Random Cool Photo Thread

[mickeyd]

[Purron]

.

[braumeister]

One of my favorites, illustrating "People Unclear On The Concept"

[Nords]

Do we have to choose just one?

I got this from a shipmate aboard the USS LOUISVILLE in 1991. Our submarine was one of their "backup hitters".

[LOL!]

The shadows on the stadium do not match the shadows on the planes, so the sun was in two different places at the same time due to PhotoShop.

[calmloki]

clickity clickity in the big black box with your sound on.

http://safe.tumblr.com/safe/video/2509512839/500

[Purron]

Quote:

Originally Posted by calmloki clickity clickity in the big black box with your sound on. http://safe.tumblr.com/safe/video/2509512839/500

Cool

[mh]

Quote:

Originally Posted by calmloki clickity clickity in the big black box with your sound on. http://safe.tumblr.com/safe/video/2509512839/500

i always love those web sequencers. thanks for the post

[Nords]

This photo came to me via the ol' phart Phantom aviator network, so I can't vouch for the caption or its date or the participants. I'm not even sure which way they paint the numbers on a carrier flight deck-- is that the FORRESTAL or the ENTERPRISE? 1960s or 1970s?

Apparently it was the Westpac practice for a forward-deployed aviation squadron to buy a clunker in one of the ports and then transport it from one liberty spot to another. Since the car would never be approved for import to the U.S. upon return, the squadron would either sell it to another sucker deployer or... um... float-test it.

Hey, it was a simpler and definitely more environmentally-ignorant time.

[Martha]

[calmloki]

ran across this. Greatest generation. Heros.

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

five stars, camloki!

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords Do we have to choose just one? I got this from a shipmate aboard the USS LOUISVILLE in 1991. Our submarine was one of their "backup hitters".

Hmm. What am I looking at here, Doug?

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ed_The_Gypsy Hmm. What am I looking at here, Doug?

Hard to believe that photo is nearly 20 years old.

It's one of the first submarine warshots of DESERT STORM in Jan 1991. The TOMAHAWK Land Attack Missile, probably a TLAM-C with a conventional high-explosive warhead, has just come up out of one of the 12 vertical launch tubes forward of the sail. The sub was at PD (hence the periscope vertical crosshair in the photo) so the VLS tubes were probably 20-30 feet below the surface.

The missile was pushed up out of the tube by a gas generator, and when it was clear of the hull its attached booster rocket lit off. The booster made the flame exhaust for a few more seconds. The missile still had quite a bit of boost to go before it dropped the booster and transitioned from "telephone pole on a rocket" to deploy its control surfaces and ram-air scoop for its own jet engine.

The scope operator can feel the launch and knows that it's gonna move pretty quickly, but despite the warning it's still almost too fast to catch. This photo was probably taken by the CO, but even he must've had the periscope's camera doing its eight frames per second (or else they pulled it off the video) and yet he barely got the shot. I suspect it was their first launch of the day because he has too much ocean in the frame-- if he had a better feel for where the missile was going to come up out of the water then he would have had the elevation angle a little higher. Not that I have any of that experience to be able to nitpick...

Here's a couple other websites with photos from above and on the surface:
Los Angeles class submarine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
File:VLS on board Oklahoma City (SSN-723).JPEG - Wikimedia Commons

[ls99]

Re: the Oklahoma City pic. Can you say Don't Make Waves.

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ls99 Re: the Oklahoma City pic. Can you say Don't Make Waves.

It's all external to the pressure hull, and there are drains on the tubes to make sure that the hatches aren't leaking seawater on the missile capsules. The tubes also have internal covers/liners and the area has lots of drainage. But yeah, you'd never open those hatches outside the harbor without a really good reason.

The TLAMs can only be loaded from outside via crane, so once you shoot those 12 (which can be done in under 20 minutes if there's sufficient "customer demand") you have to revert to the four torpedo tubes and the torpedo room (which has another 20 TLAMs or so). Nobody ever wants to load weapons alongside a submarine tender so it's almost always done pierside in a protected harbor. Usually there's a cofferdam around the tubes for easier access ("Hey, hang on, watch your step! Uhm, anybody see my socket wrench? Did I drop it over the side or in the tube?"). But even so it's an all-day affair. Maybe all-night too.

