The British completed 53 T-class (Triton) submarines in the 1930s and 40s and these 276-foot vessels took the war to the enemies of the crown and we have covered at least one of these boats, HMS Tribune (aka HMS Tyrant) in a past Warship Wednesday.

These sea monsters, designed in 1935, had an impressive armament of 10 torpedo tubes (6 bow, 4 aft) which was considered devastating at the time, room for 16 torpedoes, and mounted a QF 4-incher on deck. A crew of 48 manned the 1,500-ton smoke boat and twin diesel/electric engines/motors could drive them at nearly 16 knots on the surface and 9 when submerged. They weren’t flashy compared to the German, U.S. and Japanese fleet boats of the day, but they could sail 8,000 nautical miles and could operate at a 300 foot depth with no problem.

Nearly one in three T-class boats did not survive the war, with 16 destroyed, largely by mines and in scraps with Italian and German subs in the Med.

Which brings us to His Majesty’s Submarine P.311

Commissioned 7 Aug 1942, she was the only unnamed T-class boat, the late series  Group Three boat would have been dubbed Tutenkhamen but lost just over four months later before she could be renamed.

Here is one of the few photographs in circulation of her:

The depot ship HMS FORTH transferring a practice torpedo to the submarine P311. HMS SIBYL (P217) is seen alongside. IWM (TR 532)

Fitted to carry 2 Chariot human torpedoes, she along with sisters Thunderbolt and Trooper and U-class sub HMS Unruffled (P 46) were part of Operation Principle, the Chariot attack on Italian cruisers at La Maddalena (Palermo).

HMS P 311 departed from Malta on 28 December 1942, sending her last signal three days later from 38º10’N, 11º30’E.

After this signal she was not heard from again and she is presumed sunk by Italian mines in the approaches to Maddalena on after she was reported overdue and failed to return to base, her 71 crewmen on eternal patrol.

A submarine down, Principal didn’t really go off as planned, but did claim an Italian cruiser and some small craft for the loss of ten highly trained frogmen:

Submarines TROOPER (with Chariots 16, 19, and 23) and THUNDERBOLT (with 15 and 22) launched all five Chariots against Palermo. They then withdrew, leaving submarine P.46 to pick up the crews. The fates of the Chariots follow:

Chariot 16 (Sub Lt R G Dove RNVR and Leading Seaman J Freel) mined liner VIMINALE (8500grt) which was badly damaged.

Chariot 19 (Ty/Lt H F Cook RNVR and Able Seaman Worthy). Lt Cook was drowned when his suit was torn getting through the boom defense nets, but AB Worthy drove the Chariot ashore and blew it up prior to being captured.

Chariot 23 (Sub Lt H L H Stevens RNVR and Leading Seaman Carter) had to abandon the attack due to mechanical failure and her crew was picked up by P.46.

Chariot 15 (Ty/Petty Officer J M Miln and Able Seaman W Simpson) was lost with due to unknown causes prior to entering harbour. AB Simpson was lost, but PO Miln survived.

Chariot 22 (Lt R T G Greenland RNVR and Leading Signalman A Ferrier), was able to mine new light cruiser ULPIO TRAIANO, which was sunk. Mines were also fixed to destroyer GRECALE and corvettes CICLONE and GAMMA, but were removed before exploding.

The crews of Chariot 16 and 22 were also captured.

As for her two mission sisters, Thunderbolt was sunk by the Italian corvette Cicogna off Messina Strait on 14 March 1942 and Trooper was lost, probably to German mines, on 14 October 1943.

Now apparently P.311 has been found

A team led by Genoa-based wreck-hunter, Massimo Domenico Bondone, located the final resting place of the British T-class submarine, the HMS P 311, on 22 May 2016.

The vessel was found at a depth of 100 metres, not far from the island of Tavolara, off the northeast coast of Sardinia.

Paola Pegoraro of the Orso Diving Club, who helped prepare the dive, told the Associated Press the sub was identified by the two Chariot “human torpedoes” still affixed to the outside.

Vale, P.311, rocked in the cradle of the deep.

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday June 15, 2016: It’s you, you’re the rocket mail

Source: NARA San Francisco, Mare Island Naval Shipyard Ship Files. USN photo # NY9-27726-1-56

Here we see a port-quarter view the Balao-class diesel electric submarine USS Barbero (SS/SSA/SSG-317) at Mare Island on 18 January 1956. Though she served a hair over 20 years in the fleet, not a very long time at all, her appearance and mission morphed numerous times.

A member of the 128-ship Balao class, she was one of the most mature U.S. Navy diesel designs of the World War Two era, constructed with knowledge gained from the earlier Gato-class. U.S. subs, unlike those of many navies of the day, were ‘fleet’ boats, capable of unsupported operations in deep water far from home.

Able to range 11,000 nautical miles on their reliable diesel engines, they could undertake 75-day patrols that could span the immensity of the Pacific. Carrying 24 (often unreliable) Mk14 Torpedoes, these subs often sank anything short of a 5000-ton Maru or warship by surfacing and using their 4-inch/50 caliber and 40mm/20mm AAA’s. The also served as the firetrucks of the fleet, rescuing downed naval aviators from right under the noses of Japanese warships.

We have covered a number of this class before, such as carrier-sinking USS Archerfish the long serving USS Catfish and the frogman cadillac USS Perch —but don’t complain, they have lots of great stories.

Laid down 25 March 1943 at General Dynamics Electric Boat, Groton, Connecticut, the hero of our tale, Barbero, was commissioned 13 months later on 29 April 1944, T/Cdr. Irvin Swander Hartman, USN, in command.

I can’t find a good wartime profile of Barbero, but here is her most excellent sistership USS Baya SS-318 in 1944, who was built the same week she was, for reference

Transiting the Panama Canal, Barbero arrived at Pearl and departed on her first war patrol 9 Aug 1944, headed for the Philippine Sea.

The only Japanese warship she spotted, an armed trawler in San Bernardino Strait, escaped harm but Hartman surfaced his boat and plastered the occupied Batag Island lighthouse over two nights 23/24 September, firing 58 rounds of 4-inch and some 40mm from a range of just 4,500 yards, peppering the keeper’s structures and extinguishing the light.

The Batang Island light today

Barbero departed on her second war patrol 26 Oct 1944 from Freemantle, Australia and made for the South China Sea where on 2 November she attacked a transport and two escorts with seven torpedoes in a six-hour long running battle, in the end sinking the Japanese army cargo ship Kuramasan Maru (1995 GRT, built 1927) in Makassar Strait in position 04°30’S, 118°20’E.

She followed this up a week later by splashing the merchant tanker Shimotsu Maru (2854 GRT, built 1944) in the South China Sea about 250 nautical miles west of Manila in position 14°32’N, 116°53’E.

Barbero closed out her patrol on the holidays with a sinking on Christmas Eve– the submarine chaser Ch-30 (built 1942) in the South China Sea in position 02°45’N, 110°53’E– and on Christmas itself of the transport Junpo Maru (4277 GRT, built 1911) about 30 nautical miles west-south-west of Kuching, Borneo in position 01°10’N, 108°20’E.

While returning to Freemantle, Barbero was attacked on the surface by aircraft and damaged, put out of action for the rest of the war, arriving at Portsmouth Navy Yard in May 1945 for repairs and refit. She won two battle stars for her brief wartime service.

With the end of the conflict, the need for a scratch and dent sub, though with low miles on her, was little, so she was placed in commission in reserve, 25 April 1946 at Mare Island Navy Yard, Vallejo, California.

There, Barbero was converted to an experimental cargo submarine (redesignated SSA-317) complete with forward and aft cargo booms.

The Navy had used submarines extensively to resupply Corregidor in early 1942 and the idea was that such a conversion could prove useful in the future– especially in resupplying isolated outposts and islands. For this conversion she landed most of her deck guns and achieved a more streamlined topside.

USS BARBERO (SSA-317) Caption: Off the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Mare Island, California, September 1948, following conversion to a cargo carrier. Catalog #: NH 90818

Using sling and cargo boom to lower cargo into LVT from Barbero (SSA-317) on 10 March 1949. USN photo # 80-G-422914 by PFC William R. Keating, from NARA, College Park, Maryland, courtesy of Sean Hert via Navsource

So converted, she was one of the first submarine force units to operate in the Arctic when in 1950 sistership USS Perch (APSS 313), and Barbero, conducted a joint reconnaissance patrol and simulated amphibious raid in Bering Sea.

Perch, photographed from Barbero.

Returning from the Arctic, her conversion proved unsuccessful and she was decommissioned, 30 June 1950 then laid up.

Barbero (SS-317), pre 1950, place unknown note modifications

In 1955, Barbero was the second of her class to be picked for conversion to a floating missile slinger (redesignated SSG-317), firing the immense 42-foot long SSM-N-8A Regulus submarine-launched, nuclear-armed turbojet-powered cruise missile.

Capable of carrying a Mark 5 nuclear bomb (120kt yield) or a ton and a half of high explosives, this updated buzz bomb could fly 600 miles and was reasonably accurate for the era.

An enormous hangar was built on her stern that held two of the big missiles and a trolley ramp to accommodate their undercarriage. Likewise, her aft tubes were removed to help trim weight.

Barbero (SSG-317) with a Regulus missile exiting from launcher.

Recommissioned 28 October 1955, she embarked on life anew.

Barbero spent the next three years in the Atlantic performing deterrence patrols. Before moving to the Pac in 1959, she was designated an official U.S. Post Office for a brief experiment in Missile Mail.

You read that right.

On 8 June 1959, off the northern Florida coast Barbero fired a red-painted training Regulus towards an impact zone at Naval Auxiliary Air Station, Mayport, Florida loaded with some 3,000 canceled pieces of mail. Just 22 minutes later, the inert missile landed on a cleared runway 100 miles away and its warhead compartment, containing officially marked Postal Service containers, was removed intact.

