Posted on 06/12/2009 5:24:36 PM PDT by james500
Since it was obviously NOT a surface-search nor an air-search radar, it must have been a sub-surface search radar...
I hope they all celebrated at Olongapo city afterwards !
Yeah, I can buy that. The towed array plus cable is well over 1000’ long and doesn’t float. It would be almost impossible to detect, much less hit on purpose.
You are saying the USN Destroyer knew a sub was tailing it, and took no action? I find that hard to believe. They just left there very expensive SONAR array in the sub's path to be hit? I find that impossible to believe. The Chicom's have some very quiet electric subs. My take the the Destroyer had no idea the sub was there. Very bad news for US Naval ships. Very bad.
The towed arrays depth is determined by the speed of the destroyer? If so, what depth was the Chinese sub?
I just wonder if they hear or saw the sub on their narrow band display before it hit. STS/2 SS
This is not the case. SONAR (SOund Navigation And Ranging) uses sound waves.
I think you are confusing SODAR with RADAR.
I'm sure that they did, but absent a shooting war, there are limits to what can be done to dissuade them from getting closer than you'd like.
Likely the McCain tried to manuever their array away from the ChiCom sub, but the sub zigged when it should have zagged, so to speak.
However, I do wonder how you say, "Bring me clean underwear" in Mandarin? I'll bet the sonar operator listening to recordings of the array's "take" knows. :)
I caught that too, but it's been changed at the link from "radar" to "device".
Incidently, I used to work in the factory where the -147 is/was built. I worked different radar programs though, although one demo/test program I worked on utilized components from the -147 and/or it's relatives used in the P-3 and S-3. That was the only radar program among the many I worked on in 20+ years with that company where I got to go on the flight tests.
There are radars that are much lower than UHF. Most Over The Horizon (OTH) radars are HF.
If you've ever listened to the "Russian Woodpecker" on the HF ham bands, you've heard one (or more) of them.
Nope, the "S" in "SONAR" stands for "sound", a mechanical vibration of the medium, in this case sea water. Electromagentic waves have no medium. They are self propagating and sustaining.
See Maxwell's equations.
Gauss's Law
Gauss's Law for Magnetic fields
Faraday's law
Ampere's Law.
Sound waves are basically compression/longitudinal waves, but EM waves are basically transverse waves. That is, in sound waves the particles of the medium oscillate parallel to the propagation direction. EM waves *generally) have the EM fields perpendicular to the direction of propagation. (For "free space propagation at least).
No...the destroyers don’t just trail those things along for no reason (I am a brown shoe, so any of you SW types out there who know ASW better than I do can comment on it)
They have a cable that is several miles long, it is maybe an inch in diameter, and the array at the end is VERY expensive. Knowing how those things are, they don’t just put them in the water for a swim unless they were doing an exercise, and to have it just randomly hit a Chinese sub...well, the odds would be very long indeed.
My understanding of the Chinese sub fleet is that the numbers of platforms are limited, equipment is okay, not great, and the crews haven’t spent a lot of time at sea. I read that their entire fleet did twelve patrols in 2008, which is a lot more than any previous year. Last I heard, they did six in one year, and had a few years they only did one or two.
My guess is that our military is keeping an eye on the Chinese now the way we did with the Soviets. We pick them up on satellite as they leave port, track them with hydrophones as far as we can, then they are handed off to ASW planes and surface ships that keep tabs on them. This is just a guess.
My take on it is that the folks aboard the USS McCain knew that sub was **somewhere** out there, was trying to pin it down and ended up dragging their array right across it.
You are correct in that a decent modern diesel electric boat is a very significant threat indeed. But my guess is that lacking blue water capability, replenishment vessels and such is that this was not the case. In the absence of those things, the diesel subs are better suited to littoral roles. I’ll bet it was one of their nuclear subs.
Again, my knowledge of this is from talking to S3 guys when I was in and what I have read, all unclassified stuff which has been worked into biographies and novels. Any ASW folks on this thread?
Not anymore. George H.W.Bush was present on January 10, 2009, at the commissioning of the carrier named after him. He also was there for the first catapult test. He signaled for the "cat shot" to be fired. He was also there for the commissioning.
The sponsor is his daughter, Doro Bush Koch. One of his other kids seems to have been there as well.
Bush also was aboard during qualifications to operate aircraft just a few weeks ago, May 26-27.
This last week, George H.W. made another tandem parachute jump with the Army's Golden Knights, so he is still very much alive.
He'd jumped tandem for his 80th birthday, five years ago, and was met on the ground by Michael Gorbachev, who gave him flowers and bottle of vodka. :) That was planned as a solo jump, as the one on his 75th birthday in 99 had been. Actually in '04 he jumped twice, both tandem. That second '04 jump earned him paratrooper wings, with combat star, since his very first jump had been under combat conditions, when his Avenger torpedo bomber, was shot down in the Pacific during WW-II. He also jumped in November 2007, after hip replacement surgery.
His grandfather sounded like a great guy. He was human and made mistakes, no doubt, particularly his conduct in Typhoon Cobra, but his men apparently thought very highly of him.
Besides that, he was a very colorful guy...someone who would be unwelcome in todays military (more’s the pity) He drank hard liquor to excess, smoked his home rolled cigarettes, swore like a swabbie and was extremely unconventional in his attire and actually rather sloppy. Halsey, who adored him and was an occasional drinking buddy, was appalled when McCain spent time with him on the USS New Jersey. Halsey was extremely fastidious in his dress and living space. Everything was shipshape. McCain would walk around in slippers and a bathrobe, wearing his unique hat, rolling his cigarettes and dropping tobacco and ashes all over the place. Halsey assigned a sailor to spend his days simply following McCain around with a broom and dustpan!
My favorite anecdote about him: He suffered from chronic ulcers (due likely to his drinking and smoking) and his wife was constantly trying to get him to go see a doctor. Once, a friend of hers told her about a doctor who had developed a new treatment, and when she suggested this to him, he slammed his fist on the table and raged: “Not one penny for doctors! I am spending all my money on riotous living!”
Hehe...he meant it! After spending all that time overseas during the war and away from his family, he ended up being the scapegoat for the Typhoon Cobra debacle. The Navy meant to rake him over the coals about it, so Halsey insisted he stick around for the Japanese surrender. Immediately afterward, he got on a plane, got back to the states. On the day he arrived, they held a big welcome home party for him that night and he dropped dead.
I have always thought that for men like him and Patton, it was probably better that way.
For all his faults as a conservative, I appreciate his service to his country. At least he served, which is more than can be said for a lot of the no loads occupying government at high levels these days.
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