Indonesian submarine with 53 people on board is missing

[A380]

An Indonesian submarine with 53 people on board is missing and has air for only three days left. Poor fuckers. Hope that they are saved, and if not hope it was a quick implosion I 've been on submarines alongside a few times and whilst not claustrophobic normally would find it very hard to think of the water all around.

Missing Indonesian submarine has 72 hours of oxygen left, navy says

Indonesia is racing against time to rescue the 53 crew of a missing submarine before the oxygen runs out.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[kebabking]

Oil slick reported 24 hours ago, and she's gone down in an area whose sea bed is well below her crush depth.

Singapore have rushed one of their sub rescue/recovery ships out. Not looking good TBH, I'd be massively surprised if there are any survivors.

 

[not-bono-ever]

Well old hardware. It’s bad enough in those things when they are modern

 

[kebabking]

Indian and Australian sub rescue ships are on the way - she had been taking part in a live fire torpedo exercise when contact was lost.

 

[Pickman's model]

Indian and Australian sub rescue ships are on the way - she had been taking part in a live fire torpedo exercise when contact was lost.

Yeh I think I can hazard a guess at what might have happened, with my theory involving some catastrophic detonation before the torpedo was supposed to explode

 

[SpookyFrank]

Yeh I think I can hazard a guess at what might have happened, with my theory involving some catastrophic detonation before the torpedo was supposed to explode

It was a dodgy 'practice torpedo' that did for the Kursk IIRC.

This is one of those ones where the best you can really hope for is that it was over quick

 

[ffsear]

Any idea of the water depth in the area it went missing

 

[Pickman's model]

Any idea of the water depth in the area it went missing

Very deep

 

[kebabking]

Sounds hopeful, but I'm afraid that in all the SubMiss events there has been 'good news' that then turns out to be wishful thinking...

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Continually surprised at the countries that operate military subs.

Poor sods.

 

[likesfish]

Pushing 50 years old refit in 2012 poor bastards

 

[Supine]

I thought I knew Indonesia quite well. No idea they had submarines tbh. The idea scares me.

I hope the crew are ok but when things go wrong on a sub it’s pretty much game over

 

[kebabking]

Continually surprised at the countries that operate military subs.

Poor sods.

It's a 'cheap' way of doing sea control/denial. If you've got subs you're a player - half-a-dozen diesel/electric subs and anyone is going to have to work very hard indeed to get close to you. Subs aren't cheap, and the crews and their training aren't cheap, but you get a great deal of fear for your buck, vastly more than you would with surface ships.

With subs you're a navy, without you're a coast guard - and everyone wants to be a playah...

 

[Teaboy]

It's a 'cheap' way of doing sea control/denial. If you've got subs you're a player - half-a-dozen diesel/electric subs and anyone is going to have to work very hard indeed to get close to you. Subs aren't cheap, and the crews and their training aren't cheap, but you get a great deal of fear for your buck, vastly more than you would with surface ships.

To stop all those amphibious landings which are such a feature of modern warfare?

I appreciate their usefulness certainly in a conventional style war but they now seem like a bit of a WW2 relic, like tanks. Its that old adage about always fighting the previous war. How many submarine 'kills' (not counting cruise missiles lobbed at land targets) have their been since the Kriegsmarine threw in the towel? Off the top of my head I can think of two: The Belgrano going to the bottom and an India / Pakistan incident.

I know they are cool and all and the UK's nuke deterrent but I don't know. They don't appear to be very practical in stopping someone attacking you with their laptop or drome from the safety of their front room.

Are these old subs (like the Argentinian one that met the same fate) even true submarines or are they submersibles? If they ain't nuclear that must be some serious batteries they were given since they were built in a pre-Tesla era.

 

[Nylock]

Submarine batteries are enormous and there's tons of them on board a diesel electric...

 

[kebabking]

Sadly a total, catastrophic loss. All onboard killed.

RIP.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Poor buggers - hope it was quick.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

All the crew will be given an increase in rank. Is that to do with finances for family or just pride?

 

[petee]

del.

 

[kebabking]

An UUW has been down to the wreck site - she's in 3 bits at 850m.

There are some reports that in the rather murky images you can see what could be a survival suit - it wouldn't surprise me if that were true, but I think it's very unlikely that anyone was trying to get out at that kind of depth. She almost certainly imploded - the seals around the prop shaft, the escape hatches, and the torpedo tubes would have given way - between 400m and 600m, and of course we've no idea what actually caused the catastrophic loss of control in the first place.

 

[Spymaster]

Interesting that most navy submarines have a maximum operational depth of around a relatively poxy 300m, which isn’t even a tenth of the average depth of the worlds oceans.

 

[Graymalkin]

Interesting that most navy submarines have a maximum operational depth of around a relatively poxy 300m, which isn’t even a tenth of the average depth of the worlds oceans.

I imagine that torpedoes or depth charges have a much deeper operational range, and the hull re-enforcement would make the sub heavier and thus slower and less maneuverable. The engineers or war planners probably determined that it isn't worthwhile to go deeper.

 

[kebabking]

The Soviet Alpha class had an operational depth of about 900m, and to get that her hull was built from titanium. I wouldn't be surprised if that alone not far off bankrupted the SU...

There are advantages of being able to go really deep - hiding and sonar performance - but it comes with huge costs, as well as tactical disadvantages, so the VLF communications that the missile subs use for launch orders might not work at that depth, and firing a torpedo at 1000m would use a huge amount of compressed air to get it out of the hull.

 

[A380]

All the crew will be given an increase in rank. Is that to do with finances for family or just pride?

It’s is probably to give a bump to their pensions.

 

[SpookyFrank]

An UUW has been down to the wreck site - she's in 3 bits at 850m.

There are some reports that in the rather murky images you can see what could be a survival suit - it wouldn't surprise me if that were true, but I think it's very unlikely that anyone was trying to get out at that kind of depth. She almost certainly imploded - the seals around the prop shaft, the escape hatches, and the torpedo tubes would have given way - between 400m and 600m, and of course we've no idea what actually caused the catastrophic loss of control in the first place.

Escape suits would be fuck all use at that depth surely?

 

[likesfish]

Its more likely an escape suit is dayglo so more likely to be spotted amongst the wreckage.
A sub would have to hit the sea level in relatively shallow and relatively intact for escape suits to be even considered.
The poor sods in the Kursk who survived the initial explosion might have had a chance. Or an Astute nose diving in the channel.
The Indonesian or the Argentine sub would have a Imploded long before somebody got a suit on. The process of evacuation is involved and the suits are not easy to get on.

 

[klang]

Interesting that most navy submarines have a maximum operational depth of around a relatively poxy 300m,

if I found myself stuck in a marine war situation I'd just dive underneath them and swim away.

 

[likesfish]

The yanks call their escape hatch the mom hatch. Something to show your mum so she doesn't worry. As If something goes wrong on a sub it's likely to be very fast and very lethal . The Russians had a sub with an escape pod it worked reached the surface but half the people couldn't get out before it filled with water and went back down! Lot of the crew died of hypothermia waiting for rescue.

 

[kebabking]

There's an RN officer on twitter - Ladislaus I think. Former submariner, and he tells that whenever they had a visitor to the boat he would always bring them in through the forward escape hatch: after that their demeanor would change immediately...

The unpleasant truth is that in only a tiny percentage of submarine accidents is there any chance whatsoever of getting any, let alone all, of the crew out, and even then it's difficult, dangerous task with dreadful time constraints and a lot that can go very wrong, very quickly.