Submarines

An optical glass bow dome, no, and there are a couple of reasons for that.

1. There's no reason for it - unlike "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", there's nothing to see at the depths submarines operate at.

2. Glass properties aren't strong enough to withstand the constant pressure changes and operating environments submarines are routinely exposed to.

3. Resonance - glass resonates when a fluid is moving over it, causing a loud, low frequency.

4. Collision - any collision will likely occur at the bow, and glass isn't exactly that strong.

Glass Reinforced Plastic (Fiberglass) domes have been used on submarines for over 40 years, but their downside is that if there's an underwater collision (uncharted object, e.g.) the damage caused is much worse than if the boat had a steel dome. Both types of incidents have already happened in the U.S. fleet; my own boat hit an underwater mountain in '77, crushing the steel dome, but saving the boat from much worse damage. By contrast, the USS San Francisco, which hit an uncharted mountain several years ago with at GRP dome, lost crew and suffered serious damage as a result.

Technically, you could probably use a thick, ballistics type clear glass for a dome, but again, there's no reason for it, as the bow dome houses the main Sonar arrays.

A nuclear submarine is only limited by food it can travel as long as there foods

The tactic began in WWI and is known as Unrestricted Submarine Warfare.

HMS K13 sunk in a fatal accident during sea trials in early 1917 and was salvaged and recommissioned as HMS K22.

"Guerre de Course"; Commerce Raiding.

Submarines have variable density.

When a submarine is in port, its overall density is less than that of water so some of it is above the surface of the water. They're made out of steel, which is more dense than water, but they're hollow; most of the volume of a submarine is air.

To make a submarine able to dive, they pump water into tanks. By adjusting the amount of water, they can make the density equal to water's density, which allows the boat to stay at a certain depth without expending energy to hold it up.

The hull designator denotes the hull type, it's purpose, and its propulsion mode. For example, SSN stands for "Submersible Ship, Nuclear"; SSBN is Submersible Ship, Ballistic, Nuclear; and SSGN is Submersible Ship, Guided Missile, Nuclear. All nuclear powered vessels, submarine or surface, are denoted with an "N" in the designation.

"SS" for "Submersible Ship", goes back to the earliest days of Submarines, when they weren't true submersibles like they are today. Until teardrop and cigar shaped hulls were designed, and longer range propulsion methods made crew limitations the only liability, older submarines were essentially surface vessels that had a limited submerged operational capability. They were, literally, "Submersible Ships". What makes them different than today's boats is that the old design made them much faster on the surface than the ever were submerged. Today's submarines are true submersibles by all definitions, much faster submerged than when surfaced.

For submarine hull types, there are currently 3 in the U.S. inventory - SSN, SSGN, and SSBN. SSN's are Nuclear Fast-Attack Submarines - L.A., Seawolf and Virginia Classes; SSBN's are Ballistic Missile Submarines (Ohio class, etc.); and SSGN's are converted older SSBN's that have had their Ballistic Missiles removed as part of the Treaty with the former Soviet Union. They were converted to Cruise Missile launch platforms.

During the Korean War, many former WW2 Fleet Boats were converted for Radar Picket duty along the Korean coastline. Their designations were "SSR", for "Submersible Ship, Radar Picket"

Modern submarines, depending on the country, are made of either flexible steel, Titanium or GRP (Glass Reinforced Plastic). GRP boats are used by the Chinese, Titanium by the Russians. Most all other nations use flexible steel (the composition of which is classified) that compresses and expands with the extreme sea pressure as the boat descends or ascends through the depths. The steel used in pre-Seawolf class submarines was HY-80; The Seawolf and Virginia classes are using HY-100, which has a higher pressure rating.

Submarine decks are not actually attached to the inner pressure hull - they "float" by being suspended from cables. This is how the decks keep from getting crushed as the boat's hull compresses at deep depths, as the decks don't actually touch the sides of the inner hull.

