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    United States Navy Submarines 1900–2019
    United States Navy Submarines 1900–2019
    United States Navy Submarines 1900–2019
    Ebook313 pages2 hours

    United States Navy Submarines 1900–2019

    By Michael Green

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    A “brilliant history of the USA’s underwater exploits,” filled with photos (Books Monthly).
     
    In 1900, the US Navy took its first submarine, the Holland VI, into service. With a single torpedo tube, it had a crew of six, weighed eighty-two tons, and traveled submerged at 6.2mph at a depth of up to seventy-five feet.
     
    Contrast this to the 18 Ohio Class nuclear-powered submarines that entered service in 1981. Weighing 21,000 tons with a crew of 155, its underwater speed is estimated at thirty mph at a depth of some one thousand feet. It carries sixteen nuclear warhead ballistic missiles with a range of 4,600 miles.
     
    This photographic history in the Images of War series provides detailed insight into the many US Navy submarine classes. Particularly fascinating is the post Second World War program of nuclear powered submarines stating with the Nautilus and progressing to the Skate, Thresher, Sturgeon, Los Angeles, and George Washington. Admiral Hyman G Rickover’s role as father of the nuclear navy is also examined in detail.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 30, 2019
    ISBN9781526742070
    United States Navy Submarines 1900–2019
    Author

    Michael Green

    Michael Green is a freelance writer, researcher, and photographer. He specializes in military subjects and has authored and co-authored more than ninety non-fiction books. His books have been translated into German, Japanese, and Georgian. In addition, Green has authored or co-authored numerous articles for a variety of national and international military-related magazines. He is a lifetime member of the Marine Corps Tanker's Association and a tour guide at the Military Vehicle Technology Foundation.

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      Book preview

      United States Navy Submarines 1900–2019 - Michael Green

      Chapter One

      The Early Years

      It took the invention of many crucial pieces of technology for submarines to become practical. The most important was the electrical storage battery (1859), the self-propelled torpedo (1866), and the gasoline engine (1876), followed by the DC electric motor (1886) and AC electric motor (1899). The two men responsible for bringing these technologies together for submarine designs were American school-teacher and inventor John Philip Holland and mechanical engineer and naval architect Simon Lake.

      Of these two submarine-design pioneers, Holland won the first US Navy submarine-construction contract because he had the financial backing that Lake did not. The submarine as per US Navy requirements had to be steam-powered for surface-running and battery-powered for underwater-running. Realizing that steam-propulsion was impractical for submarines, Holland abandoned work on a submarine ordered by the US Navy named the Plunger and returned his advance payment.

      Even before Holland lost interest in the development of the Plunger, he had turned his attention to building a series of self-funded submarine designs. The last launched in May 1897 received the designation Holland VI. A gasoline engine powered it on the surface, while underwater the submarine operated with an electric motor driven by storage batteries.

      The US Navy’s First Commissioned Submarines

      Impressed by what they saw, the US Navy purchased the Holland VI in April 1900 and after a series of successful tests designated the submarine the USS Holland in October 1900. It lasted in US Navy service until November 1910. The prefix letters ‘USS’ before a vessel’s name stand for ‘United States Ship’.

      The six-man Holland had a small dome projecting above the hull but no periscope. The only vision the crew had was a small thick pane of glass in that dome. Holland’s armament consisted of a single reloadable 18in-diameter torpedo tube. At that time torpedoes were generally referred to as ‘automotive torpedoes’ or ‘fish torpedoes’.

      Initially, the Holland had two compressed air guns, one on either end of its hull, referred to as ‘Dynamite Guns’ and later reduced to a single example. The projectiles they fired when the submarine surfaced became known as ‘aerial torpedoes’.

      Displacement

      The US Navy definition of displacement is the weight of water displaced by a warship or submarine. Displacement is a constant for a given water density because the volume (subject to temperature and pressure) is a constant. A 5,000-ton displacement submarine (the weight of water displaced by its hull) can make itself heavier than a surface ship of equal displacement and submerge because it deliberately takes on water ballast.

      On the surface, the Holland could reach a maximum speed of 6 knots. Underwater top speed was 5.5 knots. A knot is a unit of speed equal to 1 nautical mile (6,080ft) per hour. The Holland’s surface range was 230 miles. The vessel was 53ft 10in in length and had a surface displacement of 65 tons.

      Simon Lake’s Submarines

      While the US Navy was considering acquiring the Holland VI, the only other design under consideration was Simon Lake’s Argonaut II. Unlike the Holland VI, Lake’s submarine lacked any armament and was intended for non-military use only, for example as a tourists’ vessel or for locating underwater wrecks.