“Missile Mail” Regulus 1 fired from Barbero

Regulus I missile landing at Mayport, Florida

Reporters and photographers patiently wait the removal of the first Missile Mail from Regulus. The missile was fired from USS Barbero (SS 317) and landed Mayport, Florida

U.S. Postmaster Gen. Summerfield removes mail from Regulus I after flight

Letter carrier Noble Upperman places first guided missile letters in mailbag as other postal officials look on. Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield is to the right of Upperman holding the bag. The Regulus Missile fired from USS Barbero (SS 317) landed at Mayport, Florida. NHHC Photograph Collection, L-File, Weapons.

President Eisenhower (left) receives Regulus I mail from DC letter carrier Noble Upperman the day after the flight while PMG Summerfield (middle) looks on

Barbero‘s footnote in postal history complete, she chopped the Pacific where she conducted regular deterrent patrols until Regulus was retired in 1964 in favor of the new Polaris SSBNs.

With her reason for being gone and the Rickover Navy full steam ahead for atomic boats, the thrice-commissioned Barbero passed once again into mothballs on 30 June 1964 and was stricken the next day.

She was disposed of by the submarine USS Greenfish (SS-351)—a sistership– off Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 7 October 1964.

Barbero remains the only ship in the fleet every named for the humble surgeonfish.

Few artifacts remain from her, though a special exhibit at the Smithsonian remembers her Missile Mail experience. It was the only time U.S. Mail has been delivered by missile.

Philatelic Cover from USS Barbero (SS 317) commemorating the first Missile Mail, complete with canceled postmark made aboard the sub. The missile was fired from USS Barbero (SS 317) and landed at Mayport, Florida. Courtesy of the National Postal Museum, Smithsonian.

Although she is no longer afloat, eight Balao-class submarines are preserved (for now) as museum ships across the country.

Please visit one of these fine ships and keep the legacy alive:

-USS Batfish (SS-310) at War Memorial Park in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
–USS Becuna (SS-319) at Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
–USS Bowfin (SS-287) at USS Bowfin Submarine Museum & Park in Honolulu, Hawaii.
–USS Clamagore (SS-343) at Patriot’s Point in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. (Which may not be there much longer)
–USS Ling (SS-297) at New Jersey Naval Museum in Hackensack, New Jersey. (Which is also on borrowed time)
–USS Lionfish (SS-298) at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts.
-USS Pampanito (SS-383) at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in San Francisco, California, (which played the part of the fictional USS Stingray in the movie Down Periscope).
–USS Razorback (SS-394) at Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum in North Little Rock, Arkansas.

Specs:

Displacement, Surfaced: 1,526 t., Submerged: 2,424 t.
Length 311′ 10″
Beam 27′ 3″
Draft 15′ 3″
Speed, Surfaced 20.25 kts, Submerged 8.75 kts
Cruising Range, 11,000 miles surfaced at 10kts; Submerged Endurance, 48 hours at 2kts
Operating Depth Limit, 400 ft
Complement 6 Officers 60 Enlisted
Armament, (as built) ten 21″ torpedo tubes, six forward, four aft, 24 torpedoes, one 4″/50 caliber deck gun, one 40mm gun, two .50 cal. machine guns
(Regulus conversion)
1 × Regulus missile hangar and launcher
2 × Regulus I missiles
6 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes (forward)
14 torpedoes
Patrol Endurance 75 days
Propulsion: diesels-electric reduction gear with four Fairbanks-Morse main generator engines., 5,400 hp, four Elliot Motor Co., main motors with 2,740 hp, two 126-cell main storage batteries, two propellers.
Fuel Capacity: 94,400 gal.

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

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Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, photographers and the like that produced them.

Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Geoffrey Stephen Allfree

Born 11 Feb 1889 in Kent, England, to the Rev Francis Allfree– the vicar of the Parish of St Nicholas-at-Wade and Sarre, young Geoffrey Stephen Allfree embarked on a career as a merchant mariner until 1911 when he took up painting.

He volunteered to take the King’s Schilling at the outbreak of war in 1914 as a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy Reserve and served several years in motor launches. By 1918, he was named a war artist and covered a number of maritime subjects of the Great War.

The Wake of a P-boat. A view from the stern of a patrol boat of the waves and spray created by the boat as it moves across the surface of the water. Another vessel is visible in the patrol boat’s wake..IWM ART 563

A Monitor’s Turret. A detailed side-on view of the two-gun turret of a Monitor, with part of the ship’s superstructure visible behind the turrent to the left. A portion of the deck is visible, with a sailor standing on it in the right foreground. The silhouettes of buildings are visible in the background, showing that the Monitor is moored in a dock. IWM 564

Submarines In Dry Dock. a view of two Royal Navy submarines being refitted in a dry dock. The foremost submarine is shown from the bow, whilst the second, to the left, is shown from the stern. Both are supported by scaffolding and struts. Men work on the deck and hull of the foremost submarine, with a few men also standing on the floor of the dry dock. IWM 777

HMS Revenge in Dry Dock, Portsmouth, 1918. A view of the looming bow of the Royal Navy battleship HMS Revenge whilst undergoing maintenance in dry dock at Portsmouth. The huge ship is tethered to the dockside and supported against the side of the dock with large struts. The lower half of the hull, usually below the water level, is a rusty orange color. Only the tallest part of the ship’s superstructure is visible at the top of the composition. The lead ship of her class of 5 30,000-ton modern battleships, Revenge was commissioned in 1916, just before the Battle of Jutland and survived both World Wars, going to the breakers in 1948. IWM 765

HMS Revenge In Dry Dock At Night, Portsmouth The Work was Continued through the Night by the Aid of Huge Flares. IWM 761

A Monitor. A front-on view of a large Monitor at sea, with its two-gun turret facing towards the bow. Parts of the ship’s superstructure are painted in a chequered pattern. A number of sailors are visible standing on deck and there is a stationary gun platform visible in the background to the left. IWM 568

Dazzled Tramp In Portsmouth Harbour. a view of the starboard side of a dazzle camouflaged Merchant Navy transport ship, which is moored in Portsmouth harbour. IWM 793

A Torpedoed Tramp Steamer off the Longships, Cornwall, 1918. A tramp-steamer in dazzle camouflage keeled over to port and grounded on a cliff-lined Cornish beach. A heavy sea flecked with foam washes over the wreck, while a stormy sky passes overhead. Shafts of sunlight illuminate the sea and cliffs with an unearthly glow. The remains of an earlier wreck can be seen stranded on the point in the upper left. IWM 2237.

HMS Iron Duke. The ship is starboard side on, steaming from left to right with a smaller ship in front of the battleship’s bow. The lead ship of her 29,000-ton class, Iron Duke was commissioned into the Home Fleet in March 1914 as the fleet flagship, fought at Jutland, and made it through WWII to be broken in 1946. IWM149.

A Dazzled Oiler, With Escort. A large dazzle-painted oiler at sea being escorted by a smaller vessel, with the white chalk cliffs of the coastline visible in the background. IWM 567.

Motor Launches Engaging a Submarine. A motor launch at full steam, moving from right to left, with her bow lifting out of the water. Two figures on the deck are manning a light gun. Another motor launch is visible just behind. Both are moving quickly towards a German submarine that has surfaced, in the background to the left. The artist served in motor launched throughout the war, even while in work as a war artist, so this image was real life for him. IWM 148

His work included very popular if stark memorial art to the loss of the cruiser HMS Hampshire

Speaking of loss, the artist was killed at age 29 during the war when on 29 Sept 1918– just six weeks before the Armistice– his craft, HM Motor Launch No. 247, was lost at sea.

From the IWM:

A four boat flotilla of Motor Launches had entered St Ives Bay for shelter during a strong southerly gale, which rapidly escalated to hurricane force winds. In the eye of the storm,the Motor Launches started engines and tried desperately to work their way into deeper water. Allfree’s launch developed engine trouble, one mile off Clodgy Point and started to drift helplessly towards Oar Rock. The St. Ives’ lifeboat raced to reach the stricken ship, but arrived minutes too late by which time the launch had blown up on impact with the rock, presumably as its depth charges detonated. There was only one survivor.

He is commemorated on a brass tablet in St Nicholas’ church as well as on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial.

A number of his pieces are in the National Collection in the UK and displayed at various public locations while the Imperial War Museum has some 53 on file and keeps a detail of his own biography as part of their Lives of the First World War series.

Thank you for your work, sir.

Named for the magnificent lemon fish (cobia) that haunt the reefs of the Gulf of Mexico, the submarine USS Ling (SS/AGSS/IXSS-297) was one of 128 Balao-class fleet boats commissioned to bring the war to Japan’s home waters, though she was commissioned just a few weeks too late to get any licks in. Spending just 16 months on active duty, she was put in mothballs then served as a pier-side trainer for Naval reservists until the Navy got rid of her in 1972, donating the barely used but aging diesel boat to serve as a museum, becoming the centerpiece of the New Jersey Naval Museum at 78 River St. in Hackensack.

At the time the landowner agreed to rent the space to the Submarine Memorial Foundation for $1 a year in 1972, but now the veterans are getting kicked off of the property so it can be developed for its real estate potential.

The land upon which the museum and memorial sit is owned by Stephen Borg of MacroMedia — the parent company for North Jersey Media Group.

Borg’s grandfather was a veteran and brokered the original deal.

“Since 1994, the company has only had a month-to-month arrangement with the association, which we terminated on May 31, 2016,” Borg’s lawyer said in a statement as reported by CBS New York.

The thing is the channel that Ling was towed in through some 44 years ago has silted in due to the water flow being altered by the Oradell Dam and there is likely no way to move her without either A) dredging the channel which is likely cost prohibitive or B) cutting her up in place. Even if the channel was dredged, the elderly Court Street Bridge over the Hackensack River would have to be opened to allow her to pass– something that hasn’t been done since 1994.

But the old sub, which has long been the target of souvenir hunters, is already attracting more vultures.

“This is what we get when we turn out back on history…”

Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, photographers and the like that produced them.

Combat Gallery Sunday: The Martial Art of Geoffrey Muirhead Bone

Sir Muirhead Bone N.E.A.C., H.R.W.S., H.R.S.A was born 23 March 1876 in Glasgow, the son of a journalist. Bone trained to be an architect, whilst attending evening drawing classes at Glasgow School of Art where, in 1894, he decided to become an artist.

