Secrets of ancient and modern submarines. Abstract: The history of the creation of the submarine
It is difficult to say what the next invention of the great Leonardo could be called. But on the other hand, thanks again to historians, it is known for sure that the submarine number 1 of the Russian Navy had three names at once. The first of these was the fruit of the joint efforts of Russian engineers Ivan Bubnov, Ivan Goryunov and Mikhail Beklemishev in July 1901, on the eve of the start of construction of a submarine at a shipyard in St. Petersburg.
The official commissioning of the submarine, originally named Destroyer No. 113, took place in March 1902. One of the founders was appointed commander of the boat - captain of the first rank and future general Mikhail Beklemishev. After that, the destroyer, as submarines were then called, was included in the lists of the Russian Navy at number 150. And on May 31, 1904, the first Russian submarine began to be called the Dolphin.
"Dolphin" is almost invisible
It is impossible to call the fate of the debut Russian submarine with internal combustion engines a happy one. Already on June 8, 1903, during the initial sea trials, the Dolphin, together with the chief designer Ivan Bubnov on board, almost lay on the bottom of the Neva. A little more than a year later, on June 16, 1904, the panic of the crew caused not only a new unscheduled flooding of the ship, but also the death of a third of its sailors.The participation of the destroyer in the Russo-Japanese War turned out to be almost formal, limited to 17 days at sea and participation in combat patrols. However, there were also casualties: one of the sailors died during an accidental explosion. More tragic was the short stay of the "Dolphin" in Murmansk. Another gross mistake of the crew led to the fact that on April 26, 1917, the boat sank right in the home port, after which it was permanently excluded from the lists of the Navy.
And already under Soviet rule, in 1920, it was not only completely written off, but also sent for scrap. By the way, a year earlier in Petrograd, Ivan Bubnov himself died of typhus. In addition to the Dolphin, this outstanding Russian shipbuilder, mechanic and mathematician managed to design another three dozen similar submarines. Including Shark, Bars, Killer Whale, Lamprey, Walrus and others.
"The Hidden Vessel"
The "Dolphin" of Major General of the Corps of Naval Engineers Bubnov, who tragically died in the Barents Sea, became the first submarine in "epaulettes". But not the first such project in more than 300 years of the history of the Russian fleet. The "pioneer" here is the Russian peasant Yefim Nikonov. In 1721, not far from Sestroretsk, he presented to the court of Peter I, who knew a lot about the courts, his invention called "The Hidden Vessel".Unfortunately, Efim Nikonov did not have time to complete the submarine due to the sudden death of the tsar. Other predecessors of the brilliant designer Ivan Bubnov can also be considered two Russian engineers who lived in the 19th century - Karl Schilder and Ivan Aleksandrovsky. Their submarines were built and tested, respectively, as early as 1834 and 1866. But they never got into the tsarist navy.
Submarines in the modern sense are a formidable weapon, but when did they become such? Who created the first submarine exclusively for military purposes, what weapons did they carry and what did they look like? We will try to answer these questions in this article.
The first inventor and creator of the first military submarine is considered to be the French engineer Denis Papin, who created his boat in 1691 in Germany. His invention was an all-metal submarine in the shape of a rectangle, having a length of 1.68 m, a height of 1.76 m and a width of 76 cm. a frame made of steel bars, a hatch that closes with several bolts, and holes for oars, which, according to the author, could be used to attack an enemy ship. Thus, we can safely say that Papen was not only the creator of the first metal submarine, but also the first military submarine.
Papin's boat
At the same time, a similar idea was born in the minds of Russian inventors. So, in 1718, Ivan Nikonov, a shipyard worker, came to Emperor Peter I and offered to build an underwater vessel for the emperor. Peter, as a true enthusiast, immediately lights up with the idea of creating a submarine, and already in August 1720, the first Nikonov submarine, which left the shipyard in 1721, was laid in the galley yard of St. Petersburg. This boat has passed a number of successful tests, as a result of which it was decided to create a new submarine. Nikonov's second project, called the "fire ship", was launched in the fall of 1724, but the boat was damaged. Unfortunately, the boats have not survived, as well as their drawings, however, it is assumed that both of them were made in the form of barrels with oar traction.
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Submarine Nikonov (reconstruction of the first sample)
There was also a third boat created by Nikonov. Its inventor created already by order of Catherine I. Perhaps it was a repaired and improved second boat. The new ship was successfully launched in 1726. In the design of this vessel, Nikonov added such weapons as small-caliber guns, a tube for throwing incendiary vessels and mechanical devices for destroying ships (presumably a drill). A surprising fact is the assumption that a diver on board could get out of a boat that was under water. To do this, Nikonov created a special cabin-capsule, which can be considered a prototype of modern lock chambers. This project cost the state dearly and, according to officials, did not pay for itself. As a result of this, the inventor was exiled to the remote port of Astrakhan.
Despite these developments, the most famous "early" submarine is the invention of David Tower, built in 1773 in the USA. The Tower's boat was an oak barrel, tied with steel hoops, on which there was a copper cap with portholes and a hermetically sealed lid. Also, the hood was equipped with two tubes with valves for supplying fresh air and removing used air. The boat was submerged when the tank located at the bottom of the boat was filled with water. To ascend, it was necessary to pump water out of it, using a pump for this. For an emergency ascent, the boat commander could disconnect the lead sinkers, which were also attached to the bottom of the vessel. The movement of the boat was carried out with the help of two screws on a muscle traction. The Tower's boat, named "Turtle", weighed about 2 tons and had a hull length of 2.3 meters and a width of 1.8 meters. This boat could be under water for up to 30 minutes, which was enough to use its only weapon - mines. This weapon was attached to a drill located on the cap of the boat, and was a powder keg weighing 45 kg with a clockwork. According to the author's idea, the boat commander had to swim to the bottom of the vessel, drill it and, having disconnected the drill, start the clock mechanism.
