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Well, say the Atlantic is 3000 miles by 3000 (very roughly). That's 9 million square miles. Submarines typically stay in the top 1,000 feet of the ocean, so it's about 1.8 million cubic miles of volume.

Call the boat 60 feet wide (with control fins and such), and 500 feet long, and about 60 feet deep; that's about 10^-5 cubic miles.

So there are in the region of 180 billion possible "slots" that the submarine could be in. So very crudely, the odds of any one particular submarine and any other particular submarine being in the same slot are 180 billion to one.

I'm sure the real probabilities are all over the place compared to that - some parts of the ocean are avoided for one reason or another, subs have to stay within range of certain targets, etc etc. But billions to one seems to be the right sort of order of magnitude.

Pure random accidental collision? Doubtful.

GrahamKennedy wrote:Pure random accidental collision? Doubtful.

Yeah, but since they couldn't really see each other could it be purposeful...
It's a very rare happening, but maybe it was merely a coincidence...

I find it hard to believe that it was completely random. I'm coming to the view that somebody somewhere put those two boats in the same bit of ocean for some reason.

Conspiracy theorist, are we?
lol

Generally not, but come on, the odds of this happening by random chance are so fantastically low...

All I'm suggesting is that maybe they did decide to hold some sort of joint exercise, test of capabilities or something that put those two boats close to one another. Not a big bad evil conspiracy as such.

lol, yeah I highly doubt that it was a coincidence too.

GrahamKennedy wrote:I find it hard to believe that it was completely random. I'm coming to the view that somebody somewhere put those two boats in the same bit of ocean for some reason.

Of course they did - the Cold War may be over, but Russia is still the most important nuclear threat to both the UK and France, so both nations' SSBNs are going to be targetted at the same bit of the planet, reducing the patrol areas considerably. Add to that the fact that the European continental shelf extends out a fair distance, and the fact that these patrols have been going on for decades, and the odds of two subs on standard deterrence patrol running into each other come down somewhat.

Not to mention, SSBNs are probably looking for good places to hide in the Atlantic ocean that let them do their job. When two people are looking for a good place to hide, their ships are playing by nearly the same rules, they probably will go to similar areas.

In this case, it was the same one.

Hell, I'd bet if the Royal Navy and the French Navy compared the patrol routes of their subs, they'd find that they'd been passing very close to each other for decades. It's kinda the whole point of subs to stay hidden, and that region is of importance to borht France and Britain.
Still, pretty bizzare chance.

"Well, they were driving on the left, and we were driving on the right, then they swerved, and we swerved, but we swerved the same way..."

I chalk it up to a British crew seeing the French sub ahead of them on their way to a particular destination... "We're not letting those frogs beat us..."

Oh, I'm SURE they were in the process of doing something stupid down there.

My vote goes to joint exercise.

SteveK wrote:My vote goes to joint exercise.

Yeah... the problem was, one too many joints.

"Dude, where's my ICBM?"

Its kind of odd...But dad, being in the RN at the moment, and working with the personnel branch has a bit of inside info?

Apparently subs bump quite alot. according to him.