A History of Submarines

400 Years of Submarines

1580 - William Bourne, an English innkeeper and scientific dilettante, provided
the first published prescription for a submarine. Bourne first offered a lucid
description of why a ship floats -- by displacing its weight of water -- and then
described a mechanism by which
It is possible to make a Ship or Boate that may goe under the water
unto the bottome, and so to come up again at your pleasure. If any
magnitude of body that is in the water . . . having alwaies but one
weight, may be made bigger or lesser, then it shall swimme when
you would, and sinke when you list....

In other words, decrease the volume to make the boat heavier than the weight
of the water it displaces, and it will sink. Make it lighter, by increasing the
volume, and it will rise. Bourne wrote of watertight joints of leather and a
screw mechanism to wind the volume-changing 'thing' in and out. He described
a principle rather than a plan for a submarine, and he offered no illustration.

Some years later, this drawing purported to be Bourne's scheme. This plan
featured leather-wrapped pads that one could screw in toward the centerline
to create a flooded chamber and screw out to expel the water and seal the
opening. Bourne wrote of expanding and contracting structures, however, not
flooding chambers, and submarines built in England in 1729 and France in 1863
conformed with his idea exactly.
1623 - Dutchman Cornelius Drebbel, hired in 1603 as "court inventor" for James
I of England, built what seems to have been the first working submarine.
According to accounts, some of which people who actually saw the submarine
may have written, it was a decked-over rowboat propelled by twelve oarsmen
and made a submerged journey down the Thames River at a depth of about 15
feet.
Neither credible illustrations of Drebbel's boat nor credible explanations of how
it worked exist. Best guess: The vessel was designed to have almost-neutral
buoyancy, floating just awash, with a downward-sloping foredeck to act as a
sort of diving plane. The boat would be driven under the surface by forward
momentum (as are most modern submarines). When the rowers stopped
rowing, the craft would slowly rise. Reports that Drebbel's patron, James I,
witnessed a demonstration may be true, but those claiming the king took an
underwater ride are most unlikely.
1634 - French priest Marin Mersenne theorized that a submarine should be
made of copper and cylindrical in shape to better withstand water pressure
(which increases about half a pound per square inch for every foot of depth).
Such a craft, he maintained, should also bear pointed ends for streamlining and
to permit course reversal without having to turn around.

1653 - The 72-foot-long Rotterdam Boat, designed by a man named De Son (a

Frenchman), was probably the first underwater vessel specifically built (by
Belgians) to attack an enemy (the English Navy). De Son meant for his almost-
submarine - a semi-submerged ram -- to sneak up unobserved and punch a hole
in an enemy ship. He boasted that it could cross the English Channel and back
in a day, and sink a hundred ships along the way. Propulsion: a spring-driven
clockwork device that turned a central paddle wheel. The device was so
underpowered, however, that when the boat was finally launched, it went --
literally -- nowhere.
1680 - No evidence exists that Italian Giovanni Borelli ever built a submarine,
but this illustration and several variations continue to appear in books and
magazines as if it had been a real boat, sometimes erroneously linked with the
efforts of Drebbel (1623) or Symons (1729). Borelli did understand the basic
principle of volume versus weight (displacement), but he illustrated a totally
impractical ballast system in which an operator would increase the boat's
weight by allowing a bank of goatskin bags to fill with water, then decrease it
by squeezing the water out and enabling the vessel to rise again.
 Illustration purportedly showing Borelli's boat with its goatskin ballast bags.
1696 - Professor of mathematics Denis Papin built two submarines. He used an
air pump to balance internal pressure with external water pressure, thus
adjusting buoyancy by controlling the in-and-out flow of water into the hull.
Propulsion: sails on the surface, oars underwater. Papin described "certain
holes" through which the operator might "touch enemy vessels and ruin them in
sundry ways."

Papin tested the first boat, but his patron lost interest, and the second boat
was never finished. Illustrations of this submarine look like a steam kettle (and,
it so happens, Papin also invented the pressure cooker). An engraver might
have confused the two, or the engravings may have been a joke or Papin's
attempt at secrecy.
1729 - English house-carpenter Nathaniel Symons created a one-man
expanding/contracting sinking boat (no locomotion) as a sort of public
entertainment. Sealed up inside, in front of a crowd of spectators, he cranked
the two parts of his telescopic hull together, spent 45 minutes underwater,
then expanded the hull, rose to the surface, and passed the hat. One man gave
him a coin.
1773 - Wagonmaker J. Day, another Englishman, built a small submarine with
detachable ballast: stones hung around the outside with ring bolts that one
could release from inside. This worked quite well in shallow water. Encouraged
by a professional gambler, Day built a bigger boat and offered spectators the
opportunity to place bets on how long he could remain underwater farther out
in the harbor.
Surrounded by ships filled with bettors, Day's associates hung some stones; the
boat wallowed awash but would not go under. They hung more stones, and this
time the boat sank like a rock. Though no one could prove it, the vessel would
have collapsed long before a frantic Day and his men could have released the
ballast. All hands were lost.
1776 - Yale graduate David Bushnell ('75) built the first submarine to actually
make an attack on an enemy warship. Dubbed the Turtle for its resemblance to
a sea turtle floating vertically in the water, the craft was operated by one
Sergeant Ezra Lee. The plan was for Lee to be towed close to an enemy ship,
open a foot-operated valve to let in enough water to sink, close the valve, and
move in under the target. He would do so by cranking two propellers -- one for
forward and the other for vertical movement -- by using a foot treadle "like a
spinning wheel." He would then drill into the hull to attach a 150-pound keg of
gunpowder with a clockwork detonator, crank to get away and operate a foot
pump to get the water out of the hull and re-surface.

In early-morning darkness on September 7, 1776, Turtle made an attack on a

British ship in New York harbor, probably HMS Eagle. The drill may have hit an
iron strap, for it failed to penetrate the hull. (Contrary to most reports, the
Eagle of 1776 did not have a copper-sheathed bottom.) Lee became disoriented
and soon bobbed to the surface. Though a lookout spotted him, he managed to
get away.
1797 - Robert Fulton, a marginal American artist but increasingly successful
inventor living in Paris, offered to build the French government a submarine for
use against Britain. Fulton called it "a Mechanical Nautilus. A Machine which
flatters me with much hope of being Able to Annihilate their Navy." He would
build and operate the machine at his own expense and would expect payment
for each British ship destroyed. Fulton predicted that "Should some vessels of
war be destroyed by means so novel, so hidden, and so incalculable, the
confidence of the seamen will vanish and the fleet [be] rendered useless from
the moment of the first terror."
1800 - After protracted delays and several changes in government, Fulton felt
encouraged enough to build the submarine he called Nautilus. He made a
number of successful dives, reaching depths of 25 feet and on one occasion
staying down for as long as six hours, with ventilation on that excursion
provided by a tube to the surface.
Nautilus was essentially an elongated Turtle with a larger propeller and a mast
and sail for use on the surface. In trials, Nautilus achieved a maximum
sustained underwater speed of four knots. Given the rank of rear admiral,
Fulton made several attempts to attack English ships, which saw him coming
and simply moved out of the way.
His relationship with the French government deteriorated. A new Minister of
Marine reportedly said, "Go, sir. Your invention is fine for the Algerians or
corsairs, but be advised that France has not yet abandoned the Ocean." Fulton
broke up Nautilus and sold the metal for scrap. He proposed but never built an
improved version.

This most commonly reproduced Nautilus was drawn two years before Fulton
built the submarine. Fulton added a deck and made a number of undocumented
changes in the finished product. Illustrations that show Nautilus with the hull
form and sail rig of a surface sailboat represent the never-built 'improved'
version.
Fulton also attached the name 'torpedo' to that maritime weapon we now call a
mine. Fulton's torpedoes were meant to be towed into position, either by a
submerged boat or a surface rowboat. When the French passed on the Nautilus,
he offered to sell torpedoes to the English, demonstrating their utility by
sinking an anchored ship with a pair of torpedoes towed into place by a
rowboat.
1812 - At least two submarines reportedly operated during the War of 1812. A
British admiral called one of them "a Turtle," though assertions that Bushnell
himself "returned to the charge" in the War of 1812 are not true. By that time,
Bushnell, whose family had not heard from him for more than 25 years, was in
his 70s and living under an assumed name in Georgia.

This drawing of Halsey's boat depicts a technical Turtle clone, with an "air tube
to shove up when at the surface" at the top and a "water cock" and "force
pump" at the bottom. The operator has one hand on the tiller, the other on a
crank used to turn the propeller and drill bit. A line attaches the 'torpedo' to
the drill.
The other submarine survives only in the notebooks of the revolver king Samuel
Colt. The notebooks (now in the collection of the Connecticut Historical
Society) show a design attributed to Silas Clowden Halsey. Colt added the
notation "lost in New London harbor in an effort to blow up a British 74." Of this
craft, nothing else is known.
1815 - Englishman Thomas Johnstone may (or may not) have participated in
Fulton's efforts on behalf of the French and may (or may not) have been hired
to build a 100-foot-long submarine to be used in a planned rescue of Napoleon
Bonaparte from exile on Elba. Whatever the facts of the case, Napoleon died
before the (possible) submarine could be finished.
1850 - While the Danish Navy was blockading the German port of Kiel, Prussian
army corporal Wilhelm Bauer persuaded a shipbuilder to construct a blockade-
breaking submarine based on his design. Bauer called his brainchild
Brandtaucher (Incendiary Diver). About the size and shape of a small sperm
whale, the boat was made of riveted sheet iron. Two men powered a treadmill
to drive a propeller, while a third man steered. The crew controlled buoyancy
with ballast tanks and adjusted trim by moving a sliding weight along an iron
rod.

Brandtaucher was recovered in 1887 and is now on display in Dresden,

Germany.
On its first appearance, Brandtaucher proved sufficiently threatening to cause
the blockading force to move farther out to sea. On a subsequent submerged
run, however, the sliding weight slid too far forward, and the vessel plunged to
the bottom, getting stuck in mud at 60 feet. Bauer and his two companions
could not open the hatch because of the water pressure; they had to wait until
a leak had sufficiently filled the interior with seawater that the pressure inside
matched that without. After an unimaginable six hours in the claustrophobic
darkness, they opened the hatch and were swept to the surface in a bubble of
escaping air.
1852 - Indiana shoemaker Lodner D. Phillips built at least two submarines. The
first, which he constructed in 1845 at the age of 20, collapsed at a depth of 20
feet.

Phillips earned an 1852 patent for a "Steering Submarine Propeller," whose

main innovation was a hand-cranked propeller on a swivel joint that allowed
crew to steer the vessel and control up and down movement.
The second achieved hand-cranked underwater speeds of four knots and depths
of 100 feet. Phillips offered to sell it to the U.S. Navy, which promptly
responded, "No authority is known to this Bureau to purchase a submarine boat
. . . the boats used by the Navy go on - not under - the water." During the Civil
War, he again offered his services to the Navy, again without success.
1855 - Wilhelm Bauer built the 52-foot Diable Marin (Sea Devil) for Russia. The
submarine made as many as 134 dives, the most spectacular of which
celebrated the coronation of Tsar Alexander II. Of the 16 men the boat took
underwater, four formed a brass band, whose underwater rendition of the
national anthem could be heard clearly by listeners on the surface.
1859 - French designer Brutus de Villeroi built a 33-foot-long treasure-hunting
submarine for Philadelphia financier Stephen Girard. The target: the wreck of
the British warship De Braak, lost near the mouth of the Delaware River in
1780. The method: divers operating out of an airlock. The boat made at least
one three-hour dive to 20 feet; no other details are known.
1861 - Early in the Civil War, the Confederate government authorized citizens
to operate armed warships as 'privateers.' A New Orleans consortium headed by
cotton broker H.L. Hunley gained approval for the operation of Pioneer, a 34-
foot-long submarine designed and built by James McClintock. The boat held
three persons, one to steer and two to crank the propeller.