Submarine Tower
It is known that this boat took part in the American War of Independence. In 1776, the Tower's boat, piloted by Sergeant Ezra Lee, attempted to attack one of the British ships blockading the port of Boston. However, the bottom of the British frigate "Eagle", which tried to attack Lee, was sheathed in metal, and the attack failed.
Tower's invention was perhaps the first and last hand-powered military submarine. After it, ships on steam engines and internal combustion engines already appeared.
Diagram of a turtle submarine
The very first
Watching the marine life, man tried to imitate them. Relatively quickly, he learned to build structures that could float on water and move along its surface, but under water ... Beliefs and legends mention individual attempts made by people in this direction, but it took centuries to more or less correctly imagine and expressed in the design drawings of the submarine. One of the first to do this was the great creator of the Renaissance, the Italian scientist Leonardo da Vinci. They say that Leonardo destroyed the drawings of his submarine, justifying this as follows: "People are so vicious that they would be ready to kill each other even at the bottom of the sea."
The surviving sketch depicts an oval-shaped ship with a ram in the bow and a low cabin, in the middle part of which there is a hatch. Other structural details cannot be disassembled.
The first to realize the idea of a submarine were the Englishmen William Brun (1580) and Magnus Petilius (1605). However, their structures cannot be considered ships, since they could not move under water, but only sank and surfaced like a diving bell.
In the 20s of the 17th century. the English court nobility had the opportunity to tickle their nerves by making an underwater journey along the Thames. An unusual vessel in 1620 was built by a scientist - physicist and mechanic, court physician of the English King James I, Dutchman Cornelius van Drebbel. The ship was made of wood, covered with oiled leather for water resistance, could dive to a depth of about 4 m and stay under water for several hours. Immersion and ascent were carried out by filling and emptying leather bellows. As a mover, the inventor used a pole, which had to be repelled from the river bottom while inside the vessel. Convinced of the insufficient effectiveness of such a device, Drebbel equipped the next underwater vessel (its speed was about 1 knot) with 12 ordinary roller oars, each of which was controlled by one rower. To prevent water from entering the vessel, the holes in the hull for the passage of oars were sealed with leather cuffs.
In 1634, a student of R. Descartes, the French monk P. Mersen, for the first time, proposed a project for a submarine intended for military purposes. At the same time, he expressed the idea of making its case out of metal. The shape of the hull with pointed extremities resembled a fish. As a weapon on the boat, drills were provided to destroy the hull of enemy ships below the waterline and two, located on each side, underwater guns with non-return valves that prevent water from entering the boat through the barrels during a shot. The project has remained a project.
In 1718, a peasant from the village of Pokrovskoye near Moscow, Efim Prokopyevich Nikonov, who worked as a carpenter at a state-owned shipyard, wrote in a petition to Peter I that he was undertaking to make a ship that could go “secretly” in the water and approach enemy ships “under the very bottom”, and also "to break ships from a shell." Peter I appreciated the proposal and ordered, "hiding from the eyes of others", to begin work, and the Admiralty Colleges to promote Nikonov to the "master of hidden ships." First, a model was built that successfully kept afloat, sank and moved under water. In August 1720, in St. Petersburg, at the Galley Yard, the first submarine in the world was laid down secretly, without much publicity.
What was Nikonov's submarine? Unfortunately, no drawings of it have yet been found, but some indirect information from archival documents suggests that it had a wooden case about 6 meters long and about 2 meters wide, sheathed on the outside with sheets of tin. The original immersion system consisted of several tin plates with many capillary holes, which were mounted in the bottom of the boat. When surfacing, the water taken into a special tank through the holes in the plates was removed overboard using a piston pump. At first, Nikonov intended to arm the boat with guns, but then he decided to install an airlock through which, when the ship was submerged, a diver dressed in a spacesuit (designed by the inventor himself) could go out and use tools to destroy the bottom of an enemy ship. Later, Nikonov re-equipped the boat with "fiery copper pipes", information about the principle of operation of which has not come down to us.
Nikonov built and rebuilt his submarine for several years. Finally, in the autumn of 1724, in the presence of Peter I and the royal retinue, she was launched, but at the same time she hit the ground and damaged the bottom. With great difficulty, the ship was pulled out of the water and Nikonov himself was saved. The king ordered to strengthen the hull of the boat with iron hoops, encouraged the inventor and warned the officials that "no one should blame him for embarrassment." After the death of Peter I in 1725, no one was interested in the "hidden" vessel. Nikonov's demands for labor and materials were not met or deliberately delayed. It is not surprising that the next test of the submarine ended unsuccessfully. In the end, the Admiralty Board decided to curtail the work, and the inventor was accused of "invalid buildings", demoted to "simple admiralty workers" and in 1728 exiled to the distant Astrakhan Admiralty.