      With the rejection of the Argonaut II, Lake went ahead and designed and had built a weaponized submarine named the Protector in 1902. However, Protector failed to arouse enough US Navy interest for its purchase. He then offered it to the US Army to help maintain the underwater minefields that protected vital American ports from possible attack by enemy warships. The army wanted to order five of them but found itself overruled by the US Navy in a jurisdictional dispute.

      First Submarines Class

      Pleased with the capabilities of the Holland, the US Navy ordered seven improved examples for experimentation and training. All built between 1901 and 1903 and commissioned (taken into active service) in 1903, the seven submarines formed the Plunger-class; following naval architecture tradition, the class name came from the first or ‘lead’ submarine in the series, the Plunger.

      Unlike the Holland, the seven-man Plunger-class submarines had no Dynamite Guns but did retain an 18in reloadable torpedo tube. They had a surface displacement of 106 tons and a length of 63ft 10in. Maximum surface speed came to 8.5 knots, while that submerged was 7.2 knots. Unlike the Holland, the Plunger-class submarines had a periscope that projected upward vertically from the centre of the hull.

      The Holland’s ‘test depth’ proved to be 150ft during the US Navy’s acceptance trials, during which it had to reach that depth without any leaks or pressure-related failures. Failure to do so would result in the submarine’s rejection. Besides the term test depth, there was also a submarine’s ‘crush depth’, which is self-explanatory and based on estimates by the US Navy.

      Designations: Part One

      In November 1911, the US Navy decided to drop class names and individual names for its submarines and began referring to them by letters; hence the Plunger-class became the ‘A-class’, and the first submarine in that class became the ‘A-1’.

      The submarine class letter and the order sequence of the boats in that class were painted onto US Navy submarines’ fairwaters of the time. Pictorial evidence also shows that the submarines’ class letter code and the order sequence number were sometimes done in metal and attached to the bows of some boats.

      In July 1920, the Holland and the seven submarines of the A-class received hull classification numbers for administration purposes, a practice that continues into modern days. The Holland became the SS-1, with the seven submarines of the Plunger-class becoming SS-2 through to SS-8. The letters ‘SS’ represented the US Navy’s designation for submarines. All the Plunger-class submarines were decommissioned (withdrawn from active service) by 1921.

      New Submarine Classes

      Following the seven submarines of the A-class, the US Navy had an additional seventy-six submarines built before the First World War. They were divided into thirteen classes starting with the B-class through to the O-class; there would be no J-or I-class. The last three submarines built formed what eventually became the T-class.

      Between October 1907 and September 1910, the US Navy commissioned eleven submarines divided into three progressively-improved classes: three B-class submarines, five C-class submarines and three D-class submarines. Their surface displacements ranged from 145 tons for the A-class up to 288 tons for the D-class.

      Maximum surface speed for the B- to D-class submarines ranged from 9.2 knots to 13 knots, whereas their submerged top speed ran the gamut from 8.2 knots up to 9.5 knots. Test depth for the B-class proved to be 150ft and 200ft for the C- and D-classes. By 1922 all three classes of the submarines had been decommissioned.

      The B-class submarines were the first to feature two bow torpedo tubes, with the C-class the first to feature two stern propellers. The D-class variants were the first US Navy submarines with four bow torpedo tubes and the first to have their inner pressure hull subdivided for improved survivability.

      E-Class and F-Class

      A technological breakthrough that occurred in 1909 involved the construction of two E-class and four F-class submarines. Rather than depending on gasoline engines for surface-running and charging their batteries, they had two diesel engines (invented in 1897). All six diesel-engine-powered submarines were commissioned in 1912 and decommissioned by 1922. The hull classification numbers for the E- and F-class ran from SS-20 through to SS-25.

      Early Submarine Builders

      The East Coast commercial firms involved in the construction of US Navy submarines included the Crescent Shipyard (that became the Electric Boat Company in 1899) to build the Holland, and the Lake Torpedo Boat Company established in 1901 by Simon Lake.

      Before the First World War, the US Navy lacked the engineering talent and experience to design its own submarines. The US Navy, therefore, depended on Electric Boat and Lake to design and build the submarines it required to a set of very broad characteristics. The end results were somewhat similar but not identical submarines that could vary in size, weight and operational parameters.

