Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works in iHeart Radio and I love all
Speaker 1: things tech. And today we're going to continue our journey
Speaker 1: to the button of the Ocean, or at least our
Speaker 1: our journey to understanding submarines and how they work. So
Speaker 1: in our previous episode, I talked about the early attempts
Speaker 1: at building vehicles that can travel beneath the waves, and
Speaker 1: we learned about brave or perhaps fool hardy inventors who
Speaker 1: took great risks and sometimes perished in the process to
Speaker 1: come up with a working submarine. And nearly all the
Speaker 1: applications for the innovation were centered around warfare. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of people who are thinking about it for
Speaker 1: you know, like a pleasure cruise under the waters. But
Speaker 1: for the most part, people are thinking, how can I
Speaker 1: use this to sneak up on people I don't like
Speaker 1: and then blow them up real good? Now. I left
Speaker 1: off in the middle of the nineteenth century with a
Speaker 1: discussion on the submarines that were used during the Civil
Speaker 1: War as well as one that was built around that
Speaker 1: same time over in France. So let's pick up from there.
Speaker 1: And as I mentioned in that episode, I'll not be
Speaker 1: covering every single submarine or every single advance in submarines
Speaker 1: bit by bit, because that would take forever. We'd have
Speaker 1: to do fifty episodes. So we're going to be jumping
Speaker 1: around a little bit in this one. One innovation that
Speaker 1: isn't about submarines specifically would still contribute to their evolution,
Speaker 1: and that was the self propelled torpedo. In eighteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: a man named Robert Whitehead came up with a design
Speaker 1: for an explosive device that could travel through the water
Speaker 1: using compressed air as the power source. Now keep in
Speaker 1: mind that up until all that point, submarines relied on
Speaker 1: either approaching a ship close enough so that you could
Speaker 1: physically attach an explosive mind to that ship, or having
Speaker 1: a spar mounted to the front of the submarine and
Speaker 1: then ramming a ship and the spar is tipped with
Speaker 1: an explosive, which clearly would put both the ship and
Speaker 1: the submarine at risk. That's how, in fact, the Hunley
Speaker 1: sank after it hit its target, the Hausatanic. But in
Speaker 1: that process, everyone on board the Huntley died. That's not
Speaker 1: ideal either. There was also the attempt to tow an
Speaker 1: explosive behind the submarine in an effort to set it
Speaker 1: on a course that would collide with the target ship.
Speaker 1: But that was also dangerous because if it collided with
Speaker 1: a submarine blow up prematurely. So the development of a
Speaker 1: projectile that could travel through the water would mean it
Speaker 1: would be possible to design a submarine that could be
Speaker 1: an effective military vehicle. You would have a torpedo tube
Speaker 1: that you could load a torpedo into. You would flood
Speaker 1: the tube and then you would activate the torpedo. If
Speaker 1: such a vessel could carry torpedoes like the ones that
Speaker 1: white Head was designing, then they could launch them at
Speaker 1: a target at a distance without putting itself in direct danger.
Speaker 1: Whitehead's torpedo design called for a pair of cylinders containing
Speaker 1: compressed air at ninety atmospheres, and these were within the
Speaker 1: body of the torpedo itself, took up most of the
Speaker 1: space inside the torpedo. In fact, the compressed air would,
Speaker 1: when released, force its way outward, turning mechanical components through
Speaker 1: a system of gears that transferred that motion to propellers
Speaker 1: at the base or the rear of the torpedo. There
Speaker 1: was also a rudder in the back that allowed for
Speaker 1: stability and some aiming capabilities. There's no real way to
Speaker 1: steer a torpedo once it left, not yet anyway. Whitehead's
Speaker 1: prototype could travel at a speed of six and a
Speaker 1: half knots that's about seven and a half miles per
Speaker 1: hour or twelve kilometers per hour, and it had a
Speaker 1: range of around two hundred yards or about a hundred
Speaker 1: eighty three ms. A ship, you know, the the over
Speaker 1: the waves kind of ship, was meant to launch it
Speaker 1: from a tube that was at or below the waterline,
Speaker 1: using either a gunpowder charge or compressed air. Whitehead and
Speaker 1: others would improve on that basic design, adding components like
Speaker 1: gyroscopes to help with steering and stability, but all that
Speaker 1: would happen over the course of the next few decades. Now,
Speaker 1: the military submarines I covered in the last episode were
Speaker 1: at best only partially successful, but there was a lot
Speaker 1: of work that needed to be done to make them
Speaker 1: a more reliable resource. Much of that work would be
Speaker 1: done by an inventor named John Philip Holland, who many
Speaker 1: call the Father of the modern submarine. Holland was born
Speaker 1: not in Holland but in Ireland, which I think he
Speaker 1: did as a joke to confuse me. He went to
Speaker 1: school in Limerick, so I guess this is happening. Get
Speaker 1: ready for some poetry. M M. John Philip was quite
Speaker 1: the boy wonder who flinched, not at high waves or
Speaker 1: at thunder. I don't care a pip. I built a
Speaker 1: new ship. I don't float on the sea. I go under.
Speaker 1: There's your Limerick. He studied engineering and worked on many hypotheses,
Speaker 1: including a paper about the possibilities of mechanical flight, and
Speaker 1: this would be years before the Right Brothers found success
Speaker 1: at Kitty Hawk. He also read about the earlier submarine
Speaker 1: designs in America during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and
Speaker 1: Holland was interested in these in large part because Ireland
Speaker 1: was under British control and conditions in Ireland were pretty
Speaker 1: harsh and a lot of blame was being thrown towards
Speaker 1: the British. Not only was there famine and disease in Ireland,
Speaker 1: but also some ruthless business practices were turning Irish families
Speaker 1: out on the streets. There was even a practice called
Speaker 1: leveling in which a landlord would evict a family, then
Speaker 1: strip the thatched roof off of that family's house in
Speaker 1: an effort to prevent them from moving back into their
Speaker 1: former homes. Holland was therefore interested in technologies that might
Speaker 1: help turn the scales against a force that otherwise could
Speaker 1: seem insurmountable. England's navy was the envy of the world,
Speaker 1: so how could Ireland ever stand up to them? Holland
Speaker 1: would immigrate to the United States in eighteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: and not long after he arrived, he fell and broke
Speaker 1: his leg, and he was laid up for a few months.
