History of submarines

They are used extensively in search and rescue operations for other submarines, surface vessels, and air craft, and offer a means to descend vast depths beyond the reach of scuba diving for both exploration and recreation.

Later legends suggested that Alexander descended into the sea using a primitive submersible in the form of a diving bell,[1] as depicted in a 16th-century illustration in the works of the Mughal poet Amir Khusrau.

[2] According to a report attributed to Tahbir al-Tayseer in Opusculum Taisnieri published in 1562: 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.

Henry Briggs, who was professor of mathematics at Gresham College, London, and later at Oxford, was a friend of Napier, whom he visited in 1615 and 1616, and was also an acquaintance of Cornelius Van Drebbel, a Dutchman in the service of James I of England, who designed and built the first successful submarine in 1620.

[9][10] Of one of these tests Constantijn Huygens reports in his autobiography of 1651 the following: Worth all the rest put together is the little ship, in which he calmly dived under the water, while he kept the king and several thousand Londoners in the greatest suspense.

The great majority of these already thought that the man who had very cleverly remained invisible to them – for three hours, as rumour has it – had perished, when he suddenly rose to the surface a considerable distance from where he had dived down, bringing with him the several companions of his dangerous adventure to witness to the fact that they had experienced no trouble or fear under the water, but had sat on the bottom, when they so desired, and had ascended when they wished to do so; that they had sailed whithersoever they had a mind, rising as much nearer the surface or again diving as much deeper as it pleased them to do, without even being deprived of light; yea, even that they had done in the belly of that whale all the things people are used to do in the air, and this without any trouble.

Thus is the body of the saltpetre broken up and decomposed by the power of the fire and so changed in the nature of the air, or as when a wet hand or cloth is waved about on a hot iron, or molten lead, which by expansion or enlargement due to heat cracks and bursts with a noise like thunder.

According to some sources, a spy of German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz called Haes reported that Papin had met with some success with his second design on the River Lahn.

The route that Turtle had to take to attack its intended target, HMS Eagle, was slightly across the tidal stream which would, in all probability, have resulted in Ezra Lee becoming exhausted.

(see below) In 1863 the Sub Marine Explorer was built by the German American engineer Julius H. Kroehl, and featured a pressurized work chamber for the crew to exit and enter underwater.

Being fully operational, waiting for its opportunity to attack with naval mines during the Blockade of Callao, it was scuttled to avoid its capture by Chilean troops on January 17, 1881, before the imminent occupation of Lima.

[34] Although his design was not very practical – the steam boiler generated intense heat in the cramped confines of the vessel, and it lacked longitudinal stability – it caught the attention of the Swedish industrialist Thorsten Nordenfelt.

Garrett and Nordenfelt made significant advances in constructing the first modern, militarily capable submarines and fired up military and popular interest around the world for this new technology.

[40] A prototype version of the A-class submarine (Fulton) was developed at Crescent Shipyard under the supervision of naval architect and shipbuilder from the United Kingdom, Arthur Leopold Busch, for the newly reorganized Electric Boat Company in 1900.

As early as 1938, a simple pipe system was installed on the submarines HNLMS O 19 and O 20 that enabled them to travel at periscope depth operating on its diesels with almost unlimited underwater range while charging the propulsion batteries.

For example, the submarine could travel slowly whilst the engines were running at full power to recharge the batteries as quickly as possible, reducing time on the surface, or use of its snorkel.

These two innovations, together with inertial navigation systems, gave submarines the ability to remain submerged for weeks or months, and enabled previously impossible voyages such as the crossing of the North Pole beneath the Arctic ice cap by the USS Nautilus in 1958.

[50] By removing the requirement for atmospheric oxygen all nuclear-powered submarines can stay submerged indefinitely so long as food supplies remain (air is recycled and fresh water distilled from seawater).

In 1916, under the British Board of Invention and Research, Canadian physicist Robert William Boyle took on the active sound detection project with A B Wood, producing a prototype for testing in mid-1917.

This work, for the Anti-Submarine Division of the British Naval Staff, was undertaken in utmost secrecy, and used quartz piezoelectric crystals to produce the world's first practical underwater active sound detection apparatus.

On 14 June 1904, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) placed an order for five Holland Type VII submersibles, which were built in Quincy, Massachusetts, at the Fore River Yard, and shipped to Yokohama, Japan in sections.

[54] Under the supervision of naval architect Arthur L. Busch, the imported Hollands were re-assembled, and the first submersibles were ready for combat operations by August 1905, but hostilities were nearing the end by that date, and no submarines saw action during the war.

In 1903, Germany successfully completed its first fully functional engine-powered submarine, Forelle (Trout),[55] It was sold to Russia in 1904 and shipped via the Trans-Siberian Railway to the combat zone during the Russo-Japanese War.

These included vessels of the diesel-engined U-19 class with the range (5,000 nautical miles, 9,300 km, 5,800 mi) and speed (8 knots, 15 km/h, 9.2 mph) to operate effectively around the entire British coast.

After the British ordered transport ships to act as auxiliary cruisers, the German navy adopted unrestricted submarine warfare,[citation needed] generally giving no warning of an attack.

[59] In August 1914, a flotilla of ten U-boats sailed from their base in Heligoland to attack Royal Navy warships in the North Sea in the first submarine war patrol in history.

On 22 September 1914 while patrolling the Broad Fourteens, a region of the southern North Sea, U-9 found three obsolescent British Cressy-class armoured cruisers (HMS Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy), which were assigned to prevent German surface vessels from entering the eastern end of the English Channel.

Over a period of three years, this force sank over 1 million tons of shipping, and fatally undermined the attempts of the German High Command to adequately support General Erwin Rommel.

The Soviet Union suffered the loss of at least four submarines during this period: K-129 was lost in 1968 (which the CIA attempted to retrieve from the ocean floor with the Howard Hughes-designed ship named Glomar Explorer), K-8 in 1970, K-219 in 1986, and Komsomolets in 1989.

In August 2005, AS-28, a Russian Priz-class rescue submarine, was trapped by cables and/or nets off of Petropavlovsk, and saved when a British ROV cut them free in a massive international effort.