During the time I served, if you asked a submariner what kind of ships did the Navy have, they would usually reply: submarines and targets.

During one particular American war game that I participated in, there were about ten surface ships and one nuclear submarine. After it had ended, there was an evaluation meeting of operation’s officers from all the ships that participated.

After all the surface ship representatives gave glowing reports of how well their crews did, the lone submarine commander went up to make his presentation. He opened up his suitcase and removed a large stack of photographs taken through his periscope while submerged.

It is a very humbling experience to see photographs with targeting crosshairs superimposed over the images of all the surface ships including your own ship. And the scary part was that even though he took these photographs in the daytime in calm seas, we never detected the submarine nor saw any wake from the exposed periscope.

No wonder submariners consider surface ships to be just targets.