11th April: National Submarine Day

Today is national submarine day. Here are a few things you might not know about submarines.

1. Submarines, in some form or other, have been around since the 17th century. In 1605, a German doctor called Magnus Pengel (who was incidentally a pioneer in Blood transfusions) built a submersible boat, but it sank in the mud. In 1620, Cornelius Drebbel built a navigable submarine powered by oars. The first submarine built for military purposes was invented by American David Bushnell in 1775. His Turtle held one person. The first submarine not to be propelled by human power was a French vessel named Plongeur, launched in 1863. It used compressed air. The first submarine to be powered by combustion was the Ictineo II, built in Spain in 1867.
2. Submarines were built and used by both sides in the US Civil War. One of these was the first submarine to sink a warship, in 1864. It went by the unprepossessing name of Fish Boat and immediately after the successful attack, the submarine also sank and all eight crew lost their lives. The submarine wasn't recovered until 2000. It was given a new name after it sank - the HL Huntley after her inventor, Horace Lawson Huntley. The submarine is now in a museum in Charleston, South Carolina.
3. The first nuclear powered submarine was the USS Nautilus. It was launched in 1954. Nuclear submarines, in contrast to the Turtle, can carry over 100 crew and stay submerged for months at a time. Thus far, only one ship has ever been sunk by a nuclear submarine - the Belgrano - sunk by the British during the Falklands War.
4. A submarine was responsible for the worst maritime disaster ever when the Wilhelm Gustloff was sunk by a Soviet submarine in 1945, and 9,343 people were killed.
5. There was a type of submarine in use during WWI which could have been described as a maritime disaster. It was called the K-Class and had so many design flaws and mishaps it was nicknamed "Kalamity Class". For example, it ran on steam, and when submerged, Water would pour into the funnels and flood the boilers, resulting in a loss of power. On one occasion when this happened, another K Class submarine ran into it and the resulting influx of seawater produced chlorine gas when it reacted with the batteries. Luckily they were on manoeuvres at the time and there was a ship nearby to evacuate the crew onto. Also, they were longer than their maximum diving distance so they could be at maximum depth at one end while the other end was sticking out of the water! 18 of them were made, six of which sank. Only one ever hit an enemy vessel - but the torpedo failed to explode.
6. Submarines work by using ballast tanks, which fill up with water to make it submerge and empty to bring it back to the surface. They are built from titanium or steel so they don't collapse due to the pressure of the water.
7. The first submerged circumnavigation of the world was completed by USS Triton in 1960.
8. A science fiction book increased the interest in submarine design in 1870. The book was 20,000 Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne. Fellow Sci-fi writer HG Wells was less of a fan. "I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea," he said. 20,000 Leagues under the Sea was made into a film, and since then there have been several films about submarines, such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Hunt for Red October, K-19: The Widowmaker, Crimson Tide and U-571. There has only ever been one number one hit record with the word submarine in the title - that was the Beatles Yellow Submarine.
9. Sound carries differently underwater than in air, so communication between submarines was a challenge. They have to use very low frequency transmissions and sonar telephones.
10. Of all the nasty accidents which can happen to a submarine, probably the most embarrassing happened to a German U-boat in 1945. There were any number of high tech gadgets on board, all of which required specialist training to use - including the toilet. Only specially trained crew were supposed to flush the thing. One day, the captain, one Karl-Adolph Schlitt went to the loo, and was presumably too shy to call in the trained toilet operative and decided to flush it himself. How hard can it be, right? Needless to say, it went wrong and the bathroom was flooded with seawater and other unmentionables. The bathroom was above the battery room and as we learned in fact #5, seawater and batteries produce chlorine gas. The captain had no choice but to order the submarine to surface, whereupon it was bombed by a passing British aircraft.

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