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US Submarine Commander Rates 14 Submarine Scenes In Movies | How Real Is It?

Jun 08, 2021
David Marquet: What? Crazy. I'm David Marquet, former nuclear

submarine

commander

, and I'm going to watch some

submarine

clips and rate them on

real

ism. Officer: Torpedo! The Americans are shooting at us again. Jonesy: The tone is too high. The torpedo is Russian. David: Yes, you can tell what type of torpedo it is by the sound it makes, and all different torpedoes have slightly different sounds. So one of the things we do is study all those different sounds to help us. Officer: Connection, sonar, new contact, Sierra 4-1. Soviet Alfa class submarine. David: Soviet Alfa class submarine. It gives me chills!
us submarine commander rates 14 submarine scenes in movies how real is it
The Alfa was this crazy submarine that the Russians built in the '70s. People tried all kinds of different things. They had a titanium helmet. They used liquefied lead to cool the reactor, if you can imagine that. It was the fastest and deepest submarine ever created. It's basically like a Miyata with a Corvette engine. It was a crazy submarine. Officer: Weapon enabled on the far side of the target. Red October passed before arming itself. David: If you turn your torpedo too far because you're trying to get as close as possible and you overshoot, you'll miss. Ramius: Melekhin, more speed.
us submarine commander rates 14 submarine scenes in movies how real is it

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us submarine commander rates 14 submarine scenes in movies how real is it...

Melekhin: Negative. You are already functioning at 110%. Ramius: Then give me 115%. David: No, 115% is not made in a reactor. You do it 100%. Zero point. Officer: They didn't shoot us. I can't attack a Soviet submarine without authorization. David: That's right. The self-defense rules don't allow you to do that. You see how Sean Connery and Scott Glenn, playing the two submarine

commander

s, are cool as cucumbers. These guys are seconds away from being blown to pieces. That's exactly what submarine commanders are like. Mancuso: You're heading straight for that torpedo. David: It's very unlikely that a maneuver will work, especially twice.
us submarine commander rates 14 submarine scenes in movies how real is it
And the torpedoes would never be that close together, so it loses some credibility. But overall, the feeling of not

