标签： Silent Service

Tautog here. We’ve got a two-parter talking about historical sub design, but before I go into that K9 wanted me to talk a little bit about general principles behind submarines.

So, as I said before. Submarines do a lot of things. Their main job is pretty obvious – sinking ships, but they also run cargo, lay mines, recon areas, secretly land troops, and even help with shore bombardment. If you’ve got a job for a ship that can stay hidden, chances are, a submarine’s done it before.

During the cold war, submarines got additional jobs. While they were used to scout before, the newer generation of submarine allowed for a lot more information gathering, like trailing enemy submarines, taking pictures of coastlines, and intercepting enemy transmissions. The cold war also saw the rise of the ballistic missile submarine. Those subs carry nuclear missiles – think of them as a moving but invisible missile silo, and you’ll quickly see why they’re strategically important.I’m sure Cusk has more to say about this topic later.

As you can see, submarines are an indispensable part of any navy. You definitely won’t see them going away (like the battleship, heh) anytime soon! The take home message here, though, is that submarines can do something no other ships do, and that’s to do things while staying hidden. Whether they’re acting as an invisible missile silo or a silent hunter beneath the seas, a good submarine is very difficult to find for the enemy, and that’s one of its biggest advantages.

So, it’s no surprise then that a lot of technology goes towards keeping a submarine stealthy. But, think about this for a second. Stealth isn’t everything. For a submarine to attack anything, it must throw off its “cloak.” In other words, once a submarine attacks a target, it in effect discards its greatest advantage, and thereby renders it vulnerable to counterattack.

Given that submarines are very poorly armored, it gave submarine commanders an interesting dilemma. Do I risk my safety so I can be aggressive and go on the attack? Or is it better for me to stay hidden until I can make a “safer” attack, but possibly at the cost of the attack’s success?

Submarine commanders had to deal with this particular trade-off because so much of what they do depended on it. In fact, you look at all the great submarine captains of all countries in the war, and you’d say that a lot of them had a thing for danger. To be an effective submarine captain you had to be aggressive, and you had to be willing to put yourself out there.

But, if you were too effective, you’d probably end up on the bottom of the ocean floor. That’s the deadly game that submarines play more so than any other ship type. The ones that are really good knew when to call it quits and “cashed out” their successes before too many enemies showed up. They also had a sense for when the risk was worth it – and when it was not.

Historically, prior to World War II, the US trained its submariners almost exclusively in matters of self-preservation and caution. Stealth and evasion and avoidance was what was emphasized. In fact, during pre-war war-games and exercises, if a submarine was so much as spotted by a plane, that sub counted as “sunk” in those exercises!

Yeah. So, before the war, the submarine was supposed to approach stealthily, minimizing one’s periscope exposure and rely on passive sonar. This made sense at the time, because the only times where a submarine would be easily detected would be right after its attack. The wake of the torpedo, the tell-tale signs of the periscope, or even the most obvious – the wreckages, which may or not be on fire – that the submarine left behind. All of those are pretty good signs that a submarine was nearby. It took many years and many developments in modern technology to make it so that we can get better at picking out submarines before they attack, but that’s another tale for another time.

What we found out was that this just wouldn’t do the job. U.S. submariners learned very quickly that the best way to do things was to attack on the surface at night. Yeah, sounds crazy, right? Well, they’d have gotten reprimanded before the war for such recklessness, but it was what ended up working really well.

Right, of course. I had almost forgotten. You’re here for cute subgirls in bikinis too.

Here’s who I’ll be introducing you to next. She’s pretty quiet, so don’t expect her to be as social as me!

Or, maybe she’s the next one? Gah, I need to check my schedule again. Everyone’s been drawn at this point. We’ve got twelve new subgirls –

*mutters* Stupid swimsuit calendar…

for the book, so, hmm…

Wait, hold on. If Bats and Pam and Lori are in, I gotta go check if Frenchie is around, too. Okay, be back in a bit!

Thanks for the responses from both our regulars and our readers. Zero’ll probably turn those things into something entertaining. Just watch.

Now, on our regular end. We’ve pumped out a bit more of the web layouts. You can see, for instance, that Zero’s trying to basically put buttons and whatnots on the site. We’re trying to learn to integrate discord and social media and forums and everything else – so please bear with us.

Yeah, despite all of us being something like 20-somethings (mostly early to mid), many of us really didn’t grow up using social media or these newer apps. I suppose you can say we’re a little old fashioned, after all. 🙂

Another update has been added to navy foods, but it’s in mandarin. We do have a Japanese translation in the works, but it’s really more so for the Chinese folks than us. They find our food fascinating (and I think we largely them as well).

The English source is the US navy cookbook. I have it in physical copy, and there used to be a copy of it floating online. I believe the Pacific War Encyclopedia (or something similar to it) also have it in text form as well. If you’re interested, go check it out.

Lastly, this is a question we actually got a while back with Lori, but given our new Silent Service book, it’s pertinent to raise it up again.

Generally speaking, it’s some kind of variant of “how will U-boats get treated in Pacific” or “Will Pacific bring in any U-boat girls?”

The answer to that now is that we now see an opportunity bringing in a character directly capable of interacting (both thematically and “historically”) with a large number of the cast. So, unlike the American(ized) Lori, she’ll be a lot more German.

The first question is a little harder to answer. I’m the author of Pacific. Sune jokingly calls this book “Allied Historical Revisionism” due to how stars-and-stripes and apple pie it gets sometimes. The reason here is that I believe it is important to highlight the accomplishments of the US during this war. There are many things that we did great in, and many things we didn’t do so well, but you do not get nearly the amount of wank on the Allied side as we see on the Axis end – whether it’s the Germans or the newly arisen Kantai Erection or Neo-IJN weebs that seem to populate this particular fandom.

Make no mistake. I am not saying that the Japanese or the Germans were trash. Quite the opposite. A careful study of many perspectives and many sources left us capable of making our own connections, and we believe in telling things for what they are. Japan, for instance, is stunningly competent in some of their pre-war and early war doctrines. Their training system was excellent, their technology was in many aspects top of the world, and their commanding officers had a gift and in many cases an intuitive grasp on tactics if not overall strategy. They were a competent enemy. To say anything otherwise would not only be insulting them, but also all those on our side who gave their lives in World War 2.

This does not mean that they did other things well. In fact, I believe you can appreciate the (oftentimes critical flaws) of the Japanese or the Germans once you get a better understanding of their strengths. It is my opinion that at the end of the day, these countries were not defeated only by matters of an environmental or industrial concern. I (and I speak only for myself and not the team) think that the failures of people, particularly the ones who are responsible for the lives of others, played just as great if not a greater one in the shaping of history.

Longtime readers of Pacific will know that indeed, that was what drew me to something like Pacific to begin with. I am fascinated by the machines of war, but what has always interested me were the people crewing the machines and the people giving orders to the machines.

Thus, it is honestly from this angle that I got together with the team to talk, okay, how are we going to bring a U-boat girl in? What does this carry for the implications of our lore? How would she view Nazi Germany? The War? What is she doing now? Why is she even here?

For that matter, how are we going to communicate the nature of the U-boat force during WW2? Whose memoirs do we use? Which sources do we apply? How do we feel about the matter, and how clearly can we articulate those opinions?

Keep an eye out and we’ll answer all of those. Believe me, we’ve got it coming up, and it’ll be great.