Hacker News Reader

Surface ships are very noisy so submarines listen for other ships in the area before surfacing. They have dead zones in their sonar coverage, but can usually deal with that by turning to listen in those dead zones before surfacing. Nevertheless, there are occasional accidents.

View on HN

Surface ships are not always noisy. This is especially a problem with supertankers if you they are head-on to you, they can be hard to hear from underwater, especially with the high level of noise from the surface around the supertanker.

This was a contributing factor to a collision in the Mediterranean about a decade or so ago.

I personally had what we called an “ass-puckering” moment for exactly this reason once. At periscope depth in fog, huge cargo ship coming at us… it was the only time in 3 years on board I (or anyone else) had to call “emergency deep”.

> in fog, huge cargo ship coming at us

And Iron Mike probably had the conn aboard the cargo ship .... (Source: A similar experience in the South China Sea.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com