Various military equipment, including aircraft carriers, must be powerful and impressive to the enemy a thousand times thought, before venturing to attack. In addition, to achieve the desired goal of the military equipment must be fully visible, but the situation with submarines is quite different.
The armies of the world tend to possess slow-moving and invisible submarines, to ensure the presence of its armed forces anytime, anywhere. Some modern submarines, carrying explosives, whose number sometimes exceeds the ammunition of the whole country, however, submarines are more affected psychologically, and the enemy never really knows for sure who it belongs to.
In 332 BC Alexander the great ordered to lock several people in a glass cage and throw them into the sea, then they told him that he had seen under water. Unfortunately, the sources did not specify how exactly Alexander the great did it and what happened to the people who have been at sea in a sealed glass cell, where did not penetrate neither water nor air.
This event was the first step towards creating a modern submarine. However, one of the first concept of a submarine was presented by the Englishman William Bourne in 1578.
Born talked about the possibility of building small boats, which will be able to rise again to the surface, when suddenly she for some reason goes down. What’s more, it can dive, then float to the surface, changing their size. According to his theory, if the boat wanted to dive under the water, she had to reduce the size, but if she was going to float to the surface, on the contrary, increase. It should be noted that born was not able to create a prototype of a submarine or theoretically describe how it would function in a similar way.
In 1620 a Dutchman Cornelius van Drebbel built the world’s first submarine, which was designed for 12 rowers. She was heavier than water, so easy to submerge, and the submarine rise back to the surface was carried out using the paddles.
16 years later the French scholar Marin Mersenne theorized that a submarine hull must be made of copper and having a right cylindrical shape to withstand the pressure.
First submarines: the many failures and curiosities
Until the seventeenth century the idea of creating a submarine revolved only around exploring the underwater world, but then love intervened person-to-arms. In 1654 during the First Anglo-Dutch war, Louis de Dream built 21-metre submarine that could quietly get close to the enemy ship and sink it, but unfortunately the tests failed.
In 1776, after 122 years after the test, Louis de Sona, the Americans decided to revive the idea of the submarine as a warship. During the War of independence, the U.S. American David Bushnell built the first military submarine called the Turtle.
Submarine Bushnell became the prototype for modern submarines. It was a special ballast tanks, which were filled with water when the submarine sank under the water, and was drained when she was brought to the surface. To stay in the submarine could only be one person who manually control the various mechanisms. In addition, the submarine was equipped with a depth gauge, a compass and a fan for forced air supply inside the submarine while moving on the surface. Unfortunately, the tests failed because of difficulties with attaching the mines to the underwater part of the enemy ship.
In 1800, Napoleon decided to use submarines to attack British Royal Navy. Speaking of which, he actually managed to invent a submarine that could descend to a depth of four meters and move underwater at a speed of four knots, but every time she approached the British ship, it was discovered due to the fact that on the surface the boat was under sail.
For 60 years after these events, the idea of creating submarines were not popular, while in 1861 has not started a civil war in the United States. Both warring parties began to work on the creation of submarines, using technological advances witnessed by the world in that period. Submarine H. L. Hunley managed to attack the ships of their enemies and undermine them with an explosive device attached to the front of the submarine. Although the H. L. Hunley has not survived, it marked the beginning of submarine warfare, which does not stop until now.
“Abdul Hamid”: Ottoman submarine, the first in the world made the launch of torpedoes from a submerged position
In the late nineteenth century the Turks made other countries competition in the world of submarines. In 1887 they purchased a steam submarine in Britain, which was named in honor of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. She became the world’s first submarine that fired a torpedo from a submerged position.
The Turks bought not one submarine, and two, and although the price of one copy at that time amounted to 9 thousand pounds, they paid 11 thousand pounds each to get them in the shortest possible time — within two months. They also demanded that the submarines were dismantled and placed into containers, and then shipped to the Ottoman Empire, which would be collected on the spot.
13 January 1888, both submarines were collected, and in the port of Izmit organized an exhibition for the public. The speed boat was not the one that counted the Turks, but they preferred to turn a blind eye, realizing that “Abdul Hamid” is the first submarine in the world, able to launch torpedoes from a submerged position.
World war. As submarines became an important naval weapon
One day, John Philip Holland asked myself: “What if we put in one device electric motor and electric battery with an internal combustion engine and submerge it in the water?” So there were modern submarines. Britain has strongly opposed their construction, and Admiral Wilson was called an underwater war is unjust and doomed to failure, but still allowed the Holland to realize his idea. Finally, in 1910, Admiral Jackie Fisher saw four ships sink during a training exercise after Holland attacked them with his new invention. British authorities have allocated 5% of the budget of the national Navy for the construction of submarines.
In an effort to counter British naval power, Germany had developed submarines U-boat. It was a new generation of submarines, which changed the balance of power in the seas in favor of Germany and the countries of “axis”. It was a small, fast and deadly submarines.
These new submarines, the Germans sank a 3 thousand ships of the allies. Since the beginning of the world war to mid-1943, they lost only 250 boats, but later just one month lost 42 submarines, and the number of destroyed their ships began to decline due to air operations of the us forces who were able to attack German submarines before they attacked the allied ships.
