Tom Clancy notwithstanding,
only one submarine battle has been fought underwater in over 100 years of modern submarine warfare — it was a World War II action that saw a British sub with limited firepower attack a much larger German adversary.
From here. An artist's impression of the battle can be found below:
There have been a small number of other cases, however, where a submerged submarine successfully hit a surfaced opposition submarine.
The world's only undersea submarine battle took place on February 9, 1945 near Bergen, Norway (more than 77 years ago). The battle itself took less than half an hour.
Allied intelligence had learned that a particular German submarine was planning to cross the Arctic Circle to deliver key military equipment to Japan and laid in wait. The British sub missed the German submarine's first pass, but located it when the German submarine turned around after experiencing problems with its diesel engines.
British fast attack submarine HMS Venturer fired all eight of its torpedoes in rapid succession (it had only four torpedo tubes and had to reload them once), because the larger German U-864 submarine started to take evasive action. Seven torpedos missed. But one torpedo was a direct hit and sunk the submarine. There was no return fire.
Ahem... calling the V-class boats "fast attack submarines" is really stretching the term to the breaking point. I doubt that any WW2 operational sub be called a fast attack submarine (1), and 11 knot (surfaced) V-class are far from fast.
ReplyDelete(1) Maybe some late war German boats, if they had reached operational state.
And... the V-class only had four torpedo tubes, with one set of reloads.
ReplyDeleteFrom uboat.net, usually pretty dependable, about HMS Venturer's 11 war patrol.
1151 hours - Sighted the periscope of the target at a range of 2000 yards. Was now able to establish the current course of the enemy of about 135° at a speed of 3.5 knots. We were gaining bearing on his starboard quarter. The enemy appeared to be zig-zagging on a mean course of 120°.
1210 hours - The target altered course to starboard leg of zig. Altered with full helm to 140° track to fire by Asdic.
1212 hours - In position 60°46'N, 04°35'E fired a full bow salvo of four torpedoes.
1214 hours - Heard a sharp explosion followed by breaking up noises.
"fast attack submarines"
ReplyDeleteI'm quoting the official designation of the submarine from the source.
The battle apparently lasted less than a half an hour.