A Civil War-era submarine that was long thought to be Pioneer but is not was
discovered and raised in 1878 and is on display at the Louisiana State Museum.
Its true origin remains a mystery.
In a March 1862 demonstration on Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain, a submerged
Pioneer sank a barge with a towed floating torpedo. In April 1862, the U.S.
Navy captured New Orleans, and its builders scuttled Pioneer. Soon discovered,
the boat was sold for scrap in 1868.
1861 - Villeroi obtained a contract from the U.S. Navy for a larger submarine,
the 46-foot-long Alligator. Its original plan for propulsion consisted of 16
oarsmen with hinged, self-feathering oars, but an improved version had a
three-foot-diameter, hand-cranked propeller.

The Alligator, with its large, hand-cranked propeller.

The Alligator's primary (and only) weapon was an explosive charge that a diver
would set against an enemy hull. Alligator entered service on June 13, 1862,
the first submarine in the U.S. Navy. Towed south from Philadelphia for
operations in the James River, the boat proved too large to hide and support
dives in the relatively shallow water, and it foundered and sank in a storm in
1863.
1862 - Confederate Army officer Captain Francis D. Lee created the low-
freeboard steamboat known as David (as in David and Goliath). It could either
directly ram an enemy or make use of a spar torpedo, an explosive on the end
of a long pole.

Despite its hopeful name, the David met with little success.
The Southern Torpedo Boat Company in Charleston built several as a profit-
making venture (anyone who could sink a blockading Union warship could earn
substantial bounties).
1863 - Hunley's New Orleans consortium shifted operations to Mobile, Alabama,
and built a second, slightly improved submarine, which may have been called
American Diver. McClintock spent a lot of time and money trying to replace
hand-cranking with some sort of electrical motor, but without success. This
submarine sank in rough weather in Mobile Bay; the crew was rescued.
1863 - Hunley's consortium built a third submarine about 40 feet long. Crew:
probably nine, eight to crank the propeller and at least one to steer and
operate the sea cocks and hand pumps to control water level in the ballast
tanks.
The Confederates sent the submarine to Charleston to try to break the Federal
blockade. It sank almost immediately, perhaps swamped by the wake of a
passing steamer, and some crewmembers were lost. Confederate Commanding
General P.G.T. Beauregard became disenchanted, but Horace Hunley
persuaded him to allow "one more try" under Hunley's personal supervision. The
boat sank again, killing Hunley and the crew.
The boat was found and raised, and two members of the original team who had
not been aboard when it sank harassed Beauregard often enough that, after
"many refusals and much discussion," he agreed to allow one more attempt, but
not as a submarine. Now named CSS H.L. Hunley in honor of her spiritual
father, the boat would now bear a spar torpedo and operate awash as a David.
1863 - A group of Northern speculators formed the American Submarine
Company to take advantage of a vote in the U.S. Congress to approve the use
of privateers. However, when President Abraham Lincoln declined to accept
the authority, construction of this consortium's submarine, the Intelligent
Whale, languished. The boat was not completed until 1866, long after the war
ended. The then ostensible owner, O.S. Halstead, made several efforts to sell
it to the government, and the U.S. Navy finally held formal acceptance trials in
1872. The Intelligent Whale failed. Halstead was not present, having been
murdered the year before by his mistress's ex-lover.
1863 - The French team of Charles Burn and Simon Bourgeois launched Le
Plongeur (The Diver). It was 140 feet long, 20 feet wide, and displaced 400
tons. Power: engines run by 180 pounds-per-square-inch compressed air stored
in tanks throughout the boat.

Sketch made by McClintock in 1872, which may represent the features of

American Diver.
To operate it, crew members filled ballast tanks just enough to achieve neutral
buoyancy, then made adjustments with cylinders that they could run in and out
of the hull to vary the volume (Bourne's concept). Le Plongeur proved too
unstable: A crewmember's movements could send her into radical gyrations.

CSS H.L. Hunley, recovered after a fatal accident and awaiting a "go-no go"
decision by Charleston-area commanding General P.G.T. Beauregard
1864 - On February 17, after months of training and operational delays, the
spar-torpedo-armed CSS H.L. Hunley attacked the USS Housatonic, which bears
the dubious distinction of being the first warship ever sunk by a submarine.

These drawings were made sometime after the Civil War from information
provided by W.A. Alexander, one of the original builders.
Shortly after the attack, Hunley disappeared with all hands, not to be found
until 1995 (by a team led by the author Clive Cussler), about 1,000 yards from
the scene of action. With hatches open for desperately needed ventilation, the
boat may have become swamped by the wake of a steamer rushing to the aid
of the Housatonic. In summer 2000, Hunley was recovered and is now
undergoing conservation and study.
1864 - Wilhelm Bauer, a visionary ahead of his time, proposed powering
submarines with internal combustion engines. All told, he spent 25 years
developing (or at least proposing) submarines on behalf of six nations:
Germany, Austria, France, England, Russia, and the United States. His plebeian
origins and autocratic style, not to mention his lowly army rank, proved serious
handicaps in dealing with the aristocratic brethren who ran most of the navies
of the day. Essentially ignored by his native Germany in his lifetime, Bauer
became a posthumous hero in the Nazi era.
1867 -English engineer Alfred Whitehead developed a self-propelled mine,
which he called the "automobile torpedo." This was the true ancestor of the
modern submarine-launched torpedo.
1869 -The U.S. Navy began manufacturing the Whitehead torpedo for use by
both surface ships and a new class of vessel: the torpedo boat. This spawned
the development of another new class, the torpedo-boat destroyer. Some
navies flirted with yet another class, the destroyer of torpedo-boat destroyers.
Whatever, surface-launched torpedoes had marginal military effectiveness and
found their true home underwater.
1870 - French novelist Jules Verne brought submarines to full public
consciousness with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, in which the
despot Captain Nemo uses his submarine Nautilus to sink, among others, the
then fictional USS Abraham Lincoln. Verne's research was impeccable; he even
computed the compressibility of seawater -- '0' for most purposes -- to be a
factor of .0000436 for each 32 feet of depth.
1870 - The German Frederich Otto Vogel built a submarine but it sank during
trials.
1874 - Recent Irish emigre and Patterson, New Jersey schoolteacher John
Phillip Holland submitted a submarine design to the Secretary of the Navy, who
passed the paperwork to a subordinate.

Holland's first design: a 15.5-foot-long, one-man boat with a foot-operated

treadle to drive the propeller, control the one-cubic-foot ballast tank, and
discharge 'used' air.
No one would willingly go underwater in such a craft, that officer suggested,
and, even if the idea had merit, he warned Holland, "to put anything through
Washington was uphill work."
1878 - Finding sponsorship with the Fenians, a group of Irish revolutionaries
seeking a way to harass the British Navy, Holland built a small prototype
submarine, Holland No. 1, to test out his theories, including the use of a
gasoline engine. The trial was successful enough to encourage building a larger,
more warlike boat.
1879 - Anglican Reverend George W. Garrett tested the steam-powered
Resurgam, which relied on steam from a boiler for surface operations, steam
stored in pressurized tanks for submerged operations. The boat passed initial
trials but sank while under tow (it was rediscovered in 1996). Broke but not
deterred, Garrett took his ideas to a wealthy Swedish arms manufacturer,
Thorsten Nordenfeldt (see 1885).
1881 - Holland launched the Fenian Ram, 31 feet long and armed with a ram
bow and an air-powered cannon. The craft reached speeds of nine knots,
depths of 60 feet, and stayed down for as long as an hour during tests, which
took up to two years to complete. The Fenians became increasingly frustrated
with Holland's delays and, faced with internal legal squabbles, stole their own
boat and hid it in a shed in New Haven, Connecticut, there it remained for 35
years. Holland had nothing more to do with the Fenians, and the boat was
eventually donated to the city of Patterson, where it is now on display in West
Side Park.
1883 - Holland and several investors formed the Nautilus Submarine Boat
Company, hoping to sell a submarine to the French, then at war in Indochina.

The Zalinski Boat.

The company launched its prototype, dubbed the Zalinski Boat, in 1885, but
the vessel proved too heavy for the launching ways and smashed into some
pilings. Her damage repaired, she made some token trial runs, but the war
ended and the company went bankrupt.
1885 - French designer Claude Goubet built a battery-operated submarine that
proved too awkward and unstable to meet with any success. He followed up in
1889 with Goubet II, also small, electric, and ineffective.

The Goubet II.

1885 - American Josiah H.L.Tuck demonstrated Peacemaker. It was powered
by a chemical (fireless) boiler, with 1,500 pounds of caustic soda providing five
hours of endurance. Tuck's inventing days ended when relatives, angered that
he had squandered most of a significant fortune, had him committed to an
asylum for the insane.
1885 - Thorsten Nordenfeldt launched Nordenfeldt I - 64 feet long and armed
with one external torpedo tube. It took as long as 12 hours to generate enough
steam for submerged operations and about 30 minutes to dive. Plus, once
underwater, sudden changes in speed or direction triggered, in the words of a
U.S. Navy intelligence report, dangerous and eccentric movements."
Good public relations overcame bad design, however. Nordenfeldt always
demonstrated his boats before a stellar crowd of crowned heads, and many
regarded his submarines as the world standard. The Greek Navy took delivery
of Nordenfeldt I in 1886 but seems to have done nothing with it. Its bitter rival,
the Turkish Navy, ordered two of the larger Nordenfeldt II boats, each 100 feet
long and bearing two torpedo tubes.

Nordenfeldt sold his 1887 Nordenfeldt III -- 123 feet long, rated to a depth of
100 feet, and boasting an advertised surface speed of 14 knots -- to Russia, but
it ran aground en route. The Russians refused to accept delivery, and the boat
was scrapped.
When crew on the first boat fired a torpedo on a test dive, however, the boat
tipped backwards and sank stern-first to the bottom. The second Turkish boat
was left unfinished.
1887 - The U.S. Navy announced an open competition for a submarine torpedo
boat, with a $2 million incentive. The Navy based specifications on presumed
Nordenfeldt-level capabilities and a steam power plant packing 1,000
horsepower. Bidders included Nordenfeldt, Tuck, and Holland. Holland's design
won, but because of contractor-related complications, the Navy withdrew the
award.
The Navy reopened the competition a year later, and Holland won again. But a
new Secretary of the Navy diverted the $2 million to surface ships. Nordenfeldt
lost interest in submarines, Tuck went into the asylum, and Holland got a job
as a draftsman, earning $4 a day.
1888 - Gustave Zede assembled Gymnote for the French Navy. A 60-foot,
battery-powered boat capable of eight knots on the surface, the submarine was
limited by the lack of any method for recharging the batteries while at sea. Her
naval service was largely limited to experimentation.
1889 - Spaniard Isaac Peral's Peral successfully fired three Whitehead
torpedoes during trials, but internal politics kept the Spanish Navy from
pursuing the project.
1893 - With a new administration in office, the U.S. Congress appropriated
$200,000 for an "experimental submarine," and the Navy announced a new
competition. There were three bidders: Holland, George C. Baker, and Simon
Lake. Holland and Lake submitted proposals, but the politically well-connected
Baker already had a submarine, which he demonstrated on Lake Michigan.

Simon Lake's scheme included a set of wheels by which the boat could run
along the bottom. Lake tested this theory in 1894 with a small wooden "test
vehicle" financed by relatives and dubbed Argonaut Jr. Public demonstrations
subsequently brought in enough money to build a larger boat, Argonaut I (see
1898).
A novel feature: a clutch between the steam engine and an electric motor that
allowed the motor to function as a dynamo to recharge the batteries for
submerged running. A troubling feature: a pair of amidships-mounted
propellers that swiveled up or forward through a clumsy period of transition.
When Holland's design once again won, Baker complained to his friends in
Washington, apparently causing the whole business to be put on hold.
1895 - Taking a leaf from the Nordenfeldt playbook -- in this case, good public
relations to overcome political intransigence -- Holland let it be known that he
was entertaining offers from foreign navies. His tactic may have succeeded, for
on March 3, the U.S. Navy awarded the John P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company
$200,000 to build an 85-foot, 15-knot, steam-powered submarine called
Plunger.
Holland was only somewhat pleased. He didn't like the imposition of a steam
engine as well some changes the Navy insisted upon. Congress was thrilled with
the prospect, however, and immediately authorized two more submarines of
the Plunger type at $175,000 apiece.

