Stretch uboat

[rickshaw]

Depth?   I'd say perhaps less than 25 metres below the surface.  Thanks for your you tube link, all those missiles appear to be firing after they surface so Kit was right.

[Joe C-P]

Boy, one meant-to-be-humourous off-hand comment, and off we go! 

Yes, the V-2 would not have fit inside, and would have been pretty pointless to fire except to scare people in the continental US and Canada.
V-1s would have had slightly more chance of hitting something if they aimed them toward a major city.

[PR19_Kit]

Depth?   I'd say perhaps less than 25 metres below the surface.  Thanks for your you tube link, all those missiles appear to be firing after they surface so Kit was right.

In that last launch sequence, the one of the Trident II, you can just see a bit of the sub's superstucture (I think....) in the background while the missile is almost at the surface so they can't be very deep. That's a bit odd though as I'd have thought the vessel would have been affected by surface waves that close to the surface. Mind you, that last missile was WAY off the vertical as it came out of the water and looked in imminent danger of going off sideways!

[rickshaw]

Got to be careful in distinguishing between what is done on trials and what is done operationally, Kit.   Those are test firings, not operational firings, as you can tell from the missile markings.   I suspect the launch depth is quite a bit deeper than what makes good camera footage.   However, as you can see, the missiles seem able to cope with quite considerable pitch over after they break the surface, they straighten up quite quickly and zoom near vertically.   Thats the advantage of thrust vectoring.

[zenrat]

Yeah, the angle they came out of the drink at surprised me as well.
There is debate out there about how long it would take to fire off a whole sub load along with disagreement over whether they have to wait for the surface to calm before each launch.  I did find a clip of 2 SLBMs being launched in quick succession which seems to answer that question.

As obviously if it's on you tube it must be true...