Mussolini did not remain in side from this front and leaving their mark. So, the Italians invented the submarine, equipped with a guided two-man crew torpedo. Manually attached to the bottom of the ship, which had to be destroyed, and established the time of the explosion. These submarines once managed to sink three of the big ship of the British Navy, one of which was named in honor of Queen Elizabeth, and was considered the pride of the British naval forces.
The Germans removed their old models and started work on designing submarines that could swim without having to surface for eight weeks in a row, but the defeat of the Germans in the Second world war prevented the project to see the light. Despite this, the idea is not dead, revived during the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Instead of attacking the ships, now the role of submarines was to attack enemy boats. This marked the beginning of a new type of war and military strategy takes into account all the available weapons: the army, Navy, air force and submarines. In 1955, the United States transferred the arms race to a more dangerous stage, when it launched its first nuclear submarine “Nautilus” that can inflict massive damage and stay under water.
A nuclear submarine, a weapon that can strike back
After the man made nuclear submarines, he began to think about creating a submarine that can carry and launch rockets with nuclear warheads. Of course, only six countries in the world have nuclear submarines: the United States, Britain, France, India, Russia and China. According to leaks, States such as North Korea and Israel also possess nuclear-powered submarines.
The advantage of nuclear submarines is that they are willing to commit not only proactive, but also retaliation. Imagine that a nuclear submarine is a huge missile launcher hidden in a hidden place somewhere in the depths. If one country decides to attack another with nuclear weapons, the submarine will disappear, and then she will be able to launch their nuclear missiles at the aggressor. Because this scenario is always possible, from the beginning it will serve as a deterrent.
In this case, curiosity is the following. If nuclear submarines can inflict a retaliatory nuclear strike even if the government will be defeated as the captain of the submarine will receive their orders in the absence of senior management and the government? The fact that in a safe place always kept a secret letter that nobody knows except the captain of the submarine. It gives him an extensive and independent powers and, in particular, specifies what to do if the government is destroyed as a result of hostile nuclear attack.
Every Prime Minister or head of state writes his message on the first day of taking office. The document remains unread, if the term of office coming to an end and was not committed nuclear strikes. Often the captain of a submarine there is a choice of four possible options: to revenge, to use his own judgment, to stand in obedience to the leadership of the allied countries and to comply with its orders or to take the bitter decision to do nothing.
Nuclear submarines have an incredible ability to disappear on the bottom of the ocean so that another submarine may not see the submarine, even at a distance of 1 meter. 3 Feb 2009 the crew of a British submarine the HMS-Vanguard felt that she collided with some object. As it turned out, the submarine collided with the French submarine “Triumphan”. Both were equipped with nuclear weapons, but fortunately, moving at low speed, so nothing serious happened. Thus, the world has managed to avoid disaster — two of the nuclear Arsenal of nuclear submarines could explode in an instant.
To avoid such incidents, countries are developing new technologies for the detection of submarines, and they are improving faster than the submarine. Of course, these technologies are used to detect the location of other submarines not so much to avoid collisions with them, but for their destruction.
Accelerate the development of technologies for the detection of submarines suggests that will soon be impossible to hide anything in depth, but until that happens, nuclear submarines are a weapon that protects us from any nuclear adventure.
People living in submarines may not know about the coronavirus
Back to the Internet and isolation from the outside world. How submarines communicate with each other? As they receive orders from the leadership? After all, most of the time the crew is at depth, and most radio waves do not reach the submarines.
The same radio waves that reach them, are low-frequency radio waves, so the submarines equipped with a large number of receivers, and the country create a huge separate stations in different areas to strengthen these waves. The problem is that the send rate of messages is low and they always come late. Sometimes, if necessary, some submarines risk to pull to the surface buoys to receive and send signals.
Since radio waves do not propagate under water, a GPS device or radar on submarines don’t work, and the crew uses sonar for feeding and receiving signals. However, the sounds of sonar can help find most of the submarine so the crew tries to avoid its use.
Submarines often have a relatively reliable map of the movement of enemy submarines. To make it help the cases of crossing with them. Because the data is inaccurate, the plans for the rescue of the crew of a submarine in case of damage often fail. The help comes as long as the damaged submarine is not coming to an oxygen deficiency.
At the same time, the submarines, of course, can not stay in the depths forever, because they work crew that eventually need to rise to the surface. Some submarines are equipped with special desalination of seawater and its own oxygen generators, but the weak point is always the food supply. As a result, when they end, the submarine must rise to the surface in order to replenish them.
A well-known fact that military submarines are better fed than everyone else in the army. Russians are most interested in the outer side of the submarines, and submarines because of their longer and wider. As for the Americans, they seek to improve the speed and efficiency of submarines by reducing their size. Sometimes this leads to the fact that some crew members have to share beds.
Some subs also have entertainment facilities such as saunas and plunge pools, and these objects are considered to be very important. Since the crew works in shifts, eight hours each, the rest of the day is given to rest of what the crew will do two-thirds of the day, because most of the time on submarines no Internet. Usually, the crew members give their families a secure email address to send emails.
These letters are read first technical team, which should ensure the absence of malicious links and any personal information that could affect the behavior of crew members, for example, the illness of a child or the death of a relative. Then letters are sent to the submarine, and when it rises closer to the surface of the water or to the place where the Internet works, the crew members can read letters and answer them.
On the background of the current pandemic, you’ll probably be surprised to know that the crew of many submarines at the end of June 2020 still don’t know about sweeping the world of the pandemic of coronavirus.