      Diesel engines were more thermally efficient, hence increasing fuel efficiency, which in turn increased submarine range. Diesel engines also offered an added advantage as diesel fuel was far less volatile than gasoline fuel, especially in the confined spaces of submarines. The diesel engines on the E- and F-class submarines were ‘mechanically-coupled’ to the submarine’s propeller shafts, as were the gasoline engines on earlier classes of submarines.

      G-Class Through to K-Class

      Despite the switch to all-diesel engines on the E- and F-class submarines, three of the four G-class submarines built between 1909 and 1913 were fitted with gasoline engines. These included SS-20, SS-26 and SS-27. Submarine SS-31 came with a diesel engine.

      Submarines SS-20, SS-27 and SS-31 were designed and built by Lake. The fourth boat (SS-26) built was based on the design of an Italian naval engineer named Cesare Laurenti and constructed at the William Cramp & Son Shipbuilding Company, the only US Navy submarine he was asked to design.

      The US Navy went on to order three examples of the diesel-engine-powered H-class submarines, with delivery beginning in 1911. All were decommissioned by 1922. The hull classification numbers for the US Navy’s H-class submarines were SS-28, SS-29 and SS-30.

      The Imperial Russian Navy ordered seventeen examples of the H-class submarine from Electric Boat. However, with the overthrow of the Russian Czar in February 1917, not all the H-class submarines were delivered; instead, the US Navy bought six and placed them into service. Their hull classification numbers ran from SS-147 through to SS-152.

      After the H-class vessels came eight examples of the K-class, all built between 1912 and 1914. The twenty-eight-man submarines had a surface displacement of 392 tons with a maximum surface speed of 14 knots and 10.5 knots submerged. They had 18in torpedo tubes and a length of 153ft 7in. All were decommissioned by 1923. The hull classification numbers for the K-class included SS-32 through to SS-39.

      Living conditions on the K-class submarines and those that came before were extremely unpleasant. US Navy Admiral Charles A. Lockwood commented that ‘sanitation arrangements were meagre at best and defied description’, a polite way of saying that they stank. At about this time the US Navy’s submarines received their favourite nickname of ‘Pig Boats’.

      L-Class Through to M-Class

      When the First World War began in August 1914 the US Navy’s most modern submarine just coming out of America’s shipyards would be eleven examples of the L-class, built between 1914 and 1917 and commissioned between 1916 and 1917. The hull classification numbers for the L-class included SS-40 through to SS-51. There was no L-class SS-47 submarine.

      Besides Electric Boat and Lake, the Portsmouth US Navy Yard, which later became the Portsmouth Naval Yard, received the assignment for building a single example of the L-class submarine to gain experience. Portsmouth had opened in June 1800. In 1914, the same year that saw the beginning of the First World War, the US Navy made Portsmouth responsible for all future preliminary submarine designs.

      With a twenty-eight-man crew, the L-class submarines had a top speed on the surface of 14 knots and 10.5 knots submerged. The Electric Boat examples had a length of 165ft 5in and a surface displacement of 457 tons.

      Some L-class submarines were the first to feature deck guns, which became a standard feature on all US Navy submarines through the Second World War. They were also the first to have been designed for deep-water operations rather than only coastal operations. Some of the L-class submarines remained in US Navy service until 1923.

      The next in line proved to be a single experimental example labelled the M-1. Laid down in July 1914, its commissioning did not take place until February 1918.

      When is a Submarine a Boat?

      The US Navy’s earliest submarines were termed ‘boats’ rather than ships or vessels (another name for ships). Boats are by definition small enough to be carried by ships. Ships do not carry other ships. Despite the continuing size increase of US Navy submarines from the Second World War up until the present, in the name of tradition, they remain affectionately labelled as boats.

      However, it failed to impress the US Navy and performed only as a test and training vessel until decommissioned in 1922. The single M-1-class submarine bore the hull classification number SS-47.

      N-Class

      Between 1915 and 1917 Electric Boat and Lake built seven examples of the N-class submarines, with some remaining in service until 1926. They were intended only as coastal defence submarines, with their armament consisting of 18in torpedo tubes. The hull classification numbers for the N-class included SS-53 through to SS-59.

      The Electric Boat Company examples of the N-class submarines had a surface displacement of 331 tons and a length of 147ft 3in. Top surface speed came out at 13 knots and submerged at 11 knots. The US Navy had all decommissioned by 1926.

      O-Class

      Based on lessons learned from the design and construction of the L-class submarines, there were sixteen examples of the twenty-nine-man O-class submarines between 1916 and 1918. These were larger, at 172ft 3in, than the previous L-class submarines. The hull classification numbers

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