Secrets of the Submarine

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Elements Of Design?Power Plant Motive Power?Surface The power plant for propelling all existing submarines is on the dual system, i. e., there is one method for propelling the vessel on the surface, and an entirely different and separate method for propelling the vessel submerged. The necessity...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Elements Of Design?Power Plant Motive Power?Surface The power plant for propelling all existing submarines is on the dual system, i. e., there is one method for propelling the vessel on the surface, and an entirely different and separate method for propelling the vessel submerged. The necessity for a dual system lies in the fact that no satisfactory prime mover adaptable to both conditions has yet been devised, although therein lies the obvious course for the future improvement and development of the submarine and much experimentation in this line has already been conducted, but so far without results sufficiently promising to be considered a satisfactory solution. In the earlier submarines, an ordinary steam engine and boiler plant supplied the motive power for surface propulsion. This was found in practice to be very unsatisfactory becausethe firing of boilers with fuel oil had not yet been perfected and coal fired boilers on board a submarine could only be handled with difficulty. Moreover, the engine was inefficient and it was found almost impossible to dissipate the heat generated in the boiler, with the result that the atmosphere in the boat when closed up for a submerged run became stifling and unbearable. About the year 1885 the gasoline engine was generally introduced in place of the steam engine and boiler plant, thereby marking a long step forward in the development of the submarine. Not alone was the cumbersome boiler with its large funnel dispensed with, but gasoline as a liquid fuel could be stowed in spaces that could hardly be used for any other purpose, and the greater efficiency and reduced fuel consumption of the gasoline engine immediately made a considerable improvement in radius of action possible. The gasoline engine generally use...