In 1773 (almost 50 years after Nikonov's "hidden ship") the first submarine was built in the United States, the inventor of which, David Bushnell, was dubbed by the Americans as the "father of scuba diving". The hull of the boat was a shell of oak boards, tied with iron hoops and caulked with tarred hemp. In the upper part of the hull there was a small copper turret with a sealed hatch and portholes through which the commander, who combined the entire crew in one person, could observe the situation. Outwardly, the boat resembled a tortoise shell, which is reflected in its name. In the lower part of the Turtle there was a ballast tank, when filled, it sank. When surfacing, the water from the tank was pumped out by a pump. In addition, an emergency ballast was provided - a lead weight, which, if necessary, can be easily detached from the hull. The movement of the boat and its management along the course were carried out with the help of oars. Weapon - a powder mine with a clockwork (fixed on the hull of an enemy ship with a drill).
Submarine D. Bushnell: a - front view; b - side view
In 1776, during the Revolutionary War, the Turtle was used in action. The object of the attack was the English 64-gun frigate Eagle. But the attack failed. The bottom of the frigate for protection against fouling turned out to be sheathed with copper sheets, against which the drill was powerless.
Nautilus and others
At the end of the 18th century The ranks of inventors of submarines were replenished by Robert Fulton, who later became famous for the creation of the world's first steamboat, a native of America, the son of a poor Irish immigrant. The young man, who was fond of painting, went to England, where he soon took up shipbuilding, to which he devoted his later life. To succeed in such a complex business, serious engineering knowledge was needed, for the acquisition of which Fulton went to France.
The young shipbuilder made several interesting proposals in the field of underwater weapons. With the maximalism characteristic of youth, he wrote: “Warships, in my opinion, are the remnants of obsolete military habits, a political disease against which no remedies have yet been found; my firm conviction that these habits must be eradicated and the most effective means for this are submarines armed with mines".
Fulton's mind was not only inquisitive, but also practical. In 1797, he turned to the government of the French Republic with a proposal: "Given the great importance of reducing the power of the British fleet, I thought about building a mechanical Nautilus - a machine that gives me many hopes for the possibility of destroying their fleet ..."
The proposal was rejected, but the persistent inventor obtained an audience with the First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte and interested him in the idea of a submarine.
In 1800, Fulton built a submarine and, with two assistants, dived to a depth of 7.5 m. A year later, he launched an improved Nautilus, whose body was 6.5 m long and 2.2 m wide and had the shape of a cigar blunted at the bow. For its time, the boat had a decent diving depth - about 30 m. A small cabin with portholes rose in the bow. Nautilus was the first submarine in history to have separate propulsion for surface and underwater movement. A manually rotated four-bladed propeller was used as the propulsion unit of the underwater course, which made it possible to develop a speed of about 1.5 knots. In the surface position, the boat moved under sail at a speed of 3-4 knots. The mast for the sail was hinged. Before diving, it was quickly removed and placed in a special chute on the hull. After raising the mast, the sail unfurled and the ship looked like a nautilus clam shell. Hence the name that Fulton gave to his submarine, and 70 years later Jules Verne borrowed for the fantastic ship of Captain Nemo.
An innovation was a horizontal rudder, with which, when moving under water, the boat had to be kept at a given depth. Diving and ascent were carried out by filling and draining the ballast tank. Nautilus was armed with a mine, which was two copper barrels of gunpowder connected by an elastic bridge. The mine was towed on a cable, brought under the bottom of an enemy ship and exploded with an electric current.
The combat readiness of the ship was tested on the Brest roadstead, where the old sloop was taken out and anchored. Nautilus came to the raid under sail. Having removed the mast, the boat plunged 200 m from the sloop, and a few minutes later an explosion thundered and a column of water and debris shot up in place of the sloop.
True, shortcomings were also revealed, the most significant of which was the low efficiency of the horizontal rudder due to the very low speed in the submerged position, in connection with which the boat was poorly kept at a given depth. To eliminate this shortcoming, Fulton used a screw on a vertical axis.
The inventor abandoned the combat use of the Nautilus due to the fact that the French naval minister did not satisfy his demand to assign military ranks to the crew members of the boat, without which the British, if captured, would hang them as pirates. The minister formulated the reason for the refusal in a style characteristic of the professional conservatism of sailing admirals: "One cannot consider people in military service who use such a barbaric means to destroy the enemy." In such a formulation, it is difficult to draw a line between chivalry and a lack of understanding of the merits of a new weapon.
Fulton went to England, where he was cordially received by Prime Minister W. Pitt. Successful experiments with the explosions of ships not so much inspired as confused the British Admiralty. After all, the “mistress of the seas” at that time had the most powerful fleet in the world, since in her maritime policy she was guided by the principle of the double superiority of her fleet over the fleet of the next most powerful sea power. Fulton said that after another demonstration of the combat capabilities of the submarine, when the brig Dorothea was blown up, one of the most authoritative sailors of the English fleet, Lord Jervis, said: "Pitt is the greatest fool in the world, encouraging a method of warfare that does not give anything to a people who already have supremacy at sea and which, if successful, may deprive him of this supremacy.
But Pitt was by no means a simpleton. On his initiative, the Admiralty offered Fulton a lifetime pension with the condition ... to forget about his invention. Fulton indignantly rejected the offer and returned to his homeland in America, where he built the first practical paddle steamer Clermont, which immortalized his name.
In the first half of the 19th century there was no shortage of attempts to create a submarine. The unsuccessful submarines were built by the French Maugeri, Custer, Jean Petit and the Spaniard Severi, the last two were killed during the tests.
