Subscribe
Notify of
guest

35 Comments
Oldest
Newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Iqbal Ahmed

‘rather than a very limited threat to the Falkland Islands.’
I hope that posters on this site remember these words when trying to use the Falklands as a reason to extract more money from the taxpayer that should be spent on the RN.
If the RN continues in its misguided attempt at keeping up with the Jones by trying to ‘punch above its weight’ on a budget, then what happened to this Argentinian submarine may one day be happening to a RN sub, with worse potential consequences as our subs have nuclear reactors/missiles.

Rick

Are you being deliberately obtuse or are you like this all the time? Your comments
are rediculous.

A D de Mowbray

Well two of three Astute class, despite ‘perisher’ have collided with either a rock or ship..maybe RN staff are too busy on diversity/inclusionist workships than learning how to staff and navigate their boats/ships…god, the cancer of political correctness is rife now in the police, army, navy…learn to fight, not learn from feminists/the diversity gestapo how to gut your service of fighters.

Leigh

Do you take lessons in being an uneducated subject matter bell-end or is it just in your DNA?

Jack Russell

No need to be offensive as it makes any point you might have worthless and irrelevant. In a democracy everyone has the right to an opinion whether right or wrong! Just stick to the facts to refute opinions that you disagree with and your responses will be better received.

Sam

I hope the end was quick for the crew 🙁 better it end in a blink of an eye than long and painful. At least some old wounds may be healed up a little between the UK and Argentina…now that cant be a bad thing 🙂 RIP San Juan crew o7

A D de Mowbray

Really? A possibly badly maintained piece of german possibly ill-maintained manufactured crap kills some men who hate Las Malvinas? Grow up. Save the tears

Don Izzy

How sad you are. Loved ones are missing and you just winge on spouting nonsense.

Kevin

Thank you very much. I’m from Argentina myself and we’re incredibly thankful for all the help your people provided. I hope this only leads to a better relationship between our countries

Eadric Streona

Argentina has the bravest sailors in the world.
I wouldn’t go to sea in one of their submarines for all the tea in China.

Grubbie

Anyone can lose a submarine and we might never know the true cause of this disaster. As alluded to in the article, the UKs much vaunted rescue capability is largely as the result of sad experience. That said, the Argentinians were operating with a reckless lack of resources, which is the probable cause. At least they have one ancient Tracker MPA aircraft operational, which is more than us. Nine P8s is not enough. How about some force multipliers?You could operate 4 C295 MPAs for the cost of a Posidon and they would have other potential uses as well. The RAF are rumoured to be in line for some C series to cart around princess Beatrice, etc. Maybe these could have a basic MPA fit out as well . I think that the Canadians would be keen to develop it as a way of avoiding Boeing ever again darkening their doorstep.

A D de Mowbray

‘Perisher’ is garbage. Two of three Astute class subs have collided with a ship or rock, HMS Nottingham couldn’t stagger around Australia ( but somehow Capt Cook could) without running aground, HMS Cornwall had a boat crew seized hostage with no response…a cyber/digital age and £1,000,000,000 million RN boats/ships can’t avoid a freighter or rock, or design a workable destroyer engine? Get a grip, you offend the memory of Nelson and Anson. The RN is a disgrace and national humiliation. But woah, there’s suddenly 52,000, 000,000 euros for Brussels. You disgust me.

Grubbie

Captain Cook actually did bump into Australia quite hard!

Grubbie

You seem to have forgotten the clusterf*** of incompetence that lead to HMS Endurance being written off.

Fedaykin

The TR1700 as sold to Argentina was one of the most capable SSK available on the market, deep diving and fast with modern systems. In upgraded form they would still be very credible vs other newer designs unfortunately Argentina has not had the budget to properly maintain them. It looks like the San Juan suffered a similar problem as the HMCS Chicoutimi, unfortunately help was not close to hand this time.
We will probably never know the full details but what we do know is:
1) She was refitted without support of the OEM
2) The Argentine navy has struggled to maintain their vessels
3) The Argentine Submarine service has had a woeful amount of dive time
4) Yet the Argentine navy decided to send the Submarine on an Ocean transit at the edge of the continental shelf rather than send her along the coastline and when they hit bad weather they were forced to proceed dived using the snorkel
5) Forcing a crew who has had barely any dive time in a submarine with a questionable refit and poor long term maintenance into the most dangerous situation possible

Grubbie

What would be your best guess? I was thinking that the crew were probably overcome with fumes, there is a vague reference to the wellbeing of the crew in the last message.

Fedaykin

Well the last message stated there was an electrical fire due to water ingress from the snorkel and she was running underwater on her aft batteries. The impression I get from that message is they had the fire under control or out but the question is what load was being put on the aft batteries and what was the damage to the forward batteries that had caught fire? Also what damage had been done to the electrical system as a whole? Another issue is when the batteries are charged Hydrogen is produced, if they were running shallow trying to charge their batteries via running the diesel engines with the snorkel but struggling to ventilate the fumes properly due to the rough seas dangerous pockets of hydrogen gas could have built up in one of the battery compartments. If the electrical fire had not been suppressed properly or an oxygen candle had been lit to help clear stale air you might well have had a very good environment for an explosion of the batteries or built up Hydrogen. A number of submarines have been lost in those circumstances.
It is worth reading the HMCS Chicoutimi accident report as it gives a very good break down of how this kind of incident can develop:
http://www.crs-csex.forces.gc.ca/boi-ce/rp/hmcs-ncsm/rp/index-eng.aspx#fog

Grubbie

Very informative and a must read for all journalists who want to comment on this story.

