Canada’s Submarines

There are lots of jokes about the Canadian Armed Forces, and I have to admit, there isn’t much weaponry in this country of ours. Sure we have some nice planes, and boats and tanks, but when you think of the Sea King helicopters, it seems all downhill from there. This a mistake most people make. The question is, what is the best part of the Canadian Armed Forces? In my opinion, it is the least talked about weapon, Canada’s five star class fleet of submarines, which I shall now inform you of.

Before you hear about our subs, I shall need to educate you on some things you need to know. There a four types of submarines. In order of importance, there are the SSNs or nuclear-powered attack submarines. These subamrines are the strike force used against other submarines and surface ships by countries with lots of money. Next you have the SSBNs, the boomers, the nuclear powered ballistic-missile submarine. These subs usually stay close to the coast of their homeland because of how outrageusly expensive they are. After the boomers are your SSGNs, or nuclear guided missile subs. A guided missile, for those of you who don’t know, is a subsurface to ground weapon. Meaning the missile is launched underwater from the sub, and then rises up the the surface of the water and takes to the air, flying towards its target, like a guard tower on the shoreline of an enemy country. These boats are used to attack a shore to clear out the enemy’s forces before the troups move in for an attack. The last submarines are the SSKs, the diesel electric subs, of which Canada has four.

Canada’s SSKs have been leased from the British Royal Navy. In Britain, they were known as the Upholder class. Tom Clancy, the famous author of political and military thrillers, who has done a lot of research on the subject, has written that the Upholder’s are the best SSKs in the world, rival in armament and sensors to the Royal Navy’s top subs, the nuclear Trafalgar class, which are the second best class in the world, next to the American nuclear Los Angeles class. Our Upholders have been renamed and refitted when we leased them, and they shall replace our older Oberon class. The new class has been named the Victoria class, named for the HMCS (Her Majesty’s Canadaian Ship) Victoria, following the navy tradition of naming a new class after the first in its line. The other three subs are the HMCS Chicoutimi, the HMCS Corner Brook, and the HMCS Windsor.

When the Upholders were being refitted, the changes were made to meet Canadadian needs and standards. Most of the changes were for the navigation equipment and sonar arrays. Also, there were some upgrades for the torpedo systems and the escape trunks.

The Victoria class submarines are medium sized subs, 70.26m long, 7.6m wide, and 5.5m tall. When it is surfaced, a Vic can displace 2, 185 tons and move at 12 knots, about 22 kilometres an hour. When submerged, it displaces 2, 400 tons, and has a top speed of 20 knots, roughly 37 kilometres an hour. This submarine can go down to 200 metres below sealevel, and can go on a patrol for two months. An SSN can stay underwater for as long as there is food on board for the crew to eat, because the nuclear reacter on the sub does not need to get fuel very often. But an SSK like a Vic needs to stop for fuel for its diesel engine. Also, while on patrol, a SSK needs to surface every once and a while because its diesel engine needs air. It does not come all the way to the surface to get the air though. It has a special snorkel, like the ones you use for swimming, to suck in air, but still remain hidden underwater. A SSKs diesel engine does not power its propeller. The engine drives a generator, which charges the main batteries. These batteries in turn power th electric motors for the propeller. So when a sub goes on patrol, it starts off wth the diesel engine on and with the snorkel up, charging the batteries. When they are fully charged, the diesel engine stops, the snorkel is retracted, and the quiet electric motors propel the sub into its dive, and it will stay submered until its batteries need to be recharged. The Victorias have two 16 cylinder engines powering two 2, 500 kw generators. There is a single electric motor turning the sub’s single seven bladed propeller.

At the top of the conning tower, there are the storage areas for the periscopes, the masts, and the snorkel. The Vics have two periscopes each. On binocular periscope, for looking far away, and one monocular attack periscope, which is thin and camaflouged, so that in an attack situation, a captain can look above the water’s surface to see what is happening, but cannot be seen. The masts are for the radio equipment, the radar, and the radar sensing equipment. The radios used are VLF , or very low frequency, meaning the radio waves can be several kilometres long. Coded orders are radioed in from command and are give to the captain. He then goes into his cabin, locks the door, pulls out the current code book, decodes the next assignment, and gives the orders to his crew. To talk to other submarines, the sub has a hydrophone system, nicknamed the gertrude.

The Victorias have some very good sensors especially the sonar. Now, there are two kinds of sonar. There is the passive sonar, which is set in arrays on the side of the sub in arrays. This is basically one gigantic microphone, used to listen for other submarines or surface ships. The other kind of sonar is the active sonar. This sonar is one large sphere in the very front of the sub, that goes ping, and these pings are listened to by the sonar man and his computer, and they use it to figure out if there are any reefs around to watch out for, or to find any submarines that are just sitting still, so quite the passive sonar can not pick up. But it is rarely used for geographical problems, because all submarines are equpped with very highly accurate depth charts.

The punch of the Victoria class are its armament. A Vic has six 533mm torpedo tubes, and can carry up to 18 weapons. Currently, the sub fleet are carrying the most popular weapon on the market, the Mk 48 Heavyweight torpedo, which can sink or disable a small or medium sized ship or sub, and several hits to a larger boat can do severe damage. The sub also has a submerged signal ejector. This is used to eject the countermeasures against enemy torpedos. The Canadian Navy uses acoustic/bubble decoys. These are cannisters which release bubbles, which can confuse the sonar of a sub, surface ship, or a torpedo.

There is enough room on the Victorias for at least 53 crewmen. The crew’s quarters are an improvement ont the accomedations of the Oberon class. There are mess decks for dining and recreation activities, and there are comfertable bunks in the sepereate sleeping areas.

I mentioned earlier about the improvements to the escape trunks. An escape trunk is like an air lock on a space shuttle. If the sub was disabled on the seabed and the crew needed to be rescued, then a DSRV, a deep submergence resuce vehicle, would land on the escape trunk, and the crew would crawl through it to the DSRV. Also there are escape suits onboard, which you crawl into, get in the trunk, let the water in to it, and then swim away to the surface. There are two escape trunks on the Vics, one infront of the conning tower, and one behind it.

Then there is the nerve center of the sub, the control room. This is where the captain or the officer on duty tells everyne what to do. In this room are the helmsman’s controls, and other controls needed to work the ship. Also in this room is the weapons launch station. Here there are two key holes. On the sub, two men carry keys, usually the captain and his first officer. These are the weapons keys, and they both need to be in the weapons terminal before a torpedo can be armed and fired. This is to make sure no single man can launch a weapon, in the very unlikely event of a mutiny, for example.

As you can see, Canada may have some bad helicopters, but our submarines are strong in force, and are Canada’s best naval defence, something of growing importance these days.