Speaker 1: So to occupy his mind, he began to seriously consider
Speaker 1: how one might overcome the challenges of building a practical submarine.
Speaker 1: He continued working on his ideas for a new submarine,
Speaker 1: and then he presented those ideas to the United States
Speaker 1: Navy in eighteen seventy five. The Navy initially dismissed the
Speaker 1: designs as quote a fantastic scheme of a civilian landsman
Speaker 1: end quote. The Navy was famously skeptical of submarines. Holland, undeterred,
Speaker 1: made a model nearly three ftlaw It's about thirty three
Speaker 1: or four cimeters in length, and demonstrated it at Coney
Speaker 1: Island in New York. The Fenian Brotherhood, which was an
Speaker 1: organization made up of Irish and Irish American people who
Speaker 1: believed Ireland had a natural right to independence from Britain,
Speaker 1: would end up funding his efforts to build a larger
Speaker 1: working model. This one, about twice the size of the original,
Speaker 1: was called the Fenian Ram in an article in The
Speaker 1: New York Sun. It was not named that by Holland himself.
Speaker 1: The Fenian Ram would reduce its buoyancy by taking on water,
Speaker 1: you know, otherwise known as ballast, but overall it would
Speaker 1: maintain positive bulliancy, so it wouldn't just sink to the bottom.
Speaker 1: It would actually bob up to the surface. But to
Speaker 1: maintain its position under water, the Fenian Ram depended upon
Speaker 1: a set of horizontal planes. They actually called them horizontal
Speaker 1: rudders back then. They're kind of like airplane wings, but
Speaker 1: you could angle them so that when there was forward
Speaker 1: motion from the submarine in the water, the water itself
Speaker 1: would push the submarine downward as it flowed over these
Speaker 1: horizontal planes, so kind of like how an airplane's wings
Speaker 1: create the lift in order to lift an airplane off
Speaker 1: the ground. These were sort of doing lift but in reverse.
Speaker 1: So if the sub we're moving, it could remain under water.
Speaker 1: But if it stopped moving, let's say the engine failed,
Speaker 1: then it would at least in theory, bob up to
Speaker 1: the surface and then whoever was in the submarine could
Speaker 1: get the heck out of it. The Fenian Ram also
Speaker 1: had a pneumatic gun that it could fire steel projectiles from,
Speaker 1: and those steel projectiles would be filled with dynamite, which
Speaker 1: sounds super safe. So this was kind of like a
Speaker 1: very primitive torpedo. And when not in use, then the
Speaker 1: guns who would be sealed with a cap, so you
Speaker 1: would have the cap in place until you're ready to fire,
Speaker 1: and then you would have to move the cap out
Speaker 1: of the way, fire the gun, and then hope for
Speaker 1: the best. I guess some shenanigans among the members of
Speaker 1: the Fenian Society would sour Holland on the whole experience.
Speaker 1: In fact, one faction of this group it sort of
Speaker 1: broke apart, and one faction ended up stealing the Fenian
Speaker 1: Ram and almost immediately sunk it. Holland refused to work
Speaker 1: with them. They ended up storing it in a shed,
Speaker 1: and he famously said something along the lines of I
Speaker 1: hope it rots on their hands. He did continue to
Speaker 1: work on innovations with submarines, and in his mind the
Speaker 1: goal would be not to escalate tensions between Ireland and Britain,
Speaker 1: but rather to pave the way for world peace. He
Speaker 1: was thinking, well, if you know your enemy has a
Speaker 1: weapon that you cannot detect, you cannot see it, and
Speaker 1: that weapon could sneak up on you and destroy your
Speaker 1: most powerful ships, then you're not going to be aggressive
Speaker 1: towards that country, right. You already know if you're aggressive
Speaker 1: toward them, they can attack you without you seeing them,
Speaker 1: and they can lay waste to your forces and your shipping,
Speaker 1: and so it makes sense you'll back off. And then
Speaker 1: if everybody has these, no one would dare attack anybody else. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, it would be a weapon of deterrence.
Speaker 1: And it's sort of the same concept that would underlay
Speaker 1: the whole mutual destruction philosophy during the Cold War. And
Speaker 1: as we know, due to hindsight, this idea rarely works out.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could argue that the conditions in Europe
Speaker 1: leading up to World War One were kind of similar
Speaker 1: If everyone built up these big armies, no one would
Speaker 1: ever be so foolhardy as to use them. But at
Speaker 1: some point or another, someone tends to decide that it's
Speaker 1: worth the risk. We were lucky than no one thought
Speaker 1: that during the Cold War with nuclear proliferation, and we
Speaker 1: can only hope that the same will prove true in
Speaker 1: the future. Anyway, Holland would end working as a draftsman
Speaker 1: for many years until the early eighteen nineties when the U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy called for submissions for the design of a submarine.
Speaker 1: So the U. S. Navy was starting to come around
Speaker 1: to the idea. At this point, Holland decided to make
Speaker 1: an effort to win a contract with the Navy, and
Speaker 1: he sank a lot of his own money into this
Speaker 1: project and then sought investments from some businessmen to complete
Speaker 1: his submission. They formed what would become the Electric Boat Company,
Speaker 1: which would own all of Holland's patents. The Navy would
Speaker 1: insist on certain elements in the design, and Holland objected
Speaker 1: to those elements. Primarily, he objected to the inclusion of
Speaker 1: a steam engine because well, it would be really hot,
Speaker 1: but it was also what all the Navy's ships were
Speaker 1: relying upon for propulsion at the time, that this was
Speaker 1: what was generating the the power needed to propel ships,
Speaker 1: so they wanted their submarines to be working on the
Speaker 1: same principle. Holland pointed out that a boiler set a
Speaker 1: submarine would cause the interior of the submarine to heat
Speaker 1: up to intolerable levels. Even argued that maybe if you
Speaker 1: want to have a steamer, if you want to have
Speaker 1: a boiler on the ship, at least let me use
Speaker 1: some insulation to help shield the operator from the heat.