He worked for a period as a freelance illustrator for the Scots Pictorial as he honed his skill in pencil, watercolor, charcoal and gouache; as well as an etcher and sculptor.

Summer, Isle of Whithorn

His drawings of Scotland served as inspiration for later etchings, and this precise and charming watercolor has all the definition of an etching. Bone was an outstanding draughtsman with an acute sense of observation. Bone moved to London in 1901 but was to travel extensively throughout his life.

In May 1916, at the suggestion of William Rothenstein, 40-year-old Bone was appointed the first Official War Artist of the British War Propaganda Bureau, serving with Allied forces on the Western Front and for a time with the Navy.

The war artist Lieutenant Muirhead Bone crossing a muddy road, Maricourt, September 1916. IWM

His first assignment: The Somme, where the flower of British and Commonwealth youth was snuffed out in the blink of an eye 100 years ago this month.

As noted by the Imperial War Museum:

Bone arrived in France on 16 August 1916 at the height of the Somme offensive. He was made an honorary second lieutenant and provided with a car, giving him easier access to the battlefields.

He toured the Somme battlefields in the south – Maricourt, Fricourt, Montauban, Mametz Wood, Contalmaison, Trônes Wood, High Wood, Delville Wood and Pozières. He worked quickly in pencil, pen, charcoal and chalk and by 6 October had sent home approximately 150 finished drawings.

He mostly recorded life behind the lines, illustrating the context and impact of the battle rather than scenes of fighting. He depicted the work of the medical services, encampments, soldiers off duty, soldiers marching, landscapes and ruined towns.

He later said: ‘I did not like to imagine war scenes & so only drew what I saw & then only when I had a chance to draw it. I am afraid [this] resulted in rather prosaic work’.

The detail and accuracy of Bone’s drawings provided an authentic, eyewitness record of the immense logistic efforts of the Somme, one that proved extremely popular and resulted in more war artists being commissioned.

The Querrieu – Albert Road An Anti-observation screen

Welsh Soldiers

tanks!

Erecting Aeroplanes

The Château, Foucaucourt

A Dead Tank

Guards Mustering for a Royal Review behind the Somme 1916

Watching our Artillery Fire on Trônes Wood from Montauban 1916

The Untilled Fields

Tommy, pencil 1916

Many of these were published during the war as The Western Front, a two-volume set of drawings with captions by Muirhead Bone, published in 1917, which is a classic of military art for the past 99 years.

The cover of The Western Front: Drawings by Muirhead Bone. Click here to download the full volume of drawings.

There was evidence this volume was used as propaganda during the war with the government’s own bio of Bone stating:

12,000 copies of the publications were to be sold, 12,000 were to be used for propaganda and 6,000 were sent to America. The publication was also translated into French (Agence et Messageries du Figaro, 1916) and 300 of these editions were sent to France along with 500 in the original English. Plates and postcards were also reproduced for distribution. There is also evidence to prove, however, that what was represented in Bone’s sketches, etchings and lithographs was represented as truthfully as possible.

Besides his work on the Western Front, he spent a good bit of 1917 observing the wartime RN, which enabled him to publish With the Grand Fleet

Between Decks (H.M.S. “Lion”)

HMS Lion: A Gun Turret

Mounting a Great Gun

Final Assembly of a Naval Great Gun

Nightwork on the Great Gun 1917

Between the wars, he returned to what he loved and knew best: landscapes.

“The Mountain Background, Gerona” 1926 Sir Muirhead Bone 1876-1953 Purchased 1930. Via the Tate.

Bone, Muirhead; Broadford Pier, Skye; Glasgow Museums;

Then came WWII and Bone was off again, becoming a full-time salaried artist to the Ministry of Information specializing in Admiralty subjects.

Sir Muirhead Bone, age 64, at work on the bridge. 1940

HMS Illustrious entering the Basin at John Brown’s Shipyard, Clydebank 1940

Building HM Submarine Tradewind, a Royal Navy submarine under construction in a dockyard. The hull is in place in the water, with numerous workers on deck, where they are busy assembling the conning tower and whole upper deck. Two large cranes are visible in the background and there is a large rowing boat in the water in the left foreground. IWM ART LD 3315. Built as P329 at Chatham, and launched on 11 December 1942, HMS Tradewind was infamous for sinking the Japanese army cargo ship Junyō Maru on 18 September 1944. Unbeknown to the Commanding Officer of Tradewind, Lt.Cdr. Lynch Maydon, the Junyō Maru was carrying 4,200 Javanese slave laborers and 2,300 Allied prisoners of war of which she took down 5,620 with her into the darkness.

A portrait of George Anderson and Lawrence Smith Halcrow, shown manning a Lewis gun in an emplacement on the deck of SS Highlander. IWM 3020

Lowering a mine into the mining deck, Dec. 1940

Minelaying off Iceland

Minelaying: The last of the lay

Sir Muirhead Bone died on 21 October 1953 in Oxford, aged 77

Much of his Bone’s art is preserved and on public display throughout the UK, cataloged over at Art UK and in the collection of the Imperial War Museum and the Tate.

Thank you for your work, sir.

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday July 6, 2016: Of British frogmen and Japanese holy mountains

Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter

Here we see His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s Ship Takao, the leader of her class, who would go on to fight giants only to be crippled by midgets.

Beginning in the 1920s, the Imperial Japanese Navy had progressed from their traditional enemies– the Chinese, Russians, and Imperial Germans– to the prospect of taking on the British and Americans in the Pacific. This led to new battleships and carriers.

To screen these ships, heavy cruisers were needed. This led to the eight ships that included the 9,500-ton Furutaka-class, 8,900-ton Aoba-class, and 14,500-ton Myōkō-class heavy cruisers built between 1925-29. Building on the lessons learned from these, the Navy ordered four impressive 15,490-ton Takao-class ships, each mounting 10 20 cm/50 3rd Year Type naval guns (the heaviest armament of any heavy cruiser in the world at the time) and buttressed by up to five inches of armor plate.

Bow turrets of Takao about 1932. Via Navweaps

Capable of making 35+ knots, these were bruisers and if their main guns did not catch you then their eight tubes of Type 90 (and later Type 93) torpedoes would.

Laid down at Yokosuka Naval Arsenal on 28 April 1927, class leader Takao was named after the holy mountain in Kyoto which is home to the Jingo-ji temple that dates back to the 9th Century.

She was commissioned 20 May 1932 and soon three sisters followed her into service.

IJN heavy cruiser Takao as published in The Air and Sea Co. – The Air and Sea, vol.2, no.6 1933

Japanese heavy cruiser ship: H.I.J.M.S. TAKAO Catalog #: NH 111672

May.11,1937 Takao class Heavy-cruiser Takao at Sukumo Bay. Note her extensive bridge and mast location. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter

Proving top-heavy, Takao and to a lesser degree her sisters were modified by having their bridge reduced, main mast was relocated aft, and hull budges added to improve stability.

World War II era recognition drawings, showing the configuration of Takao (1932-1945) and Atago (1932-1944), as modernized in 1938-39. The original print came from Office of Naval Intelligence files. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 97770

July 14, 1939 Takao-class Heavy cruiser “Takao” on sea trials at Tateyama after reconstruction. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter

1939 Yokosuka

Takao cut her teeth patrolling off the coast of China during military operations there and on Dec. 8, 1941 fired her first shots in anger against Americans when she plastered the shoreline of the Lingayen Gulf on Luzon in the Philippines.

Moving into the Dutch East Indies operating with Cruiser Division 4, she quickly sank five Dutch merchantmen, the British minesweepers HMS Scott Harley and M-51, the Clemson-class destroyer USS Pillsbury (DD-227) with all hands, and the Royal Australian Navy sloop HMAS Yarra in the first part of 1942.

During the Battle of Midway, Takao and her sister Maya took part in the diversionary task force to capture Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians.

November 1942 found her off Guadalcanal with Adm.Nobutake Kondō’s task force built around the battleship Kirishima, Takao and her sister Atago, light cruisers Nagara and Sendai, and nine destroyers. There they collided with TF-64 under Admiral Willis A. Lee made up of the new battleships USS Washington (BB-56) and South Dakota (BB-57), together with four destroyers.

By Lukasz Kasperczyk

In the ensuing melee, Takao hit SoDak multiple times with shells, knocking out her radar and fire controls and fired Long Lance torpedoes at Washington but missed. Kirishima sank and the battle was a strategic victory for Halsey and the U.S. fleet.

For the next year, she spent her life on the run, hiding from the ever-increasing U.S. submarine force while she helped evac Guadalcanal and hid out at Truk. During the war her armament and sensor package changed a number of times (as evidenced by the plans under the specs section below).

In Nov. 1943 Takao was shellacked by SBDs Dauntless from USS Saratoga, dodged torps from USS Dace the next April, then sucked up two torpedoes from USS Darter that October which left her unable to do much more than limp around the ocean at 10-knots.

By Halloween 1944, Takao was the last of her class. Sisterships Atago, Maya and Chokai were all sunk (two by submarines) within the same week during the Battle of Leyte Gulf/Samar by U.S. forces.

A wreck, by Nov. 1944 she was largely immobile at Singapore, afloat with nothing but a skeleton crew on board and no ammunition for her large guns. Her value strictly as a floating and heavily camouflaged anti-air battery.

Crucero Takao en 1945 – Lukasz Kasperczyk

She was joined there by Myōkō, who like Takao and the rest of the available Combined Fleet, had participated in the Battle of Leyte Gulf which left her with an air-dropped torpedo in her hull and another, picked up from the submarine USS Bergall as the heavy cruiser staggered off to Southeast Asia, left her irreparable at Singapore without more materials, and impossible to tow to Japan.

Operation Struggle

During the war, the British built a more than two dozen 54-foot long X/XE/XT-class midget submarines. Capable of just a short 24-36 hour sortie, they had to be launched close to their target (think SMS Tirpitz) by a tender ship and, after penetrating an enemy harbor, frogmen would attach demo charges to ships belonging to the Emperor or Der Fuhrer.

