How to make the Soviet navy competitive with the West

Thetis sank on trials killing almost the entire crew but was salvaged, renamed and recommissioned. Nine were lost to unknown causes in wartime, put down as "probably mined" but some of which could have been accidents.

Possibly accidents but with the way the Italians threw mines around with gay abandon it's not unreasonable to assume they were mined. I forgot about Thetis' sinking, to be honest.
 
Thetis sank on trials killing almost the entire crew but was salvaged, renamed and recommissioned. Nine were lost to unknown causes in wartime, put down as "probably mined" but some of which could have been accidents.

Based on what we know now, at least 4 of them died due to the same thing that killed Squalus.
 
So does the antiship capability of most navies

Actually, SSM development and naval deployment outpaced SAM development and naval deployment quite a bit. Many navies deployed SSM in the 70s but have nothing but the most basic AA capacity.
 
Actually, SSM development and naval deployment outpaced SAM development and naval deployment quite a bit. Many navies deployed SSM in the 70s but have nothing but the most basic AA capacity.

As the RN and USN found out the hard way, Mister SAM and Mister RADAR have to like each other and handshake for detection, acquisition, track, engagement to work. They DATE a lot. Expensive and difficult to do, with the villains, Cruise Missile and Aero Plane constantly hiding and sneaking around.
 
As the RN and USN found out the hard way, Mister SAM and Mister RADAR have to like each other and handshake for detection, acquisition, track, engagement to work. They DATE a lot. Expensive and difficult to do, with the villains, Cruise Missile and Aero Plane constantly hiding and sneaking around.

To be fair, SSMs in the 70s are much less sophistated and less reliable than their counterparts today. Only a few SSMs were sea skimming at that point in time and ECM was quite effective. Even basic countermeasures like chaff was effective.
 
Hum...no. Because the data themselves may be the result of biased production (intentional or accidential). That is why a human analyst remains crucial in the assessment process.


Human analysis is not any better if its biased. Stats is the only way to minimise bias from the results. There are just not that many historical examples to get reliable estimates from. Mostly guess work , even if its informed.

This is why armchair admiral- absolute statements- are disappointing.
 
I prefer this joke; "Two senior retired USAF generals at the old air farce folks retirement home are eating lunch. One asks the other; "So who won the cold war?" An old navy submariner next table over munching on his salad, pipes up; "We did, flyboys, under the arctic ice, and brother was it freezing!"



Grissom, White and Chaffee. I was a young boy and I was furious.



David Oliver remarks that the USN felt a collective keel up shock from Thresher and then Scorpion. Heads rolled in both cases. Those who survived the reviews had it burned into them that never again would we send our submariners to sea in deathtraps. It even spilled outward into the surface fleet.


I think that it is something of an organizational symptom. The USAF has a fairly carefree mentality, that was a constant problem to overcome when it came to specialized munitions. SAC thought it found a cure, then it was folded into Strategic Command and Air Combat Command and boy am I nervous about that service, especially from some incidents reported about 15 to 8 years ago.


There is a special HAZARD in operating submerged machines in nature's best known solvent. Might also add that operating that machine deaf, and blind with echo-location gear you cannot use because other men are trying to KILL you even in a cold war, while you use a finicky gyro-based artificial 2-d horizon and directional compass linked to a so-so computer (Blind man's bluff is very real.) is actually more dangerous than getting into near earth orbit. The USS San Francisco ran into an undersea mountain, because a navigation party used an old chart and they did not pay close attention to their SUBSAFE training. Thank Murphy, the machine was built to heroic standards of reliability.

As to building atomic boats to old tried and proven methods... well let RADM Oliver address that issue. Navy Sea Systems and the Portsmouth gang were killing US sailors with their carelessness.



I can. Casualties (the mechanical kind) are a naval fact of life.



It is done. One does not hear about it, but sometimes bump and scrape incidents (Refer to Oliver video and the sub tender incident.) result in US surface ships limping home banged and dented up with holes in them. Subs are worse.



1 chance in 150 war patrols guaranteed per class. Estimated 6 Novembers lost. We know of 1 Oscar, and maybe a Charlie. We know for certain that 2 Russian diesel boats also died.

But... British T-class boats were much worse. 1 chance in 100.



Likewise, given what we now know about their dangerous engineering practices.

Which RN T class are you referring to? The WW2 or 1980s SSN.

What do you think the RAF would do wrong as far as Naval warfare in the 1970s. I can see its forces being inadequate, a few ASW squadrons with either Shackletons or Nimrod, a couple of strike squadrons with Buccaneers and 1 LR MR squadron with Vulcan 2s. And with the exception of the Buccaneers these were inferior to US equivalents .

But would their sortie rates or other indicators of competence be worse? Or is their doctrine wrong?
 
Which RN T class are you referring to? The WW2 or 1980s SSN.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but flip a coin. There were no RN nuclear boats lost, though recently an RN and a Marine National boomer both bumped and dented each other.

In the case of the WW II T-class boats, these went to sea with a common fault that afflicted US, German, and British boats of the era. There is a breather intake for diesel engines called main induction that uses a variety of slam valve architectures to automatically close when a boat dives. If the valve cover does not seat to seal properly during a dive, you get a Squalus incident. Anything can cause a main induction failure, including an occlusion of the join at the seal, or shock damage unseating the cover (mines), or just a mechanical fail to close properly (a known WW II British boat design fault) that might have caused the loss of the INS Dakar.

With the nuclear boats, (not just a British problem, but if you choose the wrong alloys and guess what the British boat builders did for the Trafalgars?) one encounters reactor pipe embrittlement and literally thousands of other ways that one can inevitably screw up. This problem is not restricted to the Royal Navy. The Americans have their problems and the rest of the world have their catastrophes.

I mean how many sailors can you kill in a sub by forgetting to install an auto-cutoff to the diesel engines when you plan to snort?


 

Khanzeer

Banned
Related to making soviet navy more competitive so I'll post here

To what extend using roll on roll off ships can boost the capability of their amphibious forces ?
 
Related to making soviet navy more competitive so I'll post here

To what extend using roll on roll off ships can boost the capability of their amphibious forces ?

Soviets modernized their merchant fleet from 1960's onwards not just to provide additional economic (or military) lift capabilities, but also to provide Western money. They actually operated even cruise liners in 1980's to do that.

In sense of providing lift capability, yes they did that, but still, chances for actual Soviet landing operations, contra transportation ops, were small in Cold War scenarios. In a hot war scenario landings on Black Sea, Caspian Sea, Baltic, and maybe even Northern Norway might be feasible, but elsewhere NATO and allied navies were just superior.

One of the most impressive cargo ships must have been Finnish-built SA-15 multipurpose ship class, capable of arctic operations and unloading MBT's on ice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SA-15_(ship)
 

Khanzeer

Banned
^ ofcourse I would not expect Soviets to make an opposed landing but atleast it would boost their sea lift capability

@Jukra Were there attempts to have these ships carry helicopters, SAM or more ambitiously yak forgers?
 
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