Can a submarine really escape from a torpedo tube underwater?

It is generally recognized that the United States and Russia are currently the two countries with the most powerful militaries in the world. However, these two countries, without exception, have fallen on one thing, that is, submarines in distress.

In 2000, the Russian Kursk nuclear submarine involved in military exercises due to torpedo aging caused by the accidental explosion and sank, and ultimately the death of all crew members; 1963, the U.S. Army Long Tail Shark nuclear submarine in the deep dive test due to quality problems caused by seawater into the boat, and ultimately sank in the Atlantic Ocean bottom 2560 meters. There are also examples of successful submarine rescues after distress: in 1972, the Soviet Union's K-19 submarine suddenly caught fire, and the submarine then quickly surfaced to receive a call for help from NATO. The 12 crewmen trapped in the torpedo room were not rescued until 40 days later because of sea breezes.

None of these three incidents were cases of submarine destruction, but they can serve as a reference for those who come after them and provide ideas for future submarine crew escapes. First of all, the structural design of the submarine must take into account all kinds of emergencies in advance, leaving the design space for the personnel to escape; and in the quality of production and quality inspection on strict control, to ensure that the officers and men have the opportunity to escape; in the aftermath of the disaster, actively and the nearby ship to contact, request each other's help for rescue. This has been implemented in today's submarine design, most submarines have emergency escape facilities and contact equipment.

Then we come to how to escape, which should be divided into two parts. The first is the shallow water area, where escape is relatively easy and the submarine's crew can enter the sea directly through the torpedo tubes. In fact, this is a common method of releasing frogmen from a submarine. After all crew members have donned their escape equipment, the launching officer and crew will determine if they are ready by tapping on the launching tube, and when they are sure they are ready, the gates will be opened and the water will be released in preparation for launching.

In this process, the submarine will also pre-launch life buoys, personnel from the torpedo tube into the sea after the need to follow the life buoys slowly floating, so as to avoid the body because of the pressure of the drastic changes in the situation of discomfort. Another method of escape from shallow water is to gather all personnel into a specially established escape hatch on the submarine and then release the hatch to float. These two methods together with waiting for rescue constitute the main means of escape for shallow water submarine personnel.

Modern submarine escape is difficult to escape in deep water, generally speaking, this area belongs exclusively to the nuclear submarine, because one of the characteristics of the nuclear submarine is in the signal is difficult to reach the deep water area activities, in order to play its own sea-based nuclear deterrent role. There are two methods of deep-water escape: the first is the Russian method, which uses a specially designed escape hatch and escape equipment, and is an enhanced version of the second method of shallow-water escape. This escape hatch is located in the command tower part, encountered an accident when the escape hatch will be detached from the command tower, and then floated to the surface, the crew successfully completed the escape.

The other is the American approach, which is based on a strong safeguards and rescue system. The Americans divided the interior of the nuclear submarine so that each area could be isolated separately and equipped with escape equipment, allowing the crew to determine for themselves whether to take the initiative to escape or wait for rescue.

The U.S. military has a large number of specialized submarine rescue ships with a large amount of rescue equipment on board, such as the SRDRS system, which is capable of rescuing submarines at depths of 610 meters. The global presence of the U.S. military also ensures that these rescue ships can be the first to arrive and rescue the submarine after the accident. The U.S. submarine has a number of ports of entry, the crew can choose the nearest port of entry to wait for the submarine rescue ship rescue.