Speaker 1: But the Navy said, no, we don't do that for
Speaker 1: any of our ships. And the Electric Boat Company would
Speaker 1: comply with the Navy's orders and began to build a
Speaker 1: ship called the Plunger. But Holland's concerns proved to be
Speaker 1: on point. It was and you just couldn't stand to
Speaker 1: be inside this thing with the boiler going. It was
Speaker 1: just way too hot. The Navy would decide not to
Speaker 1: commission the Plunger, so the Plunger was never officially a
Speaker 1: Navy ship. Holland convinced his business partners to let him
Speaker 1: design an alternative to the Plunger. It was a submarine
Speaker 1: that he would call the Holland six. He had built
Speaker 1: five previous submarines. The Plunger was technically the Holland five.
Speaker 1: He was able to launch a new prototype submarine on
Speaker 1: May seventeen. This submarine was innovative for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1: One is that it used a gasoline powered engine to
Speaker 1: operate when the submarine was surfaced. When it would go
Speaker 1: below the waves, then it could switch to a system
Speaker 1: of batteries and electric motors. The advances and electricity meant
Speaker 1: that Holland could build a system that didn't require combustion.
Speaker 1: Combustion works great when you have a way to vent
Speaker 1: fumes and you also have access to oxygen, because it
Speaker 1: needs oxygen in order for it to work, but if
Speaker 1: you're in an underwater tube, the combustion is not the
Speaker 1: most ideal method to power your propulsion system. The electric
Speaker 1: motors made it possible to build a submarine that could
Speaker 1: operate without the limitations of manpower or compressed air, though
Speaker 1: you would have to surface and run the submarine on
Speaker 1: its gasoline powered engine in order to recharge the batteries.
Speaker 1: Holland changed the center of buoyancy for this ship, as
Speaker 1: well earlier ships that he had built had put the
Speaker 1: center of buoyancy very very close to the center of
Speaker 1: the ship itself, so right smack dab along the middle
Speaker 1: of the length of the ship. Holland decided to change
Speaker 1: his design so that the center of buoyancy was moved
Speaker 1: further forward in the submarines frame. This would become a
Speaker 1: common feature in submarines after Holland's design. His ship had
Speaker 1: compressed air tanks as well. These were there to supply
Speaker 1: fresh air to the operator while the ship was going underwater.
Speaker 1: Had a telescoping air vent that could access air above
Speaker 1: water when the ship was not far from the surface,
Speaker 1: and of course the operator could open up the hatch
Speaker 1: of the submarine itself to access air once the submarine
Speaker 1: had surfaced. It's highly recommended you do not open the
Speaker 1: hatch when you're underwater. One other innovation that Holland made
Speaker 1: was in the ballast tanks. Earlier submarines had problems with
Speaker 1: stability when water in the ballast tanks would slash around.
Speaker 1: I talked about that with l Planeur, the French submarine
Speaker 1: from the last episode. So Holland's solution was to make
Speaker 1: certain the ballast tanks would be completely full with no
Speaker 1: free air space inside of them. That way, the water
Speaker 1: couldn't slash at all. It was completely occupying the space
Speaker 1: inside the ballast tanks. That allowed for controlled diving and
Speaker 1: ascending using just those horizontal rudders, those horizontal planes I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, and using the forward motion of the ship
Speaker 1: to guide the submarine. He also moved the horizontal rudders
Speaker 1: to the end of the ship towards the propellers, and
Speaker 1: that meant that a small change in the orientation of
Speaker 1: the rudder would result in a much greater change for
Speaker 1: the rest of the ship. It's kind of like the
Speaker 1: lever effect. Holland demonstrated the Holland six to the Navy,
Speaker 1: which put it through numerous paces. The Navy was staffed
Speaker 1: with admirals who were still incredibly skeptical about the capabilities
Speaker 1: of an underwater ship. I mean, there was no deck
Speaker 1: for you to strut upon and to be all grand
Speaker 1: and stuff while you commanded your men too, you know,
Speaker 1: needlessly sacrifice themselves over and over again. So how could
Speaker 1: this be a proper use of a sailor's time? But
Speaker 1: the Holland six completed all the tests very well, and
Speaker 1: ultimately the Navy commissioned the ship as the USS Holland,
Speaker 1: and The Holland would become the first real practical submarine
Speaker 1: in the U. S. Navy's fleet, and it established the U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy's submarine force. The Holland was armed as well. Originally
Speaker 1: it had three armaments. One was a torpedo tube from
Speaker 1: which the Holland could fire whitehead torpedoes like the ones
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier. A secondary port above that one would
Speaker 1: allow for a pneumatic gun to fire what they called
Speaker 1: air torpedoes, pretty much what the Fenian Ram could do.
Speaker 1: There was a third gun, which was another pneumatic dynamite
Speaker 1: gun that would face backward. It's on the stern of
Speaker 1: the submarine and would face behind it. The stern gun
Speaker 1: would end up being scrapped in favor of an improved
Speaker 1: exhaust system, since the gasoline engine would generate some pretty
Speaker 1: nasty fumes in operation and needed to have a clear
Speaker 1: way to exhaust those fumes and get fresh oxygen into
Speaker 1: the combustion chamber. The Holland served as a Navy ship,
Speaker 1: largely being used in experimental missions to help refine the
Speaker 1: design and construction of future submarines, but by the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: the Navy had decommissioned the Holland and she was scrapped
Speaker 1: in Boston, and only a plate bearing her name remains,
Speaker 1: a metal plate that is not a dinner plate. As
Speaker 1: for the Electric Boat Company, they would sell submarines to
Speaker 1: the U. S. Navy, to Japan, to Russia, and even
Speaker 1: to the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom, the dreaded
Speaker 1: force that Holland had plotted against many years earlier. As
Speaker 1: for Holland, he would work for the Electric Boat Company,
Speaker 1: but over time he began to dis agree with the
Speaker 1: board of directors, primarily over submarine designs that he considered
Speaker 1: to be unsafe. After several accidents on submarines, many named
Speaker 1: after Holland himself, he decided to resign from the company.
