Seven tubes and still smokin'

Political Correctness run amok

2005-11-04T12:43:00.000-08:00

South Africa just received their first Type 209 submarine. Bully for them. At least they're not British.

Here's the bad part:

"The submarine, packed with advanced equipment, is a Type 209, of which 63 are currently in service with various navies around the world. It requires a crew of 30 and South Africa aims to have a racial balance on board reflecting that within its society."

See that? They want to crew a submarine according to a racial balance within society. That's daft. I can understand where they're coming from here, but a submarine is NOT the place to play social engineer. Try the President's honour guard for that. Or maybe his security contingent.

Canadian boats

2005-11-02T11:44:00.000-08:00

HMCS Victoria is currently undergoing her certification refit in Victoria.

Canadian submarines have a major refit every five years, which usually lasts just under two years. This refit ensures that they are safe to take to see, and fixes any major or minor safety-related defects. At the conclusion of this refit, she should have her design, building, layup and recomissioning issues fixed. She'll be fully capable of going to sea, and performing as a "clockwork mouse" for training Canadian and allied navies.

That's the good news. There's also bad news.

Despite the recent upgrade of the displays, the combat system will still be based around a UYK-20, which is about as powerful as an original IBM PC. The cutting edge of early 1980's technology. She'll be safe to drive around, but she won't exactly be a high-end combat unit.

I want a Virginia. Now THAT'S a boat with a high-end combat system.

Hot time on the Windsor....

2005-11-01T12:09:00.000-08:00

HMCS Windsor experienced a small electrical fire Sunday morning. An electrical transformer for an A/C unit melted and blew smoke through the engine room.

I have to say, this really isn't that big of a deal. Not entirely pleasant, but not exactly unknown on the boats either. Blown way out of proportion. They didn't even come off patrol, which isn't entirely unsurprising either. Windsor's crew has a very solid core of long-service submariners.

The Oberons had this sort of incident fairly often. No biggie.

Chicoutimi's memorial

2005-10-04T17:55:00.000-07:00

The crew of the Chicoutimi will have their own memorial for Lt(N) Chris Saunders.

Good on ya guys.

Chicoutimi's repairs continue

2005-08-25T05:58:00.000-07:00

From The Sub Report:

HMCS Chicoutimi's repairs are continuing. They've now progressed to the state that they can look at what's damaged, and remove it. This is expected to take until the end of 2005. The actual repairs won't be complete until sometime in 2007.

Gotta love government work.....

Skimmer in port!

2005-07-11T11:21:00.000-07:00

HMCS Toronto is in port. I'd like to remind the Greater Toronto Area submarine community that spray-painting her with slogans such as "Insert Mk 48 here ->", "Skimmers suck!" and target signs are in very poor taste, and should not be done.

That is all.

Plus ca change....

2005-06-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

Plus ca memechose......

Looks like HMCS Windsor got five days at sea. You know, the new boats don't seem to be a whole lot different from the old boats. We didn't get much better than that from thirty year old Oberons either.

Windsor has sailed

2005-06-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

HMCS WIndsor has sailed. They're out to "develop tactical routines and practices." More importantly, there will be a duty-free issue.

I do like the way the CBC mentions that "firing torpedoes [is] a feature not currently available on Canada's submarines".

Giving back the Victorias

2005-05-30T13:12:00.000-07:00

Scott Taylor has an article up on giving the Victorias back to the UK. As tempting as that may be, they actually still belong to the UK. The lease isn't up for a while yet.

My own preference would be to get the UK to fix them, but that's just me.

Oberons up for sale

2005-05-25T06:06:00.000-07:00

The Crown agency responsible for disposing of old boats is putting all four O-boats up for sale. For only about 60 000 $CDN, you too could own 291 ft of black tubular steel. Impress your neighbours! Let the Jones' keep up with THAT!

OTOH, the irony of the O-boats scrapped for razor blades would be pretty funny.

Bo knows ribs

2005-05-24T16:54:00.000-07:00

I tried a "Canadianized" version of bothenook's ribs, modified for a gas grill. All I can say is "Wow!". I bow to the master.

I boiled one batch in cola, and another batch in garlic-infused water. It's hard to find real Pepsi here, with all of the diet tuff, so I just used some generic stuff I bought at Dominion.

I also used some new Bone Suckin' Rib Rub to go along with my Bone Suckin' Sauce. The rub's OK, but you could make your own just as well. The sauce is incredible.

I also used maple and hickory chips in the smoke box, instead of the apple and hickory chips. I find the maple gives a sweeter flavour than the apple, but YMMV.

Put the smoker box on high, and then leave the ribs on another part of the grill for indirect heat. For wet ribs, cover them with sauce and leave 'em. For dry ribs, cover them with rub and leave 'em. An hour at a temp of about 325-350F should do it.

Don't peek at them! If tempted to peek, apply beer to chef. Repeat as needed.

HMCS Victoria returns. Maybe a bit sooner than expected.

2005-05-22T16:26:00.000-07:00

It looks like HMCS Victoria returned a bit sooner than she was expected to. Not to worry. The last time we bought British submarines, they broke down all the time. For a while in the late 90's, our record was 9 days without a significant failure.

But hey, I'll bet the British High Commissioner has a great explanation for it.

A non-qual speaks....