The original design of the submarine was developed in 1829 in Russia by Kazimir Chernovsky, who was imprisoned in Shlisselburgskaya. fortresses. As a propeller, he proposed paddle rods - pushers, when pulled into the ship, the blades folded, and when extended, they opened like umbrellas with emphasis on the water. But despite a number of bold technical solutions, the War Department was not interested in the project, since the inventor was a political criminal.
An active participant in the Patriotic War of 1812, the famous Russian engineer Adjutant General Karl Andreevich Schilder, left a noticeable mark in submarine shipbuilding. He was the author of a number of projects and improvements. In the 30s of the 19th century. Schilder developed an electric way to control underwater mines, successful experiments with which gave him the idea of a submarine.
In 1834, in St. Petersburg, at the Alexander foundry (now the association "Proletarsky Zavod"), a submarine with a displacement of about 16 tons was built according to the project of Schilder, which is considered to be the firstborn of the Russian submarine fleet and the world's first metal submarine. Its hull, 6 meters long, 2.3 meters wide and about 2 meters high, was made of five-millimeter boiler iron. As a mover, rows were used, made like the paws of waterfowl and located in pairs on each side. When moving forward, the strokes folded, and when moving backward, they opened up, providing emphasis. Each stroke was actuated by swinging a drive handle from inside the ship. The design of the drive made it possible, by changing the angle, the swing of the strokes, not only to ensure the rectilinear movement of the boat, but also its ascent or immersion. The innovation was the "optical tube" - the prototype of the modern periscope, which Schilder designed using the idea of \u200b\u200bthe "horizontoscope" by M.V. Lomonosov.
The boat was armed with an electric mine designed to operate at a distance close to enemy ships, as well as missiles, which were launched from two three-pipe rocket launchers located on board. The rockets were ignited by electric fuses, the current to which was supplied from galvanic cells. The boat could conduct salvo fire with missiles from the surface and underwater positions. It was the first rocket weapon in the history of shipbuilding, which in our time has become the main one in the strategy and tactics of war at sea.
On August 29, 1834, Schilder's submarine with a crew of eight, led by midshipman Shmelev, went for trials. The first submarine flight in the history of Russia began. The boat maneuvered under. water and stopped submerged with the help of an anchor of the original design. Rocket launchers have been successfully tested. Schilder is given additional funds and he is developing a project for a new submarine. Its hull was also made of iron and had a regular cylindrical shape with a pointed nose, ending in a long bowsprit and a metal harpoon with a suspended mine inserted into it. Having thrust a harpoon into the side of an enemy ship, the boat retreated in reverse to a safe distance. The mine exploded with an electric fuse, the current to which was supplied from a galvanic cell through a wire. The tests of the submarine ended on the Kronstadt raid on July 24, 1838 with a demonstration of the explosion of the target ship.
Schilder's submarines had a very significant drawback: their speed did not exceed 0.3 knots. The inventor understood the unacceptability of such a low speed for a warship, but he was also aware that when using a "muscular" engine, the speed of the submarines he created could not be increased.
Unfulfilled hope
In 1836, Russian academician Boris Semenovich Jacobi created the world's first electric boat with paddle wheels, which were rotated by an electric motor powered by a battery of galvanic cells. The commission that conducted the tests, noting the great importance of the invention, but drew attention to the very low speed of the vessel - less than 1.5 knots. The idea of an electric ship was put in jeopardy. Members of the commission came to the aid of Jacobi - engineer Lieutenant General A.A. Sablukov and shipbuilder staff captain S.O. Burachek, who argued that the point was not in electric propulsion, but in the low efficiency of the wheel mover. At the meeting of the commission, Burachek, supported by Sablukov, proposed replacing the paddle wheels on the electric ship with a water-jet propulsion system, which he called "a through water channel." The members of the commission approved the proposal, but it was never implemented.
A water cannon, like a paddle wheel and a propeller, belongs to jet propulsion. The working body of the water jet (pump, propeller) gives the water a high speed with which it is thrown into the stern through the nozzle in the form of a jet stream and creates a stop that moves the ship.
The first patent for a jet propulsion was received in 1661 by the English Toogood and Hayes, but the invention remained on paper. In 1722, their compatriot Allen proposed "to use water for the movement of ships, which would be thrown from the stern with a known force by means of a mechanism." But where could one get such a mechanism at that time? In the 1830s, during his stay in exile, the Decembrist sailor M.A. Bestuzhev and even developed an original design ...
Not having achieved the re-equipment of the Jacobi electric ship for a water jet propulsion, A.A. Sablukov, who took an active part in the testing of Schilder's submarines, proposed to equip his second boat with a water jet propulsion unit of his own design, which consisted of two intake-outflow channels inside the boat's hull with a centrifugal pump in the form of a horizontally located impeller driven by a steam engine. Schilder accepted the offer, and by the autumn of 1840 the boat was refitted. But due to lack of funds, the mechanical drive of the pump had to be abandoned, replacing it with a manual one.
Tests of the world's first water-jet submarine were carried out in Kronstadt and ended in failure. The speed of the boat did not increase, and it could not have been otherwise when the pump was rotated manually. However, the head of the Main Naval Staff, Admiral A.S., who was present at the tests, Menshikov did not want to hear about further work on fine-tuning the ship. The Maritime Department stopped subsidizing the work. Not meeting support in the higher spheres of the fleet, knowing about the ridicule of the courtiers, who nicknamed him "the eccentric general" for his numerous projects ahead of his time, K.A. Schilder stopped technical research in the field of naval weapons and devoted himself entirely to service activities in the engineering troops, which he headed by the end of his life.
