lazarus
March 24th, 2013, 14:03
83527
83528
83529
Now I'm just getting silly. However. The question was asked, and it got me to thinking-always dangerous!- How in the heck would you pull that off?
Even a V/STOL submarine Carrier would be huge if it could carry a meaningful airgroup. Its no good to stuff a flight deck on a TYPHOON or OHIO.
Boeing studued the idea in the late 1950's and came up with the AN-501, a 650 ft Triton derived ship that carried 6 folded up F-111F's in individual pressure hulls, ZELL launched from the surface after a laborious extraction-erection-unfold cycle- with no way to recover the aircraft unless there was a conventional carrier handy-sort of negates the purpose. So, I started with a requirements definition.
Has to use exsisting and planned aircraft already in inventory. No X technology.
Must be able to recover aircraft.
Must have a meaningful airgroup. I'm using the 20-27 A/C size arrived at in the Sea control ship studies.
Must be able to launch aircraft with in a few minutes of surfacing.
I arrived at a multi pressure hull , double hull arrangement, 2 cylindrical pressure hulls side by side attop a larger pressure hull. The lower hull, or hulls if it is desirable to use several for whatever reason; houses engineering, operations, accomidation. The upper pair of pressure hulls are divided into 3 water tight compartments. Port side aft, Hanger space, midships is hange/handling room, which connect athwarts to the stbd side handling room. The Stbd side handling room has the deck elevator. Both handling rooms connect though pressure doors (big, yes. But think of a sphereical shut off valve, and you are on the right track...) to their respective aft hanger, athwarts through a connecting pressure hull, and forward to a launch chamber. Port and Stbd launch chambers have the cat, and space for one ready aircraft - or submersible, as the ship should be able to launch and recover air and submarine craft-behind pressure doors at both ends. The aircraft can then be made ready submerged, and launched as quickly as the ship can surface, open the forward doors, and start the aircraft. Recovery is by conventional axial deck and cables, single elvator stbd side, and a single cat port forward. Think of the British arrangement of Furious, Glorious and Courageous interwar. The Sail is large enough for its own pressure hulls for conning and Prifly, and to house deck junk, masts ect, and is set on the Stbd side. The hull form of such a ship is going to have to be of a type more suited to higher speed surface steaming than a full submerged submarine hull; as the ships purpose is to fly off aircraft, it must do so from the surface. Again, a Triton type hull rather than an Albacore type hull. Remember; Triton was designed to operate on the surface with a carrier group as a radar picket ship, and dive to get out of harms way.
Loads of problems with all of this. Such a submarine will be big- light carrier sized, and will be unweildy. The submarine hull will be very wet due to its hull shape and limited freeboard, and will not be as fast as a fleet carrier. The multiple pressure hulls will make the ship expensive to build, and are inefficient in use of hull volume. The double hull gives lot of volume for consumables, but make the boat prone to being noisy submerged due to flow noise from limber holes and vents required by such an arrangement. Last, the inherent difficulties of C3I with submarines. Submariners learned from the Kreigsmarine not to spend alot of time radiating in the EM-Uboats talked too much on the radio, and paid the price from HFDF location- ELINT, nowadays. It is also difficult to communicate with a submerged submarine. Only VLF and ULF can be received by a submerged boat, and the baud rate is very low, so messages tend to be short- eg: WW3 has started. Oh Crap!(EAM) or Hey Bozo! Surface for Message!- tacticaly worthless. Blue green laser has shown some promise as an alternative, but has not been oberationaly deployed beyond a few short range airborne mine hunting applications- MAGIC LANTERN, for instance.
For FSX purposes, these are doodles to wrap my head around the idea and size things out. I did not model the pressure hulls, only decks and casings, and a ramp instead of an elevator to access the hanger and forward launch lock, and kept it all basic. The USS Flying Fish is CATOBAR- has arresting wires, and a catapult on the flying deck and in the launch chamber.
The Soviet version is a S/TOVL ship. I used left over bits and bobs from other sub projects to keep it simple while I work out details. Both have pretty much identical hulls, just stylistic differences to look Soviet or American, in the classic cold-war-fab-50's style.
