The Kursk was an SSGN - designed to take out entire CVBGs, then POQ back to the HQ.

Dan, good explanation. I got pretty much the same story from my brother, who spent six years in the Navy. He was assigned to the USS Pollack, a Permit (formerly Thresher) class boat on the WESTPAC tour. He saw this story and called b.s. immediately as well.

I am still scratching my head about a weapon that melts through "sheet steel due to a mechanism at its tip which combusts copper" What copper? Are they presumably talking about a shaped charge in the Mk48 which uses a copper-based compound to generate the heat?
Given the energy transferrance of water at any appreciable depth, there's not much need to get fancy.
I read an interesting book a few months back, about the Soviet/Russian Submarine Navy. Most of the material was developed through interviews with retired Russian Admirals. The last couple of chapters delt with the Kursk disaster. Aged weapons (of an unstable nature) improper maintenance procedures and weapons system people who were not up to speed were enough.
An awful waste of the lives of 118 men.
Les

Thought the MK48 used a proximity detonator?
Copper? Well, in the olden days they would sometimes plate the hull of wodden ships with copper plate to discourage marine organism growth, like copper based bottom paint today. I'm pretty sure (Dan?) that sub hulls, even the older ones, are coated with an accoustic deadening-type material....
Could be wrong....

In the gool ol' days, US Navy weapons used a manual trigger requiring impact with a ship to detonate. Triggers would fail quite often, which led to the requirement to fire several fish. Ships would come back into port, empty, having fired one or two functional weapons. Very frustrating. These days it's only a little fancier. There's some magnetics, and some acoustics, and some zen-like force-field stuff that nostatic is more qualified to explain than I am.

Rubber coating -- Tom Clancy tells some funny stories about how US subs are coated in a neat uniform rubber sheet to reflect less active sonar. He talks about how the Russkies attempted to do the same, but used tiles instead, and had funny problems with tiles coming loose and banging on the hull for the entire drive home. Imagine the amount of noise that you'd make, pounding on the hull with a 200lb slab of rubber.

Unfortunately, Dan, our boats are covered in tiles, not a uniform sheet.

I do like the "expert's" description of a Mark 48. Totally off the mark, as you mentioned in a previous post.

I haven't revealed this info before, but I am a dolphin wearer. Left active duty several years ago, but still playing in the reserves.

Moral of the story folks: don't believe the French (or a Briton that has been subverted by the French). You want to know, ask the guys on this board who've been there, done that and can't really ever talk about exactly what it is they did, or where they did it.

The story linked in the beginning of this thread is a complete crock of *****.

FWIW, I was both a Weapons Officer (aka Combat Systems Officer) on a Narwhal -class sub, and a Navigator/Operations Officer on an improved Los Angeles class boar (similar to the Toledo), so I know a little bit about Mark 48s and Mark 48 ADCAPs, as well as submarine operations.

OK, Tricky D, I'll put the question to you.
Mk 48 ADvanced CAPability, roughly 3400 lbs, 650 lb of stuff that goes "BANG" in the bad end. Is it a shaped charge? Tanks use two kinds of round to penetrate armor, Fin-stabilized discarded Sabot, (Not practical underwater, unless you use a rocket to boost the speed in the final seconds) and shaped charges, referred to as High Explosive Anti Tank. Seems to me to be a way to get a bang for your buck. As I said above, I would think, because of the high level of energy transferrence under water, this would be overkill. On the other hand, if you've only got one shot (sometimes) better make it a good one.
Les

No, it is not a shaped charge.

There are some torpedoes in the world which use a sabot-type arrangement, but the Mark 48 (and derivatives, like ADCAP) do not.

I do recall at some point in my past learning about HEAT and APDS rounds. Very interesting stuff, especially the defenses designed to defeat the HEAT round.

I thought most torpedoes were fused for proximity detonation, as they're likely to be right up close behind a fleeing sub's prop - the idea being that it pops the shaft seals, floods the engine room and sends the sub to the bottom.

