Quote Originally Posted by kokopup View Post
pomtzu



My ship the USS Essex was an Antisubmarine Carrier. We had a lot of war games with the SUB guys out of New London and Groton. We had one exercise where we were trying to find one of their Subs for weeks. On the last day of the exercise, the Sub surfaced right beside us , a sailor came out of a hatch, lit flare, & threw it, hitting us in the side.. We found out they had been riding in our screw wake under the ship for the whole exercise. The flare just added insult to injury. When it comes to races between a Carrier and a Sub the Sub won every time. The Skipjack, our fastest Sub of that day , could actually run circles around us submerged. In a word "fast", since our flank speed was well over 30 knots.

Maybe that's where they came up with that one scene in Down Periscope, where Kelsey Grammer's character has them steer the diesel sub between the screws.