Speaker 1: He retired by seven and he died about seven years later,
Speaker 1: just before World War One, when the submarine would be
Speaker 1: put to great use in war. I'll explain more in
Speaker 1: just a moment, but first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: One thing I want to talk about before I get
Speaker 1: right back into the history of submarines is the use
Speaker 1: of periscopes, and a periscope is a device mint to
Speaker 1: conduct light from one area to another for the purposes
Speaker 1: of seeing what the heck is going on in some
Speaker 1: area that would otherwise be inaccessible. So it's done with
Speaker 1: mirrors and prisms, and it captures the light from one
Speaker 1: spot and then conducts that light to another spot. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like looking through the viewfinder of a camera,
Speaker 1: except that the lens is positioned somewhere, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: several feet away from you, like above you, and uh.
Speaker 1: It's an ingenious invention. And there are not a lot
Speaker 1: of details about when periscopes were first added to submarines.
Speaker 1: They had been known for a long time before submarines
Speaker 1: started to use them, but it was fairly early on
Speaker 1: with submarines to to have periscopes. Collapsible periscopes would have
Speaker 1: to wait for a little bit longer, but even they
Speaker 1: would become pretty common for submarines by the nineteen tens.
Speaker 1: With a periscope, a submariner could get a look at
Speaker 1: what was around a submarine without the sub having to
Speaker 1: fully surface and you know, someone would have to open
Speaker 1: up a hatch and stick their head out and go,
Speaker 1: what's going on this side. With Holland's innovations, more companies
Speaker 1: began building submarines, and because of the clear military applications,
Speaker 1: the world powers all got into the game. Over in Germany,
Speaker 1: shipbuilders were making onto our sea boats or U boats,
Speaker 1: while Holland was demonstrating his gasoline electric hybrid. Germans were
Speaker 1: working with steam powered subs, but engineers soon graduated to
Speaker 1: other types of engines, and by the early nineteen tens,
Speaker 1: Germany had successfully launched submarines using diesel engines when they
Speaker 1: were on the surface and electric systems when they were underwater.
Speaker 1: One class of these submarines, the Unite teen class, would
Speaker 1: end up playing a pivotal role during World War One.
Speaker 1: Submarines were still a new concept in naval warfare, and
Speaker 1: they proved to be devastatingly effective in disrupting shipping lines.
Speaker 1: A submarine could approach a target ship with almost no
Speaker 1: warning before firing upon it, and it didn't take long
Speaker 1: for the British to look into ways to counteract the
Speaker 1: threat of submarines, leading to the development of explosives that
Speaker 1: could be set off under water. These became known as
Speaker 1: depth charges. They weren't effective as weapons unless they happened
Speaker 1: to explode really close to a submarine, but they were
Speaker 1: effective deterrence, probably because being aboard a submarine that's just
Speaker 1: in decent working order is already pretty darn risky. If
Speaker 1: you start hearing explosions going off, even if they're not
Speaker 1: right next to you, you're probably having a lot of
Speaker 1: second thoughts. In nineteen fifteen, a U nineteen class submarine
Speaker 1: called s m U twenty and yes, I know it's confusing,
Speaker 1: but that's because there were four submarines that were in
Speaker 1: the U nineteen class, the first of which was U
Speaker 1: nineteen and then the other's U twenty twenty one and
Speaker 1: you twenty two. Anyway, it fired on a cruise liner
Speaker 1: called the Lusitania. The ship was struck by a torpedo
Speaker 1: and it sank in less than twenty minutes, with the
Speaker 1: loss of nearly twelve hundred people. The Germans maintained that
Speaker 1: the Lusitania was being used to move munitions in addition
Speaker 1: to acting as a cruise liner, which the UK government
Speaker 1: denied for decades until more recent years when they owned
Speaker 1: up to it because salvage operations would have encountered potentially
Speaker 1: dangerous conditions due to the explosives that were in fact
Speaker 1: on board the Lusitania. The sinking of The Lusitania, which
Speaker 1: had nearly a hundred thirty American citizens on board, would
Speaker 1: also end up setting the stage for America to get
Speaker 1: directly involved in the conflict a couple of years later. Now,
Speaker 1: this involves having to talk about some political concepts that
Speaker 1: are not directly related to submarines. Germany's use of submarines
Speaker 1: prompted the UK to outfit some merchant ships with heavy
Speaker 1: guns that could easily be concealed and then brought to
Speaker 1: bear on a submarine once it's surfaced. These ships were bait. Essentially,
Speaker 1: they were bait meant to lure German U boat commanders
Speaker 1: to maneuver into a position where the U boats could
Speaker 1: be attacked and you could are you that it was
Speaker 1: this practice that set the conditions necessary for a tragedy
Speaker 1: like the sinking of the Lusitania to happen. So let
Speaker 1: me explain. For more than a century, the practice was
Speaker 1: for all military ships to follow what we're called cruiser
Speaker 1: rules or prize rules. These rules stated that a government's
Speaker 1: ships would not fire upon civilian or merchant vessels without warning.
Speaker 1: So you could stop a vessel, You could sail up
Speaker 1: to a merchant ship or a civilian ship, and you
Speaker 1: could demand that they do whatever. They could surrender the
Speaker 1: boat or they could leave the area, and then if
Speaker 1: they did not do that, then you would have the
Speaker 1: authorization to fire upon that ship. But you couldn't just
Speaker 1: fire upon them with no warning. And typically the way
Speaker 1: this would work is that you would stop a ship.
Speaker 1: You would then transport all the crew and passengers off
Speaker 1: of the ship to some safe location, and then you
Speaker 1: could search the vessel for any sort of contraband like munitions.
Speaker 1: The Q fifteen boats those are the heavily armed merchant
Speaker 1: vessels that the British were creating. They could fire upon
Speaker 1: a submarine that had surfaced before the submarine could fire back.