Plunger, launched in 1897, failed before ever leaving the dock. The
temperature in the fireroom reached 137F at only two-thirds rated output. As
one of Holland's employees later testified, "They forced us to put steam in the
Plunger against Mr. Holland's advice. When we . . . put the steam on, we found
it was so hot we could not live in her." In what must be an unwitting irony, the
first U.S. Navy submarine with built-in air conditioning was the 1935 Plunger,
SS-179.
1897 - Even before Plunger had failed, Holland began construction of a smaller
(54 feet), slower (7 knots), gasoline-powered boat, Holland VI. Armament: one
dynamite gun (air-launched, 222-pound projectile with seven loads) and a
Whitehead torpedo (three loads). Crew: six men. Habitability: included a toilet
to support operations as long as 40 hours. Holland began a series of public
demonstrations.
The New York Times, May 17, 1897: "The Holland, the little cigar-shaped vessel
owned by her inventor, which may or may not play an important part in the
navies of the world in the years to come, was launched from Nixon's shipyard
this morning."
1898 - The impending Spanish-American War intruded on Holland's efforts to
sell his new boat to the Navy, although Theodore Roosevelt, then Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, told his boss, "I think that the Holland submarine boat
should be purchased." The war begun, Holland offered to go to Cuba and sink
the Spanish fleet - on the condition, if he proved successful, that the Navy buy
his boat. The Navy was properly horrified at the thought of a private citizen
using a private warship to sink foreign ships; times had changed since Bushnell
and Turtle and the days of the privateers.

Simon Lake's prominently wheeled Argonaut I, coincidentally under

construction in the same dock as Holland's Plunger. This boat used a gasoline
engine for both surface and submerged running, drawing air from the surface
through breathing tubes.
In September, Simon Lake's 36-foot Argonaut I made an open-ocean passage
from Norfolk, Virginia, to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, prompting Jules Verne to
send Lake a cable: "The conspicuous success of submarine navigation in the
United States will push on underwater navigation all over the world ... The
next war may be largely a contest between submarine boats."

Holland VI, as pictured in the December 1898 issue of Scientific American.

By November, with the war ended, the Navy held an 'official' trial of Holland
VI. Some problems existed, but Holland did not have enough money to fix
them. So he joined forces with a wealthy industrialist to form the Electric Boat
Company. He was designated Chief Engineer.
1898 - The French fielded the 148-foot, 266-ton Gustav Zede, named for the
recently deceased designer. On maneuvers, the submarine 'torpedoed' an
anchored battleship to the consternation of some, and pride among other,
French naval officers. The boat's success prompted an international
competition for a submarine with a surface range of 100 miles and a submerged
range of 10 miles. The winner (out of 29 entries) was Maxime Laubeuf's 188-
foot, 136-ton Narval, which began life with a steam engine but soon switched
to a diesel engine.
1899 - After a modified Holland VI passed the Navy trials, the company made a
formal offer to sell the boat to the Navy and moved it down from New York to
Washington, D.C. to enhance the public relations effort with some
demonstrations for members of Congress. Meanwhile, Simon Lake's Argonaut I
was enlarged, improved, and redesignated as Argonaut II.

1900 - On April 11, the U.S. Navy bought Holland VI for $150,000 and changed
her name to the USS Holland. The boat had cost $236,615 to build, but the
company viewed it as a loss leader. The Navy ordered another submarine.
Congress held hearings. One admiral testified: "The Holland boats are
interesting novelties which appeal to the non-professional mind, which is apt to
invest them with remarkable properties they do not possess." However, Admiral
George Dewey, the Navy's senior officer, noted that if the Spanish had had two
submarines at Manila, he could not have captured and held the city. Besides,
he said, "Those craft moving underwater would wear people out." In August,
Congress ordered six more Holland submarines.
1900 - By October, the British had five Hollands on order but not until senior
naval leadership had wrestled with a moral dilemma: They, like many others
through the years, believed that covert warfare was basically illegal.
Gentlemen fought one another face to face, wearing easily recognizable
uniforms. As Rear Admiral A.K. Wilson put it, assuring himself a certain
immortality, the submarine was "underhand, unfair, and damned un-English."
The government, he wrote, should "treat all submarines as pirates in wartime
... and hang all crews." In the end, the Navy agreed to proceed with caution,
primarily to "test the value of the submarine as a weapon in the hands of our
enemies."
1901 - President of France Emil Loubet became the first chief executive to go
for a submerged ride. He did so in full formal dress, frock coat and all, aboard
the Gustav Zede. Three months later, on maneuvers 300 miles from her base,
the Gustav Zede put a practice torpedo into the side of the moving battleship
Charles Martel, to the reported "general stupefaction" of those aboard the
battleship. Submarines had become so popular in France that the newspaper Le
Matin orchestrated a public fund-raising drive to build submarines for the Navy:
Francais, launched in 1901 and Algerien, launched in 1902.
1902 - The German Navy rebuffed Spanish submarine designer Raimondo
Lorenzo D'Equevilley, who was looking for work. Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz
went on record saying, "The submarine is, at present, of no great value in war
at sea. We have no money to waste on experimental vessels." D'Equevilley took
his plans to the Krupp Germania shipyard, which built the 40-foot Forelle
(Trout) on speculation. Powered only by electricity and, like the French
Gymnote, lacking an underway recharging system, Forelle was not a practical
warship, though Kaiser Wilhelm II was impressed and his brother, an admiral,
even took a ride.
D'Equevilley turned his hand to marketing, publishing a book (in Germany) in
which he traced the history of submarines. "As exaggerated as it may sound,"
he wrote, "who knows whether the appearance of undersea boats may put an
end to naval battles?" Krupp worked on a larger, improved design - the Karp
class -- powered by a gasoline engine on the surface and bearing an onboard
battery recharging system. Russia ordered three. The German Navy ordered
one, but asked for a kerosene rather than gasoline engine.
1904 - On their first fleet maneuvers, the five British Hollands were assigned
to defend Portsmouth and managed to 'torpedo' four warships. Of this, Admiral
John Arbuthnot (Baron) Fisher, known as 'Jacky' in a profession that cherished
nicknames almost as much as tradition, wrote, "It is astounding to me,
perfectly astounding, how the very best amongst us fail to realize the vast
impending revolution in Naval warfare and Naval strategy that the submarine
will accomplish!"
On a more somber note, a passenger ship accidentally ran over A-1, the first of
a new, British-designed class of improved Hollands. The boat sank with the loss
of all hands; it was later salvaged and put back in service.
1904 - Holland, squeezed out of management and increasingly ignored,
resigned from Electric Boat and formed John P. Holland's Submarine Boat
Company. He sold plans for two larger, improved submarines, to be built in
Japan under the supervision of a Holland associate. One achieved a remarkable
underwater speed of 16 knots, about twice that of the five earlier model
Hollands in Japan.
Holland solicited business from around the world but quickly discovered that
Electric Boat controlled all of his patents, a fact the company made certain all
potential customers were aware of. He tried to interest the U.S. Navy in a new,
fast hull design; tested in an experimental tank at the Washington Navy Yard, it
promised submerged speeds as high as 22 knots. The Navy countered with the
opinion that it would be too hazardous for submarines to go faster than six
knots underwater.
Electric Boat sued Holland for breach of contract, for unethical conduct, and
even for using the name 'Holland.' The courts eventually dismissed the suits,
but Holland's business never recovered.
1904 - Simon Lake, blocked from competing for submarine contracts,
challenged what had become a monopoly business for Electric Boat. He won,
and the Navy agreed that the next procurement would be through an open
competition. Lake hoped to enter Protector, launched in 1902, as a template
for a new class of submarines. For its part, Electric Boat planned to enter
Fulton, a company-financed prototype of an 'improved' Holland.

Lake's Protector, taken out of the competition and sold to Russia in a desperate
bid for cash.
Lake was desperately short of cash, however, and grabbed the opportunity to
sell Protector to Russia, just then at war with Japan. Thus, as the only entrant,
Fulton won the design competition, leading to continued U.S. Navy orders. But
within a month, in an amazing display of impartiality, Fulton, too, was en
route to new owners in Russia. Impartiality? Only a few months earlier, Electric
Boat had received a contract to deliver five Hollands to Japan.
1905 - Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to take a
submerged ride, in the A-1 Plunger. (This was not the unfinished steamboat but
a later Holland model; the first Plunger became a training target for Navy
divers.) Roosevelt was so impressed with the hazards and hardships of the duty
that he instituted submarine pay for crewmembers.
1906 - Germany launches U-1, the first U-Boat (for Unterseeboot). This
modified Karp was 139 feet long, displaced 239 tons, and had a range of 2,000
miles, a surface speed of 11 knots, and a submerged speed of nine knots. It was
joined in 1908 by a twin, U-2. By this time, the French had a submarine force
of 60 boats, the British almost as many. Germany finally took notice.
1909 - Simon Lake received his first U.S. Navy contract. An inveterate tinkerer,
Lake proved unable to keep his hands off a design even when a boat was nearly
finished, and he delivered the first submarine he managed to sell to the U.S.
Navy -- Seal, laid down in February 1909 - over two years late.
 Virtually obsolete by the time she entered service, Seal nonetheless set a
depth record of 256 feet in 1914. The Lake Torpedo Boat Company had some
World War I contracts but went out of business in 1924.
1910 - British doctrine held that submarines were then limited to harbor
operations. Of course, but the people who wrote the doctrine had not been
paying attention. One could ask, Operations in whose harbor? In the annual
fleet maneuvers, the first of the new "D" class 'torpedoed' two cruisers as they
left port -- 500 miles from the submarine's home base.

