any traction.
| When another fisherman looked at their chart, he noted that they
| were dragged miles in a straight line towards Europe, and said
| "You caught a sub". The submariners don't care, they probably
| find it funny.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Strong fishing line.
| blueflow wrote:
| If a submarine drags you, you will have a noticeable wake. No
| need to look at the charts.
|
| Edit: or be instantly capsized and dragged below water, jfc:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FV_Antares#Inquiries_and_recom...
| philip1209 wrote:
| Fascinating - I wonder what the procedure is for a jammed
| propeller on a sub. I'm used to airplanes, which have
| redundancies for everything, but a sub propeller is really a
| single point of failure. Potentially seaweed or rope could become
| entangled, right?
|
| Would the sub typically have to surface to manually clear the
| propeller? Or, does it have enough torque to just (noisily)
| obliterate most entanglements?
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| I think divers can be dispatched from the sub.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Also if the propeller still ends up inoperable, the sub could
| in an emergency also use buoyancy control to both possibly
| tear free from entanglement but even to travel forward, by
| adjusting the dive planes, to make it also go forward instead
| of just up and down.
| FungalRaincloud wrote:
| I understand how this works, but for some reason, when I
| read your comment, I thought of Flappy Bird.
| nradov wrote:
| There are plenty of airplanes which have only a single
| propeller. You can find videos online from light aircraft where
| the propeller literally fell off in flight.
|
| Sub propellers have a lot of torque. There's no way that one
| would really get entangled by seaweed. But thick ropes, cables,
| and heavy fishing tackle are a risk. Every military sub carries
| qualified divers who could manually cut it free as a last
| resort.
| philip1209 wrote:
| Sorry, I was referring to Part 121 operations and missed it
| in an edit.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > Every military sub carries qualified divers
|
| The same divers who occasionally "inspect" undersea cables.
| :)
| potato3732842 wrote:
| They've even been alleged to "maintain" pipelines.
| nradov wrote:
| Those are usually different divers, sent as detachments to
| certain boats only for special missions. They are trained
| in using closed-circuit gear and perhaps in saturation
| operations, and aren't part of the submarine's standing
| crew.
|
| The sub's standing crew would typically have a few
| qualified divers trained in just the basics. They would
| only use open-circuit gear on shallow bounce dives for
| inspections and light maintenance. Anything more complex
| would require bringing in a dedicated dive team.
| sgarland wrote:
| My boat's divers were definitely trained in more than
| just the basics, including closed-circuit. I don't think
| it was regularly used, but they knew how to.
|
| If you're somewhere you aren't supposed to be, and you
| have to dive to fix or inspect something, you don't want
| to be sending bubbles up.
|
| You're on your own in the ocean, whether civilian or
| military, sub or surface. You have to be able to handle
| any and all potential issues.
| nradov wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification. The couple that I had
| talked to briefly weren't trained in closed-circuit but I
| suppose they were pretty junior and just recently
| qualified.
| devilbunny wrote:
| One of my professors when I was an anesthesiology
| resident was ex-Navy. He had been in the submarine
| service, and not as just a general medical officer. _As
| an anesthesiologist._ You can imagine the kind of
| missions a submarine with an anesthesiologist on board
| might be sent on. There might even be a surgeon on
| board...
|
| Anyway, he was dive-rated. Closed-circuit breathing is
| the basis of anesthesia machines and has been for ages
| (at least 60 years). So for us, a closed-circuit system
| isn't new - it's something we do every day at work. You
| just have to account for depth. I'd be _shocked_ if he
| hadn 't done it.
| philip1209 wrote:
| Is max torque on an typical nuclear submarine limited by the
| max reactor output, or can they rely on batteries to exceed
| this temporarily?
| sgarland wrote:
| Generally it's just various design parameters. Until the
| newest (and not-yet-built) Columbia-class, boats are all
| steam propulsion, and you can hit various pressure limits
| for components without maxing the reactor out. That said,
| yes, with nominal conditions generally All Ahead Flank will
| have the reactor output at 100%. All Back Emergency usually
| hits some other limit first.
|
| Columbia-class is electric drive, which is absolutely wild
| to me. Those are monstrous motors.
|
| Source: I ran a reactor on a Virginia-class (not USS
| Virginia, the subject of the article, but in the same
| class).
