USS Connecticut has undersea collision

Letting things cool down a bit, as some of the posts were getting a little steamy, if you will.

So, I had a little piece of Navy ASW trivia to put out there that many do not know about.

From the archives of the JFK Library:

In October 1962, an American U-2 spy plane secretly photographed nuclear missile sites being built by the Soviet Union on the island of Cuba. President Kennedy did not want the Soviet Union and Cuba to know that he had discovered the missiles. He met in secret with his advisors for several days to discuss the problem.

Turns out the first tip-off was provided by a Navy S2 squadron based out of South Weymouth NAS, MA. They were on a training exercise. One of the ASW sensors that was on board the S2's (they called them Stoof's), was a gadget called "Sniffer". It basically sniffs the air looking for carbon based emissions from Diesel engines at sea.

Back then, there were still a lot of Soviet Diesel submarines so the sensor made much more tactical sense than it would today.
The tactic was to sweep a moving grid against the wind, behind, and hopefully perpendicular to the expected course of surfaced or snorkeling submarines. If the exhaust was picked up, it would be plotted and relocated on the next gridline, gradually leading the aircraft close to the submarine.

Trouble was, it also picked up merchant vessels and fishing trawlers, so the overall usefulness was questionable, but the Navy relied on those types of vessels to train the crews of 4; Pilot, Co-Pilot and SS1,SS2 in the back seats. The S2 was primarily carrier based, but also did missions from Naval Air bases on the coasts.

Anyway, on one of these training missions they picked up an exhaust trail and ran it down to discover a large Soviet merchant ship heading south, with huge tubular cargo on deck, covered with canvas.

Being suspicious finding a Soviet merchant off the East coast heading South, they photographed it and returned to base where the information was given to proper authorities for analysis. The vessel was then tracked at night with radar down the coast by P2 patrol planes which followed stealthily to Cuba....

Only after this event, were U2 spy planes dispatched to photograph the ship docking area and subsequently discovered the building of missile silo's. The rest is history.

a reply to: charlyv

the funny part about the Cuba thing is what we gave the Soviets


most if not all perishing II missiles and other IRBMs

that was top secret until a few years ago.


as far as the sniffer goes back in the first cold war it would have been a MAJOR blow if we could have tainted their fuel supply with some sort of additive to pick them out of the normal traffic

did you ever go down under the ice down south? i hear that is an interesting run with frequent contacts

originally posted by: penroc3
a reply to: charlyv

the funny part about the Cuba thing is what we gave the Soviets


most if not all perishing II missiles and other IRBMs

that was top secret until a few years ago.


as far as the sniffer goes back in the first cold war it would have been a MAJOR blow if we could have tainted their fuel supply with some sort of additive to pick them out of the normal traffic

did you ever go down under the ice down south? i hear that is an interesting run with frequent contacts

Wow, I did not know they gave the Soviets those types of missiles ever! I bet that is a story, and I want to read about it as well.

I like your idea of a fuel additive, that would have been so sneaky and probably very effective until they caught on to it.

I have never been to Antarctica but it would not have been as a submariner, as I was in Naval Aviation, P3C's.
Stories of stuff that has gone on down there are some of the most entertaining military (and non-military) content around. I guess that most of it is highly classified.... with a lot of bull# thrown in , just like everything else

a reply to: charlyv

i spoke wrong, we pulled them back from the USSR's boarders

the reason i asked about down south is Russian missile boats like to hide under the thick ice and are even made for it.

So we are 11 pages in and still don't know what the sub collided with?

a reply to: TDawg61

i dont think the NAVY knows what it hit


we will have to wait until they release a report and pictures

originally posted by: penroc3
a reply to: TDawg61

i dont think the NAVY knows what it hit


we will have to wait until they release a report and pictures

Well what ldo you think Penroc?

a reply to: TDawg61

garbage or some kind of animal

a reply to: penroc3

or

- Collapsed Ice fractured off glacier or iceberg
- The neutral buoyant cargo container mentioned earlier.
- Another sub

I think the Navy knows exactly what it hit by now. I do not think it will ever reveal that to the public because the
fact that the sophisticated sensor systems were unable to detect it in time to avoid the collision, it exposes a weakness in the equipment or how it was monitored.

a reply to: charlyv

exactly that's why i left a wide margin of what it could be.

it could be ANYTHING


do you really think it was an equipment error or was it a personnel error? like someone not doing their job or even a cartography issue

i have a hard time thinking something translucent to sonar and be solid enough to make a sub JUST make it back to the docks.

because even ice would show up seeing as it is more dense.


I have been on some navy boats where people piss in bottles in the CIC and other posts so it wouldnt shock me if someone just wasn't paying close enough attention

i sounds like it came from above it at least how I'm imagining it

Satellite Image of USS Connecticut in Guam

I don't have any expertise in this area, but somehow, doesn't look all that bad...?

a reply to: penroc3

If it was an object that doesn’t make sound, and the sub was doing something other than three knots to nowhere. How would it be picked up by passive sonar, be distinguishable above background noise, and picked up by sonar or any other means in time to prevent a collision.

You have three things. It had to be picked up. It had to be distinguishable from background noise (like picking up a specific whisper in a sea of whispers and above the subs own noise, and picked up in time for the speed traveling. (like it doesn’t do any good to detect a deer only because it jumped 10 feet in front of your car while your doing 70 mph with no warning)

Big difference in not being detected vs being able to detect in time.

I am sure they are things we don’t know about, but passive sonar is not magic either.

Funny nobody has posted it might be an object that was designed to be blind to submarines. Especially if this did happen in waters considered by China to be an exclusion area to US actively. If you want to play the innuendo game, and not state actual facts and science.

a reply to: penroc3

You

I have been on some navy boats where people piss in bottles in the CIC and other posts so it wouldnt shock me if someone just wasn't paying close enough attention

I thought most CIC have more than one sonar station with multiple people at their terminals to prevent such a failure. On the sub I was in, there was always multiple watch standers. With increased watches standers during alerts and battle stations.

How Submarine Sonarmen Tirelessly Hunt For Enemies They Can't Even See

www.thedrive.com...

a reply to: penroc3

Why Multi-Billion Dollar Nuclear Submarines Still Run Into Things Underwater
A veteran submariner explains the challenges crews face navigating complex undersea environments that they can't even see.

BY
TYLER ROGOWAY
OCTOBER 11, 2021

www.thedrive.com...

The only time I ever had an interaction with a sub while I was in the navy was about halfway between Johnson island and Guam'
in the middle of the night, we got pinged by active sonar, just one loud ping that could be heard throughout the mine sweep i was on and all the other sweeps that were with us.

No ships on radar anywhere around us, and we had no sonar anywhere that powerful. We sent a message to Guam about it and never got any answer as to who it was.

I'll stick with a submerged shipping container. A ship off the West Coast of Canada just lost 40 of them. There's got to be hundreds of them out there.

originally posted by: JIMC5499
I'll stick with a submerged shipping container. A ship off the West Coast of Canada just lost 40 of them. There's got to be hundreds of them out there.

pretty good bet. i wonder just how many such shipping containers are floating around out there. and the can and do travel along way. such as that shipping container with a motorcycle in it, made it all the way to Canada, after being washed out by the tsunami that took out Fukushima.

and Literally thousands of containers can fall off single ships at a time. the oceans must be full of them floating around.

a reply to: JIMC5499

think about all the free stuff.....time to invest in a pirate ship to scoop those containers out

a reply to: penroc3

So how would you find them?