The British D-1, 1908-1918. Note the shift from the Holland porpoise-like hull
shape to that of a surface ship. Common in all navies of the day, this shift
marked an acknowledgment that submarines would spend most of their lives on
the surface and as such needed sea-keeping qualities not found in a
streamlined 'underwater' hull.
1911 - The U.S. Navy purchased a set of plans from the Italian designer Cesare
Laurenti. It was not a happy move. While the Laurentis had some advanced
features, they were difficult to build and awkward in service.
1911 -Thanks in large part to the efforts of a 26-year-old Navy lieutenant,
Chester Nimitz, who by this time had commanded three U.S. submarines, the
obnoxious and dangerous gasoline engine was replaced by diesels, beginning
with Nimitz's fourth submarine command, Skipjack.
1912 - Nimitz addressed the Naval War College on "Defensive and Offensive
Tactics of Submarines." He offered an innovative method for forcing enemy
ships to avoid what seemed to be submarine-infested waters and thus sail into
a trap: "Drop numerous poles, properly weighted to float upright in the water,
and painted to look like a submarine's periscope."
1912 - In the annual fleet maneuvers, two British submarines slipped into a
theoretically safe fleet anchorage and 'torpedoed' three ships. A staff
evaluation warned that enemy submarines might prove a serious menace to the
fleet. The Navy Board scoffed.
1912 - Germany began to get serious about submarines with the "30s" series --
U-31 to U-41. Displacing 685 tons, these diesel-powered boats carried six
torpedoes and one 88mm deck gun. They had a maximum range of 7,800 miles
at eight knots and boasted a surface speed of 16.4 knots and a submerged
speed of 9.7 knots.
1914 - On the eve of World War I, the art of submarine warfare was barely a
dozen years old, and no nation had submarine-qualified officers serving at the
senior staff level. Ancient prejudice against submarines remained. They
represented an unethical form of warfare, detractors felt, and they did not fit
in the classic, balanced structure of a navy, where battleships were king. No
nation had developed any method for detecting submarines or for attacking
them if found.
Professional intransigence aside, and thanks largely to the efforts of Admiral
'Jacky' Fisher, Great Britain had the world's largest submarine fleet, though
Germany, despite its late start, had the most capable. Here's the tally for
1914:
Great Britain: 74 in service, 31 under construction, 14 projected
France: 62 boats in service, nine under construction
Russia: 48 boats in service, including five Hollands and eight Lakes (the rest
from Britain, France, and Germany)
Germany: 28 in service, 17 under construction
United States: 30 in service, 10 under construction
Italy: 21 in service, seven under construction
Japan: 13 in service, three under construction
Austria: six in service, two under construction
Excluding Civil War experiences and the exploits of freelance designers and
adventurers, the submarine safety record was surprisingly good. The U.S. Navy
had one accident, two men killed. The German Navy, one accident with three
men killed. Japan and Italy had each lost a submarine, each with a crew of 14.
The navies with the most submarines had somewhat greater troubles: Great
Britain, eight accidents, 79 killed; France, 11 accidents, 57 killed; Russia, five
accidents, 70 killed.
1914 - In June, British Admiral Percy Scott wrote letters to the editors of two
newspapers. To one, he said "As the motor has driven the horse from the road,
so has the submarine driven the battleship from the sea." To the other:
"Submarines and aeroplanes have entirely revolutionized naval warfare; no
fleet can hide from the aeroplane eye, and the submarine can deliver a deadly
attack even in broad daylight." He called for more submarines and no more
battleships. He was loudly attacked from all sides, by other senior naval
officers, by the government, and by the conservative press. In summary, his
theory was "a fantastic dream."
By August, Great Britain and Germany were at war.
On September 5, U-21 sank the British cruiser Pathfinder with one torpedo.
From weapon launch to sunk took three minutes. Out of a crew of 268, nine
survived. A week later, the British had their turn when E.9 sank the German
light cruiser Hela with two torpedoes.
Then, in under two hours on September 22, a single, virtually prehistoric
German submarine, U-9, sank three British cruisers. A month later, U-17
became the first submarine to sink a merchantman. A month after that, U-18
penetrated the British fleet anchorage at Scapa Flow. Although she did no
direct damage and was captured, the effect upon the British Navy was electric.
This one small boat forced the most powerful battle fleet in the world to shift
to a base on the other side of Scotland. The face of naval warfare was, indeed,
changed forever.
1914 - The skipper of a British destroyer found himself sitting above a U-boat
he could see but not touch. "What we need," a staff officer mused, "is some
sort of bomb to drop in the water." Thus began development of the depth
charge, which claimed its first victim in March 1916. These depth charges
proved largely ineffective unless they exploded quite close to the U-boat --
within 15 feet or so. The main benefit was psychological.
1915 - The British had set up a naval blockade of Germany, which began to
have a telling effect: Germany was not a self-sufficient nation and was heavily
dependent upon imported food, fodder, and fertilizer. Germany vowed to
mount a counter-blockade, using submarines. However, the German Navy had
to wrestle with a serious ethical and legal dilemma. Under international law, a
warship could stop and search a merchantman; if found to be carrying
contraband cargo for an enemy, a warship's crew could capture and place a
"prize crew" aboard her to sail her to an appropriate harbor. Under some
circumstances, the warship could sink the merchantman, provided she had first
allowed the ship's crew to take to the lifeboats.
A submarine did not carry enough sailors to make up prize crews, so the only
option was to sink the merchant ship. For this purpose, submarines were
equipped with deck guns. However, if the submarine came to the surface to
give fair warning, she herself became vulnerable to attack by ramming,
concealed guns, or warships rushing to the rescue. German policy went through
several cycles. They played by the rules for a time, but in February, in
retaliation for the indiscriminate damage of the blockade, Germany opted for
"unrestricted submarine warfare." The legal requirement for "fair notice" was
met, at least in theory, by setting specifically designated war zones, within
which all vessels were subject to attack without warning. With only 35 active
U-boats, Germany began sinking British merchant ships faster than they could
be built, and the Germans got very serious about submarines. They launched
several accelerated construction programs. One dubbed the UB class was for
smaller, less capable boats that were nonetheless well-suited to operations
close to home.
1915 - In May, U-20 sank the civilian passenger liner Lusitania, killing 1,198
men, women, and children, including some Americans. Germany did not want
to provoke the United States, and under pressure from international public
opinion, backed off from further unrestricted submarine attacks -- for a while.
In February 1916, the Germans resumed unrestricted operations but cancelled
them in April after a controversial attack on a civilian ferryboat. Nonetheless,
the U-boats were by then taking out about 300,000 tons of shipping a month.
1915 - The British discovered that torpedoes were routinely running under
their targets. They finally realized that the explosive warhead weighed 40
pounds more than the peacetime practice head upon which they had based
torpedo depth settings.
1916 - Germany created the ultimate World War I U-boat, a true long-range
submarine cruiser. Manned by a crew of 56 with room for 20 more, boats of the
UA class were 230 feet long, about 1,500 tons, with a speed of 15.3 knots on
the surface and a range of 12,630 miles at eight knots. Armament: Twin 150-
mm (5.9-inch) deck guns, 1,000 rounds of ammunition, and 19 torpedoes.
Forty-seven UA boats were ordered but only nine made it into service before
the armistice.

The cargo-carrying submarine Deutschland at New London, Connecticut, in

November 1916, during one of her two 'civilian' visits to the United States.
Three months later, the Germans had converted her and sent her to war as U-
153.
One of the first of the UA class was built as a blockade-breaking civilian cargo
submarine operated by the North German Lloyd Line. Deutschland had a cargo
capacity of 700 tons (small if compared with surface ships, but equal to that of
seven 1990-era C-5A airplanes). She engaged in high-value trans-Atlantic
commerce, submerging to avoid British patrols. On her first trip, she carried
dyestuff and gemstones to America and nickel, tin, and rubber back to
Germany.
1916 - Toward the end of the year, the situation in Germany grew desperate.
The typical daily food ration was "five slices of bread, half a small cutlet, half a
tumbler of milk, two thimblefuls of fat, a few potatoes, and an egg cup of
sugar." One German citizen later wrote, "If we were to starve like rats in a
trap, then surely it was our sacred right to cut off the enemy's supplies as
well."
1917 - In February, the German government announced total unrestricted
submarine warfare. A note to the U.S. government affirmed that "England is
using her naval power for a criminal attempt to force Germany into submission
by starvation" and warned that Germany was now compelled to use "all the
weapons which are at its disposal." The German government knew that this
would most likely bring America into the war but predicted that Britain would
be forced to the peace table before American forces could have much effect.
Great Britain had the world's largest merchant fleet, almost half of the world
total, but British shipbuilding capacity was only about 650,000 tons a year. By
March, U-boats were sinking almost 600,000 tons a month and Great Britain was
down to a six-week food supply.
The U.S. entered the war in April.
1917 - One time-honored method existed for protecting merchant ships from
enemy attack: the convoy, dating back almost to the dawn of ocean
commerce. The British Navy resisted, however. Too many ships were coming
and going -- 2,500 a week -- and port facilities were already strained; bringing
in the glut of a convoy would create chaos.

The American troopship Louisville in full-dress pattern camouflage. For the

record, not a single soldier was killed by U-boat attack while being transported
(always in convoy) across either the Atlantic Ocean or the English Channel.
The convoy would also become a huge target for U-boats. Convoying might be
all right for military auxiliaries such as troopships, but merchant crews did not
have the skills necessary to keep in convoy formation, and many did not speak
English. Most merchant ships were fast enough to outrun a U-boat anyway.
Perhaps most significant, warships would likely be out looking for the enemy,
not herding a bunch of merchantmen. The Navy was trained for offense, not
defense, the argument went, to be aggressive, not passive.
The counterarguments: Most of the traffic consisted of small coasters and
ferries; only about 140 trans-ocean ships were arriving each week, spread
across a number of ports. A U-boat could only make one attack before the
escorts would force it to break off and hide; the larger the convoy, the more
ships would be home free. Also, a merchantman might outrun one U-boat right
into the arms of another. Crews could be trained. The goal was to curtail
sinkings, not make naval officers feel good.
By late spring, the situation was grave enough that Navy officials finally agreed
to convoy trial. They never looked back. Of 83,959 ships in convoys from then
to the end of the war, U-boats only sank 257. During the same period, U-boats
sank 2,616 independent sailors. A convoy's main benefit: It forced the U-boats
to attack submerged, which meant they already had to be in attack position if
a convoy happened to sail past.
Convoys with air patrol were the safest of all, because the submariners knew
that if they carried out an attack, the aircraft could determine their
approximate location by tracing back down the visible torpedo track. However,
the carrying capacity of most aircraft of the day was too limited for heavy
weapons; many could not even carry a radio set.
1917 - Germany deployed six UA boats to the east coast of the United States,
where they laid mines and sank 174 ships, mostly smaller vessels without radios
that could neither be warned nor give warning. The UA boats proved that a
submarine could operate 3,000 miles from home base, though they did not
have any impact on the movement of troops and supplies to Europe.
Twelve American submarines took up station off Ireland and in the Azores.
They had nil effect on the war -- providing 80 percent of all trans-Atlantic
convoy escorts, the U.S. Navy's primary wartime contribution was anti-
submarine patrol - but they learned a lot about wartime operations. One clear
lesson: the dive time of the American boats was too slow. For the L-class, it
averaged two minutes 23 seconds. A small UB could be fully under in 27
seconds.
Most navies adopted an alphanumeric system for identifying submarines,
referring to the class and the series within the class: A-1, L-5, and so forth. The
U.S. Navy added names to some but not all; in the 1920s, the scheme had
reached S-51 (the 162nd U.S. submarine). Thenceforth, America followed a
different system: U.S. submarines carried a hull number and name, usually that
of a sea creature, i.e., Barracuda, SS-163. The British system: A.5, E.6.
Germany did not differentiate class, only type: All hull numbers began with U-,
with type distinctions such as UA, UB, UC.
1917 - 'Pattern' camouflage was designed to confuse a U-boat's visual fire-
control systems, making it difficult to judge range, size, speed, and course.
This practice continued into World War II, when more sophisticated systems
were introduced. Submarines themselves employed more natural schemes of
camouflage to blend in with operating conditions: white for arctic waters and
different shades of gray for various parts of the world. Eventually, all navies
adopted some version of the U.S. Navy's "haze gray" for surface ships, black for
submarines.
1917 - Radio intercepts were one vulnerability that the Allies constantly
exploited and the Germans never fully appreciated. The Germans knew their
transmissions could be overheard and U-boat locations pinpointed by direction
finders, but they didn't seem to care. They assumed the U-boats would be long
gone before any attackers could arrive on the scene. They didn't realize that by
knowing where the U-boats were operating, the Allies often could re-route
convoys out of harm's way.
1917 - Great Britain introduced the steam-powered K-class. At 338 feet long
and 1,883 tons, they were three times the size of any other in the fleet. The
British built these huge boats in response to intelligence reports that Germany
was building a 22-knot submarine. The reports were in error. So were the K-
boats. They took 11 minutes to dive, when temperatures in the boiler room
reached 160F and in the engine room 90F (although, since the engines were not
running, no one needed to be in those spaces while submerged). Naval planners
were not concerned about the excessive dive time; they assumed that the
submarine crews would see the masts of approaching ships well before the
enemy could spot them. Naval planners seem not to have noticed the addition
of the airplane and airship to the equation.
1918 - The development of submarine-locating devices began early in the war
with hydrophones (underwater directional microphones) to listen for the sound
of propellers, and, too late to be of much use in this war, an echo-ranging
system. The British dubbed the latter ASDIC, which apparently stands for
nothing in particular, but it is now known universally as sonar, which stands for
"SOund NAvigation and Ranging." By sending out an audible 'ping' and measuring
the echo return, a sonar operator can determine the range and bearing of a
submarine.
1918 - By summer, much of Germany was in rebellion, and the government
began to move toward armistice. In October, the surface navy refused to go to
sea for one last suicidal battle, but the U-boat navy remained loyal. U-135 even
remained on alert to attack a renegade German battleship. Final kill: UB-50
sank the British battleship Britannia two days before the November 11
armistice.
Germany started the war with 26 operational boats and added 390. At war's
end, 171 new boats were in the water and another 148 were under
construction. Wartime losses: 173. Mines took out at least 48; depth charges
claimed 30; gunfire, 20; ramming, 19; accident, 19; unknown, 19; submarines,
17; aircraft, 1.
In the meantime, U-boats had sunk more than 4,000 ships comprising more than
11 million tons -- fully one-fourth of the world's total supply. In essence,
unrestricted submarine warfare almost won the war for Germany, yet at the
same time Germany lost the war because of unrestricted submarine warfare. A
paradox? Perhaps this is better regarded as a matter of timing. If the U.S. had
not entered the war in 1917, Germany likely would have been able to force a
peace agreement. But the U-boat operations directly and specifically brought
America into the conflict.
Virulent wartime propaganda to the contrary, only one verified U-boat atrocity
occurred during the war: U-86's sinking of the hospital ship Llandovery Castle,
and the skipper's attempt to hide the evidence by machine-gunning all survivors
in the water (he missed a few). Post-war, he fled the country to avoid a 1921
war-crimes trial; two of his officers were tried and convicted as accessories.
They did not remain too long in jail, however, somehow managing to 'escape'
their German guards within a few months.
1919 - UC-97 became probably the only German submarine sunk within the
continental United States. One of five U-boats turned over to the U.S. Navy for
post-war study, she toured the Great Lakes as part of a Victory Bond drive,
then was sunk (on purpose) in Lake Michigan a few miles east of Chicago. Post-
war, the U.S. Navy began applying lessons learned, from operations and from a
study of the captured U-boats, toward new submarine designs. Whereas the
operating areas for the European powers were primarily close to home, the
chief operating area for the U.S. Navy was the Pacific Ocean. Thus, the Navy
needed a boat with good sea-keeping qualities, exceptional range, high
reliability, and a reasonable level of habitability.
1919 - Japan, emboldened by its surprise victory over the Russian colossus in
1905 and its successful role in providing escort services in World War I, began
planning for an eventual showdown with the nation they viewed as their major
and logical adversary: the United States. As one of the World War I allies,
Japan received seven of the surrendered U-boats but went a bit beyond mere
'examination.' Japan imported some 800 German technicians, engineers, and
naval officers to teach them how to design and build submarines.
1919 - The British converted several unfinished K-boats from steam to diesel
power. They fitted one, designated M.1, with a 12-inch naval rifle.

