Talk:Nuclear depth bomb

Question

who invented the depth bomb?

Depends what you mean - try here: Depth charge. Ian Dunster 11:48, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Article needs sources; may contain original research or unverified claims. Enlightenedment, 9 October 2007. —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 04:15, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Citation needed

Claim that deep-diving makes submarines safer from nuclear depth charges (implied detonated nearer to the surface) is the opposite of the truth. Lots of evidence to support that. Editor needs to provide some evidence of the claim, and that would not be possible. George.Hutchinson (talk) 14:26, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree - I would have thought that the opposite is true, the extra depth just increases the stress on the hull to the point of making it more vulnerable to an explosion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.40.253.207 (talk) 20:27, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

As someone who was trained to hunt Soviet Nuclear submarines I would offer the following; The Soviets built fast and deep diving attack submarines because the US ability to detect Soviet submarines far exceeded their ability to keep them silent when underway. Therefore an attempt was made to give their subs the ability to dive away at high speed from a torpedo launched at them from other subs, aircraft and ships. The Soviet difficulty in making stealthy submarines that could avoid detection is further reflected in the Typhoon class SSBNs that were built in the early 80s. This huge submarine was designed to operate under the polar caps since detection by means of passive and active sonar was difficult because of the way sound tends to bounced between the bottom of the ice and the sea bottom. Nuclear depth bombs would not have been used against attack submarines specifically, but against missle carrying types. Soviet Naval doctrine usually called for an attack boat to accompany an SSBN on its patrol to protect it from US attack subs and to ward off the possibility of a "Red October" type of defection scenario by the missle boat captain. So, the use of a nuclear depth bomb probably would have resulted in a kill on both the SSBN and its shadowing SSN. The use of such weapons was possible by surface ships equiped with variants of the ASROC system and by subs employing SUBROC and certain specially equiped aircraft and helicopters. Generally, surface ships and submarines would be able to launch such weapons from a safe distance. Fixed wing aircraft like the P-3 Orion could also reach a safe distance before detonation of the device. It was questionable whether the H-3 or SH-2 helicopters would be as survivable given their slower airspeeds. They would not be disabled by the blast but by the EMP pulse that attenuates the detonation of any nuclear device. But, in the calculus of war expending a helicopter and its respective 3 or 4 man crew for two Soviet submarines is a bargain if it comes down to using a NDB. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.58.81.42 (talk) 21:48, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification, that deep diving would not have protected the Soviet subs from the pressure pulse, I've removed the paragraph.--KTo288 (talk) 13:43, 30 January 2011 (UTC)