They carried a crew of four: typically a Lieutenant in command, with a Sub-Lieutenant as deputy, an Engine Room Artificer in charge of the mechanical side and a Seaman or Leading-Seaman. At least one of them was qualified as a diver.

In January 1945, the converted freighter HMS Bonaventure (F139) set sail for the Pacific with six XE-type submarines on her deck, arriving at Brisbane, Australia on 27 April– as the European war ended. The first action these Lilliputian subs saw was in an attempt to cut the Japanese underwater telegraph lines off Borneo.

In Hervey Bay, Queensland, XE3 prepares for trials July 1945

Warming up for more daring missions, the Brits launched Operation Struggle in August in which Bonaventure sailed for the coast near Singapore and launched HMS XE1 and XE3 into the waves with a mission to sink the (already busted) Japanese cruisers Myōkō and Takao respectively. Escorted closer by the S-class submarine HMS Stygian, the tiny XE boats took all afternoon and night to penetrate the harbor defenses.

Lieutenant Ian Edward Fraser RNR, commanded the three-man crew inside XE-3 when they found Takao, then lying in the Johore Straits to guard the entrance to occupied Singapore, and what he saw was surreal.

The plates of the hull and the rivets of the big cruiser could be seen very clearly through the porthole of XE-3 in the 18-feet of seawater between the bottom of the ship and the mud. One side tank held 2-tons of amatol high explosive, the second one held six 200-pound limpet mines, and Fraser held two “spare” limpets in the casing of the midget sub.

After setting all of their charges, Fraser surfaced the tiny sub not too far off from the cruiser so the crew could see the vessel for what they thought was the last time, “I thought they might like to see it,” he said in a post-war interview.

Six hours later the charges tore a gaping hole in the cruiser’s hull, putting her turrets out of action, damaging her range finders, flooding numerous compartments and immobilizing the cruiser for the remainder of the war. She settled six feet six feet deeper into the harbor though her 01 deck was still above water even at high tide and was still technically afloat.

Both Magennis and Fraser gained the Victoria Cross for this hazardous mission, with the other two crew members also decorated ( Sub-Lieutenant William James Lanyon Smith, RNZNVR, who was at the controls of XE3 during the attack, received the DSO; Engine Room Artificer Third Class Charles Alfred Reed, who was at the wheel, received the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal).

James Magennis VC and Ian Fraser VC WWII IWM 26940A

A week later, after aerial recon showed the Takao was still in the harbor– though nearly on the bottom of it– Fraser and his crew were readying a second go round on the ship and the Myōkō that was postponed by the dropping of the A-bomb and then later canceled once the surrender was announced.

This, Fraser said, made him a big fan of the Bomb and left him with a rough attitude towards Japanese.

Both Myōkō and Takao surrendered to the British when they arrived in Singapore in force on Sept. 21 as part of Operation Tiderace, and when the RN got a closer look at the two found out the truth about their condition.

Fraser even returned to inspect the Takao in Singapore himself just after the end of the war. The beaten cruiser, however, would never see Japan again. She was patched up and scuttled 27 October 1946 by British Forces, with the Crown Colony-class light cruiser HMS Newfoundland (59) sending her into very deep water by the judicious use of naval gunfire and torpedoes– likely one of the last time a cruiser used a torpedo on another.

Her crew was repatriated to Japan in 1947.

As for XE-3, she was scrapped along with most of the other British midgets with only XE8 “Expunger” saved and put on public display at the Chatham Historic Dockyard.

For Takao, little remains.

A 1930 1:100 scale builder’s model of the Takao, captured in Japan in 1945, is in the collection of the Naval History and Heritage Command and has been displayed off an on for generations.

Catalog #: NH 84079. Note her original mast and bridge.

Takao has, however, inspired a number of pieces of naval art, mainly for model covers over the past several decades.

In the UK, the Imperial War Museum has the frogman swim suit worn on by Leading Seaman James Joseph Magennis RN, VC when as the diver of the midget submarine XE3 (commanded by Lieutenant Ian Edward Fraser RNR) he attached limpet explosive charges to the hull of  ‘Takao‘, as well as a white IJN captain’s field cap recovered from the vessel.

The IWM also has a 1980 interview with XE 3 skipper Lt. Comm. Ian Fraser, V.C., D S.C. that includes his own account of the Takao strike (reel 2 and 3).

He wrote a book about his WWII exploits, which is long out of print but is still very much in circulation.

Specs:

Takao’s ever-changing plans via shipbucket

Displacement:
9,850 t (9,690 long tons) (standard)
15,490 t (15,250 long tons) (full load)
Length:
192.5 m (632 ft.)
203.76 m (668.5 ft.) overall
Beam:
19 m (62 ft.)
20.4 m (67 ft.)
Draft:
6.11 m (20.0 ft)
6.32 m (20.7 ft.)
Propulsion:
4 shaft geared turbine
12 Kampon boilers
132,000 shp (98,000 kW)
Speed: 35.5–34.2 knots (65.7–63.3 km/h; 40.9–39.4 mph)
Range: 8,500 nautical miles (15,700 km; 9,800 mi) at 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph)
Complement: 773
Armament:
Original layout:
10 × 20 cm/50 3rd Year Type naval guns (5×2)
4 × Type 10 12 cm high angle guns (4×1)
8 × 61 cm torpedo tubes (4×2)
2 × 40 mm AA guns (2×1)
2 x 7.7 mm Type 92 MG (2×1)
Final Layout (Takao):
10 × 20 cm/50 3rd Year Type naval guns (5×2)
4 × Type 89 12.7 cm (5 in) dual-purpose guns, (4×1)
66 × Type 96 25 mm (1.0 in) AA guns (26×1, 12×2, 24×3)
4 × Type 93 13.2 mm (0.5 in) AA machine guns
Type 93 torpedoes (4×4 + 8 reloads)
depth charges
Armor:
main belt: 38 to 127 mm
main deck: 37 mm (max)
upper deck: 12.7 to 25 mm
bulkheads: 76 to 100 mm
turrets: 25 mm
Aircraft carried:
One Aichi E13A1 “Jake”
Two F1M2 “Pete” seaplanes
Aviation facilities: 2 catapults

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The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

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Good morning! How about starting your day with some footage rarely seen outside of dolphin and bubblehead circles. Below we have the 1000th dive of the USS San Francisco (SSN 711) courtesy of COMSUBRON11. An early Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine, she was commissioned 24 April 1981 and has spent her entire service homeported in the Pacific and in 2006 inherited the bow section of the retired classmate USS Honolulu (SSN-718) after a seamount collision crumpled her original. Still, with 35 years of service under her belt, that makes 29~ dives per annum, per average, which isn’t bad, and she is one of the last “first flight” 688’s left.

And it’s one hell of a view.

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday July 13, 2016: The tale of the pre-owned polar sub

Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1978 #: NH 86969

Here we see the O-class diesel-electric submarine USS O-12 (SS-73) at the Lake Torpedo Boat Co., Bridgeport, Connecticut, on 7 October 1918, just prior to her completion. Although her Naval service during the Great War and immediately after was limited, her mark on history was not.

The U.S. Navy, dating back to the Revolutionary War’s Turtle and the Civil War’s Alligator, was a world leader in submarine development.

Starting with the 64-ton gas/electric USS Holland (SS-1) in 1900, the Navy proceeded with the 7-vessel Plunger-class; 3-ship Viper/B-class; 5-ship Octopus/C-class (the first United States submarines with two-shaft propulsion and an overall length longer than 100-feet); 3-ship Narwhal/D-class (designed to survive flooding in one compartment); 2-ship E-class (first US diesel-powered submarines and first with bow-planes); 4-ship F-class; 4-ship G-class; 9-ship H-class; 8-ship K-class; 11 L-class boats (first US submarine class equipped with a deck gun); the unique M-1 (world’s first double-hulled design); 3 large 1,500-ton AA-1-class boats capable of 20-knots; and 7 smaller N-class boats (first US Navy submarine class completed with metal bridge shields) by 1917.

In all, some 67 submersibles built in less than two decades, with each teaching a lesson.

This led to the most capable class of U.S. Navy subs commissioned in World War I, the O-class.

Originally designed to fight off German U-boats along the East Coast, the boats of this class were not gigantic (500-600 tons, 173 feet oal) but had a decent 5,500 nm range and could carry 8 torpedoes as well as a deck gun. Laid down in five different yards (and two slightly different designs, one by Electric Boat the other by Lake) on both coasts starting in March 1916, all 16 were completed in 1918.

Built for $550,000 each, they were the first U.S. boats with really reliable diesel engines as well as the first in which each officer and man had his own berth and locker (even later designs would require “hot-bunking” well into the 1970s)

Wartime service on the O-class as limited, with two being shelled by an armed British steamer who thought them to be U-boats being the closest they came to combat.

The hero of our tale, USS O-12, was laid down at the Mr. Simon Lake’s Torpedo Boat Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut and commissioned 18 October 1918.

USS O-12 (SS-73) Photographed as she left her dock at the Lake Torpedo Boat Co., to start her official trials, Bridgeport, Connecticut, 21 August 1918. Note damaged bridge in background. #: NH 44559

Made part of Submarine Division 1, she was sent with several sisters to secure the Panama Canal, where she spent almost all of her U.S. Naval career.

USS O-12 (Submarine # 73) At Coco Solo, Panama Canal Zone in February 1920. Donation of Lieutenant Gustave Freret, USN (Retired), 1971. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 74644

“O” Class Submarines photographed in Panama by A.E. Wells of Washington, D.C., circa 1919, with S.S. SOTHERLAND in background. Subs are (l-r): O-12 (SS-73), O-15 (SS-76), O-16 (SS-77), O-14 (SS-75), O-13 (SS-74), O-11 (SS-72).#: NH 44558

Submarines O-12, O-14, O-11, and others in dry-dock circa 1919 with floating Derrick No. 5 (YD-5). Description: Courtesy Philadelphia evening ledger. #: NH 42566

On 17 June 1924, after just a few years in commission, she was pulled from service along with all of her Lake Torpedo Boat Company design sisters, replaced by newer R and S-class submarines. Meanwhile nine of her Electric Boat designed classmates continued service (one, USS O-5, was lost in a collision 28 October 1923).

