The Design And Construction Of The Nautilus

Expanded 4th Edition with 60+ pages of new material. Is there anyone, of any age, who has read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and not sketched their vision of the Nautilus in their imagination or down on paper? For 150 years, the submarine created by Jules Verne has captivated readers and inspired countless interpretations. Jules Verne was meticulous about incorporating cutting-edge technology of his time and making reasonable extrapolations. The Design and Construction of the Nautilus takes Jules Verne's in-text descriptions, paired with extensive research on the technology of the time in which Verne's iconic book was written, and presents detailed construction plans, design notes, and operational theories based on modern submarine technologies. The Nautilus is more than just a 19th-century mechanical marvel. She has always represented the ultimate technological triumph over nature, a symbol of mankind's mastery of our domain, and the human desire to explore the unknown.

Submarines had a vital, if often unheralded, role in the superpower navies during the Cold War. Their crews carried out intelligence-collection operations, sought out and stood ready to destroy opposing submarines, and, from the early 1960s, threatened missile attacks on their adversary's homeland, providing in many respects the most survivable nuclear deterrent of the Cold War. For both East and West, the modern submarine originated in German U-boat designs obtained at the end of World War II. Although enjoying a similar technology base, by the 1990s the superpowers had created submarine fleets of radically different designs and capabilities. Written in collaboration with the former Soviet submarine design bureaus, Norman Polmar and K. J. Moore authoritatively demonstrate in this landmark study how differing submarine missions, antisubmarine priorities, levels of technical competence, and approaches to submarine design organizations and management caused the divergence.

Never-before-published, firsthand accounts of under-sea action presented with a summary of torpedo tactics illustrate how a submarine's crew can hit a target trying to avoid being hit. Legendary figures in American submarine history come to life in actual logs of undersea warfare, and in accounts of sailors who were in the van of torpedo tactics development. The technology is explained in detail, showing how American subs have been so successful in their hundred-year history. Outlandish gags and pranks of submarine skippers are included, showing just how brazen this elite group of super-competent sailors could be. The reader travels through World War II and the Cold War as submarines and torpedoes enter the nuclear age. The book is filled with diagrams and illustrations.