submarine

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Virginia-class submarine underway in Groton, Connecticut, July 2004

A submarine (or simply sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term most commonly refers to a large, crewed vessel. It is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely operated vehicles and robots, as well as medium-sized or smaller vessels, such as the midget submarine and the wet sub. The noun submarine evolved as a shortened form of submarine boat;^[1] by naval tradition, submarines are usually referred to as "boats" rather than as "ships", regardless of their size (boat is usually reserved for seagoing vessels of relatively small size).

Although experimental submarines had been built before, submarine design took off during the 19th century, and they were adopted by several navies. Submarines were first widely used during World War I (1914–1918), and now figure in many navies large and small. Military uses include attacking enemy surface ships (merchant and military), attacking other submarines, aircraft carrier protection, blockade running, ballistic missile submarines as part of a nuclear strike force, reconnaissance, conventional land attack (for example using a cruise missile), and covert insertion of special forces. Civilian uses for submarines include marine science, salvage, exploration and facility inspection and maintenance. Submarines can also be modified to perform more specialized functions such as search-and-rescue missions or undersea cable repair. Submarines are also used in tourism, and for undersea archaeology.

Most large submarines consist of a cylindrical body with hemispherical (or conical) ends and a vertical structure, usually located amidships, which houses communications and sensing devices as well as periscopes. In modern submarines, this structure is the "sail" in American usage, and "fin" in European usage. A "conning tower" was a feature of earlier designs: a separate pressure hull above the main body of the boat that allowed the use of shorter periscopes. There is a propeller (or pump jet) at the rear, and various hydrodynamic control fins. Smaller, deep-diving and specialty submarines may deviate significantly from this traditional layout. Submarines use diving planes and also change the amount of water and air in ballast tanks to change buoyancy for submerging and surfacing.

Submarines have one of the widest ranges of types and capabilities of any vessel. They range from small autonomous examples and one- or two-person vessels that operate for a few hours, to vessels that can remain submerged for six months—such as the Russian Typhoon class, the biggest submarines ever built. Submarines can work at greater depths than are survivable or practical for human divers.^[2] Modern deep-diving submarines derive from the bathyscaphe, which in turn evolved from the diving bell.

• 1History
  • 1.1Early submersibles
  • 1.218th century
  • 1.319th century
    • 1.3.1Mechanical power
  • 1.420th century
    • 1.4.1World War I
    • 1.4.2World War II
    • 1.4.3Cold-War military models
  • 1.521st century
• 2Usage
  • 2.1Military
  • 2.2Civilian
  • 2.3Polar operations
• 3Technology
  • 3.1Submersion and trimming
  • 3.2Hull
    • 3.2.1Overview
    • 3.2.2Single and double hulls
    • 3.2.3Pressure hull
  • 3.3Propulsion
    • 3.3.1Diesel-electric
    • 3.3.2Air-independent
    • 3.3.3Nuclear power
    • 3.3.4Alternative
  • 3.4Armament
  • 3.5Sensors
  • 3.6Navigation
  • 3.7Communication
  • 3.8Life support systems
• 4Crew
  • 4.1Women
  • 4.2Abandoning the vessel
• 5See also
  • 5.1By country
• 6References
• 7Bibliography
• 8External links

History

Main article: History of submarines

Early submersibles

Drebbel, an early submersible craft, propelled by oars.

According to a report in Opusculum Taisnieri published in 1562:^[3]

Two Greeks submerged and surfaced in the river Tagus near the City of Toledo several times in the presence of The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, without getting wet and with the flame they carried in their hands still alight.^[4]

In 1578, the English mathematician William Bourne recorded in his book Inventions or Devises one of the first plans for an underwater navigation vehicle. A few years later the Scottish mathematician and theologian John Napier wrote in his Secret Inventions (1596) the following: "These inventions besides devises of sayling under water with divers, other devises and strategems for harming of the enemyes by the Grace of God and worke of expert Craftsmen I hope to perform." It's unclear whether he ever carried out his idea.^[5]

