Submarines: The Vietnam War

War in the Shallows explores the operations of the Navy's three inshore task forces from 1965 to 1968. It also delves into other themes such as technology, tactics, and command and control. Finally, using oral interviews, it reconstructs deckplate life in South Vietnam, focusing in particular on combat waged by ordinary sailors.

This separation presented communication and data-sharing challenges. Furthermore, the new design contained a number of technical risks, one of them was designing a submarine that would operate in a manner and environment very different from what Kockums was accustomed to. The risk resulted fuel system has been proven to be problematic. Swedish submarines have short patrols in calm, relatively fresh water. When a similar design was used in the salty, open water in which Australian submarines operate, water was sucked into the engine causing failure. Moreover, the RAN submarines transit greater distance and are on station for months at time, which has number of implications for fuel storage, hotel service, and other hull design features. The difference in operation concept and environment ultimately led to some equipment and system decision during design that caused problems with operations and supportability.

Not only did we have ships, but we had a device called the Turtle. Invented nearly 150 years before, it was not until the Revolutionary War that the submarine would be used in combat. A man named David Bushnell would develop the Turtle to deploy underwater mines. The Turtle would fail all of its missions and would be lost at the Battle of Fort Lee when the ship transporting it would be sunk. “Despite the failures of the Turtle, General George Washington gave Bushnell a commission as an Army engineer…After the war, he became commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.”(History 1).

A submarine is defined as “something that functions or operates underwater; specifically: a naval vessel designed to operate underwater.” This definition holds true today but started at the beginning of the Civil War when submarines originally became a popular choice of weaponry. In general, submarine crews were composed of a commander, who steered the boat, and six or more men who used hand cranks to move the boat. Many inventors intended on creating electric motors to move the boat, but they were unable to produce enough torque. Submarines were primarily used in combat because they could travel invisibly. Innovations like submarines did not just change the way people fought wars–they also changed the way people lived.

The submarine was called the

Another major way US forces combatted the U-Boat was by utilizing advancements in technology in both World War I and World War II. During World War I advancements in technology mainly included the use of aircraft in war. Before World War I airplanes had never been used to fight a war, therefore when World War I broke out and planes were sent into battle this was new technology (Lansford). During World War I aircraft were used to combat U-Boats in two ways, by supplementing them to convoys, and by using them to drop aerial bombs (Lansford). Aircrafts were added to convoys for various reasons these reasons included the fact that an aircraft could see more terrain than a surface vessel and could engage quicker and more efficiently than

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era conflict that started in 1946 and ended in 1974, taking nearly 30 years to resolve. The war was fundamentally a conflict between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, where the North was communist and South was not. The United States, France, the United Kingdom and other non-communist allies supported the non-communist South Vietnam. China, Russia (USSR), Cuba, Cambodia and other Communist allies supported the regime in the north. North Vietnam saw the United States involvement in the North as foreign aggression, so they fought guerilla wars against the anti-communist forces in the region. Guerilla forces (the Viet Cong) and the regular North Vietnamese Army were responsible for fighting the anticommunist forces. The conflict mainly consisted of small battles until the onset of air attacks -- part of an overall strategy of massive bombing and search-and-destroy operations, which South Vietnam and the Americans hoped would win the war.

Ideas were made realities as the country discovered more efficient tactics of warfare. On the water, the idea of being completely submerged and attacking from below came from Southerner H.L. Hunley. Hunley was “involved in the construction of several submarines, including one named after him” (Bruce). Hunley was not the first to think of the idea of a submarine but was the first to create a working model. His model consisted of “a crew of nine, eight of whom turned hand cranks along a single screw shaft that served to propel the craft” (Bruce). His invention was not flawless but was the first completely underwater machine that was ultimately deadly to the Union ships. It was the first submarine which allowed for future generations to reflect upon this first invention and improve upon it for a more effective machine. This first inkling of a thought would help achieve much greater machines decades in the future. The newly built machine was fallible and many sailors died while operating the ship. On February 17, 1864, “the Hunley sank shortly the Union screw sloop Housatonic. Although the Hunley sank shortly thereafter, it was the first submarine to claim an enemy vessel” (Bruce). The first kill from a submarine was monumental because it proved that the submarine could be a useful and feared machine lurking in the water. It had proved itself to be valuable in the time that it served and convinced the army to continue to improve upon it after the war. Following the war, the “navy continued experiments but it was not until the end of the 19th century that inventors developed a truly effective submarine” (Bruce). The military realized that the submarine had much potential that could be derived with more intensive research and analysis. Still effective today, the invention thought of centuries ago proved to be an effective killing machine. Improvements on land warfare

Despite its heft, the ship moves with less wake. Its footprint is smaller than a small fishing boat. The ship can also operate closer to the shore than other battleships. The ship also can store more power than others so it can fire the weapons more often without recharging.

Submarine warfare has been a military tactic tried again and again since the 1600s. So why have we not heard of submarine warfare during the civil war? Well, it is because both the Union and the Confederacy had their share of secret scientific research during this time, making sure that no one knew of their projects. Both sides would use submarines for different purposes altogether though, the Union would use them to clear out Confederate harbors that contained hostile ships, while the Confederacy would use the submarines to go against the naval blockade in the Atlantic Ocean ordered by the Union. The very first successful submarine attack was by Lieutenant George E. Dixon and his crew aboard the CSS H. L. Hunley, a Confederate submarine. They spotted a Union ship by the name of USS Housatonic, and submerged. Once in range they fired a torpedo which rammed itself into the enemy vessel. Once they hit their mark they retreated to a safe distance and triggered the explosive, making history as they conducted the first successful submarine attack.

The Collins Class submarine was prone to excessive noise signatures whilst travelling at speed and lacked the operational capability to enter conflict situations due to the

A submarine can controls its buoyancy force,which is a force that acts opposite to gravity, and pulls down the ship. Submarine can control this, so it can choose to sink or float. When the tanks in the submarine are

UH-1H “Huey,” The Workhorse of Vietnam and the development of Airmobile Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures

Providing for homeland security in the United States requires protection from a diverse set of threats. One prominent avenue of attack is via maritime routes, yet the nature of the coastal marine space makes it extremely difficult to detect and intercept smuggling vessels. Many sensing technologies exist for detection of seacraft, but there are few options for deployment of these sensors. Currently, such sensors are deployed on various manned vessels, tethered buoys, and aircraft. Development and testing of purpose built anti-submarine systems such as DARPA’s ASW Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) (more colorfully known as the “ghost hunter”), is underway but suffers from high cost.

In 1968, the Soviet Union came up with a new development- the building of antiballistic missiles defence systems. These were to be used for nuclear, chemical, biological or even conventional warheads in the homeland defence of such a strike because they were designed to counter ICBM’s. As a method to counter this development, United States came up with multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles (MIRV’s) which improved the chances of avoiding detection by ABM systems. In addition to this, United States also developed its own IBM in order to match that of Soviet Union.