2005-05-22T16:23:00.000-07:00

Britain's High Commissioner to Canada has commented on the Chicoutimi fire.

"All I can say as a non-submariner is, 'Shut the door.'".

Thanks, pal. Any comment on why the door broke in the first place? I thought not.

All I can say as a submariner is "Why buy the best if you can buy British?".

Thanks to The Sub Report for the heads-up.

Not enough MARLANT recompression chambers

2005-05-18T08:57:00.000-07:00

Looks like MARLANT only has enough recompression chambers for 50% of a Victoria's crew, while the large recompression chamber at Shearwater is U/S. Even when it's fixed, they'll only have enough space for 75% of the crew.

Are they merely unable to count, or are they convinced it's possible to cram 2 submariners in the space normally allocated to 1 person? Enquiring minds want to know....

HMCS Victoria back to sea!

2005-05-17T18:48:00.000-07:00

HMCS Victoria has sailed again.

Fair winds and following seas...

Weird government happenings

2005-05-10T18:08:00.000-07:00

The House has just passed a weird procedural motion, calling for the public accounts committee to ask the PM to resign. The Opposition parties are calling it a motion of non-confidence, and are calling for the PM's resignation.

I'd say the Opposition's reach is exceeding its grasp for the moment. Considering their plan is to go to work tomorrow and keep trying, it looks like they don't actually believe it was a non-confidence vote either.

HMCS Chicoutimi Board of Inquiry report released

2005-05-08T15:53:00.000-07:00

The report has been released.

The board found that nobody is to blame, which I suppose is a good thing. Apparently the fire stemmed from a design flaw, in that the connectors for the main power cables were only designed to be splashproof, not waterproof. When the boat took a goffer at the same time as the lower lid was opened for some tools, the water started sloshing over the cables. The water couldn't be completely cleaned up because of the large rolls the boat was taking. Eventually, they arced out and burned two holes through the deck. When this happened, Lt(N) Saunders was the closest person to the resulting fire in the next space down, and apparently breathed in a lot of the burning gases. Even though he was seriously injured, he closed up to his Emergency Station, and remained there until he collapsed. He was a great submariner, and is sorely missed.

MND has stated that we won't sue the UK over this, and we'll pay for the repairs. Dunno how we'll afford to do that with the current underfunding, but I'm sure we'll find a way. Or just leave the boat tied up for years.

Navy may ban beards on submariners

2005-04-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

It looks like somebody in MARCOMHQ wants to revisit the idea of requiring all submariners to shave.

Somehow, I doubt they've thought this through. Yes, the CF Fire Marshal did recommend that all beards be shaven, in order to ensure a better fit to a mask. However, I think he overlooked a couple of issues:

i) It's possible to get a good seal wioth a beard. I never had any trouble. OTOH, I've seen clean shaven sailors have trouble getting a good seal, just because the mask wasn't shaped to fit their face.

ii) Diesel boat submariners get less than a basin of water a day for bathing. That's it, and they frequently get less. Usually, we got by with no more than a face wash, and saved up the rest of the ration for a shower once a week. If the Fire Marshal now wants all submariners to be clean-shaven, the consequences of that decision is that they'll no longer be able to shower. I very much doubt the Fire Marshal has a clue about just how much it makes your skin crawl when you've been in the Caribbean for a week in 40 C temperatures, and you know that you can't bathe for another few days.

How about letting common sense take over, and make everybody prove they can get a seal, beard or no? If they can't get a seal with a beard, then make them shave it off.

There's a reason skimmers should never be put in charge of submariners....

New Canadian foreign/defence policy

2005-04-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

So, the new defence policy is out at http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/reports/dps/main/05_e.asp. Here are some of the juicy submarine details:

http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/reports/dps/main/02_e.asp

"complete, in the near term, the process of bringing the Victoria-class submarines into service. This will provide the Canadian Forces with a flexible and highly capable platform to conduct a wide range of operations in our waters and overseas"

http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/reports/dps/main/03_e.asp

"provide, when required, submarines in direct support of the Special Operations Group for operations within Canada's ocean regions; "

http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/reports/dps/main/05_e.asp

"sustain indefinitely the deployment overseas of two ships (one from each coast) with embarked maritime helicopters, or a submarine and a ship, for operations in direct support of the Special Operations Group or as forward elements of the Standing Contingency Task Force anywhere in the world; "

I'm happy to see that the Canadian submarine force will continue, but I have a couple of questions:

i) Will the boats be modernized in order to provide "a flexible and highly capable platform"? Even assuming the current Marine Systems problems are fixed, there are still a whackload of Combat Systems issues. The boats are currently being fitted with the same FC system the Oberons had. The system has had a display upgrade, but that's equivalent to dropping a new video card and an LCD display on an old 286. It's not going to do useful work any faster than the old system.

ii) Apparently they want to deploy the boats "anywhere in the world". How do they propose to get them there? The boats were built to sprint from the UK to the GIUK gap. The original plan was to offer a stretched "Type 2490" to Canada and Australia, in order to get more range. If they're going to deploy the boats farther than St. John's, they're either going to have to go slowly enough that the reason for sending the boat has passed, or they're going to have to fill up pretty often.

First post

2005-04-14T08:10:00.000-07:00

I had something profound, but blogger ate it.

Let's just say that I'm glad that it appears Luc Pelletier and the Chicoutimi officers on watch won't be punished.