That whole area came about from improvements in computing. On earlier 1970s-era LOS ANGELES-class submarines that space used to be filled with computer cabinets to generate active-sonar pulses (which were almost never used) and to process passive sonar data. After a few generations of Moore's Law, by the early 1980s those cabinets got so small that it didn't take much rearranging to squeeze in 12 VLS tubes.

[freebird5825]

Mens are from Mars, Women are from....

[ls99]

Thanks Nords. Suspected external but did not know. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind was of a US sub sinking pierside. Can't recall details or circumstances.

Last paragraph reminds me of sonar processing stuff I worked on. Could not get that model on subs, would not fit through the hatches. The mechanical design of the frame layout prevented it. That tidbit was discovered after the design was frozen by the navy. Sr. management was most unhappy.

Was one of the first waterfall displays.

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ls99 Thanks Nords. Suspected external but did not know. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind was of a US sub sinking pierside. Can't recall details or circumstances.

There have been quite a few close calls (I don't particularly want to get into how I know that), but I hope this is still the only one:
USS Sargo (SSN-583) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gumby, M_Paquette, am I forgetting any other pierside issues? I think the USS NARWHAL submerged pierside during Hurricane HUGO, but that was done deliberately after the lines parted.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ls99 Was one of the first waterfall displays.

Today that's all handled by commercial off-the-shelf PCs!

[M Paquette]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords Gumby, M_Paquette, am I forgetting any other pierside issues? I think the USS NARWHAL submerged pierside during Hurricane HUGO, but that was done deliberately after the lines parted.

There's the USS Guitarro, successfully sighted and sunk by the brave lads at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, and the reason cofferdams are bolted to bow and stern hatches to this day.

Quote:

At approximately 8:30 P.M. (Pacific Daylight Time), Thursday, May 15, 1969, the nuclear powered attack submarine Guitarro (SSN-665) sank while tied up to the dock at the Mare Island site of the San Francisco Bay Naval Shipyard. The ship had been under construction since August 1965, and was due to be commissioned in January 1970. Sinking was caused by uncontrolled flooding within the forward part of the ship. It was refloated at 11:18 A.M. (PDT), Sunday, May 18, and after inspection damages were estimated at between $15.2 million and $21.85 million.

The chronology is interesting. See if you can spot the problem.

Quote:

During the afternoon and early evening of May 15, 1969, the following events occurred at the approximate times indicated: 4:00 P.M.: A civilian construction group (nuclear) began an instrument calibration assignment which required the filling of certain tanks, located aft of the ship's pivot point, with approximately five tons of water. 4:30 P.M.: A civilian construction group (nonnuclear) began an assignment to bring the ship within a half degree of trim. This entailed the adding of water to tanks forward of the ship's pivot point, to overcome a reported two degree up-bow attitude. 4:30 to 7:50 P.M.: The nuclear group continued to add water aft. 4:30 to 7:45 P.M.: The nonnuclear group continued to add water forward. 7:00 P.M. and again at 7:30 P.M.: A security watch advised the nonnuclear group that by that time the Guitarro was riding so low forward that a one and a half foot wave action, stirred up by boats operating in the river, was causing water to enter an uncovered manhole in the most forward and lowest portion of the ship's deck. These warnings went unheeded. 7:45 P.M.: The nonnuclear group stopped adding water to the ballast tanks in preparation for their lunch break. 7:50 P.M.: The nuclear group completed their calibrating assignment and began to empty the tanks aft. 8:00 P.M.: The nonnuclear group left for lunch. 8:30 P.M.: The nuclear group emptying the water from the aft tanks and a member of the group noticed " sudden down angle being taken by the boat." At approximately the same time, the nonnuclear group and others, returning to the ship from lunch, observed in down sharply at the bow with a massive flooding taking place through several large open hatches. 8:30 to 8:45 P.M.: Efforts made to close watertight doors and hatches were unsuccessful due to lines and cables running through them. 8:55 P.M.: The Guitarro sank.