Hulls that don't flex with sea pressure, while being able to have deeper operational limits, don't have the longevity that flexible hulls do. This is because over time, repeated pressure makes the hull brittle - it is akin to repeated pressure on an eggshell. While very strong, over time it will eventually crack.

Submarines have a rudder like most surface ships.

Military submarines have different operating depths, depending on the submarine. You guessed this already, and the actual numbers are classified. From a few hundred meters to several hundred meters pretty much covers it. These are the "true" submarines, and they are the ones capable of independent operation for extended periods. If we move to the submersible, which is a "submarine" that is operated from a support vessel, the Trieste usually comes to mind. Trieste, which is of Swiss design, is a bathyscaphe (Swiss for "deep boat"). It was he deepest diving submersible, and it went to the bottom of the Marianas Trench at a point called the Challenger Deep. At about 10,900 meters, or some 35,761 feet, it is the deepest point in any ocean of the world.

Navy

The submarine is cruising at a depth of 65 meters then it dives 15 meters ascends 55 meters and then dives 75 meters at this final position what is the change in depth from its initial position?

The Confederate submarine was named for its inventor Horace Lawson Hunley.

GROTON

Warships traveled with merchant ships for protection

Restricted warfare (being nice) got them sunk. Because the victim ship would radio a "May Day" or "SOS", which naturally included the victim ship's location (position). Well, this also pin-pointed the subs position! Consequently, by the time it took those people to abandon their vessel, a plane or sea vessel could or would be tracking or diving down the subs neck. Bottom line; it was dangerous for subs to be nice about it!

Un-restricted warfare was easier on the sub & easier on the crew.

The submarine was envisioned by ancients who would sail the seas in ships of their time and dream of a weapon that could ply the deep. This undersea vessel could attack and sink opposing ships from below, taking them completely by surprise and remaining largely impervious to their attacks. But technology had a long way to go to make anything like a practical submarine possible.

It was not until the 17th century that anything could be constructed, and the technology still struggled to solve the issues with sealing a hull against pressure, propulsion, weapons, buoyancy, and crew survival. Wars had come and gone, and sea power was all about what floated on the surface. The designers still sought to find the weapons platform that would work.

The ideas to use the submarine as a vehicle of exploration and adventure were about, but the drive to create a working military application was what drove the development of the modern submarine. Modern military submarines are always on patrol somewhere. The saying now is that there are only two kinds of ships in the navy: submarines and targets.

The word submarine is generally applied to the larger, independently operated military vessels. But the smaller "submarine" called a submersible is currently operated from support vessels. Military technology, at least a part of it, has been adapted to smaller vessels for research and exploration. And we've come a long way with the contemporary unmanned submersible, too. They can be launched from support vessels and can operate a tremendous depths and under adverse conditions without directly risking lives.

Excellent question! I never smelled or tried to smell a magic marker but I do use them often. So what has a pungent smell like a magic masrker? This will take a bit of sniffing around.

No, and neither do surface warships. It's a complete and total fallacy created by Enviro-Nazis who have no clue about submarines and whales, as well as their interaction in the open ocean. They go around waving their arms and flags, and getting idiots to donate money to their "cause", which in reality is completely bogus and so out of touch with reality that it's ridiculous.

Money is the driving factor with this bogus argument; Enviro-Nazis know (but the clueless public rarely doesn't) that the Navy and the Government in general cannot respond in a civil courtroom with the actual operations and specifications of submarine and surface ship sonar systems, e.g., how and when they are used, power levels, etc., because that data is highly classified. It's pretty difficult to win an argument in both a civil court or the court of public opinion when your hands are tied and you can't respond. These people are complete and total hypocrites; one recent example is the push for wind energy by putting up hundreds of wind turbines in California near San Francisco and other areas.

