Word: skipjacks
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...Fabulous, absolutely fabulous," said Commander William W. Behrens Jr. of the nuclear submarine Skipjack, just returned last week from her first sea trials. "We could hardly believe it ourselves; everything went so magnificently smooth. The Skipjack will have no trouble holding every submarine record, and we won't even have to be good...
Commander Behrens said a mouthful. Built by Electric Boat in Groton, Conn., with a Westinghouse Electric Corp. nuclear engine, the Skipjack is the consummation of a long program to give the U.S. its first true submersible designed primarily for underwater work. Conventional diesel-electric submarines spend most of their time on the surface, are long and slender with sharp bows and flat decks. Submerged, their unstreamlined shape produces high drag, and their feeble, short-lived storage batteries push them along at a sedate, one-horse-shay speed. Even nuclear subs, whose main engines need no air and can operate...
...Skipjack is the 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...