Crazy Ivan
Madman Ivan is one of the name submarine - maneuver , the U-boat drivers in the US Navy , was coined by a tactical maneuver Russian designate or Soviet submarines. During this maneuver, the attempt is usually made to listen to the deaf sector in the wake - behind the boat - immediately after a turn , in order to discover possible pursuers.
procedure
During this maneuver, which Soviet submarines often carried out on patrol , the Soviet captains carried out a lateral evasive maneuver at certain time intervals. Combinations of geometrical figures such as figures of eight and serpentine lines with and without change in depth are often used. Only rarely does a “Crazy Ivan” consist of only one full circle (as it is often portrayed in the relevant media). During these maneuvers, attempts are often made to drive into the area directly behind the boat in order to keep the boat in pursuit at a distance due to the risk of a collision. Another method is to accelerate to maximum speed in order to entice a suspected pursuer to increase the speed as well. The passive sonar systems on the chasing boat are almost useless at high speed. The driving away boat stops the propulsion system after a few kilometers and listens for a possible pursuer. It is now hardly possible for the chasing boat to locate the boat in front of it. It is not uncommon for the hunter to become the hunted.
Cause of the maneuver
The purpose of the maneuver lay in the tactics used by American hunting submarines to follow enemy submarines extremely close in their wake. Due to the position of the sonar dome in the bow of the ship and due to the screw noise in the stern of the ship, a deaf area is created behind the submarine that cannot be heard in the passive sonar . Ultimately, chasers should be discovered using passive sonar.
Effectiveness and dangers
Since the chased boat was mostly a submarine with ballistic missiles and thus almost always larger than the chasing submarine , it had a correspondingly larger turning circle, so that the chaser could simply drive a full circle under certain circumstances. A major problem with these maneuvers is the risk of collision with the pursuer, especially when trying to navigate your own wake. According to reports, such maneuvers are said to have resulted in underwater collisions even into the 1990s.
Countermeasures
A possible countermeasure is the immediate stop of the engines and the “down-regulation” of the nuclear reactor of the pursuit boat , which then continues to drive a distance (“braking distance”) in an uncontrolled manner, whereby it can come dangerously close to the chased boat. Alternatively, an attempt can be made, if possible, to "join in" the maneuver.
need
Submarines that use a tow sonar could actually do without this maneuver, as the tow sonar covers the deaf area. For submarines that don't use a tow sonar, it's one of the few, if not the only, ways to track down potential chasers.
American boats or boats associated with other nations (especially strategic missile submarines) also carry out such maneuvers, which in the case of non-Russian submarines are usually called "Angles and Dangles". However, the so-called shuttling of the boat is also called this in the US Navy. Such a maneuver is used by all submarines, especially before the first dive, in order to discover loose objects and open flaps which, as a source of noise, would reveal the position of the boat. According to reports, this typical defensive maneuver is also part of the Royal Navy's Perisher Course . On NATO submarines, cubes are almost always used, which are supposedly even part of the official basic equipment of American submarines in order to guarantee the randomness of the time and configuration of this special maneuver.
Objects within the “deaf sector” cannot be detected by the on-board sonar of a submarine.
Known cases
persecution
Former USS Lapon (SSN-661) commander , Commander Chester Whitey Mack, who managed to track a Russian Yankee-class missile submarine for much of its patrol in the manner described, is quoted as follows:
“He changed course every 90 minutes. It was neither 89 minutes nor 91 minutes, so it was exactly 90 minutes (it is precisely this predictable regularity that the American dice are supposed to prevent) . That was also the longest time I could sleep the whole time. He went up, we went up; he went down, we went down. And sometimes we went really deep. We did that fun old dance, you know, two six thousand ton ships spinning around. "
collision
One of these collisions occurred on 20th June 1970 : Near Kamchatka in the northern Pacific probably caused the US submarine Tautog the Sturgeon class such a "collision" with the Soviet submarine K-108 Echo II class after a 180 ° maneuver. The Tautog was operating in front of the Soviet submarine base in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and was probably trying to track the outgoing K-108 . The Tautog seems to have got into the stern of the K-108 . After the collision, the American submarine quickly ran away, allegedly picking up hull noises that were interpreted as a possible sinking of the Russian boat. When the Tautog arrived in Pearl Harbor , whole pieces of one of the screws of the Soviet submarine were found in the remains of its tower . In 1992 it was announced by Russian naval officers that the K-108 had also survived the incident and was able to reach its home port without losses, something that was apparently not clear in circles of the American Navy until then.
media
The mad Iwan is also used in the submarine literature to generate voltage. B. Tom Clancy performed the maneuver several times in Hunt for Red October , which seems a bit strange in the portrayal of the film of the same name , because the Red October on the tail fin is the streamlined container for the powerful towing sonar of the hydroacoustic that occurs in third generation Russian submarines Complex "SKAT" carries.
A maneuver with a similar name was used in the first episode of the scifi series Firefly . There the pilot Hoban "Wash" Washburne shakes off a pursuer by turning some of the engine systems through a 180 degree turn.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Incident of the K-108 (Russian)
- ↑ Report on the incident (Russian)