"The Five Best Submarines of All Time" Topic
12 Posts
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Tango01 | 18 Jan 2014 10:28 p.m. PST |
"There have been three great submarine campaigns in history, and one prolonged duel. The First and Second Battles of the Atlantic pitted German U-boats against the escorts and aircraft of the United Kingdom and the United States. The Germans very nearly won World War I with the first campaign, and badly drained Allied resources in the second. In the third great campaign, the submarines of the US Navy destroyed virtually the entire commercial fleet of Japan, bringing the Japanese economy to its knees. US subs also devastated the Imperial Japanese Navy, sinking several of Tokyo's most important capital ships. But the period most evocative of our modern sense of submarine warfare was surely the forty year duel between the submarines of the USSR and the boats of the various NATO navies. Over the course of the Cold War, the strategic nature of the submarine changed; it moved from being a cheap, effective killer of capital ships to a capital ship in its own right. This was especially the case with the boomers, submarines that carried enough nuclear weapons to kill millions in a few minutes. As with previous "5 Greatest" lists, the answers depend on the parameters; different sets of metrics will generate different lists. Our metrics concentrate on the strategic utility of specific submarine classes, rather than solely on their technical capabilities
" Full article here. link Do you consider another Honorable Mention? Amicalement Armand |
Charlie 12 | 18 Jan 2014 10:43 p.m. PST |
Oh brother
. Another useless, pointless, idiotic list
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John D Salt | 19 Jan 2014 4:05 a.m. PST |
Yup, another entry for my top ten worst best/worst lists. How he can possibly relegate the Type VII to "honourable mention" is beyond me. All the best, John. |
Legion 4 | 19 Jan 2014 9:29 a.m. PST |
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HistoryPhD | 19 Jan 2014 11:01 a.m. PST |
Wasn't this same sort of nonsense a show on the History Channel? "The Ten Best ______ of all Time" |
Lion in the Stars | 19 Jan 2014 11:50 a.m. PST |
I will withhold judgement on the U31 class from WW1, and I agree with the Gato/Balao class fleet boats and with the Type XXI U-boats, but I really disagree with some of the others. The 688s are great boats, but aren't the 'greatest'. I'd have to say that their predecessors were. The Skipjack class, aka 585s, and the Thresher/Permit class, aka 637s. The Skipjacks were the first submarines built that completely sacrificed surfaced stability for submerged performance. The 'Albacore' hull was such a game-changer that almost all submarines built since have used it or a modification of it: a blimp-shaped hull with a single screw aft of the rudder and stern planes. The 637s pioneered the spherical array sonar, and installed that into a modified Albacore hull. The spherical array required a 'midships' torpedo room, with angled tubes to keep the torpedoes clear of the sonar. The loss of the Thresher also created the SubSafe program, which has not seen the loss of ANY boat built under it. (The Scorpion, lost in 1968, had not yet received her SubSafe refit) How tough is SubSafe? The USS San Francisco slammed into a seamount at maximum speed and did not have a single hull leak. The fear was that since her forward ballast tanks were smashed, her already poor surfaced seakeeping would result in a catastrophic loss of the entire ship. The 688s are actually a step backwards from the 637s, since the 688s have a straight hull section. It does give the 688s more room internally, however, and internal space is always at a premium in a submarine. And I have to question the inclusion of the Boomers, even though my service was all on Ohio-class. The George Washington herself was quite literally a Skipjack-class sub cut in half with a 130ft long missile compartment inserted between the halves. The only real advance of the Polaris submarines was their ability to launch while submerged. |
Spartan | 19 Jan 2014 3:44 p.m. PST |
The Yellow Submarine was the best. |
carne68 | 19 Jan 2014 4:56 p.m. PST |
The Skipjack class, aka 585s, and the Thresher/Permit class, aka 637s. Come on dude. Thresher/Permits were the 594 class (Thresher was 593) 637's were Sturgeons. carne68 former skimmer |
OSchmidt | 20 Jan 2014 1:47 p.m. PST |
Oh come on! Be a little kind to Armand! If we're going to eliminate all the useless pointless lists and posts, we'd have almost nothing on here. I don't know enough about submarines to even participate and I will limit my comments only to criticizing the addition of the Cold War rivalry. Submarines from that area are hard to evaluate as most of them never fired a shot in anger. Though I would advance one submarine. The British "Conqueror" that sank the Argentinian "Belgrano " (former USS Cruiser Phoenix) in the Argentinian war. I think that's the largest thing sent to the bottom by a sub since WWII. Though-- I expect that considering the shape the poor thing was in, it was kind of a mercy killing. |
Lion in the Stars | 20 Jan 2014 2:47 p.m. PST |
@Carne: oops. Happens every once in a while. Too many liberty ports spent trying to forget too many ty deployments! @Otto: I think you're right about the Belgrano being the largest submarine-sunk ship, even including SINKEX. They ended up scuttling the America, after blasting the crap out of her in weapons tests. Including a couple Mk48 torpedoes under the keel! |
Murvihill | 21 Jan 2014 8:23 a.m. PST |
Trying to compare equipment from different timeframes means comparing contemporaries. Thus, the Nautilus should be on list because compared to its contemporaries it was many times more capable (both in submerged time and operational range). Similarly, the first successful operational submarine should be on there (Holland?) because again, there wasn't anything to compare it to. It's easy to pick out the better ones that were built based on the lessons learned from the first, but the submarines that changed the equation always seemed to me to be the best pick. |
Lion in the Stars | 21 Jan 2014 10:48 a.m. PST |
@Murvihill: The original article was referring to entire classes of subs. If we're going to talk individual ships, then the Hunley, Holland, Nautilus, Albacore, and George Washington are my top 5, with SSN671 Narwhal (a whole slew of quieting tricks that has never been repeated), SSGN587 Halibut (for secret-squirrel jobs), SSN683 Parche (more secret-squirrel jobs), and SSN23 Jimmy Carter (even more secret-squirrel jobs) as runners up. |
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