On February 1, 1851, one of the diving enthusiasts, the Bavarian Wilhelm Bauer, with two assistants, tested the first Brandtaucher submarine with a displacement of 38.5 tons in the Kiel harbor, driven by a manually rotated propeller. The tests nearly ended in disaster. At a depth of 18 m, the boat was crushed, and the crew got out with great difficulty through the side mouth. Both companions were forever cured even of the thought of scuba diving, but not Bauer himself, who had not yet created a more or less suitable boat, predicted with pathos: "... Monitors, battleships, etc. are now only mourning drogs of an outdated fleet."
Everything turned out to be much more complicated, which the inventor, obviously, thought more than once, getting out of the sunken Brandtaucher, but Bauer was not tenacious. After the refusal of the Bavarian government to build a new submarine, he offered his services to Austria, England and the USA, but they did not meet with support there either. And only the Russian government, concerned about the technical backwardness of the fleet revealed during the Crimean War, favorably reacted to the proposal of the Bavarian, concluding with him in 1885 a contract for the construction of a submarine. Four months later, the ship was built, but Bauer evaded displaying her combat qualities, although there was an almost unlimited opportunity to attack the Anglo-French fleet blockading Kronstadt. Moreover, he achieved the transfer of tests to the spring of 1856, that is, at the time when hostilities ceased. The reason for the tightening became clear with the start of the tests. The submarine passed about 25 m in 17 minutes and ... stopped due to "the complete exhaustion of the people who set the propeller in motion." Later, she sank, and Bauer's next proposal to build an underwater corvette for the Russian fleet was resolutely rejected. Returning to his homeland, Bauer continued his inventive activity, but, like his predecessors, he did not create a suitable submarine.
Steam and air
The low-power "muscle" engine stood as an insurmountable barrier in the way of submarine inventors. And although at the end of the 18th century. James Watt, a mechanic from Glasgow, invented the steam engine, its use on a submarine was postponed for many years due to a number of problems, the main of which was the supply of air to burn fuel in the furnace of a steam boiler when the boat was submerged. The main one, but not the only one. So, during the operation of the machine, fuel was consumed and, accordingly, the mass of the submarine changed, and in fact it should always be ready to dive. The stay of the crew in the boat was hampered by heat and toxic gases.
The project of a submarine with a steam engine was first developed in 1795 by the French revolutionary Armand Mezieres, but such a ship was built only 50 years later in 1846 by his compatriot Dr. Prosper Peyerne. In the original power plant of the boat, called the Hydrostat, steam was supplied to the machine from a boiler, in a hermetically sealed furnace of which specially prepared fuel was burned - compressed briquettes of a mixture of saltpeter and coal, which emitted the necessary oxygen during combustion. At the same time, water was supplied to the furnace. Water vapor and fuel combustion products were sent to the steam engine, from where, having completed the work, they were discharged overboard through a non-return valve. It would seem that everything is fine. But in the presence of moisture from saltpeter (nitric oxide) nitric acid was formed - a very aggressive compound that destroyed the metal parts of the boiler and the machine. In addition, the control of the combustion process with the simultaneous supply of water to the furnace turned out to be very difficult, and the removal of the vapor-gas mixture at depth overboard was an intractable problem. In addition, the bubbles of the mixture did not dissolve in the sea water and unmasked the submarine.
Peyerne's failure did not deter followers. Already in 1851, the American Lodner Philippe built a submarine with a steam engine power plant. But the inventor did not have time to finish the job. During one of the dives on Lake Erie, the boat exceeded the permissible depth and was crushed, burying the crew along with Philipps at the bottom of the lake.
Faced with the problem of using a steam engine in a submarine, some inventors took the path of creating structures that occupy an intermediate position between a submarine and a surface ship. Such semi-submarines with a hermetically sealed hull and a pipe towering above it could be located at a depth limited by the height of the pipe, in which there were two channels - for atmospheric air to enter the boiler furnace and to remove combustion products. A similar submarine was built in 1855 by the inventor of the steam hammer, the Englishman James Nesmith, but due to a number of major shortcomings, it turned out to be unsuitable for use.
Many original designs for submarines were received by the Russian Naval Ministry during the Crimean War of 1853-1856, when the patriotic upsurge served as an impetus for the creative initiative of specialists in many areas of military equipment. In 1855, the mechanical engineer of the fleet N.N. Spiridonov submitted to the Naval Scientific Committee a project for a submarine with a crew of 60 people, equipped with a jet propulsion unit, the piston pumps of which were driven by compressed air. The air to the two air motors was supposed to be supplied through a hose from an air pump installed on a surface escort vessel. The project was recognized as difficult to implement and ineffective.
In an attempt to solve the problem of an underwater engine using compressed air, the talented Russian inventor Ivan Fedorovich Aleksandrovsky turned out to be more successful. In June 1863, in the boathouse of the St. Petersburg plant of Carr and McPherson (now the Baltic Shipyard named after Sergo Ordzhonikidze), there was the usual revival that accompanied the laying of the ship, but it attracted attention that a guard was posted at the entrance to the boathouse, blocking access to it outsiders. By autumn, an outlandish ship was already towering there, unlike any of the many built by the plant. The spindle-like hull had no deck or masts. It was the second submarine designed by I.F. Aleksandrovsky. Didn't build the first one...
