Years ago, I read an article in some science magazine (think it was Science Digest) about an engineer who’d come up with a design for a sub that was made out of concrete! His reasoning for this was that a concrete sub could travel to greater depths, cheaper to build, and be less vulnerable to damage than a conventional sub. True, there were some safety trade-offs, like the sub not being naturally boyant, but he felt that this was a good exchange for the enhanced features of the sub. Apparently, the Navy didn’t think so, as they’ve never built one. A sub like this could function as an underwater aircraft carrier, but as has been stated before, it probably wouldn’t be as effective as a surface based carrier.
In addition to the zepplin flying “carriers” the USAAF (what the Air Force was before it split off from the Army), and others experimented with large aircraft that held a fighter within. Mid-air refueling turned out to be a more efficient method, and so this idea was dropped sometime in the '50s I believe.
Unless your plane is itself submersible, and rides on the outside of the sub, you’d need a Harrier-sized hatch on your boat. You do not want a vessel to have a Harrier-sized moving part whose failure would result in the death of the vessel.
The USS Halibut, built to fire the Regulus I missile, had just such an opening. It scared the living daylights out of everyone who ever sailed on her. She was a one-off, never to be repeated, due in large part to her being horribly vulnerable while launching.
Another point: Modern fighters typically operate as part of a system which includes AWACS support, ship-born radar, etc. A fighter or two all by themselves won’t be nearly as dangerous. And we currently have the ability to project power anywhere on the globe anyway, so a submarine-based plane isn’t even necessary.
yeah i just saw something on the History channel about this - about how Japan had subs where they could launch aircraft from. Even showed a film clip of one. I guess the big question is why the US doesn’t have them in service nowadays… i mean humongous ones. Why not have all aircracf carriers be submersible? (assuming cost is not the sole answer)
What would be the point? They’d be incredibly expensive, still require the defensive auxilary ships, be more complicated to operate and gain near nothing in stealth.
Back when WW II began and the Japanese had airplane carrying subs, radar was in its infancy and the method used to find enemy fleets was to fly a bunch of scout planes around until somebody saw ‘em. In this modern day of all kinds of radar and spy satellites, etc., our most technically fearsome potential adversaries (e.g., China, Russia) are not likely to miss the armada that would still need to accompany such a carrier, and there’d be little advantage to be gained when we’re shakin’ a finger at the likes of Yemen or Grenada.
That’s assuming you meant a fleet carrier. You could, I suppose, equip a sub to carry some sort of aircraft (as in one or two), but as Sam Stone points out, they’d hardly be worth the effort.
There’s really no need for a carrier (either submersible or surface) that can carry only a few fighters or bombers. With in-flight refueling, we can pretty much launch airplanes from any airport in the world and fly them to any other spot in the world. When we bombed Libya in the 80s, some of the planes took off from England, flew around France (they wouldn’t let us use their airspace), and attacked Libya.
It is much easier and much more flexible to be able to fly aircraft to the trouble spot than to haul them slowly by submarine. The advantage of a carrier is that it is a floating airport, with facilities to maintain and launch hundreds of aircraft.
The other option would be sub launched cruise missiles…essentially pilotless bombers. We already have those.
With in-flight refueling, surface carriers, and sub-launched cruise missiles available, there is no niche for a submarine carrier that isn’t already being done better by other platforms. Well, it’s still a cool idea. To make it work you’d need to have “launch tubes” like on Battlestar Gallactica. Of course, if you dispense with the pilot you could launch much more efficiently…and then we’re back to cruise missiles.
You are probably thinking of the McDonnell XF-85 Goblin. Built and tested in 1948, the Goblin was designed to fit into the bomb bay of a B-36 bomber. It was to have launched and recovered itself by means of an extendable trapeeze that extended from the plane. Only 7 test flights were conducted, and the pilot was only able to re-attach the Goblin during three of these. The other four times, he had to bring the plane in for belly landings because it was designed without any landing gear! It was the worlds’ smallest jet fighter; only 15 feet long with a wingspan of 21 feet (unfolded). It weighed only 5600 pounds.
Speaking of sea-launched planes, anyone ever heard of the Convair XF2Y-1 Sea Dart? It was an F-102 fighter that the Navy mounted on water skis! Built in the 1950’s, it was during a time when the Navy was willing to try anything!
One Convair Sea Dart is on outdoor display at the Air Museum in San Diego. For a reason I cannot fathom, the other is on outdoor display at what was NAS Willow Grove, Pennsylvania (it is now Joint Reserve Base Willow Grove).
Generally speaking, the Sea Dart was a poor idea, as like so many other seaplanes, it could only be launched and retrieved in good sea conditions.