The victims from those projects? Eagles, who are protected by the government from being killed, and some of which are endangered, are being killed by wind turbines in numbers that would alarm the average person on the street. Where is the outrage and protests from Enviro-Nazi groups?? They're silent - it's tough for them to protest against something that they championed. In fact, the current "administration" has gone so far as to make it legal for wind farm operators to kill so many eagles per year. This is the kind of hypocrisy I'm speaking of with these people.

Back to Submarines and Whales....

Whales, as well as Dolphins, are constant companions to submerged submarines; the one thing I really miss hearing is the lonely cries from Humpback whale pods, or the "clacking" sound of a sperm whale going after food, which sounds like 2x4's being struck together.

Activists would try and have you believe that an active sonar system in the open ocean is equivalent to putting yourself in a closed room and pumping up the volume on a set of speakers so loud that it would literally kill you. Nice theory for morons who know nothing (which is exactly the type of person they target - the clueless with money), but it's also a total crock of BS. While there's no question the transmission power is very high, it needs to be if the receivers are to pick up any echo from longer ranges, and the longer the range, the more attenutation there is due to the ocean environment (temperature layers, inversions, salinity, water depth, etc.)

Guess where the Navies of the world got the idea to use Sonar in the first place? Whales and Dolphins, who regularly use their own type of Sonar (some use very high frequencies, high enough to set off a torpedo alarm, while others use lower frequencies to communicate with each other over very long distances. Active sonar, when used, is very powerful within a certain range, but it's not as far as you'd think, and the sound is increasingly attenuated by ocean environmental factors as range increases.

Modern submarines rarely, if ever, use active sonar, as it is a dead giveaway to its position; the only reason to use it would be to verify a range to target just prior to shooting a warshot or exercise torpedo to a target, or if you were testing it. In fact, we used to use it so infrequently that it was always hell during watches in Sonar if we knew a test was coming up; everyone wanted to be on the Active Sonar stack when we were going to use it, so it was a competition to see who'd get on the right rotation in order to use it. Sometimes though, it would be whoever needed it for qualification sign-offs. The only time I can ever remember using it in a tactical situation was when we were hunting a Norwegian diesel boat in a fjord during a NATO exercise. Diesel submarines on battery power are arguably the quietest boats in the ocean; that's the first lesson you learn in Sonar school. Active sonar is about the only way to really find them. But even then, you still don't use it often, since using active sonar instantly gives away your position. With modern torpedoes, which have their own active-passive sonar guidance systems, all a boat needs to do is shoot a torpedo in the general direction of the target, and input a guesstimated range. The torpedo will do the rest.

Surface warships rarely use active sonar as well, unless they're actively searching for a submerged target, or just putting up a lot of noise for a sound screen. But whales and dolphins aren't stupid either; if the area gets too noisy, they'll leave, but kill them? We've had them close aboard when using active sonar, and it didn't kill them or stop them from shutting up. Whales aren't bad, but dolphins will come up right next to a boat's bow and start squealing with their own type of sonar, loud enough that if you're not prepared for it, it can really screw up your ears.

In all my time at sea on submarines, I can never once remember any time where we didn't have whales or dolphins around; as I said, they're constant companions to submerged submarines, so much that it's almost like they know what a submarine is.

An example of a robotic submarine is the ISE -AUV. - Two of these 3 ton Automatic Underwater Vehicles have been built in Vancouver's International Submarine ENgineering. The purpose of these torpedo shaped vehicles is to map Canada's northern oceans. The AUV's will cruise as deep as 1,500 feet and map mountains and valleys beneath the oceans surface.

As of end of 2010, the Russian Navy included 12 strategic submarines of four different types. The submarines can carry 160 sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) that can carry 576 nuclear warheads.

The term comes from the "B" and "M" letters in the acronym, "FBM", which stands for Fleet Ballistic Missile (Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarine). The combined "BM" was translated into a Navy nickname, Boomer. It's similar to a BMW automobile being called a Beemer.

The fact that ballistic missiles go "boom" when they explode also played a role in the slang term. Otherwise, they could have been called "beemers" also.