Submarine

                                       Submarine

                                    

• A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term submarine most commonly refers to a large crewed autonomous vessel. However, historically or colloquially, submarine can also refer to medium-sized or smaller vessels (midget submarines, wet subs), remotely operated vehicles or robots.
• The adjective submarine, in terms such as submarine cable, means "under the sea". The noun submarine evolved as a shortened form of submarine boat(and is often further shortened to sub).^{[citation needed]} For reasons of naval tradition submarines are usually referred to as "boats" rather than as "ships", regardless of their size.
• Although experimental submarines had been built before, submarine design took off during the 19th century, and they were adopted by several different navies. Submarines were first widely used during World War I (1914–1918) and now figure in many large navies. Military usage includes attacking enemy surface ships or 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/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 (and/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 as well as ballast tanks. Smaller, deep diving and specialty submarines may deviate significantly from this traditional layout.
• Submarines have one of the largest ranges of capabilities in any vessel, ranging from small autonomous examples to one- or two-person vessels operating for a few hours, to vessels which can remain submerged for 6 months such as the Russian Typhoon class - the biggest submarines ever built and in use. Submarines can work at greater depths than are survivable or practical for human divers. Modern deep diving submarines are derived from the bathyscaphe, which in turn was an evolution of the diving bell.

History

First submersibles

• The first submersible of which we have reliable information on its construction was built in 1620 by Cornelius Drebbel, a Dutchman in the service of James I of England. It was created to the standards of the design outlined by English mathematician William Bourne. It was propelled by means of oars. The precise nature of the submarine type is a matter of some controversy; some claim that it was merely a bell towed by a boat. Two improved types were tested in the Thames between 1620 and 1624. In 2002 a two-person version of Bourne's design was built for the BBC TV programme Building the Impossible by Mark Edwards, and successfully rowed under water at Dorney Lake, Eton.
  Though the first submersible vehicles were tools for exploring under water, it did not take long for inventors to recognize their military potential. The strategic advantages of submarines were set out by Bishop John Wilkins of Chester, England, in Mathematicall Magick in 1648:

  1. Tis private: a man may thus go to any coast in the world invisibly, without discovery or prevented in his journey.
  2. Tis safe, from the uncertainty of Tides, and the violence of Tempests, which do never move the sea above five or six paces deep. From Pirates and Robbers which do so infest other voyages; from ice and great frost, which do so much endanger the passages towards the Poles.
  3. It may be of great advantages against a Navy of enemies, who by this may be undermined in the water and blown up.
  4. It may be of special use for the relief of any place besieged by water, to convey unto them invisible supplies; and so likewise for the surprisal of any place that is accessible by water.
  5. It may be of unspeakable benefit for submarine experiments.

  [edit]First military models

  

  

  A replica of the Turtle on display at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, Gosport
  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. It was the first verified submarine capable of independent underwater operation and movement, and the first to use screws for propulsion. During the American Revolutionary War, Turtle (operated by Sgt. Ezra Lee, Continental Army) tried and failed to sink the British warship HMS Eagle, flagship of the blockaders in New Yorkharbor on September 7, 1776.
  

  

  The Nautilus (1800)
  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.
  During the War of 1812, in 1814, Silas Halsey lost his life while using a submarine in an unsuccessful attack on a British warship stationed in New London harbor.
  The Submarino Hipopótamo was the first submarine in South America built and tested in Ecuador on September 18, 1837. It was designed by Jose Rodriguez Lavandera, who successfully crossed theGuayas River in Guayaquil accompanied by Jose Quevedo. Rodriguez Lavandera had enrolled in the Ecuadorian Navy in 1823, becoming a Lieutenant by 1830. The Hipopotamo crossed the Guayas on two more occasions, but it was then abandoned because of lack of funding and interest from the government. Today, few engravingsand a scale model of the original design is preserved by the Maritime Museum of the Ecuadorian Navy.
  In 1851, a Bavarian artillery corporal, Wilhelm Bauer, took a submarine designed by him called the Brandtaucher (incendiary-diver), which sank on its first test dive in Kiel Harbour—but its three crewmen managed to escape, after flooding the vessel, which allowed the inside pressure to equalize.^[4] This submarine was built by August Howaldt and powered by a treadwheel. The submarine was re-discovered during a dredging operation 1887, and was raised sixteen years later. The vessel is on display in a museum in Dresden.
  The submarine Flach was commissioned in 1865 by the Chilean government during the war of Chile and Peru against Spain (1864–1866). It was built by the German engineer Karl Flach. The submarine sank during tests in Valparaiso bay on May 3, 1866, with the entire eleven-man crew.

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