Speaker 1: Because the submarine would surface, the submarines captain would be
Speaker 1: following the cruiser rules to demand to search a vessel.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, the crew aboard one of these Q
Speaker 1: fifteen boats could bring the guns to bear and fire
Speaker 1: upon the submarine. This was considered unfair by the submarine operators,
Speaker 1: after all, they were following the rules. They were saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we're not just opening up fire on these ships. We're
Speaker 1: you know, following the protocol. So then Germany decided to
Speaker 1: adopt a different set of philosophies unrestricted marine warfare, which
Speaker 1: means that if a ship is in an area that
Speaker 1: was considered a war zone, it was fair game. Didn't
Speaker 1: matter if it was a merchant ship, a civilian ship,
Speaker 1: a military ship. It would mean that a submarine or
Speaker 1: any ship captain could fire upon it because it was
Speaker 1: in a war zone. And that gets us to the
Speaker 1: sinking of the Lusitania. Because the Lusitania was in such
Speaker 1: a zone and the Unit twenty submarine fired upon it,
Speaker 1: the United States government demanded that Germany stop all kinds
Speaker 1: of unrestricted submarine warfare operations, and Germany initially agreed. You know,
Speaker 1: in the United States was not in World War One yet,
Speaker 1: so Germany didn't want to to get the US involved
Speaker 1: because that would turn the tide and make things much
Speaker 1: more difficult, so they agreed, But then eventually they returned
Speaker 1: to an unrestricted approach in nineteen seventeen, uh for lots
Speaker 1: of reasons that I won't get into because it goes
Speaker 1: beyond this podcast. But that meant that the United States
Speaker 1: entered World War One, and I realized all of this
Speaker 1: has more to do with the use of submarines rather
Speaker 1: than in how they work. But I figure it was
Speaker 1: also an important point to touch upon and it shows
Speaker 1: how the response to the submarine threat really made Holland's
Speaker 1: dream of ending warfare a naive wish, right. It didn't
Speaker 1: turn out that the submarine was so terrifying that it
Speaker 1: made war have to stop. It just made war different.
Speaker 1: The U nineteen class submarine was much larger than the
Speaker 1: Holland class subs that were being used by the Royal Navy.
Speaker 1: These were also slightly different from the US version of
Speaker 1: the Holland submarines were based on the same design, so
Speaker 1: let's do some comparison. The Holland class sub measured sixty
Speaker 1: three ft ten inches long that's about nineteen and a
Speaker 1: half meters, and it was eleven ft nine inches across
Speaker 1: or three point six meters, and it carried a crew
Speaker 1: of eight sailors. It had a single torpedo tube. The
Speaker 1: U nineteen was two hundred ten and a half feet
Speaker 1: long or nearly sixty four point two meters, It was
Speaker 1: twenty feet or six point one meters wide, and it
Speaker 1: carried a complement of thirty five sailors. The U nineteen
Speaker 1: had dual eight cylinder diesel engines, and two motors for propulsion.
Speaker 1: She could reach a speed of fifteen and a half
Speaker 1: knots that's about eighteen miles per hour on the surface,
Speaker 1: or nine and a half knots or eleven miles per
Speaker 1: hour when submerged. She could also travel eleven thousand, two
Speaker 1: hundred miles or around eighteen thousand kilometers if she was
Speaker 1: traveling when surfaced, she could dive to a depth of
Speaker 1: a hundred sixty four feet. She couldn't travel underwater for
Speaker 1: very long, however, because like the Holland, she would switch
Speaker 1: to electrical power and that would quickly drain the batteries.
Speaker 1: Battery technology in nineteen seventeen was not that great. The
Speaker 1: diesel engines could power dynamos to recharge the battery is
Speaker 1: once the ship's surfaced, so most of the time it
Speaker 1: traveled above the water, and typically would only go under
Speaker 1: the water when preparing to attack a target. The U
Speaker 1: nineteen class had four five hundred millimeter torpedo tubes, two
Speaker 1: in the bow and two in the stern, and it
Speaker 1: would also carry six torpedo reloads. After nineteen sixteen, the
Speaker 1: submarines would also have a deck gun, and there were
Speaker 1: four submarines in that class. Like I said U nineteen
Speaker 1: to U twenty two. Germany would go on to develop
Speaker 1: other classes of submarines, like the UB class, which were
Speaker 1: meant for coastal operations. They would not venture that far
Speaker 1: from Germany, so they were more limited in their capabilities,
Speaker 1: but that just meant that they were also faster and
Speaker 1: more nimble than their bigger cousins. Then you had the
Speaker 1: long range submarine cruiser that was the U A class.
Speaker 1: These subs were real beasts. They were longer than the
Speaker 1: U nineteen, They were able to travel further and faster,
Speaker 1: and carried a complement of fifty six sailors with room
Speaker 1: for twenty more people aboard the ship. Germany planned to
Speaker 1: make forty seven of the U A submarines, but only
Speaker 1: nine had been completed before the war ended. During the
Speaker 1: course of World War One, the German submarines would be
Speaker 1: responsible for sinking around four thousand ships, and Germany would
Speaker 1: lose around one hundred seventy three submarines in the process.
Speaker 1: By the time the United States entered World War One,
Speaker 1: it was clear that the country was way behind when
Speaker 1: it came to submarines. The country that had served as
Speaker 1: the home for the first practical submarine was now left
Speaker 1: in the wake, so to speak. An engineer named Simon
Speaker 1: Lake had designed submarines for the U. S. Navy, but
Speaker 1: these were mostly used for experimental purposes. One of them
Speaker 1: set a depth record in nine of two hundred sixty
Speaker 1: five feet or seventy eight meters. For example, the U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy had classified their submarines by letter, so by the
Speaker 1: time you get to the L class submarine, which launched
Speaker 1: in nineteen fourteen, that one took nearly two and a
Speaker 1: half minutes to dive beneath the surface of the ocean.
