Ok, Johnny LA. No, you won’t find any sub operating for long periods in water that shallow. It just isn’t done. I’m sure the Navy has plenty of craft on the water and in the air there but subs will be further out in deep water, trust me on this.
I read an article about submarine operations in Proceedings around the time of Gulf War I that talked about problems operating submarines in litoral warfare. USS Topeka (SSN-754) entered the Persian Gulf in 1992, and USS Annapolis (SSN 760) was there in late 1997.
In any case, I didn’t post to find out about current operations. As I said, I was doing some idle thinking and wanted to know if it’s possible for large, modern submarines to be built with a shallow-water self-rescue system that could be used if the other escape systems failed to operate.
Out of curiousity, has there ever been an attempt to manufacture a gas for an emergency lift system? Rather than carrying compressed air, couldn’t you use the reactors to electrolyze hydrogen gas? Or carry some chemical that produces copious amounts of gas in reaction to seawater?
You’ve seen one video replayed many times, most likely. It was done in the movie The Hunt for Red October, and the skipper of that boat almost lost his job over it*.
It is, understandably, quite hard on the boat, and the Navy does not condone it, except in emergencies.
Anyway, everything’s tied or bolted down for just such an occasion. Somebody here posted once about the time he got run over by an improperly-tied-down copy machine during an aircraft carrier’s shakedown cruise…
- – Cite: my high school physics teacher, who was fresh out of the Navy, last stationed on USS Houston, which played the part of Dallas in the movie (but he wasn’t on it at the time).
Sorry to quibble, but most definetly I´ve seen videos from at least three different submarines doing it, two US subs and one Dutch(?) if may memory serves me well.
Sam–
I was wondering a similar thing. Is there any way to “extract” a gas or a liquid that is lighter than sea-water from actual sea-water? Is this even possible? Practical??
Well… it was a Dutch boat after all 
The fourth is a quite recurring piece of footage; the third emergency blow (that´s the term) I remember is probalby the one in The Hunt for Red October.
Sorry, but this is complete baloney. U.S. submarines are required to test the emergency blow procedure from test depth quarterly. Cite: me–see my profile. I have been on board for many of them. After the first two or three, I didn’t even wake up if I wasn’t involved in the evolution. (And BTW, they are a complete pain in the neck. Being a test, and not an emergency, you want to ensure that you don’t surface under anybody. The disastrous consequences of not doing this were demonstrated in the accident involving the USS Greeneville and a Japanese fishing boat in February 2001.)
An emergency blow is hard on only one piece of equipment, the emergency main ballast tank (EMBT) “knocker” valves and related check valves. They tended to need some work after each quarterly test. If anything comes loose during an emergency blow, it wasn’t properly secured for sea.
An excellent idea in principle. The first suggestion you have is not too practical; why would you want to store compressed hydrogen on board? The second has real promise. One possibility might be sodium azide (NaN[sub]3[/sub]), the chemical used in air bags. When burned, it rapidly produces copious amounts of gaseous nitrogen. A similar chemical is used to eject ballistic missiles from subs.
I’ve heard that the Russians have put such systems on their subs, and I think that U.S. sub designers should also look into the idea. One huge advantage of such a system is that it would allow the main ballast tanks (MBTs) to be emptied at much deeper depths. (There is insufficient high pressure air on board U.S. subs to completely evacuate the MBTs below a certain depth.) One disadvantage of the system is that, once initiated, it can’t be stopped, including if the system is initiated inadvertently. Also, the system would be one-use only. The latter is, IMHO, not a serious disadvantage. After all, airbags in automobiles are also one-use, but they make all the difference when needed.
I would not replace the current high-pressure air EMBT system; instead, I would supplement it with a gas-generation system.
Well, it is pretty trival to electrolyze water into its elemental componets, hydrogen and oxygen, and subs do have the equipment to do that to produce oxygen, but it would take significant modifications to produce a system that could electrolyze enough water to float a sub.
Water (H[sub]2[/sub]O) can be electrolysized into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Both, being gases, are less dense than seawater. Neither is very practical for use in blowing ballast tanks because their production is slow and energy intensive. Also, submariners tend to want to hang on to the oxygen produced for breathing purposes.
As far as liquids, you can “extract” pure water from seawater by distilling the seawater. This is done in subs prior to electrolysizing it. Distilled water is also less dense than seawater, but the density difference is slight, the process is energy-intensive, and the distilled water has better uses (including the aforementioned electrolysis, make-up water for the steam plant, and drinking).