The British M.1, with its enormous 12-inch gun.

In theory, crewmembers could fire the gun while the boat was submerged; in
practice, the submarine had to surface after each shot to reload the gun. M.1
sank after a collision in 1925. The British turned another, designated M.2, into
a submarine aircraft carrier. M.2 sank when someone opened the hangar door
by mistake while the boat was still partially submerged.
1919 - The Treaty of Versailles blocked the German Navy from having
submarines and limited the number of officers to 1,500. One of those officers
was U-boat skipper Karl Donitz. He was assigned as commanding officer of a
torpedo boat - a submarine on the surface, if you will. He began developing
submarine tactics for the next war.
In secret, Germany acquired a Dutch shipbuilding company that designed
submarines ostensibly for sale to international customers but that also were
prototypes for the next class of German U-boats. In fact, it would be German
crews that conducted sea trials in 1931 for three boats sold to the Finnish
Navy.
1923 - Most major navies have tried to use submarines as aircraft carriers,
though never with much success. The S-1, the105th U.S. submarine, was
equipped with an on-deck hangar and the Martin MS-1 seaplane.

The S-1, with a fully assembled MS-1 seaplane on deck.

Wishful thinking: Crew had to disassemble the MS-1 to fit it in the hangar and
had to reassemble it before flight, forcing the submarine to remain exposed for
too long. In addition, launching and recovery proved virtually impossible in the
open ocean.
1925 - The British tested the 3,000-ton X.1, which came armed with four 5.2-
inch guns and six 21-inch torpedo tubes. This was an attempt to build an
underwater cruiser. It was not successful and was scrapped.
1925 - A steamer rammed the U.S. submarine S-51, which sank in 130 feet of
water. Two years later, a Coast Guard cutter rammed S-4. Neither the Navy nor
the Coast Guard had any means at their disposal to rescue survivors, and all
hands were lost. These accidents led to the development of the McCann
submarine rescue chamber, and an increase in the submarine hazardous duty
pay instituted by Roosevelt in 1905.

The McCann submarine rescue chamber.

1927 - Another Nautilus, the 168th American submarine, laid down in 1927,
was another effort to put big guns on submarines -- in this case, twin six-inch
guns. Nautilus offered at least one improvement over the British and French
efforts - gunners could train and aim the guns independently -- but the shells
were too heavy for safe handling, and the V-class boat proved too cumbersome
for operations as an attack submarine. The Navy converted Nautilus into a
seaplane filling station and amphibious support ship for World War II.
1931 - Not to be outdone by the British or Americans, France fielded Surcouf,
at 361 feet and 3,304 tons the world's largest submarine until World War II.
Armed with twin 8-inch guns and an airplane, Surcouf disappeared in 1942,
probably after a collision with a merchantman.
1932 - The U.S. Navy opened a competition for the development of a
lightweight diesel engine more suitable to submarines than any currently in
production. While the number of engines that the Navy might purchase for
submarines was too small to justify the investment, engine manufacturers
understood that a large commercial market waited in the wings: the railroad.
1932 - Japanese submarine designers moved out from under the shadow of the
Germans and, on their own, focused on three basic classes: the I-boats, most of
them about the size of the German U-cruisers; the RO coastal boats, roughly
the size of the German Type VII (see 1935) but not as capable; and the HA
series of midget submarines, in many variations.
The Japanese were more serious about submarine aircraft carriers than any
other navy: They built their first, the 2,243-ton, 320-foot I-5, in 1932. It was
equipped with one floatplane. In the next 12 years, they built 28 more, in ever-
increasing sizes.
1932 - The German government approved the clandestine construction of 16
new U-boats.
1935 - On March 16, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler renounced the Treaty of
Versailles. A few weeks later, the first of a new series of U-boat, U-1, entered
service.
1935 - Captain Donitz defined his fundamental concepts for the next conflict:
"Tonnage War" and "Wolf Pack." The first replicated World War I experience:
Sink ships faster than they can be replaced, for a long enough period, and you
could strangle an island nation like Britain. The second: Teams of seven or
eight boats attack on the surface at night, submerge to escape, resurface and
speed ahead to get in position for the next night's attack. The U-boats' 15-knot
surface speed was almost twice that of an average convoy and equal to that of
most anti-submarine escorts.

A German band welcomes a Type VIIC U-boat, the mainstay of the German
World War II submarine fleet, returning from a war patrol.
As in World War I, Germany developed several classes of U-boat. Typical were
the coastal boats (Type II), long-range boats (Type IX), and jack-of-all-trades
boats (Type VII), which became the mainstay of the fleet, with more than 700
completed in six variations (A through F) by the end of the war. Typical
displacement at the surface: about 760 tons. Length: 220 feet. Range: 8,700
miles, with a functional endurance of seven or eight weeks without refueling.
Dive time: Twenty seconds, with a maximum safe depth of 650 feet.
1938 - An experimental 140-foot, 213-ton Japanese HA boat topped 21 knots -
submerged. The Japanese also developed the world's most effective torpedo,
the Long Lance. The MK95 submarine version had a 900-pound warhead, a
wakeless oxygen-fueled turbine, and a range of five miles at 49 knots.
Contemporary U.S. Navy torpedoes had half the warhead and half the range --
when they were working (see 1941, torpedo 'design' issues).
1939 - While on sea trials, the spanking new U.S. Navy Squalus, SS-192, sank in
240 feet of water when an incompletely closed valve caused flooding in the
engine room. Twenty-six men were killed in the flooded section; thirty-three
men survived. All were safely brought to the surface in four round-trips using
the McCann submarine rescue chamber. Salvaged and renamed Sailfish, the
boat served to the end of World War II.
1939 - Ten days after the Squalus disaster, a junior officer opened the inner
door of a flooded torpedo tube and inadvertently sank the British submarine
Thetis. A few men got out through an escape hatch, but 99 were lost.
The British subsequently developed an on-board escape system, whereby sailors
waiting their turn to go out through a pressure-modulated airlock would be
able to breathe through individual oxygen masks permanently stored in the fore
and aft torpedo rooms. The British also developed positive interlocks to
prevent a recurrence, salvaged the Thetis and put it back in service renamed
Thunderbolt. She was lost in combat in 1943.
1939 - When Hitler told Donitz early in the year that he was planning for a war
six years in the future, Donitz developed plans for the construction of a U-boat
fleet of 300 Type VII boats. This would allow for 100 on station, 100 in transit,
and 100 in training or under repair. However, Germany moved into
Czechoslovakia in March and invaded Poland on September 1. On the 3rd, the
British issued an ultimatum: Get out of Poland. You have two hours to make up
your mind. The Germans did not respond. World War II began. Germany then
had 57 U-boats in service, only 38 of which could be considered 'seagoing.' For
the time being, it would be enough.
1939 - The U-boat war started under "prize rules," but that policy did not last
long. On the very first day, U-30 sank the liner Athenia without warning, and
122 of 1,100 passengers perished, including 28 Americans. The German High
Command tried to pretend that the sinking was caused by a time bomb planted
by the British to inflame public opinion against Germany. As late as January
1940, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels was ordering his staff "to
continue running the Athenia propaganda ... bearing in mind the fundamental
principle of all propaganda, i.e., the repetition of effective arguments." The
German public did not learn the true story until after the war.
Toward the end of September, the High Command authorized "seizure or
sinking without exception" for merchant ships trying to radio for help when
ordered to stop. A week later, U-boats received the order to sink without
warning any ship sailing without lights, with commanders instructed to enter a
note in the log that the sinking was "due to possible confusion with a warship or
auxiliary cruiser."
By November, the Germans had withdrawn all pretense with Standing Order No.
154: "Rescue no one and take no one aboard . . . Care only for your own boat
and strive to achieve the next success as soon as possible! We must be hard in
this war."
1939 - Dr. Ross Gunn of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory suggested that
"fission chambers" using an isotope of uranium, U-235, could power submarines.
In a Saturday Evening Post article a year later, a science writer noted that one
pound of U-235 has the equivalent energy of five million pounds of coal: "A
five-pound lump of only 10 to 50 percent purity would be sufficient to drive
ocean liners and submarines back and forth across the seven seas without
refueling for months."
1940 - German scientist Helmuth Walter demonstrated a prototype for the first
true submarine, a boat that in theory could operate submerged for an
indefinite period, unlimited by battery capacity or the need for atmospheric
oxygen. V.80 gained its power from the decomposition of highly concentrated
(95 percent) hydrogen peroxide, H2O2, known as Perhydrol. In essence, when
the chemical breaks down, it releases superheated steam to drive a turbine
along with oxygen to support conventional combustion for additional power or
for crew respiration.