The first submersible of whose construction there exists reliable information was designed and built in 1620 by Cornelis Drebbel, a Dutchman in the service of James I of England. It was propelled by means of oars.^[5]

18th century

By the mid-18th century, over a dozen patents for submarines/submersible boats had been granted in England. In 1747, Nathaniel Symons patented and built the first known working example of the use of a ballast tank for submersion. His design used leather bags that could fill with water to submerge the craft. A mechanism was used to twist the water out of the bags and cause the boat to resurface. In 1749, the Gentlemen's Magazinereported that a similar design had initially been proposed by Giovanni Borelli in 1680. By this point of development, further improvement in design necessarily stagnated for over a century, until new industrial technologies for propulsion and stability could be applied.^[6]

The first military submarine was the *Turtle* (1775), a hand-powered acorn-shaped device designed by the American David Bushnell to accommodate a single person.^[7] It was the first verified submarine capable of independent underwater operation and movement, and the first to use screws for propulsion.^[8]

19th century

In 1800, France built a human-powered submarine designed by American Robert Fulton, the *Nautilus*. The French eventually gave up on the experiment in 1804, as did the British when they later considered Fulton's submarine design.

In 1864, late in the American Civil War, the Confederate navy's *H. L. Hunley* became the first military submarine to sink an enemy vessel, the Union sloop-of-war USS *Housatonic*. In the aftermath of its successful attack against the ship, the Hunley also sank, possibly because it was too close to its own exploding torpedo.

In 1866, the Sub Marine Explorer was the first submarine to successfully dive, cruise underwater, and resurface under the control of the crew. The design by German AmericanJulius H. Kroehl (in German, Kröhl) incorporated elements that are still used in modern submarines.^[9]

Mechanical power

The French submarine Plongeur

The first submarine not relying on human power for propulsion was the French *Plongeur* (Diver), launched in 1863, which used compressed air at 180 psi (1241 kPa).^[10] The first air–independent and combustion–powered submarine was Ictineo II, designed by the Spanish intellectual, artist and engineer Narcís Monturiol, launched in Barcelona in 1864.

The submarine became a potentially viable weapon with the development of the Whitehead torpedo, designed in 1866 by British engineer Robert Whitehead, the first practical self-propelled or 'locomotive' torpedo.^[11] The spar torpedo that had been developed earlier by the Confederate navy was considered to be impracticable, as it was believed to have sunk both its intended target, and probably H. L. Hunley, the submarine that deployed it.

Discussions between the English clergyman and inventor George Garrett and the Swedish industrialist Thorsten Nordenfelt led to the first practical steam-powered submarines, armed with torpedoes and ready for military use. The first was Nordenfelt I, a 56-tonne, 19.5-metre (64 ft) vessel similar to Garrett's ill-fated Resurgam (1879), with a range of 240 kilometres (130 nmi; 150 mi), armed with a single torpedo, in 1885.

A reliable means of propulsion for the submerged vessel was only made possible in the 1880s with the advent of the necessary electric battery technology. The first electrically powered boats were built by Isaac Peral y Caballero in Spain, Dupuy de Lôme and Gustave Zédé in France, and James Franklin Waddington in England.^[12] Peral's design featured torpedoes and other systems that later became standard in submarines.^[13]

20th century

The Irish inventor John Philip Holland built a model submarine in 1876 and a full-scale version in 1878, which were followed by a number of unsuccessful ones. In 1896 he designed the Holland Type VI submarine, which used internal combustion engine power on the surface and electric battery power underwater. Launched on 17 May 1897 at Navy Lt. Lewis Nixon's Crescent Shipyard in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Holland VI was purchased by the United States Navy on 11 April 1900, becoming the Navy's first commissioned submarine, christened USS *Holland*.^[14]Submarines were not put into service for any widespread or routine use by navies until the early 1900s. This era marked a pivotal time in submarine development, and several important technologies appeared. A number of nations built and used submarines. Diesel electric propulsion became the dominant power system and equipment such as the periscope became standardized. Countries conducted many experiments on effective tactics and weapons for submarines, which led to their large impact in World War I.

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