Ivan Fyodorovich Alexandrovsky
In his youth, Aleksandrovsky was fond of painting and not without success. In 1837, the Academy of Arts awarded him the title of "non-class artist" and Aleksandrovsky began an independent working life as a teacher of drawing and drafting in a gymnasium. Meanwhile, the young artist was irresistibly drawn to the technical sciences and, with his characteristic perseverance, independently mastered knowledge, especially in the field of colloid chemistry, optics and mechanics.
In the middle of the 19th century in Europe, the newly born photography became fashionable, and Aleksandrovsky became interested in a new business. In the early 50s, he finally left teaching and opened a photo studio. From now on, his business card read: Ivan Fedorovich Aleksandrovsky, artist-photographer, own studio, St. Petersburg, Nevsky Prospect, 22, apt. 45. Deep knowledge not only in the field of photography, but also in chemistry and optics related to it, allowed Aleksandrovsky to achieve great success in his new business and made his photo studio the best in the capital, which turned into a very profitable enterprise. But this man did not live by bread alone. Alexandrovsky continues to study science, is interested in various fields of technology and especially shipbuilding. The turning point in his fate was 1853, when in the summer, shortly before the start of the Crimean War, Aleksandrovsky visited London on business of a photo studio, where he not only saw an armada of formidable steam ships, but also heard more than once that the squadron being prepared was intended to march to the shores of the Crimea, in order to " teach the Russians a lesson. Knowing the low technical level of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which consisted mainly of sailing ships, Ivan Fedorovich could not remain indifferent and decided to create a submarine.
The project was almost completed when Aleksandrovsky became aware of the start of construction under a contract with the Russian Naval Ministry of the previously mentioned Bauer submarine. Despite the forces and funds expended by this time, Aleksandrovsky is developing a new project of an original submarine with compressed air engines, for which he attracts a prominent specialist in the field of pneumatic engines S.I. Baranovsky.
In 1862, the Naval Scientific Committee approved the project, and in 1863 the ship was laid down.
The submarine with a displacement of 352/362 tons was equipped with a twin-shaft power plant, which consisted of two pneumatic engines with a capacity of 117 liters, for surface and underwater movement. With. each driven by its own propeller. The supply of air, compressed to a pressure of 60-100 kg/cm2, was stored in 200 cylinders with a capacity of about 6 m3, which were thick-walled steel pipes with a diameter of 60 mm, and, according to the inventor's calculation, it was supposed to ensure the navigation of the boat in a submerged position at a speed of 6 knots for 3 h. To replenish the supply of compressed air on the boat, a high-pressure compressor was provided. The air exhausted in the air motors partially entered the boat for the crew members to breathe, and was partially removed overboard through a pipe with a non-return valve that prevented water from entering the engines if they stopped when the boat was submerged.
In addition to the original power plant, Aleksandrovsky implemented a number of other progressive technical solutions in the project. Of particular note is the first use of blowing the water ballast with compressed air for ascent, which has been used up to now for more than a hundred years on submarines of all countries. In general, this happens as follows.
To fill the ballast tank with outboard water, kingstones, or just holes, are provided in its lower part, and ventilation valves in the upper part. When the kingstones and ventilation valves are open, the air from the tank freely escapes into the atmosphere, sea water fills the tank and the submarine sinks. When surfacing into the ballast tanks with the ventilation valves closed, compressed air will be supplied, which squeezes water out of the tank through the open kingstones.
The weapons on Aleksandrovsky's submarine were two buoyant mines connected by an elastic bridge. Mines were placed outside the hull of the boat. Being given from inside the boat, the mines floated up and covered the bottom of the enemy ship from both sides. The explosion was carried out by electric current from a battery of galvanic cells after the boat moved to a safe distance from the object of attack.
In the summer of 1866, the submarine was transferred to Kronstadt for testing. Due to the shortcomings identified in their course, it was tested for several years, during which significant changes were made to the design. But some shortcomings could not be eliminated. The submerged speed of the boat did not exceed 1.5 knots, and the cruising range was about 3 miles. At such a low speed, horizontal rudders turned out to be ineffective. All submarines of that time equipped with horizontal rudders, starting with the Nautilus, had this drawback (horizontal rudders, whose efficiency is approximately proportional to the square of the speed, did not keep the boat at a given depth).
Aleksandrovsky's submarine was accepted into the treasury and enrolled in a mine detachment. However, a decision was made about its unsuitability for military purposes and the inappropriateness of further work to eliminate the shortcomings. If one can agree with the first part of the decision, then the second was controversial, and one can understand the inventor, who, recalling the indifference to his ship of the Naval Ministry, bitterly wrote: "To my extreme regret, I must say that since then I have not only did not meet with the sympathy and support of the Naval Ministry, but even all work to correct the boat was completely stopped.
David crushes Goliath
Meanwhile, fundamental research by S.I. Baranovsky in the field of practical use of compressed air for power plants did not go unnoticed abroad. In 1862, in France, according to the project of the captain of the 1st rank Bourgeois and engineer Brun, the submarine "Plonger" was built with a displacement of 420 tons with a pneumatic engine with a power of 68 liters for surface and underwater travel. s., in many respects reminiscent of the ship of Aleksandrovsky. The test results were even less favorable than those of Aleksandrovsky's boat. Slow speed, inefficiency of horizontal rudders, traces of air bubbles...
