[djmcmath]

From the perspective of an actual sub-driver, the story they present is fantastically concocted. In recent years, the Russkies have been building some pretty mediocre boats. Front line reports indicate that figuring out exactly where they are from a great distance is pretty straighforward. Collisions are thus ... unlikely, to say the least -- there's no reason to get anywhere near them.

Further, it is not standard practice to assign two boats into the same water -- confusion about who's who abounds in situations like that, and it's a recipe for disaster. We have pretty strict rules about going into the same water as another boat has been assigned. So it's unlikely that the Toledo and the Memphis were both on the same job -- that would just be silly.

Then this mess about how the Toledo _hit_ the Kursk, then fired a torpedo? Come on, are you serious? There are interlocks integral to the torpedos to keep them from doing things like that! Not that the weapons would have any value after a front end collision with a Russkie, but even if the front end survived enough to use, there are all kinds of interlocks that would prevent a submarine from shooting at something they just ran into. The alternate version, that the Toledo impacted, then ran away while the Memphis "covered her retreat" is just absurd -- no CO in his right mind would fire a weapon into a mess like that. The risk of hitting your own people is just too great.

From the sub-driver perspective, the whole story just seems stupid. I mean, I've downed my glass of Kool-Aid, and I have my tinfoil hat tuned correctly, but I'm just not getting this one at all. Sorry.


Dan



(BTW -- the only piece of evidence suggesting an external attack is the shape of the explosion. Consider a hot-running weapon -- a fish that somehow over-rides engineered safeguards to prevent it from running in the tube. Such a weapon would be immediately discharged overboard, as there are a number of really interesting ways that a hot-running weapon could kill us all. Consider such a weapon that was not discharged until relatively late in the running sequence, and which detonated shortly after leaving the submarine. Such a weapon would leave exactly the kinds of explosion hole witnessed. Add to this theory the fact that they were supposed to be out testing a new version of weapon, and it suddenly has a much simpler credibility than the ridiculous pack of nonsense linked above.)