Speaker 1: Compare that to the UB class submarine, the coastal submarine
Speaker 1: in Germany, that could do the same thing in less
Speaker 1: than thirty seconds. Meanwhile, scientists and engineers began developing a
Speaker 1: technology that could detect submarines underwater, and it would ultimately
Speaker 1: get called sonar, which would retroactively become an acronym for
Speaker 1: sound navigation and ranging. The concept is pretty simple. In fact,
Speaker 1: for passive sonar it's dead simple, because really it just
Speaker 1: means listening for sounds made by vehicles like submarines. So
Speaker 1: it involved developing hydrophones, essentially microphones that can work underwater.
Speaker 1: But even if we go with active sonar, it's pretty
Speaker 1: easy to understand. It's all based off echolocation. Basically, the
Speaker 1: ideas that you send out a sound like a low
Speaker 1: pitched ping noise. Low frequency sounds can travel pretty far.
Speaker 1: The sound travels through the water until it hits the
Speaker 1: surface and then it bounces back. And by measuring the
Speaker 1: amount of time it took for a sound to leave
Speaker 1: and then to return to you, and presuming you know
Speaker 1: what the speed of sound is through the water you
Speaker 1: are in, you can get an idea of how far
Speaker 1: away an object is. And by doing it a lot
Speaker 1: of times, you can also figure out if whatever the
Speaker 1: thing is is traveling toward you or away from you,
Speaker 1: what the size of it is. Lots of information like that. Now,
Speaker 1: while this was initially developed as a means of just
Speaker 1: detecting and thus targeting submarines in warfare, engineers would adapt
Speaker 1: sonar so it could be used as a navigation system
Speaker 1: aboard submarines. In general, sub mariners have to rely upon
Speaker 1: a collection of gauges and meters when they are underwater.
Speaker 1: Military submarines don't have windows, and besides, once you dive
Speaker 1: down a bit, it's just it's so dark that you
Speaker 1: can't navigate by sight anyway. So you need to know
Speaker 1: where you are. You need to know how fast you
Speaker 1: are traveling, how far you are going, which might not
Speaker 1: be intuitive depending upon whether you're traveling with or against
Speaker 1: the current, how deep you are, how deep the water
Speaker 1: is so, how much more space do you have below
Speaker 1: you before you hit ground, and whether or not there's
Speaker 1: anything you need to worry about around you, like any
Speaker 1: types of of wreckage or sandbars or things like that.
Speaker 1: Sonar we become a huge help, as it would let
Speaker 1: the navigation crew know if there were something they needed
Speaker 1: to maneuver around, and over time submarine crews were creating
Speaker 1: incredibly detailed maps of various areas of the ocean, which
Speaker 1: was necessary if you wanted to pilot your submarine without
Speaker 1: having to scrape up against something or get embedded in
Speaker 1: mud or sand. When we come back, i'll talk about
Speaker 1: the advancements in submarine technology during the Second World War
Speaker 1: and beyond, But first let's take another quick break. After
Speaker 1: World War One, many countries signed treaties that placed limits
Speaker 1: on stuff like how big a navy a country would
Speaker 1: be allowed to have. You know, we were starting to
Speaker 1: figure out, hey, maybe if we don't constrain ourselves to
Speaker 1: the size of our militaries, that just leads to these
Speaker 1: massive conflicts. This would in turn have an effect on shipbuilders,
Speaker 1: really anyone who was in the military industrial complex, people
Speaker 1: who found themselves on uh shaky ground because they couldn't
Speaker 1: land those sweet military contracts anymore because those limitations. One
Speaker 1: thing that did happen in nineteen nineteen, after World War
Speaker 1: One had already ended, was that a German U boat
Speaker 1: was sunk in American waters. This was actually a matter
Speaker 1: of propaganda. The U SEE ninety seven was turned over
Speaker 1: to the U. S. Navy, which studied it, and then
Speaker 1: it was sent to go on sort of a victory
Speaker 1: tour or on the Great Lakes. People American citizens could
Speaker 1: get a look at one of the dreaded U boats,
Speaker 1: and an event was planned on Lake Michigan, during which
Speaker 1: the submarine was purposefully sunk, presumably too great applause. The U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy had been using an alpha numeric classification system for
Speaker 1: its submarines, working up the alphabet with each new class
Speaker 1: of sub Like I mentioned the L class earlier, which
Speaker 1: was a pre World War One class of submarine, Once
Speaker 1: the US hit the S class of submarines, things changed.
Speaker 1: They changed the naming convention and the name of a
Speaker 1: submarine would begin with the letters S S and then
Speaker 1: a number, and the names for the classes would be
Speaker 1: given names, often of of c creatures, and they were
Speaker 1: typically named after the first submarine of that class. So
Speaker 1: the very first of these was the Barracuda class submarines
Speaker 1: designated S S one sixty three through S S one
Speaker 1: sixty five, so there are three of them. Uh, the
Speaker 1: individual submarines each had named, So you had Barracuda, after
Speaker 1: which the class was named, and you also had the
Speaker 1: Bonita and the Bass. Meanwhile, in Japan, the Japanese took
Speaker 1: possession of seven German U boats and then invited nearly
Speaker 1: one thousand German experts in the design, construction, and operation
Speaker 1: of submarines to jump start Japan's efforts to have its
Speaker 1: own submarine fleet, which would become very important for Japan
Speaker 1: during World War Two. By treaty, Germany was technically forbidden
Speaker 1: to have a submarine fleet, but the country secretly began
Speaker 1: developing the next generation of submarine technology and even purchased
Speaker 1: a Dutch ship building company that had been designing submarines
Speaker 1: for the international market. In the United States, in nineteen five,
Speaker 1: some accidents involving submarines and surface ships had resulted in
Speaker 1: the death of many submariners, and that prompted new efforts
Speaker 1: to create mean of escaping a sinking submarine. A submariner
Speaker 1: named Charles Swede Momson came up with an idea a
Speaker 1: special rescue chamber kind of a modified diving bell thing
Speaker 1: that could be lowered from a surface ship to dock
Speaker 1: with the submarines escape hatch and provide a safe way
Speaker 1: for submariners to abandon ship. His basic design was later
Speaker 1: refined by Alan Rockwell McCann, after whom the device would
Speaker 1: get its name, the McCann Submarine Rescue Chamber. The chamber
Speaker 1: would prove its worth in nineteen thirty nine when the
Speaker 1: Navy used it to rescue thirty three surviving crew members
Speaker 1: from a submarine called the Squalis. It had sunk after
Speaker 1: an accident. There was an explosion, part of the submarine flooded.