An engineer from Russia, Major General O.B., was present at the tests of Plonger and took part in them. Gern, who, being interested in scuba diving, designed three submarines on the order of the military engineering department. Two of them were driven by a manually rotated propeller, and the third by a gas engine. But none of the boats lived up to expectations, and Gern, using Plonger's test experience, developed a project for an original submarine with a displacement of about 25 tons. The ship's power plant consisted of a 6-liter two-cylinder steam engine. s., which received steam at a pressure of 30 kgf / cm2 from a boiler adapted to work on solid and liquid fuels. When the boat was on the surface, the machine worked on steam supplied from a boiler heated with wood or charcoal, and underwater - on compressed air in the mode of a pneumatic motor or from a boiler, for which, before diving, the furnace was sealed and slow-burning fuel briquettes were burned in it that releases oxygen when burned. In addition, as a backup option, in a submerged position, the boiler could be heated with turpentine, which was sprayed into the furnace with compressed air or oxygen.
For its time, the submarine O.B. Gerna was a significant step forward. Her metal spindle-shaped hull was divided by two bulkheads into three compartments. The boat was equipped with an air regeneration system, consisting of a lime tank placed in the hold of the middle compartment; a fan that pumps air through the tank; three cylinders with oxygen periodically added to the purified air.
The submarine was built in 1867 at the Alexander foundry in St. Petersburg. However, the tests of the ship, which were carried out in the Italian pond of Kronstadt, dragged on for nine years. During this time, Gern made a number of improvements. But the boat could swim under water only under the air engine, since it was not possible to seal the boiler furnace. To eliminate this and some other shortcomings, funds were required, which the military engineering department cut in every possible way.
Meanwhile, a significant event occurred in the history of diving. Before the civil war of 1861-1865. in the United States, almost no attention was paid to submarine shipbuilding. With the outbreak of war, the southerners announced an open competition for the best submarine design. Of the projects presented, preference was given to the submarine of the engineer Aunley, under whose leadership a series of small cylindrical iron boats with pointed ends, about 10 meters long and about 2 meters wide, was built. The first boat was named David after the biblical young David who defeated the giant Goliath . Under the goliaths, of course, meant the surface ships of the northerners. David was armed with a pole mine with an electric fuse, exploded from inside the boat. The crew consisted of nine people, eight of whom rotated the crankshaft with the propeller. The immersion depth was maintained by horizontal rudders. In fact, these were semi-submersible ships, during the movement of which a flat deck remained submerged above the surface of the water.
Schematic representation of the submarine type "David"
In October 1863, a boat of this series attacked an anchored battleship of the northerners, but the explosion was carried out prematurely and she died. Four months later, a similar attempt was made by the Hunley boat, but from the wave of a steamer passing nearby, it tilted sharply, scooped up water and sank. The boat was raised and repaired. But evil fate pursued her. The boats of the David type had insufficient stability, as a result of which Hunley, anchored at night, suddenly capsized. The boat has been restored. To find out the causes of accidents involving Aunley, extensive tests were carried out, during which Hunley sank again with the entire crew and inventor. Another rise and repair followed, after which, on February 17, 1864, Hunley became the hero of the event, about which it is written in the Naval History of the Civil War:
"On January 14, the Secretary of the Navy wrote to Vice Admiral Dahlgorn, commander of the fleet at Charleston, that, according to the information he had received, the Confederates launched a new vessel capable of destroying his entire fleet ... on the night of February 17, the newly built beautiful ship Housatonic with 1200 tons of displacement, standing at anchor in front of Charleston, was destroyed under the following circumstances: at about 8 hours 15 minutes in the evening, some suspicious object was seen 50 fathoms from the ship. It looked like a board floating on the ship. Two minutes later it was already near the ship. The officers were were warned in advance and had a description of the new "hellish" machines with information on the best way to get rid of them. The officer of the watch ordered to loosen the anchor ropes, set the engine running and call everyone up. But, unfortunately, it was too late ... One hundred pounds of gunpowder at the end the pole was enough to destroy the strongest armadillo." True, the boat itself did not escape the fate of its victim. As it turned out later, Hunley did not have time to move to a safe distance and was drawn into the armadillo along with the water that gushed through the hole. But David crushed Goliath. The death of Housatonic caused a resonance in the naval departments of different countries and drew attention to weapons that until recently were not taken seriously by many.
Under the enemy ship, with the help of a drill, attach a mine to its bottom, and then start the clockwork and move to a safe distance. In domestic and foreign books on the history of the development of scuba diving, images of a Byuchnel boat with two types of propulsion are usually given. Let's take a closer look at these drawings. The top drawing (probably from a genuine drawing) is roughly...
Lieutenant Beklemishev. They were allowed to settle in the Experimental Shipbuilding Basin, where they developed the project "destroyer No. 113" - this was the first name of the submarine "Dolphin" (the class of submarines did not yet exist in the Russian fleet). On May 3, 1901, the commission in the above-named composition presented the project developed by them to the chief inspector of shipbuilding. In July 1901 ...
A submarine is a vessel capable of submerging and staying under water for a long time, as well as performing certain military operations. Submarines are used in military practice, both for reconnaissance and combat purposes. For peaceful purposes, ships are widely used in research expeditions.
