1941 Diesel-Electric Hybrid-Submarine_USS_Silversides_ SS236

Sometimes ya just gotta go out and play. This hub is more about documenting the parts of diesel-electric hybrid subs that never seem to be mentioned on the other sites. First rattle out of the box, on the serps pages, you'll note how similar the other sites are and how different this one is. Talking about thinking outside the box is easy.This hub actually delivers truly unique content.

28 subs were built in Manitowoc, Wi. Shakedown cruises were performed year around during the early 1940's. Sailing the Great Lakes is not the same as sailing an ocean. Remember, Jacques Ceausteau almost lost Calypso to ice buildup which threatened to capsize her when he delayed leaving Lake Superior until almost winter. Here's where to find the subs and more traditional sub data sites with specs, pix, and stories:

• USS Cobia, (SS-245) is a Gato class fleet sub located in Manitowoc, Wi. It has the early-model box-like conning tower that Silversides began with.

• U-505 is a German type IXc in Chicago, at the Museum of Science & Industry.

• USS Silversides (SS-236) is the Gato class fleet sub located in Muskegon, Mi. that we'll be touring today after a brief history of the submersible. Its conning tower has been pared down to only the essentials to reduce the sillouette.

If you've ever hankered to build a sub of your own, this is right up your alley. The farther back you trace a type of device or machine, the simpler it gets. Google Patents will blow your mind when you use it and a spreadsheet to trace the prior art, sometimes back a century or even two.

The submersible dates back at least as far as David Bushnell's Turtle in 1776, for example. In that case the pilot was the power source. In 1897, the US Navy commissioned the USS Holland, which had an internal combustion engine for surfaced operation, electric propulsion when submerged, a conning tower, a system of ballast and trim tanks, even a deck gun of sorts.

R class and S class boats, which were riveted together, were the Navy's main subs until just before the war. The movie U-571 begins on one of them. The combination of tight (ok- penny pinching) Congress and lack of machining and construction technologies such as welding forced submarines to be designed as simply and reliably as possible.

No, true submarines needed nuclear power, improved inertial navigation, and life support systems such as carbon dioxide removers to operate effectively under water for more than a day at a time. In a pinch, world war 2 subs could lay on the bottom to conserve air and battery power for around 48 hours before the carbon dioxide buildup would become as fatal as a depth charge.

Many times the bottom was not an option, as these boats were rated to operate at a maximum depth of 300 feet. In practice, they were often pushed over 450 feet to find a layer of colder water that would shield them from sonar beams seeking them out to aim depth charges.

Some extreme cases around 600 feet have been reported. This is always brought on by desperation- only research submarines go that deep routinely. To make matters worse, a sub diving below 400 feet is almost always damaged by depth charges before diving that deep. If you've watched U-571 closely, you can see the entire bow shimmy and shake like a bow string following some of the explosions.

Submerging traded mobility and flexibility for stealth while it began counting down the amount of air and battery charge available for manuevering. What a sub skipper gained by diving was stealth, so it was often used for the attack and escape segments of a war time patrol.

Submerging was also the most effective defense against airplanes.

World War II submarines often engaged merchantmen with the deck guns to save torpedos. The Silversides' only casualty in 14 war patrols was from machine gun fire returned by a ship attacked by the deck guns. This record earned Silversides the nickname of "The Lucky Boat".

Submarine propeller shafts are turned by electric motors, rather than a combination of diesel engines on the surface which get shifted to electric motors when the boat submerges. This reduces weight, space, and complexity while it improves reliability.

Gato class submarines had four Fairbanks-Morse diesel engines in two engine rooms. Each drove an electric generator, which could charge the batteries, which actually turned the motors. The switching for all of this was done on a panel in the manuevering room, which was just forward of the aft torpedo room.

The movie "Below" shows this panel in operation many times, as well as the battery compartments below the crew's mess and officer's country.