The experimental 1943 250-ton Type Wa-201 Walter boat, U-793, here partially
dismantled at the end of the war.
V.80's designer optimized its hull shape for submerged operations, and the boat
indeed demonstrated exceptional speed -- 28 knots submerged. It also
demonstrated exceptionally high fuel consumption, 25 times that of a diesel
engine, at exceptional cost. According to one source, one six-and-a-half-hour
trial run consumed $200,000 worth of Perhydrol. The design showed great
promise, but Hitler thought his war was won, so plans for production of a series
of Walter boats were put on hold. Research continued, however, and perhaps
eight, in several variations between 250 and 300 tons, were put into service in
1943-44.
1940 - The U.S. Navy ran depth-charge tests against an operational submarine
that, for most of the test, was moored underwater without a crew. Finding
that 300 pounds of TNT was not very effective, they doubled the explosive
charge.
1940 - In June, France signed an armistice with Germany, and soon three
French bases gave U-boats more convenient access to the open ocean. The 18
months between July 1940 and December 1941 were known, to the German
submarine force, as the "happy time."
Fleet headquarters in Germany directed U-boat operations by long-range radio.
The Germans assumed the Allies would intercept the traffic but didn't care,
because they were encoding all messages. However, even coded intercepts
were useful; the Allies could identify many individual boats by their unique
radio signature. Even if an Allied plane or ship could not establish a submarine's
firm position, an analyst could determine when a boat would be near the end
of a mission and therefore headed home along one of several reasonably
predictable routes.
1940 - Italy joined Germany in June, bringing 105 submarines to the
Mediterranean theater. They do not seem to have had much impact.
1940 - In ramping up in anticipation of war -- or, put more delicately,
considering the then overwhelming public support for continued neutrality, as
a "just in case" prudent measure -- U.S. submarine production jumped from six
or seven a year through the mid-1930s to 71 for FY1941. The Navy settled on
Gato, SS-212, laid down in October 1940, as the template. Specifications: 312
feet, 1,825 tons, range 11,400 miles, 24 torpedoes. Over time the Americans
made improvements, including a thicker pressure hull, beginning with the
otherwise more or less identical Balao, SS-285.
1940 - On August 17th, Hitler formally declared a total blockade of the British
Isles. Desperate to acquire more escorts, British Prime Minster Winston
Churchill struck a deal with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt: a loan of 50
over-age World War I American destroyers in exchange for long-term leases for
base facilities in Newfoundland, Bermuda, British Guiana, and the West Indies.
1940 - The first Wolf Pack went into operation in September. Whereas in World
War I the simple fact of 'convoy' kept the U-boats at bay, the Wolf Pack tactic
instigated a series of long-running battles. Early in the war, escorts were
lacking, and escort coordination was minimal. Often, before meeting up in
ocean, escort vessels had not even talked with one another, much less trained
together.
One example: On October 16, one U-boat spotted a convoy of 35 ships and
called in the rest of his pack, six more boats. Another boat joined the next day.
After three days, the U-boats had sunk 17 of those ships, had intercepted two
other convoys, and sent 21 more ships to the bottom, without a single U-boat
loss. The tally would have been higher, but most of the submarines had fired
all of their torpedoes and had to go home to re-load.
1940 - At the end of the year, a German Naval Staff study noted the
'accomplishments' of the U-boats, but called for the building of more
battleships, taking shipyard resources away from submarine construction. At
the time, a handful of operational U-boats -- often, not more than ten at a
time -- were sinking twice as many ships as the surface fleet.
To enhance morale among civilians and sailors alike, a book of fiction and a
feature movie showed Wilhelm Bauer battling bureaucracy and professional
intransigence to reach the forefront of heroes ("Corporal Wilhelm Bauer, the
first man who dove into the twilight..."). (See 1850.)
1940 - By December, newly perfected aircraft-mounted radar could pick up a
surface-running U-boat at seven miles. Not a great distance, but farther than
the eye could see at night. It was a start.
1941 - America's role as a 'neutral' was somewhat fuzzy. A steady stream of
supplies flowed by convoy across the Atlantic, protected for much of the
journey by U.S. Navy resources. After U-boats sank an American merchantman
in May and a U.S. destroyer on October 30, with the loss of 115 sailors, public
opinion, which had been about 70 percent in favor of continued neutrality,
began to shift.
1941 - The code-breaking effort dubbed 'Ultra' cracked the German Navy code.
Beginning in June, the Allies could read much of the U-boat radio traffic off
and on throughout the rest of the war, depending on whether the Germans had
implemented new codes. (See Decoding Nazi Secrets.)
1941 - In August, U-570 became the first and only submarine ever captured by
an aircraft. Under attack, she surfaced and surrendered, and an arriving escort
ship took control. U-570 subsequently entered the Royal Navy, where,
redesignated Graph, she served until she was wrecked off the west coast of
Scotland in March 1944.
1941 - In August, Hitler demonstrated a constitutional inability to keep hands
off and let his commanders run the war. Against all advice, in a misguided
effort to protect his supply lines to North Africa, he ordered a shift of
submarines from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. (Misguided? How, indeed,
could a submarine protect a surface ship against the principal threat, air
attack?) This soon led to an order to shift all operational boats from the
Atlantic theater, at a time when there were Atlantic targets aplenty and good
weather in which to attack them. The submariners' "happy time" soon came to
an end.
1941 - On December 7, Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii. The Japanese had 25 I-boats on station around the islands, but
the submarines did not encounter any American warships. In addition, five HA
midgets attempted to penetrate the harbor before the air attack began, but
they achieved nothing but their own destruction. One became the first casualty
of the Pacific war, sunk by the destroyer Ward before the air attack had begun
as an unauthorized interloper in the offshore defensive sea area. The destroyer
sent a flash message to headquarters, which thought it might be a false alarm.
The battle fleet was seriously damaged in the Japanese air attack, but in time
all ships were back in service except for two obsolete battleships: Arizona,
sunk at her moorings, and Oklahoma, which sank while under tow back to the
west coast for repairs.
The major effects of the attack: to coalesce American public opinion as never
before, and to force the U.S. Navy to abandon an ingrained fascination with
battleships and shift the burden to the new-generation warships: the aircraft
carrier and the submarine. At that time, the U.S. Navy had 111 submarines in
commission, including 60 in the Atlantic and 51 in the Pacific, but many were
barely capable. They commissioned Gato at the end of the month, yet it would
be several years before a fully capable submarine force was in place.

Submarine pioneer Admiral Chester Nimitz assumed command of the U.S.