real

ly knowing what's going on, the feeling of having to make decisions, the feeling of this cat and mouse is really good. When I joined the submarine force, I did not come from a military family. My mom says, "What are you doing?" And I said, when this movie came out, I said, "Mom, watch this movie! This will tell you." Eight out of 10. We don't use glass in a submarine like that. And that's why. Considering these guys just went under, they're in pretty good shape.
us submarine commander rates 14 submarine scenes in movies how real is it
Unfortunately, we know what this looks like because in 2005, an American nuclear submarine hit bottom. This was an indirect blow. 98 of the 135 people on board suffered some type of injury. There was a lot of blood in the submarine. Many bruises, broken bones. And this would be much worse than that, because it went down. They were going straight to the bottom. So I think letting everyone be okay, yeah, we saw some people wandering around, but basically everyone was okay afterwards. Of course you can't make a movie if everyone dies. That's the end of the movie. However, the feeling of what it's like when you go vertical is pretty good.
So I'll give it a six out of 10. By the way, you don't want to do this on your sub. Why did that torpedo fall so easily, it seemed like there was a cut in the cable. These things are held together with multiple straps. It is really difficult to dislodge them. And the other thing is that what they show here is quite accurate. It takes a lot for the gun to go off, and the thing falls and bounces; The gun is not going to fire. You hit it with a hammer; The gun is not going to fire.
You heat it up; The gun is not going to fire. These things are designed so that it takes a very specific sequence of operations to make the warhead explode. So, these are torpedoes, with the classic propeller at the back, and they are designed to sink other ships or submarines. Submarines can also carry missiles that can attack land targets and missiles that can attack other ships, as well as mines that stalk the bad guy. It only takes one of these modern torpedoes to sink all but the largest warships. It is a space that all members of the submarine crew would have access to and would know.
The reason is that if there is any kind of victim, we must gather the entire crew to go look for them. The philosophy of a submarine is: "One crew, one fight." Thus, with very few exceptions, the entire crew has access to the entire ship. I'll give it a seven out of 10. Barney: Mayday! May Day! The engine room has a leak! David: Now, this scene from "The Simpsons" gives me chills, because this is every scuba diver's worst fear: flooding. At great depths, water enters very, very quickly and it is not necessary to flood the entire submarine. This is what is happening.
Let's say there is water at the front of the submarine. That part of the submarine starts to get heavier, and then the submarine starts to tilt down like this, which means that the water in the submarine runs more towards the front, making it even heavier and tilting down even more. . And then what happens is that now the submissive, you end up like this. And when you are like this, your ballast tanks no longer work. You can't use air to expel the water, because the air will just come out the side. This is how you die in a submarine.
And if you saw the movie "Titanic," that's how that ship sank. And you remember at the end of the movie, as the ship was sinking, the Titanic was rising, and that's because the water was cascading from one compartment to another. It's called the free surface effect and that's how you die in a submarine. Its not cute. Now, if you dive into water like these guys do, the first thing you want to do is get as shallow as possible. That does two things for you. No. 1, pumps that pump water have less pressure to pump against, so you are pumping faster and the water coming in has less pressure behind it.
The easiest way to stop flooding in a submarine, because most of the water inside a submarine enters through pipes, is to have these valves that we can turn off. Isolate the system. Now here, it looks like it's next to a tank or maybe even the hull. In that case, it is a very, very difficult problem, because when there is a leak, the water enters very forcefully. It's harder than any water cannon you've ever seen. And here they demonstrate it; It's leaking like a limp garden hose! There is no way! So, are you fighting the pressure to put an earring in there?
No. The most realistic thing about this whole scene is the guy underwater drinking beer. So I have to give them at least a three for trying. Morozov: From here to here. Robinson: Which means we're on one of these two ridges, or we'd be crushed. David: Yes, these graphs are very accurate. You can see that they have contour lines, and for a body of water like the Black Sea, which humans have operated in for a long time, it is probably very well mapped. That's probably accurate. Robinson: No, the Black Sea is anoxic at depth. Without oxygen. David: Yes, the Black Sea is a very special body of water.
It's basically like a bathtub, it has very little interaction, there are rivers that flow into it and then flow into the Mediterranean. So, deep down, there is a layer where the deeper water is anoxic. There is very, very little oxygen. And as a result, there is little decay. Now, I'm not sure it's perfectly preserved, but it's like finding human remains in swamps. They are very well preserved. Whether they can use the driveshaft or not, I don't know. But it's still overall a nine out of 10 for realism. That's true. Ramsey: We have rules that are not open to interpretation, personal intuition, gut feelings, hairs on the back of your neck.
Hunter: Captain. Ramsey: We are all very aware of what our orders are and what those orders mean. David: This is exactly right. You want to side with Denzel, but what Gene Hackman says here is exactly right. These guys are trained on this 100 times over, including the exact types of errors they're seeing right now. But then he takes it too far. Ramsey: Cob, arrest this man and get him out of here! Hunter: Captain Ramsey, under the operating procedures governing the launch of nuclear weapons, we cannot launch our missiles unless you and I agree. David: That's right. So Denzel doesn't need to get into a big argument, he just needs to say, "I'm not going to announce that." The rest of the crew knows it.
The procedure is that if you don't hear both voices, those missiles won't fly. Gene Hackman has no right to remove him from office because he disagrees with him. It is designed so that two people independently have to make the decision to launch nuclear weapons. Its a big problem. Ramsey: I order you to arrest the XO on charges of mutiny! David: Now, this is all just a fantasy that some people in Hollywood dreamed up. First of all, it's not a mutiny, because Denzel doesn't collaborate with anyone. It's just that he's alone. A mutiny would mean he has a bunch of people, or at least another one, with him.
Denzel cannot relieve the captain just because he does not agree with his decision. Commanding officers may be relieved, for example, for medical reasons, if he is incapacitated. Having a disagreement about something is not a legitimate reason to relieve your commanding officer of it. Nobody would follow that order. I'll give it like a four out of 10. So, here's what it would look like. Now, the reason they have to practice this is because a World War II submarine spends a lot of time on the surface. It is actually more submersible, because they have diesel engines and need oxygen.
