Steam-powered submarines of WWI | Hacker News Reader

Steam-powered submarines of WWI

warisboring.com

57 pointsvinnyglennon10 comments

Wow, that's quite a history.

There's more detail on the Battle of May Island here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_May_Island

The damage on Fearless, which sunk the K17, gives a little insight into the pandemonium http://www.rfyc.org/wp-content/uploads/BattleMayIsland_Fearl...

Of course, modern nuclear submarines are steam-powered too :)

Observing where in the article this is in fact noted becomes a test of reading comprehension and comprehensiveness.

I guess I failed. I couldn't find it.

Its the last sentence it isn't exactly hidden.

In his defense, the last sentence is sandwiched between two ads, not exactly the most reader friendly place to end your article.

It's the very last sentence of the article. Hard to miss.

The oil fired steam propulsion was standard for larger warships of the era. In the 30's engineers started to install internal combustion diesels to large ships. But the oil fired steam still persists. (When power/weight is more important than fuel consumption, but internal combustion turbine is too expensive.)

This hints that it was designed to be large. And steam propulsion was selected because large enough diesels were not available.

Nuclear-powered, but steam-driven.

Why would an oil fired steam turbine be a bad solution for a submarine, compared to then contemporary diesels? Fast ships did use oil fired steam turbines, not large diesel engines - so why not submarines? What are the differences? How many of the accidents are really attributable to the steam turbine?

The article is a little shallow on that point, I think it's an interesting question. Why were so many holes needed?

I think quite many of these histories tend to "a new plane was designed and made, it was faster than the previous ones, it was used by these units for these years." You don't learn much.

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