Also, there is wide variation in whether or not you put windows in the sail. In this other class of sub, you may notice, the sail itself is windowless so while surfaced the watch-standers (and smokers) get to poke their heads above the top old-style, with a pop-up barrier to keep them from getting splashed too badly. Meanwhile in the OP sub you can see that you have that going on at the very top, plus then the level with windows immediately below, probably to accommodate surfaced watch standing in bad weather.
The dorsal fin of marine animals helps stabilize the animal against rolling, as well as assisting in sudden turns. Does a submarine’s “sail” - called a “fin” in European/Commonwealth usage - assist the submarine at all in these areas?
When does a modern nuclear sub ever need to surface outside a dock?
The Russians will often need their lookouts to have protection from the elements in Murmansk and Vladivostok. The American don’t at Pearl Harbour and even at Groton or Norfolk, a heavy jacket and mittens will suffice.
As stated the tower is for the lookouts. Subs will need to surface when the local water depth in insufficient for safe underwater operations, like in coastal areas, straits or when transiting canals.
Why not just put some cameras on retractable mast? Why do you need Mark 1 eyeballs up top?
Also, do missile subs ever enter shallow waters? Why? Isn’t staying hidden their number one priority?
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Heck if I know, ask the Navy. But I suppose same reason surface vessels don’t go to just 360-round cameras fed to the command room and still have topside lookouts - redundancy and, it is hoped, human ability to recognize something wrong. Even then they don’t always manage to prevent the Loud Crunching Sound.
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Nearing and entering port. Which in turn means you may be around traffic, in a low-profile dark vessel so the more you want to see them in time.
The sail is the whole thing sticking above the hull. The conning tower is (was, actually) the part where the people lived. The rest of the sail was filled with stuff that didn’t mind getting wet.
If you read the whole article I linked to, you’ll find that surface ships had a conning tower too, once upon a time. It was just not as obvious, being buried in the superstructure.
Periscope engineering was indeed a highly developed art. I have looked through the periscopes of https://www.historicdockyard.co.uk/site-attractions/off-site-attractions/hms-alliance and the optical quality and the brightness of the image were stunning.
In a different league from ordinary binoculars etc.
Illustrated here. Above the conning tower were the exposed topside bridge, from which you drove the boat while surfaced, and masts for antennae, periscopes etc.
Even our favorite, “two men, for twenty minutes,” submersible, the bathyscaphe Trieste, had a window. It was a conical piece of Plexiglas 4.5 inches in diameter, and 5.9 inches thick. And it still famously cracked at about 31,000 feet deep during Walsh and Piccard’s trip to the Challenger Deep.
Since you said missile subs, the Russians do , or at least did for their bastion patrols. They would be entering shallow waters in a mine field, so the boomer would be riding higher.
Older generations of Russian boomers used the sail for housing the SLBM’s.
I read Big Red: Three Months on Board a Trident Nuclear Submarine by Douglas Waller not too long ago; the process of coming out of the submarine base at King’s Bay here in Georgia is apparently fairly tricky (and definitely involves threading their way through some narrow and shallow channels). I would imagine the naval base over in Bangor, Washington (the other base where U.S. ballistic missile subs are home-ported) requires similar maneuvering. It’s only after they’re out to sea that they dive, and vanish.
Here’s an idea: instead of a big, useless sail, bolt a cherry-picker onto the sub instead. Just get a guy to stand on a platform, have a hydraulic crane lift it up 10-20 feet, *et voila *- you’ve got a lookout.
What? No one is asking about the huge windows on the Seaview?
It gives you a place to put antennas, periscope masts and the like that need to be above the waters surface to work correctly. A place that produces a less wake and is less obvious than the main body of a submarine.
Also, I know ordinary pleasure yachts are a lot easier to manuever from the upper bridge (which is ~10 feet above the normal bridge). I imagine the same is true for military subs.
google “submarine sail”
It takes about 3 seconds.
Which is much, much less than showing your ignorance here.
Moderator Note
Telling someone to google something is not acceptable in GQ.
Maybe you should have taken a few seconds to read the General Questions FAQ:
Oh Marvin, I don’t mind showing my ignorance. I AM a civilian and an old lady, and I don’t mind asking questions; that’s how you learn things (except–in your case–manners, it would seem).
ETA: Maybe this is the part of the FAQ’s he didn’t read:
We have one guiding principle: Don’t be a jerk.
Made me laugh!
