The father of a friend of mine was a submarine commander in the Canadian Navy, the Iroquois if I recall correctly, WWII diesel submarine. During war games with the Yanks he was tasked with taking out the Nimitz aircraft carrier, the sort of thing that admirals ask of commanders. So he made a best guess of where Nimitz and his escort destroyers would be cruising and then he found a large bank of seaweed and buried his submarine in it and waited, for 2 days, total silence - until the Nimitz task force came over the horizon. He let the escorts sail by and then lined up a full spread using battery power, sank the Nimitz and was sunk himself with in minutes (figuratively speaking, dummy torpedoes of course)

@Surfpirate not a sub.

HMCS Iroquois was the lead ship of the Iroquois-class destroyers of the Royal Canadian Navy, also known as the Tribal class or the 280 class.

@callmedubious It was the mid 70's and I can't be sure of the name of the submarine, I only recall hearing the story at the Barnes' kitchen table as a teenager. Still incredible that a well trained crew could take out a nuclear aircraft carrier surrounded by state of the art destroyers with a WWII diesel submarine. I have the utmost respect for our men and women in the armed forces, some of the best trained warriors on the planet, if only they had the proper tools to do the job.

@Surfpirate 'if only they had the proper tools to do the job.'
what job? when i served i took some pride in actively saving lives. was on a navy ship that rescued 6 fishermen from a boat off NFLD. then i worked in search & rescue with the air force.
as far as spending billions on defense to defend ourselves from the russians ot ISIS, it's just a waste of money that could much better spent on social programs.
the only real threat we have from foreigners is the country to the south of us.

@callmedubious I was thinking about the job that the Canadian Armed Forces did so well for the latter half of the last century - Peacekeeping. It was only under Harper that the role started to change to a more American style of military. I agree that the Department of National Defense should be just that and that the only threat of attack at the moment is from the south but that has been the case since long before Plan Red came to light.
I live less than 10 klicks from CFB Kingston and less than an hour from Fort Drum so I am well aware of the main military threat to Canada.

There was a collective moan down here by the US border when we saw the weather report for Cowtown.

@Surfpirate Cowtown is in Alberta's Banana Belt.

Our people are some of the best trained military in the world, if they ever get decent weapons then look the hell out.

@Surfpirate Same thing in New Westminster where I was a kid.