Video Shows ‘Stealth’ Nuclear Submarine Stuck in Scottish Mud

[Jeffersons Ghost]

For all the talk about which high-tech weapons systems the British military might have to do without as the country slashes budgets to reduce its debt, officers in the Royal Navy must be glad they still have tugboats and ropes at their disposal, since those were what they were using Friday to try to dislodge a nuclear submarine that ran aground just yards off the coast of Scotland.

Video of the HMS Astute, and the tugboat that was trying to pull it to deeper water, was shot and posted on YouTube by Paul Yoxon, a wildlife biologist on the Isle of Skye, who normally uploads images of rescued and rehabilitated otters being released into the wild.

The BBC reports that the new nuclear submarine has been described as Britain’s “stealthiest” because of “39,000 acoustic panels which cover its surface mask its sonar signature, meaning it can sneak up on enemy warships and submarines alike, or lurk unseen and unheard at depth.”

Right now, though, the Astute would have a hard time sneaking up on an otter, as Helen Birch, a colleague of Mr. Yoxon’s at the International Otter Survival Fund on the Isle of Skye, confirmed in a telephone interview with The Lede minutes ago. After explaining that Mr. Yoxon had shot the video of the beached submarine uploaded to YouTube, Ms. Birch was kind enough to put the phone down, go to an upstairs window of the otter group’s offices and look to make sure that the Astute was still stuck. It was.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/video-shows-stealth-nuclear-submarine-stuck-in-scottish-mud/?ref=global-home

[Cronus Protagonist]

1. I spent almost every summer right at that location in my childhood

In defense of the captain, he probably wasn't aware of how fast that tidal race is.... the ocean there runs round the bottom of Skye as fast as a river... this isn't the first boat to be trapped around there, and it won't be the last either.