Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by A. B. (talk | contribs) at 04:37, 10 May 2006 (submarines: added link to graphic of water depths in Northwest Passage). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

An event mentioned in this article is an August 8 selected anniversary

From the article: "The Spanish called it the ." This sentence was added in the most recent revision, 05:11, 5 Mar 2004, by Decumanus, but it is incomplete. What did the Spanish call it? Edward 10:38, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Melting Arctic ice risks Canada-US territorial dispute

There was this news report on Yahoo! News today Melting Arctic ice risks Canada-US territorial dispute. It looks like there are a number of items in the article that should be incorporated into the Misplaced Pages article, but I don't know enough about the Northwest Passage to know what's worth including and what's just trivia. 11:34, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

US Subs

The article as currently written contains the following sentence:

"In late 2005, it was revealed that U.S. nuclear submarines had been traveling the passage without Canadian approval, sparking Canadian outrage."

A Google news search turns up no conclusive 2005 reports of US submarines in waters claimed by Canada. Canadian media did report a U.S. nuclear submarine surfaced near the North Pole in late 2005 on a trip between oceans; these reports claimed it therefore likely transited Canadian waters to get there.

This was then used in later articles to allege US submarines were using the Northwest Passage. Since the Northwest Passage runs east-west, not north-south, it would not be used as a route to the North Pole. A submarine transiting the Passage would go nowhere near the Pole.

I think it's unlikely that U.S. nuclear submarines would use the Northwest Passage as a shortcut between the Altantic and Pacific Oceans. It's more likely that they transit up the east coast of Greenland and then around the top of Greenland before heading across to the Bering Strait. Although this route is approximately 1000 miles longer, it's all in deep water without obstacles until a submarine nears the Bering Strait. That would allow a nuclear submarine to transit the Arctic Ocean at maximum speed. Such a transit would also pass close to the North Pole. At no time would a submarine on this route pass anywhere near waters claimed by Canada.

The Northwest Passage is shallow and contains islands. Because of the inherent uncertainties associated with navigating underwater without external references, standard submarine doctrine requires using slow speeds when moving through shallow confined waters. This becomes even trickier when the submarine has to worry about avoiding ice projections from above. The requirement to travel slowly for 800 to 900 miles through the Passage would more than offset the distance reduction, so it is more likely that American submarines are taking the faster, longer, safer route around Greenland. references:

USS Charlotte http://en.wikipedia.org/USS_Charlotte_%28SSN-766%29

Not standing on guard in the North http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1135810213632&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

Canada: Don’t Tread on Us http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.18952/article_detail.asp

Harper vows to boost western defence http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=94deb3f7-2b10-4a6f-997b-4aaf5c3e4ea0&k=43913

Smithsonian's submarine navigation page http://americanhistory.si.edu/subs/operating/attackcenter/navigation/

military.com: Submarine grounding discussion http://forums.military.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/2171941282/m/74900578613"

Bonnyman 20:24, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Not sure about that statement in the article either, I don't recall hearing about a specific incident in 2005. However, in early 2005, some Canadian media suggested that "foreign nuclear Submarines" (they could be American, British, Russian, etc) had been seen in (claimed) internal waters over some of the past several summers by some local Inuit residents. It appeared to be all eye witness reports with no actual hard evidence. In particular, I recall there was a CBC documentary that aired around January-March of 2005 on "Artic Sovereignty "(around the same time as the Hans expedition), it was probably replayed a few times throughout the year. I can't find any web sources that mention it though.Kilrogg 22:30, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Here's a graphic to illustrate the point: Bathymetric image of the Arctic Ocean. This graphic shows extensive shoaling for any submerged transit of the Northwest Passage; by contrast, note that a submarine transiting to the Pacific from the east side of Greenland has a wide open, straight shot under the North Pole for a very high speed transit. Submariners hate submerged, near-blind navigation in shallow waters -- especially when they're closely confined on either side by land.

It's impossible to say that there was a submarine in the Passage just prior to the Canadian elections unless someone saw or heard it. An underwater acoustic array such as the U.S.'s old SOSUS system would allow the Canadian military to very cost-effectively monitor any submarine activity in the Northwest Passage.--A Bonnyman 04:37, 10 May 2006 (UTC)