Convair got contracts to build a lot of aircraft in those days that seemed like poor ideas. These include the world’s only supersonic flying boat, the YP6Y-1 (? I bet I messed the designation up), an immense turboprop flying boat that required special docking facilities to be even moderately useful (I forget it’s name), the Pogo delta wing turboprop tail-sitting VTOL fighter prototype, and the YB-60A: a scheme to extend the life of the obsolete-when-first-built B-36 behemoth by adding swept wings and jet engines. Convair eventually became General Dynamics, which later still was swallowed up by Lockheed-Martin.
But as to the OP, aside from the need for huge flight deck elevator hatches that would be difficult to impossible to seal underwater, it seems to me that if you took something with the internal hangar and supply storage space of an aricraft carrier and then added ballast tanks of sufficient size to make the whole thing submersible, you’d have one really, really, big piece of machinery. Submerging and surfacing quickly would most likely be rather difficult to manage and certianly very noisy.
BTW, I’m sure the submariners out there will be glad to remind you that all carriers can submerge. Once.
OK, I know, I know, but it would be friggin’ cool.
No signs of anything above surface, until the gunnery periscope appears and spots the target. Then, silently, ominously, half a dozen artillery muzzles (with a suitable high-tech waterproof door) appear through the choppy surface, fire, and disappear again in rapid succession. Dive when the shells are still in the air, reload and relocate for the next salvo.
There’s a gazillion reasons why it wouldn’t work, I know.
catmandu42, wasn’t there something with one of the big V-bombers (UK cold war stuff) and others where they could carry a couple of small fighters under the wings?
And I liked the Seaquest DSV, they had some pretty cool mini-subs didn’t they?
There used to be some subs with pretty big guns, though generally only one. I think it was WWI really, before torpedoes and submerged attacks became dominant.
Oh, there were some “drawing board” type of ideas that centered around the idea of a piggyback fighter in the UK, but nothing ever came of it as far as I can determine. I’ve heard rumors that the USSR experimented with it’s own version of the goblin for it’s bear bombers, but they pretty much gave up after killing 2 or 3 test pilots. I think the closest we will ever get to an “airborne carrier” is probably in the computer game “Crimson Skies”, which is pretty slick.
OK, coming late to this discussion, and then only to illuminate a few side points:
FUGO fire balloons: approx 9000 contructed, at least 6000 launched from the home islands (I don’t count the IJN rubber weather balloons as weapons), so far approx 350 accounted for on North American mainland (about 80 of which were in Canada–as far east as Manitoba!!); very likely still hundreds out there in the woods. Here’s an excellent page about how the Royal Canadian Air Force dealt with the balloons.
’phage and Bartman were right on the money as regards the I-class subs equipped with recon/light bombers.
You want subs with big guns, my friend? How about a freakin’ 12-inch equipped sub? Read about the Royal Navy’s “M” Class subs at this copyright page. Note that the M2 was converted to a seaplane carrier as a result of the Washington Disarmament Treaty. Note further that someone found the wreck of the M1 sub recently.
I have just finished putting up a display of the business end (sans 15-kg bomb, which is still being certified inert) of a Japanese fire balloon here at Fort Rodd Hill; I will post a photo tomorrow.
USS Halibut? LMBO! There’s a ship name for you. “What sub do you sail on? The Batfish? The Crimson Tide?” “No, the Halibut.”
AcidKid said:
You don’t need a carrier for a surprise air strike. Mid-air refueling now allows you to launch from Oklahoma, refuel over the ocean, and bomb Sidney. If you wanted to.
Lemur866 already pointed out all the niche’s are being filled by other methods.
During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, B-52’s took off from Barksdale AFB, Louisiana, midair refuelled a couple of times, bombed targets in Iraq and Kuwait, and returned to Barksdale, refuelling along the way. If I remember correctly, the missions took about 18 hours or so to fly…but the B-52 crews got to go home to their families after every mission. These were longest-range combat missions ever flown, and the bombers only ever touched the ground at their home base in Louisiana.
As promised, here’s a photo of the Japanese Fire Balloon basket assembly that I just put on display.
The balloon itself is long gone, but the basket assembly we have includes the wooden box, which contained the battery and the barometric switches, the insulated electric wiring, and the complicated (cast aluminum) chandelier, with the 72 blow plugs for the 32 ballast sandbags (as well as the 4 incendiary bombs and one 15-kg anti-personnel bomb). The bomb still exists, and once it is certified inert by an EOD unit of the Canadian Armed Forces, I intend to sling it in its original position, underneath the chandelier.
I chose to display the basket hanging in mid-air, suspended by four shroud lines (as it would have appeared in 1944-45), with a sky blue backdrop. (There are two interpretive signs as well, not in the photo.)
I can verify that the Smithsonian does in fact have this plane. I saw it being restored at their facility in Maryland. The Japanese had at one point asked for it back, but no dice. But the Smithsonian did allow it to be measured for a scale model kit.
