#submarines

This Spanish, foot-pedalled communist utopia coral-harvesting, "fish boat" submarine:

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And this steam powered sub designed by an English clergyman/inventor. It had a whole ass furnace with a chimney that heated steam tanks for days before submerging. The machine was unbearably hot and a potential carbon monoxide death trap. A Swedish industrialist came along and funded the project, put his own name on the patent and every boat they built thereafter. He also put torpedoes on them and sold them to the Russians (who refused to pay).

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None of these inventors built their own machines. They had teams of designers and craftsmen to fulfil their visions. I truly hate the myth of the sole genius, it's a breeding ground for parasites like Elon Musk and I don't want to perpetuate it in fiction. Even Vegapunk split himself because he couldn't do everything alone. What I'm trying to say is that I disliked the idea of the Polar Tang being the product of one single man so much that I built a plot around it not being that way.

"There are more airplanes in the sea than submarines in the sky" is one of those funny aphorisms. But guess what, there's been at least one submarine in the sky! No, there's probably a good reason we don't do it that often.

As early as 1920, people have wanted flying submarines. I'm really not sure what the benefit would be. On the other hand, we did also have submarine-launched airplanes in that era. These were "submarine aircraft carriers", which sounds a whole lot cooler than they actually looked, which is still pretty cool.

They worked by having a tiny waterproof hangar on top of the submarine, carrying just one or two small planes with folding wings. Typically, these would be for reconnaissance. Submarines have pretty bad vision above the surface.

More enthusiastic minds tried to do aerial bombing based out of submarines (and did so in WWI), but the small size of the planes limited their range more than just launching them from actual land.

(A WWII Japanese design with a hangar for torpedo bombers)

Anyways, why not cut out the middleman and have the plane be able to fly underwater? Well, lots of reasons, but let's ignore all of those and forge ahead with the design. For starters, your engine needs to work underwater. Jet engines can handle a lot of water going through them (look up a jet engine water test!), but I don't think they're quite able to go underwater.

So instead you need an electric engine for underwater propulsion and shut off the aerial one. Oh, and all that air a plane has in its fuselage won't let you go underwater, so that needs to be designed to flood. Maybe give the pilot a rebreather for that step, since you'll need all the ballast you can get to stay under.

Still with me? Glad you're reading my post, Donald Reid. Reid designed The first (and only?) practical flying submarine, the aptly-named Reid Flying Submarine 1. It did all of the above.

Now, prepare to be disappointed. Wikipedia notes that with such a compromised design, "the performance expected from such a construction is usually rather moderate." The RFS-1 is no exception. Going underwater required first landing, removing the propeller, then putting a rubber cover over the engine. So don't expect a Thunderbirds-esque dive into the water from the air.

After all that, it was a pretty lousy plane and submarine. It only demonstrated flight up to 25 meters in distance, and 10 meters in altitude. It couldn't get near that same depth underwater, just 3 meters.

So there's a reason Reid's the only one to really do it. There have been lots of proposals and drawing board designs. As for submarine aircraft carriers, we may be working our way back toward that with much smaller drone designs launched from submarines.

Beneath the ocean’s surface lies a world of silence, steel, and strategy.

Modern nuclear submarines like the Virginia-class, Borei, and Astute are not just machines—they are symbols of global power and deterrence.

They move unseen, strike if needed, and remain hidden for months at a time.

An era of naval warfare is coming to an end. The US Navy plans to retire the historic Ohio-class submarines by 2028 after decades of service as one of America’s most powerful strategic assets.