First attempts
The history of submarines is very deep. He also mentioned similar structures, but abandoned the idea, fearing the use of destructive power in the underwater world. According to historical data, Alexander the Great tried to use something similar to an underwater bell for the purpose of reconnaissance. Zaporizhzhya Cossacks used special boats "Seagulls", capable of operating upside down.
The first submarine in history appeared in the 17th century in London, having been invented by the physicist and mechanic Corneille van Drebbel. To bring the unit into working condition, 3 officers and 12 rowers were needed.
Submarine Cornelius van Drebbel
In 1634, the Jesuit Mersen described a submarine very similar to the modern version.
David Bushnell - American inventor built a model submarine in 1776, first intended to attack the enemy. The boat received the name "Turtles" because of the external similarity of the two halves of the vessel, soldered together and resembling a tortoise shell. In the upper half there was a dome with glass. However, at the first attempt to attack the boat was destroyed by the English fleet.
Successes and failures of submarine designers
In 1800, Robert Fulton developed a good model of a submarine for 3 people and presented it to Bonaparte. However, numerous and costly trials of the ship seemed useless to Napoleon, and he abandoned this idea.
Drawing by Robert Fulton
In 1810, a boat for 9 people was invented, but it died during one of the tests. The first launch of missiles from a submarine was carried out from the boat of Schilder, a Russian inventor, tested in 1834. Its rowing devices vaguely resembled duck paws.
Peyerne's hydrostat, developed in 1845, was the first to use pressure differences in a boat. In the next 10 years, the boat was used to remove underwater rocks.
The first submarine to successfully participate in combat battles was the American Hunley. She had several ballast tanks, which were filled with water for diving and purged by hand for surfacing. To urgently raise the boat to the surface, iron weights attached to the bottom were provided. The screw of the boat rotated with the help of 7 sailors. In 1864, the submarine sank from an explosion, before sinking an enemy sloop.
The first Russian submarine was built at the Baltic Shipyard according to the drawings of Ivan Aleksandrovsky in 1866.
At the beginning of the 20th century, submarines began to actively appear in the armed forces of many countries of the world.
The very first submarine in Russia, built in 1721, was called the "Secret Ship", and in appearance it looked more like a wine barrel than a submarine.
The idea of creating the first submarine came to the mind of a peasant near Moscow and part-time self-taught inventor Efim Prokopievich Nikonov. Having made several attempts, he was still able to reach out to Peter the Great and convince the tsar of the need for a sealed boat - "... for a military occasion, I will make a pleasing ship against the enemies, with which at sea, in quiet times, I will break ships ... secretly under the very bottom... ”- Nikonov wrote a petition to Peter.
In 1720, after a personal conversation with the tsar, the inventor was ordered - " hiding from prying eyes", to first make a working model of the first submarine:" not to the extent that would go under the ship in the sea, but for the sake of testimony and in the river of testing».
By order of Peter the Great, the Admiralty Board in the first days of January promoted Efim Nikonov to the “master of secret ships”, and already on January 31, 1720, in accordance with the order of the tsar, the Admiralty Board decided: “ Send peasant Efim Nikonov to the office of Major General Golovin and order an exemplary vessel to be made, and what is needed for forests and artisans at the request of this peasant Nikonov to be sent from the mentioned office».
The model of the first submarine in Russia was built in St. Petersburg at the site of the Ober-Sarvaer shipyard. Work began in February 1720, and thirteen months later, in March 1721, the model was ready.
Since no drawings or detailed descriptions of this vessel have been preserved, one can only assume that the “Secret Vessel” was barrel-shaped. The reason for this is the participation of coopers in its construction, as well as the order to release fifteen iron strips, most likely intended for hoops, with which they pulled together the wooden hull of the submarine. The bow of the first Russian submarine repeated the structure of a surface ship common for those times, and the stern was equipped with a rudder. The cabin on the upper deck played the role of a periscope and had dense viewing glasses.
Ordinary oars were used as an engine, and the crew of the vessel consisted of four members. Fifty candles were provided for testing, which suggests that the time spent under water was about ten hours.
The first test took place in the presence of Peter in the summer of the same year on the Razliv Lake, and it was impossible to call them successful - the bottom of the primitive structure burst. However, despite this, Nikonov was instructed to proceed with the construction of a "hidden fire vessel of a large hull" on the slipway of the Galley Shipyard in St. Petersburg.
By the autumn of 1724, the first submarine was built on a full scale. However, this time the test ended unsuccessfully. The boat went to the bottom like a stone, hit the ground and broke the bottom. The biography of Peter 1 says that he ordered the inventor to strengthen the hull of the ship, correct the shortcomings, and also publicly announced - “ Yefim Prokopyevich, so that no one would blame embarrassment».
Nikonov fixed all the damage, but on January 25, 1725, Peter the Great died. So the inventor lost his patronage. But, despite this, he nevertheless brought the repair to the end, and in the spring of 1725 the first Russian submarine was launched again. But a leak was again detected in the hull of the boat, and it was again pulled ashore.
The last launch of a submarine into the water took place in 1727 and did not end well. As a result, the naval authorities, dejected by this outcome, ordered the submarine to be locked up in a barn. It was stored there for many years, until it rotted over time. Nikonov, in the winter of 1728, was demoted to an ordinary carpenter and sent to the Astrakhan shipyard.
Today, a monument to the very first submarine in Russia, made at the St. Petersburg cooperage, is installed in Sestroretsk, near the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul.
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