If money was no object, this isn't a discussion and the Seawolfs (Seawolves?) laugh at your Virginias. Since it is, Virginias are pretty nice.
Would love to go back for a few weeks onboard a Seawolf. I would have interest in riding the North Korean sub but want to live to see my kids.
So are there actually still minefields in most of the oceans? How come you never hear about a submarine blowing up in a minefield? Or even about the minefields themselves for that matter? Or do you, and I'm just out of the loop? Maybe it's just not mine field of expertise.
I especially enjoy the rust-colored camouflage paint all along the waterline. Truly deceptive. It's like they WANT you to think that the boat's a piece of $#...
In 1962-63 I lived on the Pearl Harbor Channel and took a picture of every large ship passing through. I've told the story here of how I waded in illegally once. I haven't seen the photos for about 30 years, but they're around here somewhere. Probably still classified info. Usually the crews would stand at attention in formation in dress whites. The Kitty Hawk was the largest boat in the Pacific. I used to ask everyone what the giant tank on top of some submarines was. Theories were, a tank of fuel or provisions, nuclear torpedo or missile, radar, spool of cable for mines or comm, mini-sub, etc. Many years later, diagrams like this captioned them as mini-subs. They're more streamlined now. They used to look like rounded blimps, not fit for underwater travel. Some were almost spherical. Hmm. I still wonder...they could have been anything.
Funny they just call that a duct around the propeller. Looks like a Kort Nozzle to me or perhaps a Rice Speed nozzle.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't trust Chinese nuclear-powered boats to maintain all of the regulations that we do. As for the DPRK, they have enough trouble keeping diesel boats afloat.
When the radiation hits the beach in Portland, there'll be one guy with a geiger counter and lots of heat about it.
If you say so dog. A little surprising to see this on an attack sub, but I imagine it is there to enable higher silent running speed. I doubt it facilitates any higher top speed and more bollard pull wouldn't be of much use, that I can think of.
That's just it...I'd expect a Rice Speed nozzle on a trawler or tug, not necessarily something that should never have to pull something bigger than a towed array cable. I would also surmise that there are acoustic properties involved in the Kort nozzle...
