A Skipper under attack with ride a layer in order to help confuse the incoming, he would porpoise the layers and drop a few countermeasures on either side of the layer to help throw it off. then he’d either go deep and silent (the Russian way) or blow and surface running at all speed (the American way). IMHO a good Skipper will think about what happens after the worst case, at least on the surface some of the crew can survive, down deep if you’re hit no one will survive.

Now the tactics depends on certain things and as for me its as follows – skippers nerve; confidence in his CMs; confidence in his subs strength; saving his ship; safety of his men.

I put the safety of his men at last bcoz, no skipper has that as his top-most priority when in action, and it just flipps to the top only after every other means of saving his sub have been nearly exhausted.

And thats what one gets to see in the two different approach that the Russians & Amrikkans take. It shows the confidence that the Russians and Amrikkans have in their countermeasures. In the case of the Russians, they show their faith in their countermeasures against the Amrikkans/NATO acoustic homing torpedos by diving deep & silent after employing their CMs where as the Amrikkans (& hopefully NATO) skippers show their faith in their countermeasures against the Russian wake homers by blowing & surface running after employing their set of CMs.

And I wud take the Russian line, coz first & foremost wud be my faith in my CMs & then my subs strength (double hulled & reserve boyancy) to take in punishment and still capable enough to blow out to surface. That is coz its always better to have urself covered under the natural protection (at times) of the ocean layers as u simply don know whats out their in the open untill I’m not in my home/allies waters.

And SSNs are mostly not for staying in the home ground, but rather take the battle to the enemys backyard, so there is little sense in blowing (if all options have not exhausted) with the thought of the ‘home ground’ and then getting hammered on the head.

SSN are huge compared to SSK that’s why they need to hide at depth of ~500m to avoid detection but at that depth it limits their operations to the occeans and not shallow waters.

I disagree, no SSN or SSBN is huge enough to have its belly scratch even a 50m deep seabed. The primary factor is that the N-guys love to saty out of the shores for they are naturally lovers of open ocean and I don thnk anyone who loves open ocean wud love to come back to rest in the shallow water unless the situation deamds it. And I’d take the size as a factor only next to this. But then French Rubis SSN is a very small N-sub which have its non-nuclear design in the form of Scorpene SSK.

SSK are usually for patrol and sea denial close to shore therefor have relatively restricted use of depp diving capabilities because the water isn’t that deep anyways!

And so are SSN/SSBNs. But before the N-power came both Amrikkans and Russians were using the diesel-electric ocean-going SSKs.

And the only ocean going SSK that got sunk after WW-II was the PNS Ghazi which was a refurbished American ocean going SSK that was actually on lease. Hopefully the American training was not good enough or the other party never learnt it quite well. On the contrary was the PNS Hangor skipper’s nerve after sinking the IN’s British junk. He (as usual must have dived deep and silent rather than running like hell) slipped off under the nose of the IN’s ASW assets. Now that has to be attributed to his good never and tactics, maybe the French traning payed off (?) or the French Alize was not capable enough or was in no mood to side with the Indian Navy to have the French built sub destroyed.