POLAR SUBMARINE

Hokitika Guardian, 13 April 1931, Page 2

POLAR SUBMARINE

TNGENIOUS VESSEL. WILL SKID ON ICE CEILING. When you first hear of a submarine voyage under 2,000 miles of polar pack ice, there is an immediate reaction against men “committing suicide in so futile an undertaking,” writes Fitzhugh Preen in “The American Magazine.” But pure science demands that we find out tlit- depth and 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 tli ' waters under th e 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 Jnpnn via the Pole t!m distance is only a limit 6,96(3 miles, or about half of the Panama distance. From New York to Nome, Alaska, it is 9,0(30 miles v,ia the Canal, and only a little over 5,000 miles by submarine under the northern ice. From New York to the Philipines by canal is 12,900 miles. Using the icechoked North-west Passage, a submarine could travel between the same porta and covt only 9,000 miles, or 3,900 miles’ sai’v'f i»» fuel, t»«ohaidcn] wear am," oher Overheadj There ujn >•: i- ,liabilities of the gyenf hum. ■ > n.i-rjpg On the Polar seaa-—Siberia and Alaska. ICE-BREAKING prow, “The reason the polar submarine will run when surface ships jammed is mat the sun ace 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 is made possible through a small diving compartment in the front end of the boat. The diver enters and an air pressure is raised to the level of the water pressure without, He can then open a trapdoor in the deck, from which leads a ladder to the sea. Air pressure keeps water from entering. 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. ArUST REACH SURFACE. The necessity for the polar submarine to force her way through the ice to the surface arises, not from the desire for those aboard her to inspect the pack, hut 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 runs, air is required. Should the' ice above her be too thick to break with a bomb, it will be pierced by an unique boring machine which Simon Lake has designed. As the diameter of the submarine is roughly fourteen feet, she can bous e a drill about fourteen feet long to penetrate that thickness of solid ioo, 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 stilt a prisoner under the pack. Tile 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 pola r pack itself .is continually being split and torn by tide- and wind*. Wide lanes of open water nun ' •.:.<?«, winter and summer. i> • v uis it is estimated tlmt the Nimj+M- will never be more than twenty- 4.« miles from either thin ice or’ open water on her North Pole voyage, JNVERTEI) TOBOGGAN. The cruising radius of the Nautilus with her engines will be about three thousand miles. She will probably have to cover about two thousand mike between Spitsbergen and the open water north of Alaska. Thus she will have a fifty per cent, factor qf safety, Over her one-hundred-foot length is built an inverted toboggan, or bum-per-bar, to guide her under the ice. The upper .surface of this device will he sharpened to help her break through. Since her gauges will tell those aboard her at all times what depth the submarine has reached, and since tlie bumper-bar’s exact distance above tlie hull is known, the navigator can always tell within a few inches just how thick the ice is over his head. When Nansen made his famous drift in the Fram lie made many borings to determine the average thickness of the floes. He found that for the old fields, apart from narrow pressure ridges, a figure of twelve to fourteen feet was about the usual thing. One of the most extraordinary

things about the Polar Sea is that its temperature remains almost constant at 28 degrees above zero Fahrenheit, while that of the air above the ice ■ may he as low as 90 degrees below /.oro. Further, since sea. water is brine, it does not freeze or stay frozen at 32 deg. above zero in the same way that fresh water does. In some concentrations of salt it does not solidify until the temperature is nearly zero. Hence, the sea water actually melts tlie sea ice with which it comes into contact. Throughout the trip, the Nautilus will make continuous sounding of the Polar Sea, something that, lias hitherto been impossible. By means of her electric apparatus she will throw a sound wave to tlto bottom of the ocpnn. The time interval required for this sound to he echoed back is automatically resolved into depth.