[sub]BTW, I Love Me, if you are curious about this sort of thing, you should really consider taking an introductory chemistry course.[/sub]
On the gas extraction thing. Yes and no. Subs have a couple of devices called oh two generators. They electrolyze water into oxygen and hydrogen. The oxy is stored, the hydrogen is pumped overboard. Extremely flammable stuff there. Hydrogen wouldn’t make that much difference over air as far as blowing ballast and it’s a real bitch to store and handle.
Secondly, yes, subs can surface in the manner you describe but’s not usual.
Rig for depth charge also gives the cooks warning to cover and secure potential hot liquid dangers.
About that water that gets distilled and used. The drinking, cooking, and bathing water is used as is, straight from the distiller. The water for the plant and oxy generation is run through an ion exchanger. It comes out 100% pure, ph neutral (ph of 7) water. Oddly enough, you can’t electrolyze pure water. It won’t conduct electricity, and so an electrolyte has to be used to allow it to be used to generate oxygen.
Before you ask,“why not just use straight sea water since it conducts electricity just fine?”. It’s because it is just too full of mineral salts and contaminants that would quickly foul the electrodes of the generator.
I’ve got a nifty photo of me sitting atop the Topeka’s sail, alongside the tender at the pier in the 'Gulf. Mind you, this was after I was no longer sailing on submarines, and was instead repairing them. I was showing a young sailor how to do spot repairs on periscope fairings.
Yup, the water was shallow, and sure enough, there was a modern nuc boat, big as life, and scary as hell to pretty much anyone that wanted to get frisky.
BTW: IRT testing emergency surface. It’s an E-ticket ride. We did it after every overhaul, though not usually from maximum depth. The best place to be in the boat during this is in the bow compartment. When the boat broaches, for an instant you hang weightless, before gravity regains control.
My brother-in-law did about a year of sub duty. He got his “dolphins” his first time out. He didn’t like emergency blows, he said they made him sick to his stomach.
I do remember him telling me a story about a sub’s “planes” getting stuck and the only way to stop from going down was to do an emergancy blow. When they did it the gas froze while filling the ballast tanks not letting any air through and the sub went down. Anyone verfy this?
He’s talking about the USS Thresher (SSN 593) which was lost with all hands in April 1963.
I’ve never heard that the proximate cause of the accident was a jammed-plane casualty.
Note that the Thresher did not have an emergency blow system. It had a “normal blow” system that routed the high-pressure air through long, narrow, tortuous lines. This was combined with the problem that the high-pressure air was not dried, and therefore contained some water vapor. The end result was that ice plugs formed in the air lines during long blows.
In fact, the emergency blow system, with short pipe runs and large diameter air lines was created in light of the Thresher loss. Air dryers were also added to submarine high-pressure air compressors.
In addition, the whole SUBSAFE program was created (an extensive Quality Assurance program), as well as design changes such as fewer hull penetrations, and procedural changes such as Fast Recovery reactor startups.
U.S. submarines built after 1963 became much safer due to the loss of the Thresher.
Robby - You must be stationed in Groton. I come from a long line of submariners from there. Not having gone in the navy myself, I still know quite a bit from all the salty dogs tales from my family member. Incidentally, the Nautilus museum over there…My dad was on it when it went under the ice caps! 
My maternal grandfather served in a submarine a long time ago. Could have been (probably way) before WWII. Dad was Combat Air Crew in Korea on the Philippine Sea and Lexington before he became the communications officer for Oklahoma City. I would have been a Naval aviator, but I went skiing one time to often. 
Anyway, another sub question: Is “bubblehead” considered offensive?
Mildly derisive sorbiquets are common anywhere large groups of men with a lot of esprit come together. I personally was never offended being called a bubble head. We called surface ship sailors ‘skimmers’ or ‘targets’. In fact there were divisions within the crew of a ship. Engine room and boiler room guys are called ‘snipes’. Bosuns and deck persons in general are called ‘deck apes’. Marines of course are ‘jarheads’, aviators are called ‘airdales’.
And then there are the inter-service jokes:
Q. Why are marines stationed aboard Navy ships?
A. Because the sheep couldn’t clean up after themselves.
I don’t think so…I’ve heard it mentioned at reunions, and from people refering to themselves as ex-bubbleheads. One thing that is offensive to navy guys is when you call them Squids…I live next to the Submarine Capitol of the world…Groton Connecticut. Our towns are over flowing with ahem…squids.
You can always tell the old submariners - the diesel ship-guys* - probably a group of the most detail oriented people I have ever met in my life.
**not just the diesel shippers all submariners seem to be as detail oriented…especially the engineers.
To my knowledge, as of the time I left the submarine fleet about a decade ago, the actual causalty that caused the loss of the Thresher was still flooding from an auxilliary seawater line in the engineering spaces. Nothing I’ve heard since has challenged that.