Posted on 02/16/2009 8:11:43 AM PST by Sub-Driver
French sub unaware it rammed Royal Navy vessel in mid-Atlantic nuclear crash
Charles Bremner in Paris, and David Brown
A French submarine was unaware it had rammed and damaged a British nuclear sub in a mid-Atlantic collision until it was informed by the Royal Navy.
HMS Vanguard and the French submarine Le Triomphant were both carrying nuclear ballistic warheads when they crashed in the Atlantic earlier this month.
Both navies said today that the collision had been unavoidable because the vessels were “running silently” to avoid detection by sonar.
Official inquiries have started in Britain and France into the incident which has raised concerns about the sharing of information between the allied navies.
The First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, said the incident happened at low speed and none of the 250 crew on board the submarines were injured.
“Both submarines remained safe and no injuries occurred,” he said. We can confirm that the capability remained unaffected and there has been no compromise to nuclear safety.”
The French Navy claimed earlier this month that Le Triomphant’s bow sonar dome was probably damaged in a collision with a submerged shipping container while returning from patrol.
It only discovered it had hit British submarine after one of their regular exchanges of information with the Royal Navy.
HMS Vanguard returned its base in Faslane, western Scotland, on Saturday with dents and scrapes on its hull following the collision reported to have occurred on February 3 or 4.
Le Triomphant took three days to limp home to port in Brest, northwest France, with extensive damage to its Thales DMUX 80 sonar.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
...must be close to the odds of two 747's colliding on the ground.
The captain was a little old lady who spent the entire cruise with her left turn signal on.
More like the odds of two 747's colliding and not knowing it happened.
Pure nonsense.
Captain Clouseau, “ Did you feel a Boomp” You mean a bump? “Oui a Boomp”
It tells you there must be finite areas where the missles reach intended tarets and you can hide.
The Captain was probably talking on his cellphone.
. . . LOL . . .
and cursing a blue streak about the romance novel she was reading?
From this pix:
It looks like the sonar dome... 
is in the nose.
Gadzooks! Yes, yes, yes, I know it is the French Frigging Navy, but how could they... 
not know?
Go to http://pagesperso-orange.fr/sous-marin.france/Type%20snle-ng%20triomphant%20color.jpg is red x above
searching quietly for underwater truffles?
Trying to find where they’d stashed those cases of rare wine?
As we used to say at SUBLANT, “Ah, the old ‘I-must-have-hit-a-submerged-shipping-container’ excuse.”
I’d hate to have to calculate those odds. Numbers of subs, go and no go areas in the seas, depths (maximum depth unknown) and probably a whole other list of variables i can’t think of.
I do think we can rule out everyplace above sea level.
Once upon a time when I was a crewmember of a US Navy destroyer, the only submarine I specifically remember that my ship “sank” in a war game was a French one.
So don’t let the Brits and French have subs, and don’t let the Dutch and Americans have 747s. Problem solved.
Read the article. The French were well aware that they had git something. They just didn't know what. The only way that you would know is if you heard it before or after the crash. As its sonar dome was damaged, that leaves only the before part.
A better question would perhaps be to ask how the British knew what they hit, but didn't avoid it.
Three words.
Hit and run.
It was the french who did the hitting, not the british.
Subs play cat and mouse all the time. The surprise here is that two boomers (SSBN) did it. Usually, attack boats (SSN) do it.
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