More Ships sunk by Nuclear Submarines

There's a way to confirm this; equipping submarines to fire sub-Harpoon is not a matter of just saying "here they are" and adding them to the torpedo room. There are specific changes needed to the combat system on the submarine which require a refit.

Thanks, but I've been attached to enough RAMPs to know that.

I'm trying to find the dates of Spartan's refits now but so far I've found she hadn't had that refit before 1985.

As a hobby?

On the other hand, memories, especially those a quarter of a century old are hopelessly unreliable. I wouldn't take a person's work for a specific load-out on a specific date as anything more than an unsubstantiated opinion.

Whilst I will take your word for it since you seem to be the man vis-a-vis dates, it would seem very odd for a senior ex-member of the crew aboard her for a very specific and momentous period to be so mistaken about what she was carrying. We were both quite drunk.
 
Would an India-Pakistan War do the trick?
It would have to be in a very narrow timeframe- between 1988 and 1991- when India was using a leased Soviet Charlie-I SSGN for their navy to learn how to operate nuclear submarines. Alternatively, India could have managed to keep the boat after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
The ATV boats India is currently building wouldn't work for this challenge, as they're SSBNs so unikely to be used to sink ships.

Incidentally, the Pakistani Navy is the only navy other than the RN to have recorded a kill by a submarine since 1945- the Indian Blackwood-class frigate Khukri, sunk by the French-built PNS Hangor in 1971.

Otherwise, I don't really have any ideas that haven't already been had.
 
With a nuclear submarine?! Seems a little excessive, even for the French, Shimbo.

Well, they did blow it up in harbour, and I was thinking if they torpedoed it on the high seas no one would ever be able to prove why it sank so it might actually work out better for them.

Bit unlikely I must admit.
 
Well, they did blow it up in harbour, and I was thinking if they torpedoed it on the high seas no one would ever be able to prove why it sank so it might actually work out better for them.

Bit unlikely I must admit.

Unlikely, but perhaps not impossible. Rainbow Warrior was a giant f*ckup for the French, as having their man get busted by the New Zealand police kinda causes problems for everybody.

You could have one recently. Greenpeace guys go after waste ship, and the French have enough of the harrassment and send one of their SSNs to put a stop to it. Extreme, but not impossible.
 
As a hobby?

No, checking through official records. Spartan's refits are listed somewhere, its simply a matter of getting to them

It would seem very odd for a senior ex-member of the crew aboard her for a very specific and momentous period to be so mistaken about what she was carrying. We were both quite drunk.

Not really, people's memories can - in fact almost always do - play tricks with them. Dates and times get mixed up, something that applied at one time gets transferred to a different period. It's quite easy for your friend to remember what was in the torpedo room at during one part of his service and assume that they were there at another time or remember something from another submarine and transfer that. Add in that people don't like giving "don't know" answers in pub conversations because they think it might make them look foolish and there is enormous scope for errors.

The installation of GWS.60 wasn't a minor job so it would require a dockyard refit. Now, one thing I have found is a Fact Card for the Falklands operation that lists Spartan as being armed with 'Anti-Submarine and Salvo Torpedoes', the former obviously being Tigerfish and the latter unguided Mark 8s. That isn't conclusive since UGM-84B could have been on board as a classified weapon but the absence of any major refit in the 1979 -82 period suggests that this wasn't the case.
 
Tigerfish - one of those ended up attacking a friendly golf course.

Working on the assumption that if we didn't know what they'd do when we fired them, neither would the Russians.
 
Was that refered to on the show Yes Minster? If so it would give the RN the land attack capability they had lacked since abandoning the deck gun just after WW2. Would it work on other types of sporting arenas? What is the range of a torpedo when you run it up a beach, or would you make it jump out of the water like a whale?
 
I think I could see the French sinking a Greenpeace ship if they try to screw around with the french nuclear waste to much
 
Was that refered to on the show Yes Minster? If so it would give the RN the land attack capability they had lacked since abandoning the deck gun just after WW2. Would it work on other types of sporting arenas? What is the range of a torpedo when you run it up a beach, or would you make it jump out of the water like a whale?

