Argentinian Submarine Lost? News?

[Bob DBF]

Besides, most torpedo tubes consume air during operation and that would be the most valuable commodity onboard.

If you had not already used the HP air to attempt to surface, you could use it to breathe but any venting inboard would increase pressure in the hull, with no way of decreasing it, putting you in a bad spot for rescue since, at that point, you may need decompression. The procedure would be use an O2 bleed and CO2 scrubber and/or absorbent to maintain the atmosphere only raising the pressure slightly. That's why the mention of how much O2 the boat had on board is so important.

The limit of O2 to last depends on how it is used. If it is 10 days, under normal conditions, that could be lengthened by a slower bleed if you had the ability to scrub the CO2 and put up with labored breathing and a nasty headache. The lack of ability to scrub CO2 is the limiting factor.

HP air would be held to attempt a surface or escape if no help had come in time. The problem with escape is that you should have help at the surface. In WWII the USS Tang was sunk in 180' of water and in the forward torpedo room thirteen men escaped from the sub, but only eight made it to the surface. Of these, five were able to swim until rescued, and this was in warm water. This was the only documented escape by buoyant ascent from a sunken sub.



Bob

 

[Akimbo]

If you had not already used the HP air to attempt to surface, you could use it to breathe but any venting inboard would increase pressure in the hull, with no way of decreasing it, putting you in a bad spot for rescue since, at that point, you may need decompression.

True, but it has last-resort potential. The DSRVs could support some overpressure in the boat (I don't remember the specs). NEDU (US Navy Experimental Diving Unit) did a lot of work on accelerated decompression for rescued boat sailors. Somehow hazardous duty pay and better chow doesn't really cut it when the poo hit the fan.

 

[Bob DBF]

The problem with bleeding air is you need more than with O2 and can't bleed it off until you are at the same pressure as depth. That can be a substantial delta P.

I don't think any of us got into subs for the hazardous duty pay, but we did thank Teddy Roosevelt for that tip of the hat. And don't get me wrong, I enjoyed being a raghat with a lot of cash in my pocket.

Let's face it, any job in the fleet can get real dangerous when it hits the fan, however deliberately sinking the ship before having a problem leaves submariners at a slight disadvantage.



Bob

 

[Akimbo]

I don't think any of us got into subs for the hazardous duty pay...

Agreed. Better chow is another matter entirely.

Honestly, the DSRV program probably had more value to the Navy as a way of hiding funds used in the cable tapping project and as a way to hide the saturation system piggybacked to the boats. I was never assigned to the DSRVs but had friends that were. Nobody could understand why all their parts were 10-20x more expensive than catalog prices. The Mark II Deep dive system I was on had similar issues.

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage

 

[Bob DBF]

Anything around nuke subs and underwater cost a lot and who was going to call Rickover and complain, since half the stuff was so secret it couldn't be talked about. We had a few projects on my boat that were interesting.

There was a lot of finger pointing about people talking out of school when Blind Mans Bluff came out. And nothing could be said to confirm or deny so it all settled out, just don't talk around Sontag.

Here are a couple of others to look at.

Dark Waters by Lee Vyborny and Don Davis about NR1.

The Silent War by John Craven about the Cold War under the sea.

On the "fiction" side

Spy Sub by Roger C Dunham about a fictionalized USS Halibut.

Blow Negative by Edward Stephens a view of subs change from diesel to nuke with satire at Rickover.



Bob

 

[jfe]

Pitty about the political infights when lives are at stake. Hope these guys will be recovered alive.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Last I heard the search had moved to a slightly different area based on some new information. I didn't catch all the details. Anybody?

 

[Akimbo]

Pitty about the political infights when lives are at stake. Hope these guys will be recovered alive.

Sad, but it happens in every submarine loss I have studied. I found the Russian response to the Kursk disaster especially disturbing. Unfortunately concerns over state secrets and careers means more to some people than lives of citizens who volunteered for dangerous duty serving their country.

 

[Steve_C]

Sad, but it happens in every submarine loss I have studied. I found the Russian response to the Kursk disaster especially disturbing. Unfortunately concerns over state secrets and careers means more to some people than lives of citizens who volunteered for dangerous duty serving their country.

Unfortunately, in general, a trait found across all political and economic systems, corporate and governmental.

 

[Bob DBF]

From CNN this morning.

(CNN)A noise detected near the last known location of a missing Argentine submarine on the day it vanished was consistent with an explosion, the Argentine Navy said Thursday.

"An anomalous, singular, short, violent and non-nuclear event, consistent with an explosion, was registered," navy spokesman Enrique Balbi told a news conference in Buenos Aires.
A dozen nations have been searching by air and sea for the ARA San Juan, which has 44 crew aboard and was last contacted off the coast of Argentina on November 15.
The latest update comes as the clock runs down on the chances of finding the vessel before its air supply runs out.


The San Juan has enough air to last only seven to 10 days if it has remained fully immersed since that time, experts say. If the submarine has surfaced or "snorkeled" -- that is, raised a tube to the surface to refresh the vessel's air -- since then, the crew may have bought more time.
Anxious families have been waiting at Argentina's Mar del Plata navy base, to which the submarine was heading when it vanished, for news of their loved ones. Meanwhile, ships and aircraft are scouring a swath of the South Atlantic for the missing vessel.

A ship heads out to join the search for the missing submarine on Monday.
Balbi said Wednesday that the Navy had just begun analyzing a new noise that was detected on the day the sub vanished.
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, based in Vienna, Austria, said Thursday that its monitoring systems had detected the noise referred to by the Argentine Navy.
On November 15, it said, "two CTBTO hydroacoustic stations detected an unusual signal in the vicinity of the last known position of missing Argentine submarine ARA San Juan."
The sound of "an underwater impulsive event" was detected at 1:51 p.m. GMT (10:51 a.m. local time) by its underwater microphones, it said. The organization has 11 hydroacoustic stations positioned around the world listening for signs of nuclear explosions.
"Details and data are being made available to the Argentinian Authorities to support the search operations that are underway,"

Not good news as this was the same type of data that found the USS Scorpion. This could be a battery explosion which, since she has not been found on the surface, would leave the boat on the bottom in bad shape, or too deep and lost.


Bob