| philip1209 wrote:
| Thanks for the detailed answer!
| shadowgovt wrote:
| My understanding is the electric motors have in general
| gotten scary-powerful. I know some cruise ships have
| switched over to them because it simplifies the overall
| mechanical architecture (fewer moving parts, fewer high-
| pressure fluid circuits). Some of the Royal Carribean
| fleet has "azipods" that can be angled 360 degrees to
| provide arbitrary thrust for simplifying docking and
| undocking.
| ranger207 wrote:
| Electric drives are nothing new on submarines in general;
| the _Gato_ class were diesel-electric, and the French and
| Chinese apparently prefer nuclear-electric. But I think
| this is the US Navy's first nuclear-electric ship
| lukemercado wrote:
| From first principles I'd expect the functional limit not
| to be one of power generation but of energy transfer. The
| limit probably manifests as wiring and motors overheating
| in a full electric drive (I don't think any subs are...) or
| as sound, heat and fatigue in reduction gears and gear
| shafts.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| If silence is important, modern subs have divers and they can
| work on it w/o surfacing. In peacetime they'd probably want to
| surface and concentrate on not damaging anything.
|
| I would guess they test props against real-world commercial
| fishing nets as part of some qualification process.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >I would guess they test props against real-world commercial
| fishing nets as part of some qualification process.
|
| I assume enough nets have been run over by various vessels
| over the centuries that they can simply predict performance
| by looking at the design and plugging key parameters into a
| formula or table.
| Retric wrote:
| The propellers on nuclear subs are powerful enough to ignore
| seaweed and almost anything else, it's (edit: 100's of
| thousands HP) rotating a multi story steel building with
| literally tons of momentum.
|
| They do have divers which can get out without surfacing to deal
| with some problems, but Nuclear subs _can_ move forward without
| the propeller.
|
| Water is so dense those stubby wings you see on the side can
| when angled properly create forward thrust when the sub moves
| up or down which they can do repeatedly by adding and removing
| water from a ballast tank. Essentially acting like gliders who
| can swap gravity to keep going.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| It probably isn't millions of HP, 746MW is roughly equal to 1
| million HP. Regardless, it's still several hundred thousand
| horsepower driving the propeller, so your point still stands!
| Retric wrote:
| Good catch, I remember someone referring to a sub that way
| and never double checked the numbers.
| pandemic_region wrote:
| right, horsepower not hit points I see now.
| yial wrote:
| According to Wikipedia for USS Virginia class subs, the
| propulsion is 1 x S9G nuclear reactor280,000 hp (210 MW).
| bogeholm wrote:
| According to Wikipedia, the reactor on a Virginia-class sub
| has 280,000 hp (thermal, I guess) and 2x40,000 shp steam
| turbines.
|
| So a little less oomph than 2 out of the 5 fuel pumps on a
| Saturn V, just for an irrelevant comparison ;)
| UltraSane wrote:
| I did not know that subs can do that reversible gliding
| trick. That is pretty neat.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Depending on what was tangled, I'd be more concerned about
| any noise potentially generated. It's amazing what sonar can
| hear
| mmooss wrote:
| If fishing nets / lines can stop a sub, it would save money on
| mines.
| kqr wrote:
| Underwater nets were a common defense against submarines
| during the second world war, protecting harbours and the
| like. I have no reason to think the case is otherwise now.
| mmooss wrote:
| 'Net' is a generic term. I have a 'computer', NOAA has a
| 'computer', but they aren't the same thing. I would be
| surprised if a fishing net was sufficient to stop a
| military sub.
|
| Also, subs now are a lot more capable than they were then.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Modern nuclear subs turn the prop with hundreds of
| thousands of horsepower. That is very hard to stop.
| simne wrote:
| They are in actively using, where convenient to block large
| water area. As even in war ports, usually active traffic.
|
| Second reason why now limited usage, WWII submarines was
| very limited power, many experts consider them as just
| high-speed boats with extremely limited underwater
| capabilities, but modern submarines are really powerful,
| especially nuclear.
| bell-cot wrote:
| If a fishing net or line was strong enough to stop a sub,
| then no sane commercial fisherman would _ever_ pay the extra
| $$$$$ for it, to get that that level of overkill. Plus, the
| "nuclear-strength" net or line would weigh a LOT more, and
| fishing involved plenty of hauling your stuff out of the
| water & other handling.