Pacific Fleet on December 31, 1941, on board the only available undamaged
warship, the submarine Grayling (the aircraft carriers were at sea).
With Roosevelt's approval, the U.S. Navy implemented unrestricted submarine
warfare that same day. To salve the conscience of those who had for so long
deplored German practice, all Japanese shipping was defined as being in the
service of the military, and thus need not be considered as "merchant vessels."
1941 - On the first day of the war, 28 submarines of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet
stood in defensive positions around the Philippines. That was more submarines
than the entire German U-boat fleet at the beginning of World War I; indeed, it
represented more submarines than had ever been assembled for one battle at
the same time. But they might as well have been in San Diego. For the losing
three-week Philippine campaign, with potential targets including 76 loaded
transports and supply ships, the Americans averaged only two attacks per
submarine and sank only three Japanese ships.
On the flip side, only one American submarine was lost. But that is not meant
as a compliment. Pre-war training had emphasized caution: "It is bad practice
and is contrary to submarine doctrine," noted an official report of 1941, "to
conduct an attack at periscope depth when aircraft are known to be in the
vicinity." Of more significance were problems with torpedo supply and design.
As for supply: 1941 torpedo production was limited to 60 a month. For all of
1942, even with a war well underway, total production was 2,382. Submarine
commanders, already too cautious, were cautioned not to waste their precious
ammunition. For the year, they fired 2,010.
As for design: The Americans, British, Russians, and Germans all had similar
problems with their torpedoes. The depth settings were wrong, the fuses were
inadequate, and the torpedoes did not explode on contact. Example: during
one period in 1940, U-boats launched four attacks on a battleship, 14 on
cruisers, 10 on destroyers, and 10 on transports; they sank one transport. The
leading U-boat ace Gunther Prien complained, "I cannot be expected to fight
with a dummy rifle."
In all navies, senior management did not give credence to reports coming in
from the fleet. The submariners themselves, who after all had the most to gain
(and lose), continued to complain until someone took notice, or they
conducted their own indisputable tests. Amazing to note: Some of these
problems were holdovers from World War I, and others were well known in the
1930s. The Germans solved their problems toward the end of 1940.
Before the U.S. Navy had discovered and fixed its own problems -- an effort
that took the first two years of the war -- their submarine commanders had
fired almost 4,000 torpedoes against the enemy, with only marginal results. On
one patrol, for example, Halibut fired 23 torpedoes; only one exploded, though
one of the targets sank when the torpedo punched a hole through rusting hull
plates. The U.S. tally for all of 1942 -- 180 ships, 725,000 tons -- was about
equal to a monthly U-boat total. The Japanese replaced 635,000 tons in the
same period. As far as the undersea forces were concerned, it looked like it
was going to be a long war.
1942 - Japan began construction of the 5,223-ton I-400 class of submarine
aircraft carrier. Designed for attacks against the Panama Canal and the U.S.
west coast, each carried three dive-bomber seaplanes. They planned for 12 but
built only two, which never saw any useful service. Japanese submarines also
made some attacks on the west coast, lobbing shells at Santa Monica,
California and Astoria, Oregon. The attacks had minor effect, although Radio
Tokyo gloated, "Americans know that the submarine shelling of the Pacific
coast was a warning to the nation that the paradise created by George
Washington is on the verge of destruction."
1942 - Donitz had hoped to send a blitzkrieg of U-boats against the eastern
seaboard of the U.S., but Hitler, fearful of an Allied invasion of Norway, forced
him to keep most of his assets closer to home. Donitz nonetheless managed to
get five long-range cruisers into position in January, where they found the
whole coastline lit up like Times Square on New Year's Eve: no blackouts, all
navigational aids aiding, all ships sailing with full navigational lights. With the
war 3,000 miles away, it was high tourist season in Miami, and the northward-
flowing Gulf Stream just a few miles off the coast kept southward-bound ships
close inshore, nicely silhouetted against a glowing Florida skyline. The tally for
two and a half months in American coastal waters: 98 ships. Coastal
communities did not go under blackout until April.
1942 - The Battle of the Atlantic began in July and continued for 11 months,
with U-boats claiming some 712 merchant victims. They were sinking ships at
more than twice the replacement rate, and new U-boats were joining the fleet
at a rate of about one a day.
Also in July, the Germans began deployment of a mid-ocean filling station. The
Type XIV boat had a capacity for 700 tons of fuel and other supplies rather than
armaments. Dubbed the "Milk Cow," this submarine could keep a dozen Type VII
boats at sea for another month or five Type IX boats for two months.
1942 - On September 13, in what may be the most spectacular, if unplanned,
submarine event of all time, the Japanese I-19 launched a spread of six
torpedoes at the aircraft carrier Wasp. Three hit, sinking the ship. The others
continued running for twelve miles into another task group, where one caused
fatal damage to the destroyer O'Brien and other sent the battleship North
Carolina to the shipyard for two months. The sixth cruised on into the
unknown.
1942 - Technological advances such as improved radar, the radar altimeter,
the aircraft searchlight, and effective air-dropped depth charges began to
enter the force. Before long, aircraft could claim participation in 50 percent of
all U-boat sinkings.
1942 - In September, Donitz issued a corollary to Special Order 142: "Be hard.
Think of the fact that the enemy in his bombing attacks on German towns has
no regard for women and children." He put his finger on the reality of modern
war: All is 'unrestricted.'
1942 - By the end of the year, with the U-boat fleet clearly in trouble, Hitler
authorized the design of a fully combat-capable, Walter-cycle, 1,600-ton U-
boat designated Type XVIII. Two prototypes were ordered, but it soon became
clear that not enough time or money existed to turn this dream into reality.
The Germans converted the design into a conventionally powered submarine --
diesel on the surface, batteries for submerged running -- and the rather large
space intended for storage of the Perhydrol was given over to an extra-large
bank of batteries.
The Germans ordered two new classes. The 1,600-ton Type XXI had only half
the range of the comparable Type IX, could manage bursts of 17 knots
underwater (compared with seven knots in the Type IX), dive to almost 1,000
feet (300 feet deeper), and remain totally submerged at economical creep
speed for 11 days. With a sophisticated fire control system, the Type XXI could
launch an attack from a depth of 150 feet.
The 230-ton coastal submarine Type XXIII, meanwhile, had twice the
submerged speed and five times the underwater endurance of the small pre-
war Type II. However, combat effectiveness was severely limited: two
torpedoes, no reloads.
The Germans quickly phased out all other submarine construction in favor of
Type XXI and Type XXIII.
1943 - Hoping to hide existing U-boats from increasingly devastating air
patrols, the Germans perfected an idea that had been kicking around for a long
time: use of a breathing tube to allow running on diesel power just below the
surface, thus also keeping the batteries fully charged. They dubbed it the
'snorkel.' It was not a perfect solution. The tube could break if the boat was
going too fast, and the ball-float at the top would close if a wave passed over,
thus shifting engine suction to the interior of the boat and occasionally popping
a few eardrums. The snorkel also left a visible wake and returned a pretty good
radar blip. But it helped.
1943 - The Germans underestimated the industrial capacity of the U.S. The
prediction under which "Tonnage War" was by then being waged was that the
1943 ship production of Great Britain and the U.S. together would be less than
eight million tons. The U.S. alone launched more than double that figure.
The Germans also underestimated the ability of the Allies to develop and
implement highly effective anti-submarine weapons and tactics. During the
year, the U.S. Navy established anti-submarine "Hunter-Killer" groups centered
on a small, quickly built so-called 'jeep' carrier, from which perhaps a dozen
planes might operate. Long-range aircraft went into service, including the B-
24, which was adapted for anti-submarine efforts. Among other efforts, they
put an end to the "Milk Cow." The rendezvous were too easy to spot by air
patrol. Of nine Type XIV submarines in service in June 1943, seven had been
sunk by August.
Also operational: the 'hedgehog,' so-named because the array of two dozen 65-
pound projectiles looked like the bristles of a porcupine. Launched 230 yards in
front of a surface warship, the projectiles would cover a 100-foot circle,
exploding on contact. The weapon proved highly effective.
By the end of May 1943, the Germans had clearly lost the Battle of the
Atlantic. In that month alone, the Allies sank 41 U-boats, representing 25
percent of Germany's current operational U-boat strength. Things got worse: In
the final four months of the year, during which almost 5,000 ships sailed in
Atlantic convoys and only nine were lost, the Allies destroyed 62 U-boats.
1944 - As in World War I, only one verified German submarine atrocity is on
record. In March 1944, U-boat commander Heinz Eck, on his first combat
mission, ordered his crew to kill all survivors of the Greek merchant steamer
Peleos and to try to pulverize all floating wreckage with hand grenades. His
motive: to hide the sinking from patrolling aircraft and thus conceal his own
presence in the area. Three survivors later testified in a post-war trial; Eck and
two of his officers, who claimed they were only "following orders," were
convicted and executed.
1944 - In June, a "Hunter-Killer" group became the first American force to
capture an enemy warship on the high seas since the War of 1812. Depth
charges forced the Type IX boat, U-505, to the surface; quick action by a
boarding party saved the boat from being scuttled by her crew. U-505 is now a
permanent exhibit at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.
1944 - In a reprise of the Deutschland efforts of World War I to move high-
priority cargo through the blockade, the Japanese sent the cargo-carrying I-52
(356 feet long, cruising range of 27,000 miles at 12 knots) from Indonesia with
a cargo of rubber, tin, opium, quinine, tungsten, molybdenum, and two metric
tons of gold bullion, bound for Nazi-occupied France. Allied radio intercepts
had pinpointed a mid-ocean rendezvous with U-530, to transfer a coast pilot, a
radar technician, and some new radar equipment to assist I-52 in running the
Allied gauntlet. Sunk on June 23, 1944 by an aircraft from the jeep-carrier USS
Bogue, I-52 was discovered in May 1995 under 17,000 feet of water.
1944 - The American version of code-breaking, dubbed the "Pacific Ultra,"
allowed the fleet to plot Japanese merchant convoys in advance -- no need for
long open-ocean hunting expeditions. As the existing submarine force was
running out of targets, the U.S. radically scaled back submarine production
early in the year. With perhaps 140 submarines operating in the Pacific, U.S.
Navy submarines sank more than 600 Japanese ships, 2.7 million tons -- more
than for the years 1941, 1942, and 1943 combined.
As targets disappeared, the Navy assigned many submarines to picket duty to
rescue downed aviators making B-29 raids on Japan, or anyone else who
happened along. The boats hauled aboard a total of 540 individuals, including
the youngest pilot in the U.S. Navy, Lt(jg) George Bush.
1944 - On November 28, the U.S. boat Archerfish sank the largest ship ever
sunk by a submarine, the newly minted 71,890-ton Japanese aircraft carrier
Shinano.
1944 - Japan fielded the Kaiten suicide torpedo, incorporating elements of the
24-inch, 40-knot version of the Long Lance, with a control compartment into
which the pilot was locked. Range: not more than five hours, no matter what.
I-class submarines carried Kaiten into battle, and a fairly large number went
into action. The record is ambiguous, however. They did succeed in sinking one
American tanker and a small landing ship, perhaps also a destroyer escort, as
well as damaging two transports.
1944 - Germany also pursued weapons of desperation, developing a two-man,
two-torpedo midget submarine called the Seehund. Thirty-nine feet long and
weighing 15 tons, Seehund could dive to 165 feet with a surface range of 120
miles at eight knots or 250 miles at five knots; submerged, 20 miles at five
knots, 60 miles at three knots. When the war ended in May1945, the Germans
had at least 268 Seehunds ready for service.
1944 - To minimize the effect of Allied bombing, the Germans built late-war
Type XXI boats in virtually complete sections at scattered locations and
transported them by barge to assembly yards.
1945 - The first Type XXIII went on war patrol in February. By the end of the
European war on May 7, six were in service, 53 in the water, and 900 under
construction or on order. The first Type XXI, U-2511, left Hamburg on war
patrol on April 30; when she returned home to surrender, 30 Type XXI were in
shakedown and training, 121 were in the water, and another 1,000 were under
construction or on order.
1945 - Germany's largest U-boat, the 1,700-ton Type XB minelayer U-234 found
itself at sea when the war ended and surrendered in mid-ocean to an American
destroyer escort. Her original destination had been Japan. Her cargo included
two complete ME-262 jet fighters (disassembled in crates, but with complete
technical data) and 550 kilograms of Uranium 235 (or Uranium oxide -- sources
differ), packed in lead containers. No one has ever determined -- or at least
revealed -- the reason the Germans were sending the uranium to Japan.
1945 - How each country's submarines fared during the war:

For some, the war ended too soon. With more hope than sense, Germany had
more than 1,900 Type XXI and Type XXIII submarines under construction or on
order on the last day of the European war.
Germany: U-boats claimed 14.4 million tons, but Germany lost 821
U-boats. Allied aircraft were responsible for (or directly involved in)
the loss of 433 U-boats; surface ships, 252; accidents, 45; mines, 34;
submarines 25 (only one of which happened when both hunter and
victim were submerged); unknown, 15; scuttled by their own crews,
14; interned in neutral ports, 2; sunk by shore battery, 1.

United States: American submarines sank at least 1,300 Japanese

ships, 5.3 million tons, including one battleship, eight carriers, 11
cruisers, and 180 smaller warships. The U.S. Navy lost 52 boats; 22
percent of the submarine personnel who went on patrol did not
return. It was the highest casualty rate of any branch of service,
though not as high as that of the German submarine force, which lost
an astonishing 630 men out of every 1,000 who served in the U-boat
fleet.

Soviet Russia: The Soviets started the war with the largest submarine
fleet: 218. They added 54 and lost 109. They did not have much
impact on the course of the war, though S-13 was credited with the
single greatest disaster in maritime history: the 1945 sinking of the
German liner Wilhelm Gustloff, which was engaged in an effort to
get German soldiers out of the path of the advancing Red Army.
 More than 8,000 troops and civilians may have been aboard; fewer
than 1,000 were rescued.

Japan: Japanese submarines had great success early in the war,

especially in the Indian Ocean area. But the tide of battle began to
turn with the Allied invasion of Guadalcanal in August 1942, and the
Japanese pulled submarines off combat duty and assigned them to
carry vital supplies to beleaguered troops or to pull troops out of
failing campaigns. The Japanese built submarine landing ships and 28
cargo submarines. Japanese submarines did score a few important
victories, including the carriers Yorktown and Wasp and the last
American surface warship sunk, the cruiser Indianapolis in late July
1945. Overall, however, they sank only about one-fifth as many ships
as the American submarine force did.

Growing desperate late in the war, the Japanese launched a massive building
program of suicide and midget submarines. Here, 84 midgets of four different
designs huddle in drydock, October 1945.
On the last day of the Pacific war, Japan had only 33 submarines in commission
(excluding midgets), seven of which were in the training command. Except for
the midgets, the submarine force had become irrelevant.
1945 - Donitz, who started the war as commander of submarines, became Navy
Chief of Staff in January 1943 and ended the war as Hitler's chosen successor as
Chief of State, even though he had never been a member of the Nazi Party.
After Hitler committed suicide on April 30, Donitz assumed command (on May
1) and issued cease-fire orders (on May 3).
The 1945 Nuremberg War Crimes tribunal brought Donitz up on charges,
especially for "breaches of the international law of submarine warfare" for
authorizing and encouraging unrestricted operations. The best witness in his
defense: U.S. Admiral Chester Nimitz, who acknowledged that the U.S. Navy
had authorized unrestricted operations against Japan throughout the Pacific
Ocean from the first days of the war.
Nonetheless, Donitz was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for being "fully
prepared to wage war." It was a specious charge in the eyes of most observers,
for any military force should always be thus prepared. Most observers believed
he was tried in place of the unavailable Hitler.
1945 - The U.S. Navy took two Type XXI boats and a handful of Japanese
submarines for study and applied some lessons learned to a fleet upgrade
dubbed "Greater Underwater Propulsive Power" (GUPPY).

The Navy modified 52 boats, adding snorkels, removing guns, streamlining

superstructures, and greatly increasing battery power. They gave another 19
boats some improvements. The net result: vastly increased underwater speed
and endurance.
1946 - Dr. Philip Abelson proposed a marriage of the Walter hull form with a
nuclear power plant. The Navy detailed eight engineers to the home of the
atomic bomb, the Atomic Energy Commission facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee,
to see what might be developed.
1947 - Testing some newly discovered peculiarities concerning the transmission
of sound in the open ocean, a U.S. submarine was able to detect a destroyer at
a distance of 105 miles and hear depth charges exploding 600 miles away. This,
and other research, led to the development of a deep-ocean array of
hydrophones called SOSUS (for SOund SUrveillance System). One of the earliest
installations could detect a snorkeling submarine at 500 miles.
1948 - The U.S. Navy began experimenting with submarine-launched missiles,
starting with a copy of the German V-1 buzz bomb now called Loon. Crew
members tracked Loon by radar and command-controlled it from the
submarine. Erection of the launching ramp and preparation of the missile kept
the submarine on the surface for five minutes, however. The Navy therefore
developed a hand-off control system, in which another submarine 80 miles
downrange could take over for the missile's final 55 miles of flight.
1950 -The Soviet Union moved to regain status as operator of the world's
largest submarine fleet. Over the following eight years, they built 235 Whiskey
class submarines using the Type XXI as a template.
1950 - USS Pickerel, SS-524, ran from Hong Kong to Pearl Harbor -- 21 days,
5,194 miles -- on snorkel.
1950 - One of the officers detailed to Oak Ridge in 1946, Captain Hyman
Rickover, assumed control of the Navy nuclear propulsion program -- and kept
control until finally retired in 1982. Rickover was a submariner and an
engineer, with a passion for safety and an obsession for control. Brilliant and
difficult, he made nuclear power a reality, not just in submarines but in many
major surface warships as well.
1952 - The first of the post-war U.S. submarines -- USS Tang, SS-563 -- set an
American depth record of 713 feet.
1953 - The next generation sub-launched missile, Regulus I, could carry a
3,000-pound nuclear warhead for 500 miles.