Rusting away in Philadelphia, O-12 was stricken on 29 July 1930 and was soon leased for $1 per year (with a maximum of five years in options) to Lake’s company for use as a private research submarine– as far as I can tell the first time this occurred. As part of the lease, she was disarmed and had to be either returned to the Navy or scuttled in at least 1,200 feet of water at the conclusion of her scientific use.

Australian explorer and man of letters Sir George Hubert Wilkins, MC & Bar, and American polar explorer and philanthropist Lincoln Ellsworth (whose family bankrolled Roald Amundsen’s 1925 attempt to fly from Svalbard to the North Pole) hammered out a deal to use the retired sub on a private trip to the North.

Simon Lake was all-in, and made tremendous modifications to the ex-O-12.

Cutaway illustration of the O-12/Nautilus for Modern Mechanics magazine, 1931

The prow of the submarine was equipped with a rounded plunger, which served as extra protection while diving under the ice. Her topside structure cleared for operating under ice, she was outfitted with a custom designed drill that would allow her to bore through ice pack overhead for ventilation and even transfer crew through the pack.

Elevating conning tower showing crewman exiting through tube on to ice

All 18 crewmembers–mostly ex-Navy men– had to sign a contract indemnifying Lake, the submarine’s skipper Sloan Danenhower and the Expedition against damages, including particularly claims for death.

Jean Jules Verne, grandson of Jules Verne, author of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was present at christening, at the invitation of Lake, and the ship was named Nautilus. She was christened with a bucket of ice cubes.

Ellsworth contributed $90,000 to the project while newspaper tycoon Randolph Hearst added $61,000 for exclusive rights to the story. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute pitched in $35,000 and even Wilkins chipped in $25,000 of his own money. There were also a number of moneymaking tie-ins.

During the expedition, special radio telegrams were sent as were a series of 12,655 postal covers (mailed during the voyage at London, Bergen, Spitsbergen and from an unidentified port at the end of the expedition. The basic fee was 75 cents per cover for the first three legs, $1 for the final leg with additional fees for registry service and autographs.)

However, things started going bad almost immediately.

A June 1931 crossing to Europe almost ended in failure had Nautilus not been towed by the battleship USS Wyoming in the mid-Atlantic and emergency repairs in England. Setting out from Norway in August, they only had 600 miles to go to reach the Pole and make history.

Nautilus in the dry dock in Devonport, England undergoing repairs to the engines and other items things that failed during the first part of the voyage

Nautilus reached 82°N, the farthest north any vessel had reached under its own power, and preparations began to dive –first submarine to operate under the polar ice cap.

Captain Sloan Danenhower opening the conning tower hatch following a dive. A huge cake of ice can be seen jammed on the main ice drill

The Nautilus in the Arctic, 1931.

The thing is, she was missing her diving planes, suffering from mechanical issues, facing thicker ice than anticipated and fighting severe storms and by September had to turn back for Spitsbergen and then Norway, for repairs, without ever reaching the Pole.

In Bergen

There in Norway, Wilkins threw in the towel on Nautilus and agreed with the Navy to sink her in deep water outside Bergen, which was done 30 November 1931.

Her wreck, in over 1,100 feet of water, was found in 1985 and has been visited several times since then. In good condition, the Bergen Maritime Museum has an extensive exhibit on her though there are no plans to raise this world’s first Arctic submarine.

As for her sisters, the five other Lake designs were scrapped in 1930, USS O-9 (SS-70) and her 33 officers and men was lost on a test dive in 1941, and seven Electric-design classmates served through World War II at New London training thousands of students at the Submarine School, being scrapped in 1946. Few enduring relics remain of the class.

The Ohio State University Libraries have an extensive online exhibit on Nautilus as does PigBoats.com from which many of the images in this post originate. Dr. Stewart B. Nelson has a great post covering the vessel and her discovery here while the Universal Ship Cancellation Society Log details the philately history of the Nautilus covers in a way far outside the scope of this post.

Wilkins’ 1931 book “Under the North Pole: the Wilkins-Ellsworth Submarine Expedition” is available for download free online in multiple formats.

After his death, the Navy later took his ashes to the North Pole aboard the submarine USS Skate on 17 March 1959. The Navy confirmed on 27 March that, “In a solemn memorial ceremony conducted by Skate shortly after surfacing, the ashes of Sir Hubert Wilkins were scattered at the North Pole in accordance with his last wishes.”

Specs:

Simon Lake’s O-12 (SS-73) retained his trademark stern and amidships planes (shown folded down in the outboard view). Note the separate flooding ports in the watertight superstructure. Drawing by Jim Christley, text courtesy of U.S. Submarines Through 1945, An Illustrated Design History by Norman Friedman. Naval Institute Press. Via Navsource

O-12 (SS-73) was discarded in 1930 to be rebuilt by Lake & Danenhower Inc., of Bridgeport CT., for the Wilkins Artic expedition. Lake had long thought about submarine operations under ice; in 1903, he built a trestle atop his Protector and deliberately operated her in iced waters. The Nautilus conversion, shown here, was far more sophisticated. Drawing by Jim Christley, text courtesy of U.S. Submarines Through 1945, An Illustrated Design History by Norman Friedman. Naval Institute Press. Via Navsource

Displacement:
491 long tons (499 t) surfaced
566 long tons (575 t) submerged
Length: 175 ft. (53 m)
Beam: 16 ft. 7 in (5.05 m)
Draft: 13 ft. 11 in (4.24 m)
Propulsion:
Diesel-electric
2 × 500 hp (373 kW) Busch Sulzer diesel engines
2 × 400 hp (298 kW) Diehl electric motors
1 shaft
18,588 US gallons (70,360 l; 15,478 imp gal) fuel
Speed:
14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph) surfaced
11 knots (20 km/h; 13 mph) submerged
Test depth: 200 ft (61 m)
Complement: 2 officers, 27 men (Naval service), 20 scientists, explorers, and crew in civilian
Armament: (Disarmed 1930)
4 × 18 in (457 mm) torpedo tubes, 8 torpedoes
1 × 3″/50 caliber deck gun

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

The aging HM Submarine Vanguard (S28), commissioned in 1993, is the lead ship of the RN’s four boomers.

It looks like the Brits will keep their SSBN fleet for another generation with MPs voting overwhelmingly in favor of renewing their aging Trident submarine fleet by 471 to 117. Opponents to the renewal of the Faslane, Scotland-based subs came from the Scottish National Party (SNP) and parts of the Labour Party, however new PM Theresa May stressed lawmakers to back Trident, not only to protect Britain from growing threats from Russia and North Korea, but also to protect thousands of jobs in Scotland and elsewhere post-Brexit.

The Brits, along with former WWII Big Five countries U.S., Russia, France and China, are the only operators of SSBNs, and the only other country besides the U.S. to operate Trident SLBMs (D5 variants) from their four 15,900-ton Vanguard -class submarines.

They form the UKs only nuclear deterrent.

Meanwhile, maritime surveillance capabilities of the British Royal Navy are to experience a setback in 2017 due to budget constraints. Janes has it that the ScanEagle UAS will leave RN service, without being replaced, in November 2017.

Since 2014, ScanEagle flights have operated from the Type 23 frigates HMS Somerset, HMS Northumberland, HMS Kent, HMS Richmond, and HMS St Albans, with HMS Portland now deploying. As well as using the UAS in primary ISR and overwatch roles, the RN has also conducted tactical development to explore the utility of ScanEagle for other tasks such as covert surveillance, anti-submarine warfare, naval gunfire support spotting, and support to Harpoon missile surface engagements.

But don’t worry, the RM is now opening combat roles to females, so there is that.

When the U.S. entered WWII, the entire garrison of tiny Kiska Island in the Aleutians consisted of a 10 man U.S. Navy radio/weather station. As a diversionary attack as part of the Battle of Midway, on 6 June 1942 the Japanese landed in force, some 550 men of an elite Naval Landing unit.

Over the next year, the Japanese build up on the remote island grew to 3,700 Navy personnel at Kiska Harbor and some 3,500 Army personnel at Gertrude Cove despite U.S. air and naval attacks. They put in fire hydrants and the beginnings of a water system, laid hundreds of foxholes, personnel trenches and barbed wire entanglements; dug underground bunkers into the hillsides; constructed a power and telephone network and erected a Shinto shrine.

In the harbor floated Kawanishi H6K ‘Mavis” flying boats, Nakajima A6M2-N ‘Rufe’ floatplane fighters and Aichi E13A ‘Jake’ floatplane bombers/reconnaissance aircraft. They also crafted a slipway and repair facilities for midget submarines (more on this later).

With a looming Canadian-U.S. force ready to invade the frozen tundra near the Bearing Strait in July 1943, the Japanese swiftly withdrew their troops and when the 34,000-man Allied force hit the beaches the next month, they found nothing but a ghost town– and three wrecked Japanese midget submarines.

These subs remain to this day.

The Japanese used Kiska as a base for Type A Kō-hyōteki-class submarines. The same type of boat that helped attack Pearl Harbor (where USS Ward splashed the first American kill of the Pacific War on one trying to penetrate the harbor), the 47-ton Type A was just 78-feet long and was electric-only, with a 600hp motor and 224 Type D batteries.

They were actually pretty fast– 19 knots submerged– but due to not being able to recharge their batteries, had a very short range (about a half-hour at full speed, 24-hours if barely spinning the contra-rotating propellers). The two-man crew of these boats carried a pair of 17.7-inch Type 98 (Type 97 “Special”) torps in a pair of blackpowder-fired tubes forward (each with a 772-pound warhead and a 3.4-mile range), and a 300-lb scuttling charge for when things went wrong.

Interior of a Type A Japanese midget submarine. Copyright Newspix/News Limited, via NWS.gov.au.

The IJN completed about 105 of these vessels in four slightly different variants, of which a few were based at Kiska for coastal defense against encroaching U.S./Canadian vessels, and others lost in raids on Australia and Madagascar.