Melting through the hull? Someone's been watching too much SeaQuest DSV!

Note I said "Tom Clancy tells stories," not "this is truth." ;) I was fairly precise, if dodgy, in my selection of words there. :)

Rock on. I did my midshipman cruise on the Narwhal (which could be technically argued was the only Narwhal-class boat). Which boat was that? I'm liable to come back as either a NAV or a WEPS -- how did you like your department head time?

Dan,

Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky. I flat out missed the "Tom Clancy" part.

When did you do your Middie cruise? I was on her from 98-99 for her last deployment and beginning of decom. And yes, Narwhal was 1 of a kind.

Being a DH was more interesting, but the hours really started sucking. Several of the JOs decided to get out after seeing the kind of hours we worked. At the time, there was a shortage of DHs, so the tours were getting longer.

And here's a pic I took on deployment:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1115908546.jpg

Tricksy JO's, tricksy! We knew they were up to no good, gollum, gollum!

I didn't really realize until power school how unique that boat was. Wasted my whole time on the middie cruise listening to sea stories in maneuvering. Let me see here, I was a second class that summer, so that would have been summer of '97. The only guy I really remember was a tall skinny JO from the midwest who had just reported; he might have still been there when you arrived. ... and one of my NAVs, Gustavo Guttierrez, iirc, was a JO on the Narwhal as well, though I don't remember when he was there.

I do recall seeing my Navigator reviewing charts until 2300 pretty routinely. And I just had an engineer do a 52 month DH tour. Ouch. Most of our JO's bailed out because of time in the shipyard. There's nothing to demotivate a young JO like spending a few months in the drydock learning PSNS-style work control processes.

Excellent. This may sound sick, but I am looking forward to going back. It'll be good to earn a paycheck again. This shore tour thing is sucking the life out of me.

Tall, skinny - might have been Ken Stuber. Only other really tall JO was Clay Hicks. Of course, the NAV, Randy Lewis, was pretty tall too.

I looked forward to going back too. And I'm glad I did, because I got to see the SSN side (was on the 730 as a JO) and do some pretty cool stuff.

But in the end, my family and wife's career were more important to me, so I left.

What are you doing for shore duty?

Clay Hicks -- that's the guy. I remember he showed us letters from the headhunters, and how he already knew he was planning on getting out. Just out of curiosity, did he stay? The name Stuber rings a bell, too, but I can't place him.

JO tour on the HMJ? I was on the Penn; my room-mate did his quals on the HMJ while the Nevada was in the yards a couple years back. Small world.

My shore tour is as the XO of the Transient Personnel Unit at Puget Sound. The detailer asked if I wanted the job, and I told him I had no idea what a TPU did, but XO means my own parking spot and an office, so I took it. :) Nutty. Right now I'm single, and I'll probably stick around as long as I continue to be single. When I get a wife (if I get a wife), I may follow in your footsteps -- I've seen a lot of guys get out for their families.

Funny, because Clay stayed in at least for his shore tour, and was considering going Intel. His girlfriend at the time (now wife) has family here in Tucson (as do I, which is one of the reasons we returned) so it is indeed a very small world. I've lost touch since then, unfortunately.

TPU? Put a stick in my eye. No wonder you're not having fun. I can definitely understand having your own space, though. It's funny how the little things can have such great influence, no?

UPDATE 2025

Interesting read.

Kursk submarine disaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kursk_submarine_disaster

The blaming of the media for the incident and injecting an outspoken grieving mother with sedatives were just as interesting as the technical parts of the incident in my opinion.

Spoiler, a faulty 10 year old dummy torpedo and probable improper procedure did them in.

EDIT:

Article from ten years ago with more detailed insights.

Russia’s Kursk sub disaster anniversary highlights 15 years of polished deception
Publish date: August 12, 2015
Written by: Charles Digges
https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2015-08-russias-kursk-sub-disaster-anniversary-highlights-15-years-of-polished-deception