Integrated into the hull, the missile hangar on USS Grayback, SSG-574, could
house two Regulus I missiles. When later developments overtook Regulus, the
hangar became a compartment for clandestine amphibious assault troops. The
Soviet Union countered with Project 651 class vessels. These were code-named
as Juliett-class submarines.
1953 - The U.S. Navy began operation of a fast-submarine test bed (a boat
without combat capability but easily reconfigured to try out various control
schemes): the 203-foot USS Albacore, AGSS-569. Bearing a hull form resembling
that of an airship, the boat went through five experimental configurations. In
the first, she demonstrated underwater speeds of 26 knots.

The Navy applied the Albacore's successful hull form to the last class of U.S.
diesel boats, including the USS Barbel, SS-580 (shown here) and to the Skipjack
nuclear class, both of 1959.
1954 - The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, SSN-571, went
to sea. The 323-foot, 3,674-ton boat boasted a speed of 18 knots (surface) and
23 knots (submerged). On her shakedown cruise, she steamed 1,381 miles from
New London to San Juan, Puerto Rico, submerged all the way at an average
speed of 15 knots. She was so fast that, on her first exercise with an anti-
submarine warfare (ASW) force, she outran the homing torpedoes.
Note the use of the term 'steamed.' The nuclear plant finally made a steam-
powered submarine practical. The reactor generates heat that turns water into
steam to drive the turbine. Two different reactor configurations were
proposed. One used pressurized water to transfer heat from the reactor to the
steam plant, the other used a liquid sodium potassium alloy.
Rickover built one of each. He installed the first in Nautilus, the other in the
second nuclear boat, USS Seawolf, SSN-575, where it proved to be difficult to
maintain and not as effective as the Nautilus plant. It was replaced a few years
later.
1955 - The U.S. Navy experimented with various propulsion systems, including
so-called closed-circuit engines, which did not require access to atmospheric
oxygen.

The 49-foot-long X-1 tested a closed-circuit diesel-hydrogen peroxide plant,

which exploded in May 1957 and was removed.
Development of the nuclear power plant tended to put other technologies on
the shelf, however, at least in the United States. The development of closed-
circuit systems has continued, especially in some European navies seeking a
lower-cost alternative to nuclear power.
1955 - Based on hard experience with the Japanese kamikaze aircraft, the U.S.
Navy developed a prototype nuclear-powered radar-picket submarine. At 447
feet and 5,963 tons, USS Triton, SSN-585 was the largest U.S. submarine to
date, but by the time she was in commissioned in 1959, advances in airborne
detection systems had rendered her intended mission unnecessary. In 1969 she
became the first nuclear boat to be retired.
1956 - The German V-2 rocket became the U.S. Air Force Jupiter missile.
Although the missile was exceedingly large, at least one scheme proposed
mounting four V-2s in a submarine. Timely development of the Polaris missile,
which permitted 16 on a boat, precluded any further discussion of submarine-
based V-2s.

The USS Sam Rayburn, SSBN-635, one of 41 U.S. ballistic missile submarines
built between 1960 and 1968, with its Polaris tube hatches open.
The A-1 Polaris -- solid-fuel, compact at 28 feet long, and bearing a range of
1,200 miles -- was ready for deployment by 1960. An A-2 version, 1,500 miles in
range, entered service in 1962, followed a year later by the 2,500-mile A-3, all
of which could fit in the same launch tubes.
1958 - The Soviet Union fielded its first nuclear-powered submarine. The
Soviets gained a head start by following and copying the Americans. Five years
into its program, the Soviet Union had 24 nuclear boats in three classes, all
bearing the same reactor. Unfortunately for submarine crews, the Soviets
apparently failed to appreciate the hazards associated with nuclear power.
Rumors have circulated that entire crews of early Soviet boats later died from
radiation poisoning.
1959 - The first submarine to utilize the potential of both the nuclear power
plant and the high-speed Albacore hull was USS Skipjack, SSN-585, which was
officially rated at 29 knots submerged.
1960 - USS Triton completed the first submerged circumnavigation of the
globe: 36,014 miles in 84 days.

The USS Triton, the first submarine to execute a submerged circumnavigation

of the Earth.
1963 - On April 10, the USS Thresher, SSN-593 became the first of two nuclear
submarines the U.S. Navy has lost to accident. After two years in commission,
the boat had just spent some time in a shipyard and was on sea trials when
something went wrong, perhaps the rupture of a section of piping. No one
knows for certain. Thresher sank in 8,300 feet of water, taking 128
crewmembers with her. The boat had an operational depth of 1,300 feet, more
than any other U.S. submarine class to that date, but clearly the hull would
have passed "crush depth" well before hitting bottom.
At least two things came out of this accident. First, the Navy carefully
reviewed the entire design, looking for any possible defects, and it ordered
modifications to all boats of the class then under construction. Second,
because the U.S. had no viable method for rescuing trapped submariners at any
depth below a few hundred feet, the Navy developed the Deep Submergence
Rescue Vehicle (DSRV) to assist any submarine that bottomed short of crush
depth.

The Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle is air-transportable and able to mate

with and remove crew from U.S. submarines to a depth of at least 5,000 feet.
Two were built; neither has ever been used.
1965 - USS Albacore reportedly set an underwater speed record of 33 knots,
though the posted 'official' speed is 25 knots.
1968 - On May 22, the USS Scorpion, SSN-589, became the second U.S. nuclear
boat lost. Possibly the victim of one of her own torpedoes, Scorpion in its last
moments may have been picked up by the then-secret SOSUS sound arrays
planted on the ocean floor.
1968 - A Soviet November class nuclear submarine surprised the U.S. Navy by
keeping up with a high-speed task force going 31 knots and led by the nuclear-
powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. Spooked, the Navy developed a new
class of fast attack boats, Los Angeles.

The USS Los Angeles, SSN-688

The class had some teething problems, but the 62 boats in the class
demonstrated respectable performance, with submerged speeds in excess of 30
knots.
1971 - The C-3 missile, Poseidon, with multiple independently targeted
warheads, went to sea.
1972 - Development was underway on the next-generation submarine-launched
ballistic missile, Trident, C-4, which had twice the range of the C-3. A C-4-
equipped submarine could launch at the most logical targets in the Cold War
world while sitting in New York harbor. The U.S. would no longer need to
maintain overseas submarine bases in Scotland, Spain, and Guam, and the Navy
closed those bases when the C-4 became operational. The C-4 missile first flew
in January.
1977 - The C-4 did pose some problems for the people who design submarines.
Too large to fit in any extant sub design, Trident required a new, very large
class of submarine: Ohio, 560 feet long, 42 feet wide, 16,674 tons.
1974 - The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency attempted to raise a Soviet Golf-
class diesel-powered boat, K-129, which sank in 1968. The agency did so under
cover of a deep-ocean mineral recovery effort using a ship built for the
purpose, the Glomar Explorer. The submarine apparently broke apart and the
stern half fell back to the bottom.
1982 - During the Falklands War, two British ASW carriers, more than a dozen
other surface warships, five submarines (four of them nuclear), and a gaggle of
patrolling aircraft became occupied -- in fact, almost paralyzed -- in protecting
the force against two badly maintained, poorly manned Argentine submarines.
One was a post-World War II Guppy and the other an eight-year-old German
boat that, in the end, had nil effect upon the war.
Be not deceived by this comic-opera vignette, however. For the British, the
submarine war was deadly serious. With two World War II-vintage torpedoes,
the British submarine Conqueror sank the World War II-era Argentine cruiser
Belgrano (ex-USS Phoenix), killing 368 sailors.
1982 - Planning began for the next-generation American attack submarine:
another Seawolf, SSN-21. The Navy adjusted the hull number (the next in the
series would have been 774) to celebrate Seawolf as the "submarine of the 21st
Century." It features the most sophisticated systems imaginable. Size: 353 feet
long, 40-foot diameter, 8,000 tons. Top speed: probably in excess of 35 knots.
According to one program manager, when underway at quiet speed, Seawolf
would be as quiet as a Los Angeles boat sitting at the pier. Quiet speed may be
in excess of 20 knots.
1986 - On October 6, a Soviet Yankee-Class nuclear-powered missile boat, K-
291, sank in the Atlantic 680 miles northeast of Bermuda, from an explosion in
a missile tube.
1989 - Soviet submarine Komsomolets sank in the Norwegian Sea. Most of the
crew abandoned ship, but while waiting for rescue in the frigid waters, 34 of
them died from hypothermia, heart failure, or drowning. This accident
prompted the Russians to develop individual escape survival suits rated to a
depth of 328 feet, and led the U.S. Navy to adopt the Mark 10 British-designed
Submarine Escape Immersion Module. This provides individual full-body thermal
protection and has been tested to 600 feet.
1997 - Seawolf joins the United States Navy fleet.
1997 - In preparation for development of the next submarine class (Virginia),
the U.S. Navy elected to create a one-fourth-scale, unmanned submarine to
test new and emerging technologies before they are committed to full-scale
ships. Designated the Large Scale Vehicle (LSV) 2 and named after a species of
trout, Cutthroat, the 111-foot boat was delivered to the Navy in the spring of
2001.
2000 - The U.S. Navy tested Avenger, a 65-foot mini-submarine with a closed-
cycle engine powered by diesel fuel and liquid oxygen. Intended for use by
SEALs, the Navy's clandestine amphibious assault teams, Avenger can carry 18
troops and a crew of six.
2000 - The Russian missile attack submarine Kursk, K-141 sank while on
maneuvers in the Barents Sea. Placed in service in 1995, the 510-foot Oscar II-
class Kursk had a surface displacement of 14,700 tons and speed in excess of 30
knots.

The ill-fated Russian missile attack submarine Kursk.

On August 12, the sound of at least two explosions reached the Norwegian
Seismic Service and five other ships operating in the area, including two
American and one British submarine shadowing the exercises. The cause of the
accident remains unknown, although Kursk had radioed for permission to
launch an exercise torpedo about an hour and a half earlier.
Kursk went down in about 350 feet of water with 118 men. Although the boat
bore several escape systems, including individual escape-survival suits, none
was used. Efforts to reach Kursk were hampered by bad weather. Eventually,
during recovery of bodies, search teams determined that at least 23 sailors
survived the initial explosion, only to perish later. Russia has contracted with
several firms to help remove crew remains, and plans for raising Kursk are
under discussion.
2000 - The United States Navy celebrated the 'official' 100th anniversary of the
submarine (dating from the U.S. Navy purchase of the Holland in 1900), some
47 nations operate more than 700 submarines, almost 300 of them nuclear-
powered. A host of countries, including the United States, Germany, Italy,
Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Japan, are pursuing new designs. In short, the
submarine appears to be in the best of international health.
2002 - Women in the Submarine Service?
Australia, Canada, Norway and Sweden operate diesel-electric powered
submarines which have to surface regularly to recharge their batteries, during
the course of which the atmosphere is refreshed. There is a potential health
risk to a fetus from the build up of contaminants in the submarine's
atmosphere. Despite careful filtration and purification, there are around thirty
different contaminants, including higher than the usual concentrations of
Carbon Dioxide and Carbon Monoxide, which could be harmful to fetuses. There
is no health risk to adult male crews. Most nuclear submarine fleets remain
underwater for much longer periods of time, allowing the contaminants to
accumulate. Currently, no women are known to serve in the U.S, U.K., French
or Russian Submarine Forces.