Speaker 1: All of the crew in that part of the submarine
Speaker 1: were lost, and the other thirty three we were able
Speaker 1: to be rescued using this particular rescue chamber. In the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen thirties, Germany renounced the Treaty of Versailles and
Speaker 1: the U one series of submarines went into action. Germany
Speaker 1: again a new strategy called wolf pack, in which groups
Speaker 1: of seven to eight submarines would form night attacks on targets.
Speaker 1: Then they would submerge to escape, and once the submarines
Speaker 1: reached a sufficient distance from their targets and presumably detection,
Speaker 1: they would resurface, and then they would sail to the
Speaker 1: next attack zone to prepare for the following night. The
Speaker 1: submarines fell into categories like coastal submarines, long range boats,
Speaker 1: and then Germany also had a Type seven submarine. This
Speaker 1: was meant to fill in depending on what was needed
Speaker 1: at the time, so kind of a jack of all
Speaker 1: trades submarine. Germany would build more than seven hundred submarines
Speaker 1: across these different classifications throughout the course of World War Two.
Speaker 1: One German innovation in World War two got around a
Speaker 1: huge problem that submariners had been having since the invention
Speaker 1: of the submarine. It couldn't stay submerged indefinitely because of
Speaker 1: a couple of big problems. One was that the electrical
Speaker 1: systems would drain the batteries and then they'd be without power.
Speaker 1: Plus they'd have to get access to atmospheric air occasionally
Speaker 1: because they could only carry so much air aboard the ship.
Speaker 1: A German scientist named Hellmuth Vaulter figured out that by
Speaker 1: using a high concentration of hydrogen peroxide, he could solve
Speaker 1: both of those issues at once. The H two O
Speaker 1: two would release an enormous amount of heat as it
Speaker 1: broke down, which could then be used to generate steam
Speaker 1: to turn a turbine and power and electrical generator, and
Speaker 1: a convenient byproduct of this process would be oxygen. The design,
Speaker 1: while capable of generating enough energy to move a sub
Speaker 1: at a very zippy speed compared to its diesel engine variants,
Speaker 1: would also require a lot of hydrogen peroxide. It was
Speaker 1: determined to be about twenty five times more fuel hungry
Speaker 1: than a d Old powered submarine, so it was thought
Speaker 1: to be expensive and not terribly practical. Plus at the time,
Speaker 1: Hitler was pretty sure he had this whole war thing
Speaker 1: sewn up. At that point, this would be around nineteen
Speaker 1: forty and so Germany never pursued the concept any further.
Speaker 1: While the US wasn't yet involved in World War two.
Speaker 1: At that point, the country did escalate its submarine manufacturing efforts.
Speaker 1: The Navy settled on two designs for submarines to serve
Speaker 1: as the template sports World War two subs. The first,
Speaker 1: established in nineteen forty, was the Gotto class, and the
Speaker 1: second class, called Balao, was essentially the same as the Gotto,
Speaker 1: but with some improvements added to the design. Now I'm
Speaker 1: going to skip to the end of World War Two
Speaker 1: here because otherwise this would become a very long laundry
Speaker 1: list of battles and encounters, and that's not really this
Speaker 1: show's focus. There also be some crossover to other topics
Speaker 1: I've covered in the past, such as code breaking, because
Speaker 1: that would become an important part of the various war efforts,
Speaker 1: both on the Axis and the Allied sides, and it
Speaker 1: very much was centered around submarine operations. But I've covered
Speaker 1: that in other shows. And by the end of the war,
Speaker 1: Germany had lost more than eight hundred submarines, so not
Speaker 1: just the seven hundred had produced, but some that it
Speaker 1: had still had on its own. The United States lost
Speaker 1: fifty two submarines, Russia lost a hundred nine submarines. Russia
Speaker 1: had also begun the war with the largest submarine fleet,
Speaker 1: but during the course of the war, their manufacturing was
Speaker 1: far outpaced by other countries. By ninety eight, the United
Speaker 1: States began to experiment with sub launched missile systems, so
Speaker 1: you could launch missiles from submarines. By nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: United States submarines could carry nuclear missiles, which made them
Speaker 1: particularly dangerous useful in the Cold War. If you can
Speaker 1: create a nuclear missile launch facility, then you can park
Speaker 1: it off the coast of whatever country you're looking at.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to worry if the missile itself couldn't
Speaker 1: travel the entire length of the globe. In nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: the United States launched the Nautilus, a very popular name
Speaker 1: for submarines. This version of the Nautilus would have a
Speaker 1: nuclear powered engine in it, So this was the first
Speaker 1: nuclear powered submarine. And I've talked a little bit in
Speaker 1: other episodes about how nuclear power works. Essentially, you have
Speaker 1: a controlled nuclear decay process and that generates a lot
Speaker 1: of heat, use that heat to boil water into steam,
Speaker 1: and you use the steam to turn turbines which are
Speaker 1: part of an electrical generator system. The United States has
Speaker 1: lost two such nuclear submarines, both in accidents. One happened
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three. That submarine was called the thresh Sure,
Speaker 1: and no one knows for sure what exactly happened leading
Speaker 1: up to the accident. The submarine sank in water that
Speaker 1: was about seven thousand feet deeper than what the submarines
Speaker 1: whole could withstand, so there was very likely total whole
Speaker 1: collapse before the submarine settled to the bottom, and it
Speaker 1: demonstrated that there was a need to develop a rescue
Speaker 1: system that could work at much greater depths than the
Speaker 1: mccan rescue chamber, and that led to the development of
Speaker 1: the Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle or d s r V.