Have fun!
83528
83529
Now I'm just getting silly. However. The question was asked, and it got me to thinking-always dangerous!- How in the heck would you pull that off?
Even a V/STOL submarine Carrier would be huge if it could carry a meaningful airgroup. Its no good to stuff a flight deck on a TYPHOON or OHIO.
Boeing studued the idea in the late 1950's and came up with the AN-501, a 650 ft Triton derived ship that carried 6 folded up F-111F's in individual pressure hulls, ZELL launched from the surface after a laborious extraction-erection-unfold cycle- with no way to recover the aircraft unless there was a conventional carrier handy-sort of negates the purpose. So, I started with a requirements definition.
Has to use exsisting and planned aircraft already in inventory. No X technology.
Must be able to recover aircraft.
Must have a meaningful airgroup. I'm using the 20-27 A/C size arrived at in the Sea control ship studies.
Must be able to launch aircraft with in a few minutes of surfacing.
I arrived at a multi pressure hull , double hull arrangement, 2 cylindrical pressure hulls side by side attop a larger pressure hull. The lower hull, or hulls if it is desirable to use several for whatever reason; houses engineering, operations, accomidation. The upper pair of pressure hulls are divided into 3 water tight compartments. Port side aft, Hanger space, midships is hange/handling room, which connect athwarts to the stbd side handling room. The Stbd side handling room has the deck elevator. Both handling rooms connect though pressure doors (big, yes. But think of a sphereical shut off valve, and you are on the right track...) to their respective aft hanger, athwarts through a connecting pressure hull, and forward to a launch chamber. Port and Stbd launch chambers have the cat, and space for one ready aircraft - or submersible, as the ship should be able to launch and recover air and submarine craft-behind pressure doors at both ends. The aircraft can then be made ready submerged, and launched as quickly as the ship can surface, open the forward doors, and start the aircraft. Recovery is by conventional axial deck and cables, single elvator stbd side, and a single cat port forward. Think of the British arrangement of Furious, Glorious and Courageous interwar. The Sail is large enough for its own pressure hulls for conning and Prifly, and to house deck junk, masts ect, and is set on the Stbd side. The hull form of such a ship is going to have to be of a type more suited to higher speed surface steaming than a full submerged submarine hull; as the ships purpose is to fly off aircraft, it must do so from the surface. Again, a Triton type hull rather than an Albacore type hull. Remember; Triton was designed to operate on the surface with a carrier group as a radar picket ship, and dive to get out of harms way.
Loads of problems with all of this. Such a submarine will be big- light carrier sized, and will be unweildy. The submarine hull will be very wet due to its hull shape and limited freeboard, and will not be as fast as a fleet carrier. The multiple pressure hulls will make the ship expensive to build, and are inefficient in use of hull volume. The double hull gives lot of volume for consumables, but make the boat prone to being noisy submerged due to flow noise from limber holes and vents required by such an arrangement. Last, the inherent difficulties of C3I with submarines. Submariners learned from the Kreigsmarine not to spend alot of time radiating in the EM-Uboats talked too much on the radio, and paid the price from HFDF location- ELINT, nowadays. It is also difficult to communicate with a submerged submarine. Only VLF and ULF can be received by a submerged boat, and the baud rate is very low, so messages tend to be short- eg: WW3 has started. Oh Crap!(EAM) or Hey Bozo! Surface for Message!- tacticaly worthless. Blue green laser has shown some promise as an alternative, but has not been oberationaly deployed beyond a few short range airborne mine hunting applications- MAGIC LANTERN, for instance.
For FSX purposes, these are doodles to wrap my head around the idea and size things out. I did not model the pressure hulls, only decks and casings, and a ramp instead of an elevator to access the hanger and forward launch lock, and kept it all basic. The USS Flying Fish is CATOBAR- has arresting wires, and a catapult on the flying deck and in the launch chamber.
The Soviet version is a S/TOVL ship. I used left over bits and bobs from other sub projects to keep it simple while I work out details. Both have pretty much identical hulls, just stylistic differences to look Soviet or American, in the classic cold-war-fab-50's style.
Have fun!