Read about or do?

Anything else you want to talk about.
iankw
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Re: Read about or do?

Post by iankw »

Many thanks to both Vic and Bgile. Excellent posts there, that really gave me an insight into life aboard a vessel.

Brilliant :)

Ian
Bgile
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Re: Read about or do?

Post by Bgile »

marcelo_malara wrote:Hi Bgile:

Is it true that a sub tends to roll heavily due to the round hull?

Regards
You don't roll very much submerged because there is no wave action unless you are shallow and there are heavy seas. On the surface I don't recall rolling very much either. We didn't spend much time on the surface on the nuke boats. Pretty much just out to the 100 fathom curve and then dive. When you are on the surface you set the stern planes to an up angle to help keep the stern down. This is because the shaft is on the centerline and the blade tips tend to come out of the water periodically. Maybe the angle on the planes also tends to stabilize the ship so it doesn't roll that much. Not sure. I think we rolled a lot on the surface at slow speed, but again that was pretty unusual. About the only time we surface on the patrols we did was to clean and reapply the coating on the periscope headwindows. After a few weeks they would get so they didn't drain off the water very well and it would bead up making it harder to see out.

The diesel boat was just like a 250 ft surface ship, so it acted accordingly.
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marcelo_malara
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Re: Read about or do?

Post by marcelo_malara »

Thanks. When was the last diesel sub decommissioned in the USN?
Bgile
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Re: Read about or do?

Post by Bgile »

marcelo_malara wrote:Thanks. When was the last diesel sub decommissioned in the USN?
Not sure, but I did a quick web search for the Barbel class, which I think were the last ones built, and they seem to have been struck from the navy list in 1990. We have also decommissioned a number of old nuclear submarines since. There has been some discussion of building new diesels or having them built overseas so we can operate against them in exercises. Some of the newer ones are very hard to detect and represent a serious threat.
lwd
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Re: Read about or do?

Post by lwd »

marcelo_malara wrote:Thanks. When was the last diesel sub decommissioned in the USN?
That's a bit of a trick question. From what I recall the US kept one diesel sub in commission at least until fairly recently but it was used for research purposes I think.

It may have been the Albecore decommissioned in 72 but I think there was another one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Albacore_(AGSS-569)

Indeed Tang was decommissioned in 1980
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tang_(SS-563)
along with Wahoo and Gudgeon in 1983
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Gudgeon_(SS-567)

Out of time but I think there's a latter one. Will looks some more.
lwd
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Re: Read about or do?

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