On nuclear submarines, we spend almost all of our time underwater. So, let's say you're on the surface, sailing, and suddenly someone sees a plane coming towards you. You have to go underwater very, very, very fast. So what's happening is that the people on the bridge are getting off the bridge. Now, the hatch is open, but at the same time we are opening the vents and flooding the submarine and tilting it deeply. You have to close the hatch before the water level reaches that level, or you will suddenly start experiencing flooding. It is a highly choreographed and synchronized event.
This is a 10 out of 10. This is exactly how it would have been. Man: Chief of watch, submerge the ship to 160 feet. David: So, as he sees, the submarine spends as little time as possible on the surface. Submarines are allergic to sunlight. The goal of being a submarine is to stay underwater. So they show up at the last minute, and as soon as they get the SEAL team on board, which they do very quickly, they close the hatch and submerge the ship again. That's how it is in war. If they can see you, you may be a target.
If you can be a target, you can be shot. If they can shoot you, they can kill you. So the best way to break that chain of events is from the beginning. Overall, I'll give it a seven out of 10 for realism. Vostrikov: The reactor repair failed. At any moment we could have an explosion that could blow up the warheads. David: No. Reactors don't explode. Unfortunately, this is perpetuating the myth that we have to fight in nuclear energy, which is that reactors are somehow like nuclear weapons and that a reactor will explode like nuclear weapons can. So, first of all, the reactor is not going to explode.
Secondly, I would say that it is in your power, it might melt, but it won't explode. If it explodes, the chance of it igniting and detonating secondary weapons is zero. Because the other weapons are designed not to explode just because there is another explosion nearby. Vostrikov: This would destroy the American ship just a few kilometers from the NATO base. David: I wouldn't blow up the warheads, because the warheads are designed not to detonate unless their detonation sequence is completed. You can't, if you explode a warhead, it doesn't explode either. The possibility that they were so close that if their warheads exploded, they would destroy this other ship or the NATO base, again, is very, very, very unlikely.
Vostrikov: We could dive and try to repair the reactor. David: No. What does diving have to do with reactor repair? Simply repair the reactor wherever you are. So, I mean, they really don't have much of a choice here. Either they don't try to fix the reactor and risk an explosion, or they try to fix the reactor. So it's not like there's a whole debate here, but I'll give it a zero out of 10, because not only is it totally unrealistic, but it perpetuates some of the unhelpful myths about nuclear power. Klough: This is the Navy, where a commanding officer is a powerful and terrible thing.
Don't you dare repeat what you said to the kids over there: "I don't know." David: Yes, this is a question of command philosophy. Now, I'll tell you, I like to say "I don't know," because what it does is invite the team to think. When Captain Sullenberger landed his plane, the Airbus, in the Hudson River, one of the last things he said to the co-pilot was, "Hey, do you have any ideas?" What you want is for everyone to be on board and thinking. Now, maybe in an extreme crisis you don't want to act like you really don't know what's going on, but 99.999% of the time, saying, "I don't know," saying, "What do you think?" That's actually a good thing.
Klough: You're the captain now. And the boss always knows what to do, whether he does it or not. David: The official title of the captain of a submarine is the commanding officer or CO or,sometimes, the captain. That is something very common. But here, Harvey Keitel refers to Matthew McConaughey as "boss." It comes from an old Dutch German word based on ships: ship, schipper. Another term for captain is a little less fun. He is called the "old man." And they might refer to the captain as the old man because usually the captain was the oldest person on the ship.
Now you will notice that they wear different uniforms. And the idea comes from World War II, submarines, because they were so cramped and so claustrophobic, they were a little less formal than surface ships. And the men tended to take some liberties with their uniforms. This is putting a bit of pressure on him. In modern submarines, what you will find is that they all look very professional. We have common uniforms and they are designed to protect us from fires and things like that. That's why we take these uniforms very seriously, because they could end up saving our lives.
I'll give it an eight out of 10. Man: Captain, we are prepared to counterattack. David: Yes, this is the first question. "We are prepared to counter the launch." Counterlaunch what? Submarines do not have weapons to shoot down other missiles. They have weapons to shoot down ships and other submarines. That? Yes, it is an amazing weapon, but not that amazing. Look, these missiles are the size of small school buses. They're flying 1,000 miles an hour, they're this far away, they're coming toward the submarine, you put 100 bullets into that thing in two seconds, it's still going to go through the submarine.
Crazy. Multiple problems with tactics. The physics of the thing don't really work. I don't think any submarine commander would act that way. I love the movie, but it's not realistic. I'll give it a three out of 10. Yeah, I don't think so. Here is the problem. Sound does not transmit well between a large interface, such as water to air. So, you can put your head under the water and you can listen, let's say you can listen to whales and stuff, then you raise your head in the air; You don't listen to them anymore. And the opposite is true.
The sound that is in the air is not transmitted to the water. If you were drumming on the side of the boat, on the side of that little rowboat, and that rowboat was transmitting the noise to the water, then, yes, you could hear that, but it wouldn't have the fidelity that these guys have. hear. Good movie, but this scene, not so realistic. Five out of 10 for this particular scene. Murrell: Mr. Ware, set the depth charges to 100. Mr. Ware: Arr! David: Yes, in World War II none of these weapons were guided. You had to drive directly over the enemy submarine and drop your depth charges, hopefully placing them at the correct depth.
Von Stolberg: It's spinning. David: So, he's listening to the sonar, and when you have two propellers, those destroyers have two propellers, and when a ship starts turning, what happens is the water pressure is different and the two propellers come out a little bit. synchronization. So instead of going, it's like, and you can hear that. And that's what the submarine captain hears. Then the destroyer passed and now she wants to go back, but she has to turn and at that point it is very wide. That is the point of maximum vulnerability. I'll give this an eight out of 10 for how WWII submarine vs destroyer combat looked.
There is no way! So, are you fighting the pressure to put an earring in there? No. The most realistic thing about this whole scene is the guy underwater drinking beer.

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