Shipbucket

Fantastic job on this series of subs Craig. What I find fascinating was the USN being so keen to develop submarines and continue with it past the initial Hollands when as far as I can see there was no initial practical use for them except training and development, since they were limited to coastal work.
IIRC early subs were essentially submersible torpedo boats, can someone explain to me why the USN invested heavily in early subs and torpedo boats?

_________________
Projects:
Zealandia AU
John Company AU
References and feedback is always welcome!

Hi!
Tell me please, You do not plan to do drawings of submarines intended for export?
Very interested in the boat of "CC-class".
Best regards!

I think the early USN was basically a costal defence force for the continental USA (The USN didn't build the fleet train needed to cross oceans till WW2), Does it matter about range if all you want them for is to defence east/west cost city's ?


O and they are all very nice subs

JSB

@karlik:

I've not run into the CC class yet.
Do you have any useable data and images?
J
Basically, if I encounter notations that any subs of a class were built for export I'll note it on the drawing. That's happened once or twice in the drawings already posted. I'm quietly hoping sombody from one of those countries feels the urge to modify my drawings or starts one of their own.

I was curious myself why the USN built so many subs so quickly on the 1st two decades prior to WW1. I haven't had time to research it myself. My guess is that subs became fashionable, it was the tail end of the torpedo boat craze... The search for a cheap counter to capital ships. Subs were also a natural fit with the developing torpedo technology and just plain cool. They were also new tech which had a big opperational learning curve. A lot of the USN modifications reflected that. I'll also guess that the USN felt the subs were to be used for local defense, not long range strategic goals...hense the small displacement of all the pre WW 1 hulls.

Europe REALLY accellerated the development with wartime use and the need for real open ocean deployment. At that point the USN had to catch up.

CraigH

_________________
In active progress
More Ships with Sails
Early Torpedo Boats in SB and FD Scales
Some railroad stuff
More random stuff that strikes me!

From "U.S. Submarines Through 1945" СС-2



there is still here СС-1

http://www.thebattleofatlanticmuseum.ca ... age51.html

CraigH and JSB thanks for the responses. The thing that I don't get though is that the United States Mainland has no obvious use for coastal defense since it had no close enough clear threat to warrant such. The subs were definitely at least partially built for such a purpose.
I guess it was a more of a just in case type thing, such as a Spanish American war type of situation but where the enemy tried to attack the mainland for some reason.

Also JSB the doesn't the Spanish American War and Great White Fleet show that the United States Navy at the time was capable of more than just continental defense?

_________________
Projects:
Zealandia AU
John Company AU
References and feedback is always welcome!

Not really. If anything the Spanish-American war showed just how ill prepared the US military in general was.
The Great White Fleet was a major undertaking, but as far as I know it relied almost entirely on friendly ports to coal in. Without a proper fleet train it couldn't fight that far away.

_________________
“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

Worklist

Source Materiel is always welcome.

While that is true, what about the Asiatics fleet in the Philippines? It was based in China to protect American interests there and soundly defeated the Spanish forces at Manilla Bay. A cruiser led force from California also captured Guam. This is no where my area of expertise but the Navy at the time had at least some power projection capability it appears to me.

_________________
Projects:
Zealandia AU
John Company AU
References and feedback is always welcome!

Doing some catch up.

It wasn't long before Simon Lake began screaming about Holland's (Later Electric Boat) monopoly on sub construction for the USN. His lawsuit basically forced the purchase of a few of his designs. The navy wasn't too happy about this as he was a tad hard to work with.


USA, G-1 USS Seal (1912)

USA, G-1 USS Seal (1917)

USA, G-1 USS Seal (1918)

Besides wheels these boats also featured an airlock just forward of the bow wheel. There were also a pair of trainable broadside torpedo tubes built into the deck structure. The extra dive planes along the sides were a key feature of Lake's desire to control depth while keeping the hull horizontal (rather than pitching the boat AKA: Holland and just about everyone else).

USA, G-2 USS Seal (1915)
Lake's 2nd Boat submitted, an improvement to correspond more closely to what the USN was looking for.

There are 2 more boats (call them competitive designs) in the works. I'll get to them shortly.

Craig H

_________________
In active progress
More Ships with Sails
Early Torpedo Boats in SB and FD Scales
Some railroad stuff
More random stuff that strikes me!

I got a tad distracted, basically I got tired of both Lake and Holland designed boats and needed a break. I was also clearing out a bunch of hobby stuff and ran into a couple old models. That's a disaster as back in the mid 1990's I was building RC subs. Now I've an RC Type VII U-Boat in the works (you'll probably hear the hull collapsing sounds coming from my checking account shortly as it approaches crush depth).


Germany, Type VIIC Class (1938-1945) This drawing should be considered "typical" for 1940 or so.

The problem with drawing Type VII C's is that 568 were built! This doesn't include the A, B, D, and F variants. No other submarine in history was built in such vast numbers. Many manufacturers were used, uncountable modifications were made, and basically no two subs remained identical. Vent patterns were altered by series design changes, manufacturing needs, and even by the individual subs' captains. Conning towers evolved over time, etc., etc. to reflect wartime requirements. I've a LOT of reference material on these boats and I've several additional drawings in the works.

Where possible I've tried to adhere to SB Standards...unless the Standards impact the readability of the line-work. Enjoy!

CraigH

_________________
In active progress
More Ships with Sails
Early Torpedo Boats in SB and FD Scales
Some railroad stuff
More random stuff that strikes me!