A Target-Rich Environment
My earlier post of a good periscope photo of a destroyer in the crosshairs inspired an old college buddy of mine to send in a TOF shot from his boat during Rimpac '02. How'd you like to see this through the 'scope?
There was also a fifth ship in the formation that wouldn't fit into the field of vision. From the E-mail accompanying the photo:BTW, the skimmer “judge” said it was a miss on all targets!!! (We were shooting the oiler, but figured “what the heck”, the mayhem of hitting any of the five was worth the lack of separation.)Skimmer "judges" are funny. I remember during my first deployment, we were doing an "opposed unrep" against the Ranger Battle Group. We had the carrier, oiler, and a destroyer all sailing along tied up together, with us 4nm ahead of them, about 2000 yds off track. The carrier guys we had riding us said they'd been told that there was no way a submarine could ever get in that position because of the "protective ASW blanket" surrounding the carrier. We laughed and laughed, shot off our flares, and radioed in that we'd be back in 30 minutes to do it again.
posted by Bubblehead at 9:10 AM
10 Comments:
Such an odd sense of humor...could it be the air in the sub is scrubbed too much?
:)
9/19/2007 7:07 PM
Poor deluded skimmers!
9/19/2007 7:33 PM
Odd sense of humor? Bad air? NOPE, he's just telling the FACTS! The Ranger BG never had a chance...good call Joel!
Gordo
9/19/2007 8:08 PM
Gordo knows. He was the Sonar God on Topeka for that deployment; on the same leg of the trip, we lost all of BSY-1 from an "impossible" fault, so all we had was a steerable hydrophone and a headset. Gordo picked up the Omaha on those from several thousand yards.
9/19/2007 10:29 PM
RIMPAC 02. All I will say, is that Japanese sub Skipper schooled everyone towards the end. Those who were there will know what I mean.
9/20/2007 1:23 PM
The guys from up top have to keep themselves dilluted I am sure it makes them nervous when they see that Fire Control has firing solutions to ALL battlegroup ships! I know I am nervous when underway on top of the ocean!
--Rch
9/20/2007 1:55 PM
>>I know I am nervous when underway on top of the ocean!
One of the perils of running at test depth all the time!
9/20/2007 11:58 PM
Bubblehead,
I am sheepish to admit to actually wearing a SWO pin and being a qualified OOD of a CVN, but I am still a submarine nuke MMC at heart. Many an ERS watch was spent in control running the time freq plot, yelling at the sonar girls feeding me crappy freqs because there tracker had drifted off the source. I know for a fact that skimmers don't "get it" and I am thankful that we take SSN's with us when we deploy. BTW, the reactor department of all 11 of those CVN's has centuries of submarine experience onboard in the form of nuke mustangs. We keep them doing the primary job: putting warheads on foreheads. Thanks for this amazing blog site, you have converted me.
RickyCWO
9/21/2007 2:39 PM
Yet another example. And another sub whose sonars and combat system has some of yours truly's IP in. As do the Swedish and Chilean boats recently exercising with the USN.
The thing is, I work on surface combat systems too. If more skimmers had some sub experience, they could make life for submariners far more difficult. The sub has many disadvantages, these can be exploited.
Of course a good ASW group will just make sure the sub only gets the first shot, and not a second. Still, Murphy can ruin any submariner's day.
9/22/2007 3:58 AM
Still got the picture of the Ranger and the Wabash. There is no such thing as a good skimmer ASW group
10/02/2007 10:04 PM
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