I believe it was; but I was told by someone who spent a lot of time watching Tigerfish misbehave during trials: the golf course bit could be an exagerration, but I believe one ended up on the shore.
 
I believe it was; but I was told by someone who spent a lot of time watching Tigerfish misbehave during trials: the golf course bit could be an exagerration, but I believe one ended up on the shore.

I've also heard the golf course story attributed to an Exocet, a sub-Harpoon and a Sea Dart. It also appeared in an early episode of Yes Minister and it may have entered popular history from there. The ultimate source might (tenuous connection here) be a Scimitar that dropped a Red Beard nuclear device on a golf course back in 1959/60.

A lot of torpedoes have ended up beaching themselves over the years, its not an unknown habit. Trials torpedoes are set to float after their run (warshots are set to sink) so if a trials torpedo isn't picked up for some reason its quite likely to drift on shore.
 
I think I could see the French sinking a Greenpeace ship if they try to screw around with the french nuclear waste to much
Not with a nuclear submarine, and not so publicly.

If Greenpeace was stupid enough to mess around with a French military vessel, then the most they're going to get are some warning shots before they disperse or a boarding crew detaining the activists in a French military installation until they can be processed by a court of law.

The whole reason the French blew up the Rainbow Warrior in dock with a covert team was to minimise casualties, especially loss of life, but also to decrease the chances of capture or detection and political embarrassment for France. Getting blown up by a nuclear submarine isn't so subtle now, is it?

Apart from the risk of detection via analysis of the wreckage, you better hope to God that there are no survivors, otherwise your game is up. There is also the question of how exactly the French SSN/SSBN would avoid detection by their own allies, or at least the British and Americans. Fellatio Nelson will know more about this, but don't NATO allies (Or at least the British, French and Americans) share data on SSN/SSBN locations, and in some cases carry out joint patrols and division of work? How will the French get around this? If the submarine goes 'offline', surely that will raise eyebrows in London or Washington? Could they falsify the data? Regardless, someone's going to know something's up.

If the French are found out, take the political embarrassment and fallout of OTL Rainbow Warrior and multiply it by a million... the French sinking an unarmed Greenpeace vessel in New Zealand or international waters, with a nuclear submarine? It's just not worth the risk. The French may be flamboyant at times, dramatic at others, but they're not silly enough to take such a risk, or do something as extreme and overkill as this.

Now I expect Fellatio Nelson or Bill Garvin to tell me I'm talking bollocks. :D
 
I've also heard the golf course story attributed to an Exocet, a sub-Harpoon and a Sea Dart. It also appeared in an early episode of Yes Minister and it may have entered popular history from there. The ultimate source might (tenuous connection here) be a Scimitar that dropped a Red Beard nuclear device on a golf course back in 1959/60.

A lot of torpedoes have ended up beaching themselves over the years, its not an unknown habit. Trials torpedoes are set to float after their run (warshots are set to sink) so if a trials torpedo isn't picked up for some reason its quite likely to drift on shore.

Ah, reminds me of that David Lander episode from years back about Sea Demon ending up in someone's washing line and having to be fetched back by the Navy.
 
Ah, reminds me of that David Lander episode from years back about Sea Demon ending up in someone's washing line and having to be fetched back by the Navy.

My favorite was when a PAP-104 mine clearance submersible got tangled up in some fishing nets and the fishermen held it for ransom. They are reputed to have started cutting bits off and sending them to the RN (probably apocryphal) with letters to the effect of "pay up or the submersible gets it".
 
My favorite was when a PAP-104 mine clearance submersible got tangled up in some fishing nets and the fishermen held it for ransom. They are reputed to have started cutting bits off and sending them to the RN (probably apocryphal) with letters to the effect of "pay up or the submersible gets it".

Oh yeah, I recall that story. Fishermen don't like submarines much... for some reason. :D


I'm still impressed by that British bloke who inadvertently replicated the guidance system of the Exocet MM38 in his garden shed. (But then the French did nick some of the tec. off the Israelis - and the RN helped finance its further development.)
 
Top