As noted by Combined Fleet.com, on 28 June the seaplane/submarine tender Chiyoda left Yokosuka with six Type A’s (HA-28, HA-29, HA-31, HA-32, HA-33 and HA-34) as well as the 150-man crew of the future midget submarine base, a detachment of the 12th Construction Battalion and 200-tons of cement.

The submarines on Kiska were launched to and from their base via a beaching railway with four sets of launch rails in the Western part of Kiska Harbor, and all the structures around the bases, when abandoned, were rigged with 155mm IEDs, sulphuric acid cans set to explode via live grenade, and other booby traps, making souvenir hunting hazardous to a GI’s health.

Arriving 5 July, the submarine force joined the 5th Guard Unit, Special Purpose Unit and was under command of Lt ( j.g.) Otozaka Shoichi. With Chiyoda leaving, the aging L-class submarine RO-61 (1,000-tons, completed 1920 to a British design) arrived in August to serve as a pier-side battery charger for the midgets, three of which were afloat in the harbor at a mooring buoy and three more retained on land.

By November 1942, with the submarine base built and the vessels operational, they begin taking regular personnel casualties in air raids from American bombers. Larger subs stopped coming as often.

Losses mount, with HA-33 sunk in a heavy storm in early April 1943 and on the 14th P-40 Warhawks from Amchitka strafe HA-29 and HA-34, leading to the cannibalization of  HA-29 and HA-34 for spare parts, but as a result of continuing air attacks and storms repair cannot be completed.

This led Vice Admiral Kawase Shiro in May to order the midgets redeployed to nearby Attu but when two fleet submarines arrive to accomplish this, the news that Attu has fallen leads the midget crews to instead embark on I-31 and I-35 for the Kuriles.

On June 8, the two remaining midget submarines in the harbor are scuttled with demolition charges and one midget submarine is blown up using two Type 98 torpedo warheads, ending in watery graves. The three partially cannibalized midget submarines in the maintenance shed (including HA-32 and HA-34) are also demolished and the cache of some 20 remaining torpedoes are thrown in the harbor.

The sheds and buildings are burned with the stored fuel.

When the Americans arrived in August all they found were ruins.

Entrance to tunnel near Japanese sub base on Kiska, August 1943. Tunnels gave protection to the Japanese against bombs and provided sleeping quarters; image and caption Alaska State Library/Alaska’s Digital Archives (as with three following images).

Inside view, looking seaward, of covered, Japanese submarine beaching railway, tracks leading to waterfront; a soldier passes large submarine handling cradles on left; warships are visible through opening.

Japanese winches used to pull submarines into work shed on Kiska, August 1943.

Two-person submarines, damaged by internal explosions, on Kiska, August 1943. Fleet Air Wing Four military personnel remove incapacitated submarines from marine railway track leading to waterfront; lumber is scattered along one side; sandbags line top of hillside; winches for hauling subs are at right. All of the submarines, as with other equipment left on the island by the Japanese, were captured in thoroughly disabled condition as to be expected.

Submarines converted into scrap on Kiska Island, August 1943. Fleet Air Wing Four military personnel use torches to cut up submarines for scrap

Today these boats are still there to some degree

These images from Brian Hoffman, cc-nc-sa-4.0, via Flickr:

Kiska is federally owned and forms part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, which is administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service, though the National Park Service and others are also stakeholders.

Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, photographers and the like that produced them.

Combat Gallery Sunday: The Forward-looking submarine Ops of Luis Philip Senarens

Along with Tom Swift, Frank Reade Jr., and others, Jack Write was one of the host of fictitious “Edisonade” series of brilliant young inventors from the 1880s-1914 who graced the pre-Great War dime novels of the era. These were young men whose adventures were full of pluck and included the high tech forward thinking science of the era including radios, electric weapons, electrical land vehicles, steam powered robots, airships, rockets and submarines.

Speaking of which, Brooklynite Cuban-American Luis Philip Senarens, who was so busy that he wrote under a series of at least a half-dozen pseudonyms and has been described as both “the first prolific writer of science fiction” and “the American Jules Verne” crafted no less than 300 dime novels, inventing first Frank Reade Jr. and later Jack Wright. Most of these he wrote as “Noname.”

While written almost exclusively in the 1890s, they were republished several times through about 1920 and while Senarens himself was not the illustrator, the detailed descriptions he embedded in his work helped craft the images seen on the cover.

Many of these involved complex submarine operations long before they were practical including:

Jack Wright’s Submarine Catamaran (1891)
Jack Wright And His Electric Turtle (1891)
Jack Wright And His Submarine Yacht (1892)
Jack Wright And His Deep Sea Monitor (1892)
Jack Wright And His Ocean Sleuth-Hound (1892)
Jack Wright And His Dandy Of The Deep (1892)
Jack Wright And His Submarine Torpedo-Tug (1893)
Jack Wright And His Submarine Explorer (1894)
Jack Wright And His Submarine Warship (1894)
Jack Wright And His Submarine Destroyer (1894)
Jack Wright And His Electric Submarine Ranger (1895)

Senarens also gave Reade his own U-boat from time to time, such as in this arctic submarine adventure from 1892 and in The Search for the Silver Whale.

It should be realized while looking at this work that the U.S. Navy’s first modern commissioned submarine, the dynamite gun armed USS Holland, was not commissioned until 12 October 1900 while the Royal Navy’s first submarine, HMS Holland 1 (guess who the inventor was), was not accepted until the following year. Russia’s first working submersible, Delfin was adopted in 1903, and the German’s kerosene powered SM U-1 was not commissioned until 1906. It could be argued the submariners of these early craft may have had a copy of a Noname attributed submarine dime novel stashed among their sea bags.

Other than the works of Swedish industrialist and arms dealer Thorsten Nordenfelt (who will be spoken about in a coming Warship Wednesday), Spain’s Peral, and the experimental French submarine Gymnote, which were afloat during Jack Wright’s heyday, there were few workable submersibles on the seas.

As for Senarens, he died in 1939 though his Reade and Wright adventures had peaked long before then.

Thank you for your work, sir.

160817-N-PM781-002 WASHINGTON (Aug. 17, 2016) An M1 Garand rifle used by U.S. Marine Corps Raiders during the World War II attack on Japanese military forces on Makin Island is at Naval History and Heritage Command’s (NHHC) Underwater Archaeology Branch. Due to the rifle’s significant surface concretions, corrosion and other physical damage, NHHC Underwater Archaeology Branch is performing an assessment of the artifacts stability. (U.S. Navy photo by Arif Patani/Released)

During the darkest part of the war in the Pacific, a group of Marine Raiders stormed Japanese-held Makin Island. Today one of their Garands left behind is undergoing long-term preservation.

Scarcely eight months after the attack on Pearl Harbor and just weeks after the fall of Corregidor, the U.S. Navy was planning to take the war to Imperial Japan at a little known island in the Solomons by the name of Guadalcanal. As part of the initial assault on that chain, “Carlson’s” 2nd Marine Raider Battalion were to carry out a diversionary strike on Makin Atoll in the Gilbert Islands.

Carried to Makin by two submarines, USS Argonaut and USS Nautilus, some 211 Raiders came ashore in rubber rafts in the predawn hours of August 17, 1942. By the end of the day they had annihilated the Japanese garrison, sunk two of the Emperor’s boats, and destroyed two of his planes. As part of the withdrawal the next morning, 19 fallen Marines were left behind in graves on the island.

In 1999 the military returned to Makin, now known as Butaritari in the island nation of Kiribati, to recover the Marines, 13 of whom are now interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

Now, attention is being paid a rifle found during the recovery process, a corroded M1 Garand discovered in the grave and returned to Hawaii before its eventual transfer to the Raiders Museum located at Marine Corps Base Quantico.

After an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team inspected the rifle to make sure it was not loaded, it has now been transferred to the Naval History and Heritage Command’s Underwater Archaeology Branch at the Washington Navy Yard.

There, the archaeological conservators are formulating a plan to treat the rifle, buried in wet sand on a Pacific battlefield for over 50 years, and preserve it for future generations.

U.S.S. Robert E. Lee (SSBN 601) Pax Deterrendo Deep Dive Diploma

Be it known among all ye landlubbers and topside sailors that on 15 Nov 60 I was visited in the depths of my domain by the U.S.S. Robert E. Lee (SSB (N) 601) during a dive to DEEP DEPTH. And among the distinguished present at that time was Admiral A.A. Burke, USN He shall forevermore bear the mark of the confirmed Ballistic Missile Submariner.

For Davy Jones
W.F. Dawson
His Majesty’s Scribe

Neptunus Rex
Woodall
Commanding
His Majesty’s Servant

Arleigh Albert “31-knot” Burke was of course the longest serving Chief of Naval Operations, a job typically filled in two-year terms, serving from across the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, working 15-hour days, six days a week, starting in 1955. Born 19 Oct 1901, he was just a couple weeks past his 59th birthday when he picked up his Deep Dive diploma above.

Upon completing his third term, Burke was transferred to the Retired List on August 1, 1961.

Though famous for being a destroyer man, he oversaw what became the Navy’s SSBN program, arguing that land-based missiles and bombers were vulnerable to attack, which made the U.S.-Soviet nuclear balance dangerously unstable. By contrast, nuclear submarines were virtually undetectable and invulnerable– the strongest part of the nuclear triad.

The Robert E. Lee was a George Washington-class fleet ballistic missile submarine and the third to join the fleet when she was commissioned 15 September 1960. She served until replaced by a more modern Ohio-class boomber in 1983 and was recycled by 1991. When commissioned (and while Burke took his cruise) Lee carried 16 UGM-27 Polaris SLBMs, each capable of being armed with a single Mk 1 re-entry vehicle, carrying a single W-47-Y1 600 kt nuclear warhead.

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday Aug 24, 2016: 100-feet of Turkish Surprise

Here we see the steam-powered Nordenfelt-type submarine Abdülhamid of the Ottoman sultan’s fleet (Osmanlı Donanması) as she was completed in 1886.

