Word: shippings
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When the Skipjack is maneuvering under the surface like a sportive whale, she must be handled more like an airplane than a ship. Her pilot, copilot and engineer are strapped tight in airplane-type seats, steering in three dimensions with an aircraftlike "stick." And as Skipjack dives and banks and turns in the dark depths, propelled by her tireless nuclear engine, the rest of the 83-man crew hang on for dear life. Only when the Skipjack comes to the surface does she tend to wallow clumsily like a surfaced whale...
...Beam. To build a true, fishlike sub, the Navy scrapped all remaining vestiges of surface-ship design. The first test vehicle was the Albacore, built in 1953-a small (200 ft.) diesel-electric boat with extra-powerful batteries and a fat, well-streamlined hull. The Albacore's purpose was to use battery power extravagantly in short underwater spurts and find out what a true submarine could do. The performance was so good that the next step was obvious: to combine a nuclear engine with an Albacore hull...
...result. After tests in a wind tunnel much like those for an airplane, the Navy settled on a length of 252 ft.-almost 70 ft. shorter than the Nautilus-a 31-ft. beam, and a blunt nose that makes her look more like a blimp than a ship. A tall, thin conning tower, which the crew calls a "sail," rises out of her rounded, whalelike back to give roll-stability and carry the forward control planes...
Forty Knots in the Bank. The Navy is mum about Skipjack's performance on her first trial, but her submerged speed beat the top speed of the Albacore (30 knots), and may be in the range of 40 knots (46 m.p.h.). Few if any surface ships can travel so fast except over a glassy-smooth sea. A fast surface ship expends most of her energy in raising waves in the interface between sea and air. But the Skipjack has no such problems...
...problems she does encounter come from her very speed. Noise caused by water passing rapidly over the ship's skin and control surfaces can play hob with delicate sonar gear. The Skipjack's forward planes (used to raise or lower the bow during underwater maneuvers) are a particularly noisy item, so they were moved to the sail to keep them as far as possible from the sonar in the bow. Another trouble is control. The Skipjack's maximum depth has not been announced, but even if it is better than 1,000 ft., the ship...