[OT] Navy releases photos of U.S.S. San Francisco

OM wrote:

...On a side note, the Navy Department has officially confirmed that
the mountain the sub hit was *not* on any nav charts whatsoever, and
that the sub's navigation team did have the latest updated charts.


A supplemental factoid that appears in today's NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/28/na...submarine.html

Navy Releases Photos of Crash Damage to Nuclear Submarine
The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER DREW
Published: January 28, 2005

[SNIP!]

Also yesterday, Kent D. Lee, the chief executive of East View
Cartographic Inc., a map company based in Minneapolis, said Russian
Navy charts indicate more hazards in that part of the ocean than were
on the American charts, though they also fail to show the undersea
mountain.

Mr. Lee said the Russian charts have been available for five years. He
said one of the Russian charts noted that the area where the crash
occurred had been "insufficiently surveyed." It also warned:
"Cautionary measures should be taken when sailing."

Reed Snellenberger wrote:



Question for anyone who knows... there is what looks like a "hump"
right where the lubber lines are located... is that normal? I've
never seen a picture of a sub from this angle -- usually it's from
below (if under construction) or this area's covered by the bow wave
when they're underway. I imagine that the bulge here could act sort
of like a regular ship's breakwater when traveling on the surface...
if the bulge wasn't there before the collision, then I'm even more
amazed they made it to the surface.


I thought it was a bulge also; I think what it is is that the walkway
that is on top of the hull narrows at that point, and the "bulge' is an
optical illusion caused by that narrowing.



Anyone think they'll salvage her, or is this going to be an ex-submarine?


She's one of the older ones (diving planes on sail instead of bow, no
cruise missile vertical launch tubes) so she could probably be
decommissioned without losing too much capability. I imagine it depends
on whether they think the damage is limited to the bow sonar area, or if
the impact damaged the pressure hull itself- and the cost of repairing
the damage. We've got the new Virginia class subs coming along, so she
might be considered not worth repairing, especially given the fact of
the dwindling Russian submarine fleet that the Los Angeles class was
designed to counter.

Pat

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...


Reed Snellenberger wrote:



Question for anyone who knows... there is what looks like a "hump"
right where the lubber lines are located... is that normal? I've
never seen a picture of a sub from this angle -- usually it's from
below (if under construction) or this area's covered by the bow wave
when they're underway. I imagine that the bulge here could act sort
of like a regular ship's breakwater when traveling on the surface...
if the bulge wasn't there before the collision, then I'm even more
amazed they made it to the surface.


I thought it was a bulge also; I think what it is is that the walkway
that is on top of the hull narrows at that point, and the "bulge' is an
optical illusion caused by that narrowing.


Compare this pic of her in drydock undamaged
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0871104.jpg

I'd say that's a bump, and she's probably an ex-submarine.
-
Jim

James Nowotarski wrote:



Compare this pic of her in drydock undamaged
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0871104.jpg

I'd say that's a bump, and she's probably an ex-submarine.



If it did actually distort the pressure hull, then I'd say you'd never
want her to go to sea again, that's just asking for it, especially at
any great diving depth. But I can't picture the hull distorting that
much without ripping open; and if it had ripped open, that would have
been it for the sub in a matter of seconds.

Pat

"Herb Schaltegger" wrote in message
...
Holy crap!

That sums it up well. The crew must've done a hell of a job (or were lucky)
to avoid total loss.

Tim K. wrote:

"Herb Schaltegger" wrote in message
...


Holy crap!



That sums it up well. The crew must've done a hell of a job (or were lucky)
to avoid total loss.




Again though remember- the front fifty feet of the sub doesn't have any
crew in it, it's set aside for the submarine's sonar gear arrays
(including a whopping big sonar sphere on a stalk coming out of the
front of the pressure hull), so even getting this area smashed flat
won't necessarily compromise the integrity of the pressure hull where
the crew are.
Here's a cutaway of a Los Angeles class boat (later version with the bow
diving planes and vertical missile launch tubes) in a unexpected
language: http://submarine.narod.ru/LA2.gif

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:


James Nowotarski wrote:



Compare this pic of her in drydock undamaged
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0871104.jpg

I'd say that's a bump, and she's probably an ex-submarine.