The Ottoman Navy dates back to the 14th Century and was hardened in centuries of warfare with the Greeks, Russians, Venetians, Spaniards, Mamelukes, and Portuguese and ventured as far as the English Colonies in North America and the Indian Ocean by the 17th Century. However, the fleet peaked around 1708 and fell into steady decline, being annihilated first by the Tsar’s navy at Chesma in 1770 and then again by the Brits at Navarino in 1827. This led to a building and modernization spree under the reign of first Sultan Mahmud II, then Abdülaziz.

While the Ottoman Navy was largely inactive during the Crimean War, by 1876 the fleet was again the focus of attention as the country loomed to yet another war with Imperial Russia.

And, after getting another licking at the hands of the neighbors to the North, new Sultan Abdülhamid II had on his hands 13 ironclads including the British made Mesudiye (formerly HMS Superb) as well as a number of dated wooden vessels and river gunboats. Further, the Ottomans had been introduced to the bad end of a new weapon when Russian torpedo boats carrying surfaced launched torpedoes in 1878 sank the Turkish ship Intibah.

Unable to afford to go bigger, the Sultan needed to stretch his funds and innovate.

Enter Swedish industrialist Thorsten Nordenfelt.

With the help of British inventor George Garrett, who had crafted two small steam-powered submersibles in England, in 1885 the Swede living in the British Isles paid to build a 64-foot steam-powered submarine of some 56-tons, which he dubbed unimaginatively the Nordenfelt I.

The Greeks, fearing the Sultan’s ironclads and taking a cue from the Russian use of torpedoes in the late great regional hate, promptly purchased the tiny submarine– though they never used her. Further, and most ominous for the Turks, the Russians were looking at Nordenfelt’s designs as well.

Nordenfelt I in trials in Landskrona, Sweden just before she was handed over to the Greeks. (September 1885)

With the writing on the wall and already falling behind in the submarine arms race, the Ottomans doubled down and bought two improved Swedish steamboat subs.

Ordered 23 January 1886, the Turkish vessels were longer, some 100-feet overall, and as such topped 100-tons on the surface (160 submerged). Powered by a Lamm locomotive type engine and boiler fed by up to 8-tons of coal, they could make 6 knots on the surface by steam, then did the unusual and shut down the engine to dive and carry on underwater until the pressure on the boiler dropped– usually just a few minutes or so.

Armament was a pair of 14-inch torpedo tubes forward and outside of the pressure hull. An initial stockpile of Schwarzkopf torpedoes (Whiteheads made in Germany) were acquired, each capable of carrying a guncotton warhead some 600 yards. These fish were popular with navies of the time, being purchased by the Chinese and Japanese as well as both the Spanish and Americans on the eve of their dust up in 1898.

For surface action, Mr. Nordenfelt offered a pair of double-barreled 35mm heavy machine guns of his own design. Good guy Thorsten.

Nordenfelt two-barreled 25mm gun on naval mounting. The guns sold to the Turks were the same, except in a larger caliber. (Courtesy: Royal Armouries)

Barrow Shipyard in England built the two submarines under contract by Nordenfeld in 1886. The first sub, Nordenfeld-2 was dubbed Abdülhamid and was launched 9 June 1886 after the sections were assembled at the Tersane-i Amire shipyards in Constantinople.

The second vessel, built as Nordenfeld-3 in sections, was commissioned at Tersane-i Amire as Abdülmecid on 4 August 1887 (though she never had her torpedo tubes fitted).

Library of Congress’s Abdul Hamid II Collection

The Sultan paid some £22,000 for the two ships and their gear all told, which was quite an inflation from the £1,200 that the Greeks paid for their Nordenfeld boat.

The Ottomans were also forced to establish an entire infrastructure to support their fledgling submarine arm.

Turkish torpedo factory. Library of Congress’s Abdul Hamid II Collection

Turkish assembled torps. Library of Congress’s Abdul Hamid II Collection

Divers at the Imperial Naval Arsenal, 1893. Library of Congress’s Abdul Hamid II Collection

Battalion divers at the Imperial Naval Arsenal. Library of Congress’s Abdul Hamid II Collection

After trials in the Golden Horn and Bosporus in late 1887, the two submarines sailed together with a tender for the Bay of Izmit in 1888 and the wheels fell off. They suffered from stability problems and super easy to swamp on the surface in any sort of sea state. The longest leg of the trip completed without the assistance from their tender was just 10 miles.

Due to their lack of reliable propulsion while submerged, they were static when awash and, being very primitive indeed, their raw crews (no such thing as experienced submariners in 1888) were unwilling to submerge very deep, though they were thought capable of 160-feet submergence.

Still, that spring, Abdülhamid made history by firing a Schwarzkopf while submerged in the general direction of a target barge– the first such submarine to do so.

Like the Greeks, the Turks soon had their fill of their tricky Nordenfelds and the vessels were docked after the Izmit tests and scrapped in 1914 when it was found they were in condemned condition.

As for Nordenfelt, he had similar luck. Getting out of the U-boat biz after his fourth submarine sank while en route to the Russians, he was forced out of his machine gun company by a fellow named Hiram Maxim in 1890, which he fought in the courts for years without success. Bankrupt, he retired in 1903.

Specs:

Image by Michael Crisafulli

Displacement: 100 tons surfaced (160 submerged)
Length: 30.5 m (100 ft.)
Beam: 6 m (20 ft.)
Propulsion: Coal-fired 250 hp Lamm steam engine, 1 boiler, 1 screw
Bunkers: 8 tons of coal
Crew: 2 gunners, 2 firemen, 1 coxswain, 1 engineer, 1 officer (7)
Speed:
6 kn (11 km/h) surfaced (10 on trials)
4 kn (7.4 km/h)
Test depth: 160 ft (49 m)
Armament:
Two 356 mm torpedo tubes, Schwarzkopf torpedoes
Two 35mm Nordenfelt twin machine guns

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Today we have narco subs (self-propelled semi-submersibles, or  SPSSs) to deal with but they are an idea that is almost a century old.

The Volstead Act in 1919 came at a time of technological innovation and, with a lot of Great War era soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines out of work, some quickly fell into the quick and easy field of bootlegging. While there were plenty of overland smugglers, rum row operations where speedboats (often powered by surplus Liberty aircraft engines) zipped up and down the coast, and some aerial smuggling, there also seems to be at least some evidence of submarine ops.

Some were apparently large scale as related in Smugglers, Bootleggers and Scofflaws: Prohibition and New York City by Ellen NicKenzie Lawson, which contains a 1924 aerial photo, purporting to show rum-smuggling submarines in the Hudson River near Croton Point.

The photo appears in the chapter “Rum Row”—the name of the smuggling area of the Atlantic coast from Nantucket to New York City and New Jersey. Lawson writes:

“News of a submarine being used on Rum Row appears to have some substance to it. One smuggler testified in court that he saw a submarine emerge on the Row with a German captain and a French crew. Newspapers in 1924 reported that submarines were smuggling liquor to New Jersey and Cape Cod. An aerial photo, taken by a commercial Manhattan map-making firm that same year, suggested submarines were thirty miles up the Hudson River near Croton Point. (German submarines were kept out of the river during World War I by a steel net strung low across the bottom of the Narrows.) The photo purported to document two submarines below the surface of the Hudson River, each 250 feet long [as big as a German Type U-93 class boat or a UE-II minelaying sub] and 600 feet apart. The aerial firm sent the photograph to the U.S. Navy, which had no submarines in the area, and the startling image was given to Coast Guard Intelligence and filed away.”

A firearms blog also contends that, “During prohibition a syndicate of bootleggers operating out of Puget Sound somehow managed to acquire a World War I German U-Boat.  They used the submarine to smuggle booze from Canada to Seattle.”

This is backed up by newspaper reports of the time (see The Evening Independent – Feb 16, 1922)

As Roy Olmstead, the “King of the Puget Sound Bootleggers,” was very well connected and financed, it may have been theoretically possible.

So there is that.

The only thing is that at this time the U.S. Navy (as well as those of France, Britain and Italy) were really stingy with selling surplus subs to the public with the exception of established ship breakers and other subs that may seem like there were floating around on the open market just weren’t.

Former Warship Wednesday alumni, the obsolete Lake-built submarine USS USS O-12 (SS-73) was stricken after being laid up during Prohibition and was soon leased for $1 per year (with a maximum of five years in options) to Lake’s company for use as a private research submarine– as far as I can tell the first time this occurred. But, as part of the lease agreement, she was disarmed and had to be either returned to the Navy or scuttled in at least 1,200 feet of water at the conclusion of her scientific use.

Further, in 1919 the Allied powers agreed that Germany’s immense U-boat fleet should be surrendered without the possibility of return and, while some boats were kept for research, the majority were dismantled and recycled or gesunken in deep water in the 20s. Of course, there is always the possibility that a scrapper may have resold a scratch and dent U-boat for the right price, but good luck keeping that quiet as subs of the era had to spend most of their time on the surface and most certainly would have been noticed by some busy body.

Then there is the crew, and a former bluejacket or unterseeboot driver who worked on such a project–providing he didn’t wind up in Davy Jones locker with said rum sub– would be sure to pass on the wild tale to their family post-Prohibition leading to the inevitable “my great uncle told me about his whisky U-boat” anecdotal recollection on a Ken Burns’ documentary.

Build your own

A 1926 newspaper article tells a similar tale of a towed submersible caught coming across the U.S./Canadian border via Lake Champlain.

“[S]ubmarine without motors, has been seized at Lake Champlain with 4800 bottles of ale. The seizure was made by the Royal Canadian Boundary Waters and Customs officials. It is pointed out that bootleggers have been using every known method of conveyance to run contraband liquor from Canada to the United States, including automobiles, motorboats, aeroplanes, and submarines. The latter have been known an mystery boats, having a length of 28ft., with a device for submerging and rising to the surface, but without any propelling mechanism, they being towed by the hawser 175ft. long. Air and vision are obtained by periscopes. The authorities say these vessels are extremely expensive, but they have successfully conveyed so much liquor that they have quickly paid for themselves.”