Speaker 1: These are like submarine lifeboats. They can navigate down to
Speaker 1: a maximum depth of five thousand feet and they are
Speaker 1: designed to dock with the escape hatch of a submarine,
Speaker 1: so you would transfer submariners over to this smaller submersible
Speaker 1: vehicle and then navigate away from the sunken sub The
Speaker 1: second accident happened in nineteen sixty eight with the USS Scorpion,
Speaker 1: which may have sunk due to an accident with one
Speaker 1: of the submarine's own torpedoes. There's other stuff that I
Speaker 1: could also cover in this episode. I haven't really touched
Speaker 1: on a lot of the life support system improvements over
Speaker 1: the years, so let's talk about that for a second,
Speaker 1: because obviously these are really important. All the older subs,
Speaker 1: you know, they had things like snorkels, and they would
Speaker 1: get up enough, you know, close enough to the surface
Speaker 1: where the snorkels could open up and get a little
Speaker 1: bit of fresh air into the submarine. Otherwise you had
Speaker 1: to open up the hatch to air it out, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't really work if you're doing prolonged operations under
Speaker 1: the water. You have other issues you have to worry about.
Speaker 1: For example, you've got to figure out how to get
Speaker 1: all that carbon dioxide out of the ship, because at
Speaker 1: higher concentrations of c O two you get to toxic
Speaker 1: levels and people will die. So to take care of that, submarines,
Speaker 1: particularly in the nuclear era where US some ring could
Speaker 1: at least in theory, operate for weeks without surfacing, you
Speaker 1: have to carry what are called scrubbers, and these rely
Speaker 1: on chemical compounds that essentially absorb carbon dioxide. So the
Speaker 1: carbon doxide gets absorbed by these chemicals and then you
Speaker 1: can treat those scrubbers to remove the CEO two, typically
Speaker 1: by heating it up, and then the CEO two gets released.
Speaker 1: You can capture the released CEO two and a UH
Speaker 1: in a pressurized tank and then you can essentially jettison
Speaker 1: the CEO two into the ocean. So that's how we
Speaker 1: make sure that CEO two levels don't build up. On
Speaker 1: top of that, you also need things like D humidifiers
Speaker 1: because as we you know, as we exhale, we're not
Speaker 1: just excelling carbon dioxide, we're also excelling water vapor, and
Speaker 1: so without D humidifiers to capture some of that water vapor,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of condensation building up all over
Speaker 1: a shop. Pretty soon everything would be moist. What a
Speaker 1: great word, huh. To produce oxygen, the submarine can typically
Speaker 1: take on sea water and run it through a desalination
Speaker 1: process to create fresh water, so you're removing the salt
Speaker 1: from the ocean water. Then with the freshwater, you apply
Speaker 1: an electric current to that water. The electric current breaks
Speaker 1: down the molecular bond between hydrogen and oxygen, so as
Speaker 1: a result, it starts to bubble and you get oxygen
Speaker 1: and hydrogen gas. This process is called electrolysis. And it's
Speaker 1: how modern submarines replenish the supply of oxygen within a
Speaker 1: sub even if it operates underwater for weeks at a time.
Speaker 1: I also didn't go into detail over the various meters
Speaker 1: and gauges that you'd find aboard a submarine to monitor
Speaker 1: the sub's heading, its position, the amount of pressure on
Speaker 1: the whole, and other factors. But then to do so
Speaker 1: would require two or three more episodes. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'll get around to it in the future and I'll
Speaker 1: over how those different pieces of submarines work. I think
Speaker 1: that this topic is fascinating. I personally have toured a
Speaker 1: few submarines, including a World War Two era submarine. In fact,
Speaker 1: I remember my wife and I toured the submarine and
Speaker 1: we were part of a tour group that was just
Speaker 1: four people. In fact, we thought it was just gonna
Speaker 1: be my wife and I at first, but then these
Speaker 1: two tourists joined us and a submarner took us on
Speaker 1: a tour of a World War two era submarine. We
Speaker 1: were amazed at how small everything was. The average submariner
Speaker 1: was of a slightly uh shorter than average height you
Speaker 1: had to be. The facilities were very small, the quarters.
Speaker 1: The bunks and stuff were quite small, and uh, we
Speaker 1: were taken through and we realized that the other two
Speaker 1: people in our group, um we're German, probably still are
Speaker 1: and that made things interesting because we were talking about
Speaker 1: a World War two era submarine. But then the sub
Speaker 1: mariner aboard cheerfully pointed out that that particular submarine had
Speaker 1: been used in the Pacific theater so far away from
Speaker 1: German ships, which seemed to make everything go much more
Speaker 1: smoothly for the rest of the tour. It was really
Speaker 1: neat to get a firsthand look at a submarine, and
Speaker 1: I recommend that if you get a chance to tour
Speaker 1: a military submarine to check it out because it will
Speaker 1: give you a real appreciation for what sub mariners go through.
Speaker 1: They typically get additional hazard pay and it's completely understandable.
Speaker 1: The quarters are tight. You have no view of the
Speaker 1: outside world, and chances are that if you're on a
Speaker 1: nuclear powered submarine, you may not see the outside world
Speaker 1: for weeks at a time. You're you know, breathing in
Speaker 1: this air that's been processed through electrolysis. It's it's a
Speaker 1: different kind of experience and um, yeah, it definitely opens
Speaker 1: up your eyes to how strange that world must be.
Speaker 1: And that wraps up this episode and the two episode
Speaker 1: overview of how submarines work. Like I said, there's a
Speaker 1: lot more that we could go into, and in the future,
Speaker 1: I probably will revisit this topic and give more details.
Speaker 1: But I hope that this gives you an appreciation for
Speaker 1: the development and evolution of the submarine and uh, if
Speaker 1: you guys have suggestions for future episodes, you can reach
Speaker 1: out to me the email addresses tech stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or you can pop on over
Speaker 1: to our website that's text stuff podcast dot com. You'll
Speaker 1: find links to where we are on social media. You'll
Speaker 1: find an archive of all of our past episodes there,
Speaker 1: and it's completely searchable so you can check and see
Speaker 1: if I've already covered a topic. And you'll also find
Speaker 1: a link to our online store where every purchase you
Speaker 1: make ghost help the show and greatly appreciate it, and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
Speaker 1: more podcast us from I Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows. H