Russian submarine collided with Royal Navy warship in North Atlantic

Authored by telegraph.co.uk and submitted by MGC91
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A Russian submarine collided with a British warship’s sonar as it was tracking its movements in the North Atlantic, in the first collision between Russian and Royal Navy vessels since the end of the Cold War.

Following the collision in late 2020, HMS Northumberland was forced to abort its 48-hour mission to find the Russian submarine by using a towed array sonar.

The device, which uses hundreds of microphones attached to a cable, was trailed behind the Type 23 frigate in order to subtly detect submarines. However, it was damaged to such an extent that the warship had to return to port in order for the sonar to be replaced.

One Navy source told The Telegraph that the noise made when the submarine collided with the towed array would have been so powerful that “they probably would have scared themselves s–tless when they did it”.

They added that the probability of a submarine hitting the towed array was “infinitely tiny”.

“The ocean is a huge place and the towed body is so small that the likelihood of interaction is so low. This is just unfortunate and unintentional. The Russians would not have tried to do this on purpose.”

After the incident the crew launched a Merlin helicopter to try and find the submarine.

Gold-Perspective5340 on January 6th, 2022 at 23:29 UTC »

Maybe the aim was to cut a shiny new towed array and take it back for analysis? Crazy things like this have happened in the past

mr_rivers1 on January 6th, 2022 at 23:21 UTC »

Nobody read the article again.

The ships didn't collide, the Russian sub hit the towed array sonar the ship had trailing behind it wqhich is used ironically to detect subs.

There's no way the russians deliberately hit the SONAR. It was a completely unlucky and unlikely accident.

Homelessnomore on January 6th, 2022 at 20:14 UTC »

"Following the collision in late 2020, HMS Northumberland was forced to abort its 48-hour mission to find the Russian submarine by using a towed array sonar.:

Found it!