Mk 48 Torpedo -- Not Just For Skimmers

All submariners enjoy seeing a surface ship blown in half by a well-placed torpedo, but sometimes we forget that the Mk 48 is also effective against submarines. Poking around the 'net looking for information on the Navy's recently-released 5 year SINKEX plan, I found (here, here, here, and here) video of the torpedoing of USS Sailfish (SS 572) by my old boat USS Topeka (SSN 754) in May 2007. All the videos I found were in a .wmv format, so I uploaded it to YouTube for ease of viewing:



Personally, I think that being the target of a SINKEX is one of the most honorable ways for a retired warship to end her life -- she helps train the next generation of Sailors, and provides a home to marine life.

Back to the Navy scrapping list, the only surprise I saw is that they expect to scrap USS Los Angeles (SSN 688) within the next five years; she's still in commission, so it'll be a rush job (considering some of the other boats coming up for scrapping have been decomm'd since the mid-'90s).

(Non-sub related postscript: While I was uploading the video to YouTube, I figured I might as well post the old video of my cat Hercules molesting blankets.)