Diesel submarines

On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 11:47:30 -0700, Alan Frisbie vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

remove ns from my header address to reply via email

HAHA! I bet it's funny watching their lips move af....no...that's wrong...

***************************************************** I know I am wrong about just about everything. So I am not going to listen when I am told I am wrong about the things I know I am right about.

At least one. The USS Cod is docked as a war memorial at Cleveland

This was the sub seen recently on the Discovery / History channel that rescued the crew of the Dutch l-19 that ran aground during WW2.

Hugh

don't call us Shirley.

The diesel submarine can only run it's engines while surfaced - either to propel it forward and also charge a huge array of lead batteries that filled the whole bottom of the sub of which was over 1/3 weight of the whole sub. During dives or underwater travel only batteries are used for propulsion and operation - and compressed air was used to fill and empty the ballast side tanks of water of the sea that allow the boat to rise or sink. A German device devised during the second World War to avoided radar detection while partly surfaced to travel and recharge the batteries and change the breathing air ... was called a "snorkel " --- a long tube with a water intake trap which could be extended to the surface and take in air to enable and run the 2 side by side diesel engines while the sub was 20 feet below the surface during daylight . The German subs usually traveled surfaced at night and with the diesel engines running for power and charging --- and during the day traveling on the batteries to avoid visual detection during that war. Today nuclear power subs never have to surface and can operate for up to for up to 6 months I believe totally undetected ... surfacing --only as the food stored runs out.

H> don't call us Shirley.

And one of my favorite stories also..... A neighbor of mine , Keith Gill is the currator of the sub and my ex- father in law (Zenon Lukosius) was on the boarding party. He was the "one" that kept it from sinking.There were 6 sailors that made entry into the sub, the Germans attempted to scuttle the boat by opening the sea strainer and letting it flood. Zenny found the cap for the sea strainer and re installed it. There were several boarding parties, but Zenny's party, from the Destroyer Excort USS Pillsbury,got there first.

After the boarding party secured the boat, they found code books and I believe an Inigma (sp) machine. Because the US forces now had the German code, the hunter killer groups in the Atlantic knew what every German Uboat was doing. The Germans never know what hit them.

The boat was then towed to Burmuda, where our intelligence guys literally took the boat apart. The boarding party and the rest of the tak force got bunch of medals and decorations, but they couldn't tell any one what they were for. The whole event was kept secret until the war was over.

In April of this year, some of the surviving members were guests of the MSI to celebrate the 50th Aniversary of the capture. THe Pritzker Military Library (where my wife is the librarian)

a program that featured the U505 captors. They brought a group of young naval officers in from Great Lakes Naval Training center, It was fun to see these young sailors interact with the "old salts".

etc.

Mark Rand RTFM

Tom

That statement is wrong in almost every important particular.

Please find out what "Ultra" meant, and why there were almost court martials over the capture of this U boat. Two of the most crucial advantages the Allies had were that Enigma traffic was being read, and that the Germans didn't _know_ that it was being read. The way this action was carried out in front of the POWs captured almost let the cat out of the bag.

Eeer, I gather it it was the brits who captured the first enigma machine from a U-Boat, actually. M.K.

And it was the brits who captured the enigma machine before the yanks even entered the war, contrary to the fictional crap peddled by Hollywood:

M.K.

The incident with the U-559 is only a small part of a much more complex and interesting story.

The Allies had the Enigma machine almost from the start of the war, thanks to the Poles. But that was only part of the problem. Enigma used a number of rotors which could be changed out and used in any order, a plugboard to feed the signal back through the rotors, as well as a couple of other tricks. In order to decipher messages, you needed to know the rotor settings, plugboard settings and other stuff which changed constantly. Encoding a message was a 15-step process that required not only the Enigma machine, but an indicators book (showing which rotors were to be used by that radio network on that day) a machine setting list to show the settings of the rotors, tables to encipher pairs of letters into other pairs of letters and other stuff. Figuring out the settings was what took the time and what the British got off the U-559 wasn't an Enigma machine, but some of the related books and paperwork.

This didn't completely crack the codes, but it was a major help in the efforts to unravel the Enigma system.

There is a fascinating book called "Seizing The Enigma" by David Kahn (he of 'Codebreakers' fame) that tells the whole story in considerable detail, including patent drawings of the Enigma which probably give enough information for someone to build a replica.

--RC If I weren't interested in gardening and Ireland, I'd automatically killfile any messages mentioning 'bush' or 'Kerry'