A history of the anti-smuggling patrol from U.S. Customs on the Lake, collected by the Vermont Historical Society, relates a similar tale, with a better take on a smaller unmanned semi-submersible:

While in the main channel of the lake a bit west of the Rutland Railroad fill, we saw an object which, from a  distance, looked like a  floating log. Whenever we found logs or other floating hazards to navigation, we dragged them ashore. As we approached the presumed log, to our surprise we saw instead a sort of barge anchored in such a way that the top of it lay awash. About 10 feet long, 6 feet wide and 4 feet deep, it had a hatch on the top which, when removed, disclosed a cargo of sacks of beer which weighted the barge sufficiently to keep it awash. Presumably towed by a small boat in stages over several nights,  we assumed that the smugglers would tow it as far as they dared during the night hours and would then anchor it in the hope that no one would discover it during the day. We towed the barge with its contents back to St. Albans Bay and again destroyed the alcoholic contents. The 1932 clippings from the St. Albans Messenger refer to a “submarine” bought at auction. Jack Kendrick later told me that this was the same barge which we had found floating in 1926.

Another Lake Champlain tale:

To disguise themselves on the water, some bootleggers tied a long rope to one end of the bags of alcohol and towed it behind them in a hollow log under water like a submarine. The disadvantage here, however, was that the log would immediately float to the surface and become visible if the boat were to be stopped by an officer. The method that worked best was to tie the bags of alcohol to one end of a rope and tie a box of rock salt to the other: if chased, the bootleggers could push the setup overboard, the bags and box would sink to the bottom, and later, as the rock salt dissolved, the box would float to the surface and act as a buoy-like marker for bootleggers to recover their lost cargo.

Then, there is the small scale home-built river running submersible on public display at the Grand Gulf Military Park near Port Gibson, Mississippi.

Apparently the one-man submarine was powered by a Model T Ford Engine and used during the early Prohibition period to bootleg whiskey and rum from Davis Island to Vicksburg.

A turn of phrase

Another popular action of the period (and even today), moon-shining, saw the advent of “submarine stills” large black pot stills with a capacity of  up to 800-gallons of mash.

Submarine stills…like Japanese midget subs waiting for the 7th Fleet

This led to the inevitable possibility of bootleggers passing off bottles of hootch that, when asked where they came from, would be told “From a submarine”….which may have made the legend of surplus U-boats full of whisky more popular than the reality.

Either way, it is a great story.

“Every day our ballistic missile submarines are used to deter the most extreme threats to Britain’s security. We cannot know what dangers we might face in the 2030s, 2040s and 2050s, so we are building the new Dreadnought class. Along with increasing the defence budget to buy new ships, more planes, and armoured vehicles, this commitment shows we will never gamble with our security,”– Defence Secretary Michael Fallon

There have been something like 10- 11 previous “Dreadnoughts” in the Royal Navy going back to a 40-gun ship built in 1553 to include the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought of 1906 which, with her “all-big-gun” armarment was literally the dividing line between old and new battleships.

With the name being such an icon of the Great War era, the Brits recycled it for their first nuclear-powered submarine, (S101) launched in 1960.

Now, the vintage and storied name has been tapped to bring what will likely be the last class of British ballistic missile submarines into the 21st Century.

The 17,200-ton SSBNs of her class will be capable of carrying 8-12 Trident D-5 SLBMs and will be the UKs sole nuclear deterrent– a role left to HMs submarines since the last WE.177C tactical nuclear bombs were retired from the RAF’s Tornado force in 1998.

From the RN’s presser:

At 152.9m (501ft) long, the new boats will be three metres longer than their V-boat predecessors, but displace 1,300 more tonnes.

Dreadnought is also due to be fitted with a new lighting system which can imitate night and day – making it easier for crew to get used to normal life after three months submerged.

There will be nearly 13,000 electrical items aboard, enough piping to cover the distance of a marathon and 20,000 pieces of cable stretching 215 miles, or from the boats’ future home in Faslane to Leeds.

For the first time in a British submarine, there’ll be a dedicated compartment for studying, a gym (rather than gym kit squeezed into odd spaces), and separate quarters for female crew.

When in full swing, the Dreadnought class will be the biggest defense project in the UK.

The Alameda, California-based USCGC Waesche (WMSL-751), one of the new 418-foot Legend-class National Security Cutters, offloaded 39,000 pounds of cocaine Thursday at Naval Base San Diego– including a large bust from a narco sub.

The self-propelled semi-submersible, or SPSS, was stopped in the Pacific Ocean off Central America on September 6.

Upon sighting the vessel, the cutter launched two fast pursuit boats with boarding teams and an armed helicopter crew to interdict the SPSS. Five suspects, apprehended by the Coasties (where are you going to go in open ocean?) attempted to scuttle the dope boat as water filled the smuggler to just below the helm.

Waesche crew members boarded the sinking vessel and were able to dewater it using portable pumps, allowing boarding officers to safely remove over 5,600 pounds of cocaine from the SPSS. It is the sixth such submersible captured this year by the service and the 43rd total.

According to a fact sheet from the service, Coast Guardsmen apprehended a total 585 suspected drug smugglers in Fiscal Year 2016– a new record for the service, up from 503 suspected drug smugglers last year.

We’ve talked about DARPA’s 132-foot USV robot subchaser, the Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV), dubbed Sea Hunter, a few times already this year.

The ship’s projected $20 million all-up price tag and its $15,000 to $20,000 daily operating cost make it relatively inexpensive to operate. For comparison, a single Littoral Combat Ship runs $432 million (at least LCS-6 did) to build and run about $220K a day to operate– but of course that is a moving target.

We’ve also talked about their Towed Airborne Lift of Naval Systems (TALONS) U-boat kite program which is a low-cost, fully automated parafoil system designed to extend maritime vessels’ long-distance communications and improve their domain awareness.

Towed behind boats or ships, TALONS could carry intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and communications payloads of up to 150 pounds between 500 and 1,500 feet in altitude—many times higher than current ships’ masts—and greatly extend the equipment’s range and effectiveness.

So it makes sense that now video has emerged from DARPA of Sea Hunter taking its para-sail for a drag.

Now if they Navy can just cough up 50-100 of these, with ASW weapons and an automated C-RAM to avoid being splashed by enemy aircraft wholesale, and keep it from running $30 billion– then you have a real sea control ship when it comes to denying an area to the bad guy’s subs.

Turkish wreck-hunter Selcuk Kolay has found what he believes to be the Royal Navy’s long-lost S-class submarine HMS Simoom (P225) about 6 nautical miles north-west of the Turkish Aegean island of Bozcaada (Tenedos) in 67 meters of water.

As reported by DiverNet:

The forward hydroplanes were of a folding type found on British submarines, and the single external torpedo-tube visible at the stern was also typical of S-Class subs.

Kolay reported extensive damage near the starboard hydroplane, probably caused by a surface mine. The fact that the hydroplanes were folded underlined that the sub would have been navigating at the surface when hit.

The conning tower was covered by fishing-net, but the 3in deck gun was still recognizable in front of it.

Only two British submarines were known to have been lost in the area, and the number of torpedo tubes and absence of a gun platform among other factors suggested that the find was Simoom (named after a desert wind) rather than HMS Trooper.

Built at Cammell Laird Shipyard (Birkenhead, U.K.) P.75/Simoom was commissioned 30 Dec 1942.

As noted by Uboat.net, her first war patrol off Northern Norway to provide cover for convoy operations to and from Northern Russia in early 1943 was uneventful as was her second in the Bay of Biscay. Transferring to the still very active Med, her third patrol, off the West coasts of Corsica and Sardinia was a bust.

Her 4th, providing coverage for the invasion of Sicly harassed some coastal shipping and in the end she would sink the destroyer Italian Vincenzo Gioberti in her eight month of service on 9 August 1943. Other rather sedate patrols followed.

The end of her tale came just three months later:

2 Nov 1943
HMS Simoom (Lt. G.D.N. Milner, DSC, RN) departed Port Said for 7th war patrol (5th in the Mediterranean). She was ordered to patrol between Naxos and Mikonos, Greece. At 1142B/2 she reported that she did not hold the letter coordinates for November and would use those of October. This prompted Captain S.1 to communicate them the following evening.

On the 5th she was ordered to patrol off the Dardanelles, five nautical miles west of Tenedos.

On the 13th she was ordered to leave her patrol area PM on the 15th passing between Psara and Khios, through 35°06’N, 26°44’E and then on the surface from 34°25’N, 29°59′ E. She was due in Beirut at 0901B/20 but this was later corrected to the 19th.

Simoom did not show up at Beirut. She was declared overdue on 23 November 1943.

At 1729 hours, on 15 November, the German submarine U-565 (KL Fritz Henning) fired a single stern torpedo from 2000 metres at a target described as “probably a submarine” on course 250°, one hit was heard after 3 minutes and 48 seconds. The position recorded was Quadrat CO 3381 (36°51’N, 27°22’E or off the east coast of Kos) and it is unlikely that HMS Simoom was in the area. Post-war analysis concluded that she was probably mined on 4 November 1943 on a new minefield laid off Donoussa Island (ca. 37°06’N, 25°50’E).

However in 2016 the wreck of HMS Simoom was found off Tenedos Island (Bozcaada) by a diving team lead by Turkish wreck-hunter Selcuk Kolay. There was extensive damage near the starboard hydroplane. Most likely Simoom had hit a mine while running on the surface. The mine Simoom hit was probably one from a minefield laid by the German minelayer Bulgaria and the Italian torpedo boats Monzambano and Calatafimi in September 1941.

Vale, Simoom and her 48 officers and men.

Huntington Ingalls Industries just dropped a new video hyping their swag prototype Proteus DMUV (dual mode undersea vehicle– they really need to fix that acronym) which they hope will replace the vintage MkVIII “Eight Boat” SDV (frogman sub) in use by NSWG. Sure, its a little over the top with all the cheerleading by people really happy to be part of the team building experience they can pop in on their LinkedIn page, but there are lots of shots and a little background on the Proteus. Dig those interfaces.

More on Proteus here at HI Sutton’s Covert Shores site