- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
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During some war games a few years ago, the Dutch Navy managed to score a hit against a US Navy carrier using a diesel sub.
Like someone else said here, carriers are big, slow targets, it’s not impossible for something to sneak past and sink them.
It was impressive but it happened in 1999. The Dutch Captain said that he doubted he could do it again and indeed a different Dutch Submarine failed at it the next year.
Carriers are considerable faster (30 Knots) than Diesel Subs (20 Knots) too, something the Dutch Captain touches on in that article.
Well in my mind few years ago was 1999…
Seriously though I thought this only happened within the last 10 years, TIL.
Diesel subs are also different kinds of beasts. They’re terrible for international conflict, but for short range operations, they’re silent. You can turn off a diesel engine, but not a nuclear reactor.
Has anyone tried making a reactor that can be turned off? Seems like an easy upgrade to make them silent in the short term.
I’d imagine it’s not doable because of how quickly they’d develop insane amounts of heat.
Carriers are actually some of the fastest ships out there because of nuclear propulsion.
Not in anyway an expert on matters naval, but diesel subs are pretty quiet running on electric motors. Nuclear reactors make more noise.
Feel free to correct me.
Point is, they’re big, impossible to hide from anyone that has satellites, and you just need to get a lucky hit with a relatively cheap missile/torpedo to give the other side a multi-billion dollar loss in one go.