If it did actually distort the pressure hull, then I'd say you'd never
want her to go to sea again, that's just asking for it, especially at
any great diving depth. But I can't picture the hull distorting that
much without ripping open; and if it had ripped open, that would have
been it for the sub in a matter of seconds.

Pat

Like most pictures of subs in drydock that I've seen, it's taken from
below so that you can't see the upper part of the hull very well. If
you look at the hi-res version of the first San Francisco picture (click
the link at the right), you can see that one of the straight boards at
the edge of the walkway can't follow the curvature -- it's not just an
optical illusion caused by a narrowing of the walkway.

It seems too smoothly curved to be the result of the collision, which is
why my first thought was that it was there to keep the bow waves from
going all the way to the sail when it's running on the surface. Since
we've got some ex-submariner contributors I thought one of them might
know for sure.

Since they've been decommissioning some of the older Los Angeles class
boats anyway, I suspect it might make more sense to decommission her in
place of one of the other ones. I sure wouldn't want to put any trust
in that pressure hull again -- it's suffered enough.

--
Reed Snellenberger
GPG KeyID: 5A978843
rsnellenberger-at-houston.rr.com

Pat Flannery wrote:


If it did actually distort the pressure hull, then I'd say you'd never
want her to go to sea again, that's just asking for it, especially at
any great diving depth. But I can't picture the hull distorting that
much without ripping open; and if it had ripped open, that would have
been it for the sub in a matter of seconds.


Here's another photo of the damage from further down:
http://navysite.de/ssn/images/ssn711acc2.jpg
On this one no obvious bump is visible...but boy, that must have been
something to experience! The website says they were about 500 feet down
when they hit it: http://navysite.de/ssn/ssn711.htm

Pat

Reed Snellenberger wrote:


Like most pictures of subs in drydock that I've seen, it's taken from
below so that you can't see the upper part of the hull very well. If
you look at the hi-res version of the first San Francisco picture
(click the link at the right), you can see that one of the straight
boards at the edge of the walkway can't follow the curvature -- it's
not just an optical illusion caused by a narrowing of the walkway.


Yeah, I just stumbled on that same one- the front of the pressure hull
is in the shape of a truncated cone with the sonar sphere mounted on a
stalk coming out of its end*, it might have buckled the skin of the hull
around the base of the cone.
The support stalk with the sonar sphere on the end was very long on the
Los Angeles class (about 25-30 feet) compared to earlier subs to leave
space on either side of it to install the vertical launch tubes for the
Tomahawk cruise missiles at a later date on the improved design, and
retrofit them to the earlier boats if desired- as well as to better
insulate the bow array from internal ship noise. You can always tell a
Los Angeles class sub that doesn't have the launch tubes because it
rides bow high in the water when at rest; here's a shot of the San
Francisco showing the bow-high attitude: http://navysite.de/ssn/Image929.jpg
In this case that long standoff between the bow and the internal
pressure hull can probably be thanked for having saved the crew's lives,
as flooding would be almost instantaneous at 500 feet down if the
pressure hull were compromised.
This damage still looks odd to me; more like I'd expect from hitting the
bottom or skimming the side of an iceberg rather than the side of a
mountain....If it's a mountain, it's a very steep one.


It seems too smoothly curved to be the result of the collision, which
is why my first thought was that it was there to keep the bow waves
from going all the way to the sail when it's running on the surface.
Since we've got some ex-submariner contributors I thought one of them
might know for sure.


It's supposed to be smooth until it hits the inward curve of the bow ogive.



Since they've been decommissioning some of the older Los Angeles class
boats anyway, I suspect it might make more sense to decommission her
in place of one of the other ones. I sure wouldn't want to put any
trust in that pressure hull again -- it's suffered enough.


She appears to have been slated to be decommissioned in the next few
years according to this, and the retirement times shown for the boats
made around the same time she was:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/ssn-688.htm

*Cutaway drawing on page 168 of "U.S. Submarines Since 1945" (Norman
Friedman, U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1994, ISBN 1-55750-260-9)

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:

Here's a uncollaborated (but it sounds like the straight poop to me)
first hand account of the collision:
http://www.runryder.com/helicopter/t152375p1/
The part where he's talking about "at the highest speed we can go at
about 500 feet below the surface" would be around 30 knots BTW.
The part about the damaged ballast tanks is particularly interesting.

Pat