Pete Bryan

I disagree with point 4 – Submarines run best underwater and direct routing is always preferred.
Please don’t refer or compare this event to Chicoutimi; your comparison indicates that you are not fully informed about her and neither is anyone in possession of the facts about SAN Juan yet.

Grubbie

Comprehensive Canadian government report not good enough for you? You can even read through the redactions and get a pretty good idea of how unpleasant it really was.
I doubt we will ever be in possession of the facts about the San Juanita, so we are going to have to speculate. We know that they had a problem with water ingress and a fire, it’s reasonable to speculate that things cascaded from there.
It was reckless to send an unpracticed crew and a boat that was not fully worked up so far out into the ocean in the middle of a big storm. As soon as something went wrong, they quickly ran low on options.

Grubbie

San Juan, dammed spell checker.

Fedaykin

You know what I find funniest about Keyboard warriors correcting other keyboard warriors and declaring that the other is not fully informed is that more often then not they are themselves not fully informed!
Unfortunately Pete you fall into that latter category. You would be right in correcting me about my point 4 if we were talking about Nuclear Submarines but in this case we are talking about a Diesel SSK. For an SSN indeed direct routing underwater is the fastest way to get from Point A to Point B. For Diesel SSK it is different. When transiting the fastest they can run is on the surface albeit their hull form is not optimised for it, the reason being they can run up their diesels at full chat. The second fastest is to be close to the surface and snort using their snorkel. There are several limitations which reduce the speed. They can’t run too fast as it increases their wake signature, can cause damage to the masts and tangentially increases the charging time for the batteries as the Diesels can’t run as fast using the Snorkel. A Diesel SSK will surface transit with a top speed of 14kts (on a good day), a snort speed of 5-12kts depending on range required. On batteries submerged up to 20kts but with very limited range. To transit a long distance on batteries would require the submarine to be down at the 5kt or less range to make headway.
In heavy seas as the San Juan was caught running in the surface would be difficult and snorting dangerous due to the chance of water ingress as did happen according to her radio signals. Her signals also stated she was running on batteries submerged, she certainly wouldn’t have been barrelling along at 20kts. After that all we have is speculation
I will compare to HMCS Chicoutimi thank-you very much as it is a very valid comparison and explanation of how this kind of incident can develop.
BMT have an interesting paper out about SSK transit performance, I suggest have a read before Poo-pooing somebody else:
https://www.bmtdsl.co.uk/media/6097911/BMTDSL-Optimising-SSK-Transit-Performance-Confpaper-Pacific-Jan12.pdf

A D de Mowbray

Save the tears. The patrol was at the Falklands’ border, maybe even within, a service which would happily torpedo a British ship. Insincerity displaces a lot more water in tears than a UK navy ship these days. There’s little more nauseating than crocodile tears. Reflect on your enemies’ deaths, don’t labour overlong and weep over them.

Grubbie

Classy

Harry

Even in war death is sad, but at least meaningful. In peace time it isn’t even that. Grow up you child.

Michael

Those 44 men were fathers, sons, brothers and husbands. Their surviving families will spend Christmas knowing that their perished loved ones are in a steel grave on the bottom of the sea. Give it a rest.

Harry Nelson

Troll

Fedaykin

The ARA San Juan was nowhere near Falklands waters and was performing a port to port transit. Currently Argentina nor its navy is our enemy due to the fact that we normalised relations with them years ago. We keep a watchful eye on them as they have designs on the Falklands but that doesn’t mean we can’t show concern when they loose a vessel during peacetime operations.

Geoffrey Hicking

We are reflecting. While I get what you mean about insincerity, please remember that the RN was rescuing French sailors hours after Trafalgar and Quiberon Bay.
IF (and frankly its a big if) they are still enemies, then helping them and showing some sympathy might go a long way to ending hostilities.

Leigh

You are a real cock aren’t you! Your comments remind me of a simple child with a chip on their shoulder! I presume you have never achieved what you thought you deserve to achieve and now want to wet your pants and gash your teeth about it. Rather sad.

A surprised argentinian

If I had to say what I think about all this mess, I’d give them this post. In a sad time like this is for us, we (at least the ones we use our brain, sadly diminishing these days) are incredibly surprised by all the help provided by, well, a long list of countries, but especially the Royal Navy. Given old and not so old conflicts with the UK, we were surprised to see so many resources poured into finding a submarine that has probably sank due to our own country corruption and corner cutting.
By all means, we thank your Navy and all the forces in the world in the help you’re providing us.

Harry

In a humanitarian crisis former enemies are just that. Former.

Michael

We wish there could have been good news to come out of the search. Our condolences to the survivors families, and you.

eduardo.

Excellent article. I am argentine, by the way.

Stahlkocher

Interesting point I never saw mentioned: Why did the San Juan have 44 people on board?
The sources I can find claim a complement of either 29 or 26 and 6 empty bunks.