Plunger class
 USS Plunger (SS-2; A-2)
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The Plunger class was a class of small gasoline-electric submarines of the United States Navy . The boats were built from 1901 by the Electric Boat Company at the Crescent shipyard in Elizabeth and at Union Iron Works in California. The type boat of the class was the USS Plunger . The original ship numbers were SS-2 to SS-8, on November 17, 1911, the boats were given the new designations A-1 to A-7. The USS Adder (SS-3 ) entered service before the USS Plunger (SS-2) . This is why the class is sometimes called the A class or also the adder class.
development
John Philip Holland had achieved an initial success with his Holland VI, which was bought by the US Navy and put into service as the USS Holland (SS-1) . However, it was clear that this boat could not serve as the basis for series boats. So Holland constructed an enlarged version of the Holland VI, the Holland VII. This boat, the Fulton , was built in 1901 by Electric Boat in New Jersey, but was not adopted by the Navy. The first series-production boat, the SS-2 Plunger , thus became the type boat of the Plunger class. The Fulton, however, was sold to Russia and delivered to Kronstadt . The boat named Som became the type boat of the submarine class of the same name, built under license in St. Petersburg .
description
The boats of the plunger class were single-hulled boats with a spindle-shaped pressure hull and a propeller arranged centrally at the stern . The hull was divided into three sections: bow section, control center and engine room in the stern. In the bow section, the only torpedo tube was in the middle, in the cross section of the vertical and transverse axis. The two reserve torpedoes were stored in the headquarters above the main ballast tanks . The drive system consisted of a gasoline engine and an electric motor . The two batteries with 3 × 20 cells housed in the bilge of the engine room allowed nominally up to 4 hours of underwater travel. The boats had a cross-shaped stern rudder system , there were no separate depth rudders as in modern boats. The low tower was streamlined .
Of the seven Plunger-class boats, five were built at Crescent on the east coast and 2 at Union Iron Works on the west coast.
The boats were mainly used to gain experience in submarine service and to train crews.
export
Electric Boat was in financial difficulties despite the Navy contract and therefore issued licenses for plunger boats abroad. In England, Vickers Sons & Maxim built the first British submarines as Holland 1 to 5, Russia acquired the Fulton and built six more as the Som class , the Netherlands built O-1 as their first submarine and Japan ordered five boats, the Electric Boat Fore River Shipyard in Massachusetts and then assembled in Japan.
units
| Names | shipyard | Keel laying | Launch | Commissioning | marine | Decommissioning | Whereabouts | comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USS Plunger , A-1 , Submarine Torpedo Boat No. 2, SS-2 | Crescent Shipyard, Elizabethport | May 21, 1901 | February 1, 1902 | September 19, 1903 | United States Navy | February 24, 1913 | scrapped on January 26, 1922 | Torpedo attempts, training, Theodore Roosevelt tour |
| USS Adder / A-2 , Submarine Torpedo Boat No. 3, SS-3 | October 3, 1900 | July 22, 1901 | January 12, 1903 | December 12, 1919 | sunk as a target ship | Torpedo attempts, training, patrols | ||
| USS Grampus / A-3 , Submarine Torpedo Boat No. 3, SS-4 | Union Iron Works, San Francisco | December 10, 1900 | July 31, 1902 | May 28, 1903 | July 25, 1921 | Sunk as a target ship on January 16, 1922 | Earthquake relief in San Francisco, 1906 | |
| USS Moccasin / A-4 , Submarine Torpedo Boat No. 5, SS-5 | Crescent Shipyard, Elizabethport | November 8, 1900 | August 20, 1901 | January 17, 1903 | December 12, 1919 | Target ship | Training, test drives, patrols | |
| USS Pike / A-5 , Submarine Torpedo Boat No. 6, SS-6 | Union Iron Works, San Francisco | December 10, 1900 | January 14, 1903 | May 28, 1903 | July 25, 1921 | sold as scrap on January 26, 1922 | Earthquake relief in San Francisco in 1906, training, test drives, port patrols | |
| USS Porpoise, A-6 , Submarine Torpedo Boat No. 7, SS-7 | Crescent Shipyard, Elizabethport | December 13, 1900 | September 23, 1901 | September 19, 1903 | December 12, 1919 | Target ship | Whiting experiment (attempt to exit through the torpedo tube), other attempts, port patrols | |
| USS Shark, A-7 , Submarine Torpedo Boat No. 8, SS-8 | January 11, 1901 | October 19, 1901 | September 19, 1903 | December 12, 1919 | Target ship | Torpedo and other attempts to patrol Manila Bay |
literature
- Robert Gardiner: Conway's all the world's fighting ships 1906-1921 . Conway Maritime Press, 1985, ISBN 0-85177-245-5 (English).
- Norman Polmar, Jurrien Noot: Submarines of the Russian and Soviet Navies, 1718–1990 . Naval Institute Press, 1991, ISBN 0-87021-570-1 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
Web links
- John Holland website. In: reocities.com. Retrieved July 29, 2015 .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c John Holland Father of the Modern Submarine. In: navy.mil. Archived from the original on April 1, 2015 ; accessed on July 29, 2015 .
- ↑ Norman Polmar, Jurrien Noot: Submarines of the Russian and Soviet Navies, 1718-1990 . Naval Institute Press, 1991, p. 22 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ American 'A' Boats. Type 7. In: reocities.com. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; accessed on July 29, 2015 .