Americans of a certain disposition are cheering and thumping their chests in celebration of the fact that their navy, the largest and most-expensive navy in the world, just sank the first “enemy warship” with a torpedo fired from a US submarine since the Big One that ended in 1945.
And so it did: a not-yet-identified US Navy fast attack nuclear submarine displacing between 3500 and 10,000 tons fired one $4.2-million torpedo at a “blind” and possibly unarmed Iranian destroyer of 1,500 tons displacement returning home from a non-hostile participation in an international naval exhibition in the Bay of Bengal hosted by the Indian Navy. This triumph was attained with a Mark 48 torpedo said to be capable of sinking a 100,000-ton aircraft carrier with a single well-placed hit, marking the first submarine kill since 1945 in which the submarine was larger (possibly seven times larger) than its target on the surface. (Running out of targets, the submarine USS Torsk took out two Japanese coastal patrol boats of 745 tons on the last day of World War II, perhaps launching a proud tradition of America’s Silent Service that lives on to this day.)
The unlucky IRIS Dena was “blind” because its entire ability to detect underwater threats was embodied in the helicopter it was designed to carry and deploy, but which it did not carry, since it was on a “mission” that did not contemplate hostilities of any kind. That the Dena was indeed blind to the presence of the submarine was of course known to the American attacker, who made the otherwise-risky decision to remain at periscope depth after launching the torpedo, in order to capture exciting film footage for the people back home who were the purported beneficiaries of the slaughter.
The Dena may likewise be supposed to have been “unarmed.” The launchers for four anti-aircraft and four anti-ship missiles with which it was equipped may have been empty. It also sported a 3-inch gun on its foredeck along with smaller guns for air defense, for which it may have had ammunition aboard, so it may indeed have been armed, although in no way against submarine threats.
The grotesquerie of a small warship being sunk by a submarine at least twice its size is pointed up by the November 1944 sinking of the aircraft carrier Shimano, at 65,000 tons the largest ship ever sunk by submarine-launched torpedo, by the USS Archerfish, displacing 2,500 tons when submerged (its heaviest). The submarine hit the aircraft carrier with four torpedoes. A further incongruity with the norms of submarine warfare is that US nuclear attack submarines are faster underwater than the Dena’s maximum speed of 25 knots. The hapless Iranian couldn’t have outrun its American pursuer even if it had known she was being shadowed. The time and place of the attack were entirely the attacker’s choice.
The use of an almost-2-ton torpedo to kill 150 of Dena’s 180-man crew cannot be blamed on any malice or cruelty on the part of the American submarine’s captain; the Mk 48 torpedo has been “standard issue” on US submarines for over 30 years, and was quite likely the only type of torpedo the attacking vessel had ready to launch at the chosen moment.
The lopsidedness of the navy’s latest triumph on the seas reminds one of the image of B-52 eight-jet-engined heavy bombers dropping smart bombs on ragtag little men wearing black pajamas and carrying AK-47 assault rifles through the jungles. In that case, overwhelming technological and destructive power ultimately did not deliver victory.
The present conflict could turn out the same way. Or worse. Much worse.
