"French Submarine Sinks A US Aircraft Carrier Group ..." Topic

…During War Games Off Florida.

"If you thought aircraft carriers were invincible you were wrong.

On Mar. 4, the French Ministry of Defense released some interesting details, about the activity conducted by one of its nuclear-powered attack submarine (SNA) in the waters of the North Atlantic Ocean.

According to French MoD website (that is no longer online, even if you can still find a cached version of the article titled "Le SNA Saphir en entraînement avec l'US Navy au large de la Floride"), the Saphir submarine has recently taken part in a major exercise with the U.S. Navy off Florida…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

If you thought aircraft carriers were invincible you were wrong.

Someone has ever thought that? Huh.

I'm guessing if they did think they were invincible, they must not have heard about the russian subs that would sneak under carriers back in the 80's and 90's. I recall a couple collision back in the day.

How unsporting of them.

And this, after I read today that we're letting their jets takeoff and land on our aircraft carriers. Hope they don't score an own goal, and/or get waived off repeatedly on future landing attempts, and have to land their nice, pretty planes in the sea. That would be embarrassing too.

;-)

[heavy sarcasm intended, in case you couldn't tell]

To be fair its a fairly regular occurrence. The are quite a few periscope phots of US and other countries HVUs on the net that were taken by SSKs and SSNs that had penetrated the screen and "sunk" the subject in exercises. I even came across a Brunei FAC that did it in the 90s by disguising itself as a fishing boat.

And here I thought we bought all those expensive escorts just for good looks.

Happens all the time, in games. Soviet-style OpFor used to win all the time at the NTC, too. We generally seem to do better in RL operations, that being part of the point of training games.
-Kle.

Freedom Fries!!!

Take all of this with a grain of salt. Not everything is as it seems.

There are two kinds of ships: submarines and targets.

@Klebert L Hall

Yes that's true, but the OpFor were stationed at the NTC and new every square inch of the terrain. Their job was beating whoever showed up for training. Not sure if that truly showed how effective the Russians would have been, but I suppose the reasoning was if one trained vs a superior enemy it made you sharper.

Christopher

@tberry7403: damn straight!

Heck, *my* subs were occasionally called to serve as OPFOR for carrier groups working up, and I only served on boomers.

And yes, we shot the [expletives deleted] out of the carriers. Wish I could have shared the photos, but the Security Officer wouldn't approve the prints for release.

Soviet-style OpFor used to win all the time at the NTC, too.

Hey Klebert…No..they didn't win "all the time"….

But there are quite a few reasons why they won so much….

If you are that curious, I'll be happy to list some of them.

No one really fought the Soviets since Manstein and co… And back then it did not work as advertized.
Beware of underestimating your opposition, even if they are not the enemy.

You know sometimes the enemy is quite stupid, he does not know he is the enemy.

Nothing to worry about squids! There's a thread next door that states that it's all over for sub's. That senative sensors and powerful computers will soon easily reveal the locations of all subs!

Sank the entire group? really?

Yes that's true, but the OpFor were stationed at the NTC and new every square inch of the terrain. Their job was beating whoever showed up for training. Not sure if that truly showed how effective the Russians would have been, but I suppose the reasoning was if one trained vs a superior enemy it made you sharper.

Exactly my point. Exercises are exercises, and should not be taken as predictors of real-war performance.

Hey Klebert…No..they didn't win "all the time"….

But there are quite a few reasons why they won so much….

If you are that curious, I'll be happy to list some of them.

"All the time" as a colloquialism, not a scientific term.

I understand the circumstances of NTC, and approve.
-Kle.

I recall a story of someone writing simulation software for the navy some time back being surprised that they, at the time, had declared carriers unsinkable.

The thought of a nuclear strike on one had not crossed anyone's minds.

Sank the entire group? really?

Not too difficult when one heavyweight torpedo is enough to instantly kill the escorts. How "instantly"? I'm talking "break the ship in half, sunk in ~30 seconds" instantly.

14 weapons would be enough to kill 10 escorts and put 4 fish into the carrier.

Bravo Zulu to the crew of the Saphir!

So whats new? Canadian and our Australian Oberons class subs were doing this 30+ years ago. Even one of our much maligned Collins class subs has scored 2 Attack subs, 2 US Amphib Assault ships and with in range of a Carrier undetected.
U.S.N. Ships Theoretically Destroyed or Incapacitated in Exercises as reported by the Media since 1981

Ship Type Date Attacker
U.S.S. America Aircraft carrier 1981 Canadian submarine
U.S.S. Forrestal (?) Aircraft carrier 1981 Submarine
U.S.S. Constellation Aircraft carrier 1997 Russian submarine
U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt Aircraft carrier 1999 Dutch submarine
U.S.S. Kitty Hawk Aircraft carrier 2000 Russian Air Force
U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln Aircraft carrier 2000 Australian submarine
U.S.S. Independence Aircraft carrier 1996 Chilean submarine
U.S.S. Boise Nuclear submarine 1999 Dutch submarine
U.S.S. Olympia Nuclear submarine 2002 Australian submarine
U.S.S. Montpelier Nuclear submarine 2001 Chilean submarine
U.S.S. City of Corpus Christi Nuclear Submarine 2003 Australian submarine
U.S.S. Mount Whitney Command ship 1999 Dutch submarine

You would hope that the US Naval Command would have sorted themselves out by now , obviously not.

Well, you don't hear the other side of the story, because it's a LOT easier to declassify periscope camera pics than it is to declassify sonar, etc on the ASW side.

But the subs usually run roughshod over the ASW forces, because we could conduct a periscope attack at ranges outside our passive-detection footprint. Makes for a very lopsided encounter, when the surface ship is looking for a 6" wide fence post and the sub is looking for a 300+ft long ship.

What rules were they using to hamstring the USN task force?

Good job. The USN should learn from this experience and improve in their counter submarine and fleet protection capabilities. What's learned from wargaming is cheaper than learning during a real war.

I think too many people think wargames (not our kind) are meant to show-off.

Anyone remember that India "sank" a US carrier in wargames as well?

What rules were they using to hamstring the USN task force?

Probably none, to tell you the truth.

When my sub was assigned to play opfor, we had a lot of extra restrictions on the sub, not to mention restricted travel channels where every P3 in the entire damn Pacific Ocean was overhead. Even 10 years later, I still cringe when I hear a P3 or C130 overhead.

In the seventies, the USS Knox killed the Enterprise by pretending to be an Iranian Oil Tanker, then put a nuclear tipped ASROC on her flight deck. Games are fun.