SUBMARINE NAUTILUS

Otago Witness, Issue 4041, 25 August 1931, Page 44

SUBMARINE NAUTILUS

MACHINERY OVERHAULED BOUND FOR THE POLE. SPITZBERGEN, August 18. With her machinery overhauled, the submarine Nautilus has started on het undersea dash to the Pole.

When you first hear of a submarine voyage under 2000 miles of polar pack ice, there is an immediate reaction against men “ committing suicide in so futile an undertaking,” writes Fitzhugh Green in the American Magazine. ° But pure science demands that we find out the depth apd shape of the bottom of the Polar Sea, and pure science still wonders whether there is land in the unknown area of the Polar Sea; what life inhabits the waters under the polar pack; what currents move these waters; what, if any, bearing on weather these currents have*; and so on. The commercial aspects of Sir Hubert Wilkin’s forthcoming expedition are more specific.

From England to Japan via the Pole the distance is only about 6900 miles, or about half of the Panama distance. 1’ rom New York to Nome, Alaska, it is 9000 miles via the canal, and only a little over 5000 miles by submarine under the northern ice. From New Y’ork to the Philippines by canal in 12,000 miles. Using the ice-choked North-west passage, a submarine could travel between the same ports and cover only 9000 miles, or 3900 miles’ saving in time, fuel mechanical wear and tear, and other overhead. There are also the possibilities of the great lands bordering on the polar seas—Siberia and Alaska. “The reason the polar submarine will run when surface ships jam is that the surface ship’s bow acts as a wedge, and the only way she can then make progress is to split the ice field apart.” says Simon Lake, designer of Sir Hubert’s submarine Nautilus. An important feature of the Nautilus is its trapdoor for submerged diving. This leads from under her bow, and permits a diver to descend while she is under the surface.

This device is of peculiar importance to the under-ice submarine. It permits a diver to emerge from the boat and place a bomb under the ice overhead. Then the boat backs off, and the bomb explodes, tearing a hole through to the air above.

The necessity for the polar submar’re to force her way through the ice to the surface arises, not from the desire for those aboard her to inspect the pack, but because a submarine’s batteries must be charged by gas or oil engines every few hundred miles of her voyage. She runs submerged on her electric motors, for which the power is supplied by the batteries. When the fuel engine rrns, air is required.

Should the ice above her be too thick to break with a bomb, it will be pierced by a unique boring machine which Simon Lake has designed.

As the diameter of the submarine is roughly 14 feet, she can house a drill about 14 feet long to penetrate that thickness of solid ice. This drill will project upwards through her conning tower, and will be sheathed in a tube about six inches in diameter.

The tube will go up with the drill and finally emerge above the surface of the ice. It also contains a periscope with which the commander can look about him while his boat is still a prisoner under the pack. The submarine will not cruise at all times under a well-nigh impenetrable floe of massive dimensions. There are practically no icebergs in the Polar Sea, and the polar pack itself is continually being split and torn by tides and winds. Wide lanes of open water form at all times, winter and summer. Because of this it is estimated that the Nautilus will never be more than 25 miles from either thin ice or open water on her North Pole voyage.