| mmooss wrote:
| For safety, you do not want it to stop the sub. You want
| the sub to tear right through it or else the sub is going
| to take your boat with it, and what if the sub decides to
| dive?
| bell-cot wrote:
| Sorta kinda. The sub could be stopped, in the sense of
| "badly tangled in our equipment, and will need to stop
| and get untangled", without actually hauling the fishing
| boat along after it. Maybe the equipment wasn't well
| secured to the boat. Maybe your savvy crew realized the
| problem and cut loose. Either way, you're out some
| expensive equipment.
| Animats wrote:
| Here's a modern commercial fishing net: [1] The net itself
| isn't that heavy per unit area; it's just big. The top
| support line of the net is a string of floats, like pool
| lane markers, but larger. They're fishing for herring, not
| the Great White Whale.
|
| Anti-submarine nets are far, far heavier.[2]
|
| _MESH ROPES: - flexible steel galvanized wire rope_
|
| _This is a single strand, flexible steel galvanized wire
| rope consisting of 70 wires and 21 hemp yarns. It is one-
| inch in diameter, has a breaking strength of 98,280 pounds
| and is internally lubricated and protected against the
| action of salt water by saturating the fiber cores with a
| preservative composition. It weighs 1.8 pounds per running
| foot and is supplied on reels carrying 3,000 feet of wire
| and weighing 5,000 pounds packed for shipment._
|
| The top support line of a submarine net looks like a bridge
| cable. The floats are the size of cars or larger.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_CP6VtgDVc
|
| [2] https://maritime.org/doc/netsandbooms/index.php
| shim__ wrote:
| Regular propellers somwtimes feature an rope cutter. If that
| doesn't work the sub could still surface and dispatch divers to
| free the prop.
| kstrauser wrote:
| "Guess we have a sub now! It's the law of the sea."
| thmsths wrote:
| Funny story, but unfortunately the article is light on details.
| stetrain wrote:
| Yeah, I had to follow the link to another referenced article
| and read an image caption to find out that this seems to have
| just happened on November 11, I assume this year.
|
| Usually a date and year are useful details to include in a
| story.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Better throw it back then; they aren't in season right now.
| ilamont wrote:
| Fishermen sometimes happen upon submarine accidents. This one
| dates from 2003:
|
| _On April 25, 2003 the crew of a Chinese fishing boat noticed a
| strange sight--a periscope drifting listlessly above the surface
| of the water. The fishermen notified the People 's Liberation
| Army Navy (PLAN) which promptly dispatched two vessels to
| investigate._
|
| https://www.chieftain.com/story/news/2018/06/07/in-2003-chin...
|
| Every one of the submariners died.
|
| There was another reported Chinese sub accident in 2023, but it's
| not clear how it was discovered
| (https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-submarine-
| death...).
| ok_dad wrote:
| During world war two, German U-boats used to have issues with
| chlorine gas being produced from the batteries and it would
| flood the boat and kill everyone onboard.
| ilamont wrote:
| My grandfather was in a US Navy salvage group in WWII. At the
| time, to verify an enemy vessel (especially subs) had been
| sunk, they would send down divers in the old fashioned "heavy
| gear" suits to identify the vessels.
|
| They would also bring up proof, usually something that could
| be tied to the vessel, which could be a piece of military-
| grade equipment or even silverware engraved with the names of
| the ship or the enemy seal.
|
| This is what the suits looked like:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_diving_dress
| kreyenborgi wrote:
| https://www.nrk.no/tromsogfinnmark/harald-fra-sommaroya-fikk...
| original article here.
|
| > "No use getting riled up about it" says young fisherman after
| sub ruined fishing gear worth 50.000 NOK (4.500 USD)
| chriscjcj wrote:
| Neither the Vice article nor the The Barents Observer article it
| links to seem to report exactly when the incident occurred.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws
| lb1lf wrote:
| The NRK story says it happened Monday, November 11th.
|
| I am surprised the other sources left it out; 5Ws an'all.
| rollulus wrote:
| > The fishermen were unaware of it until they were contacted by
| the US Coast Guard.
|
| Can someone explain this to me? Does the US Coast Guard have a
| (radio) base in Norway? Do they phone them?
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