Turn of the Century Sub Designs
So I’ve been spending a lot of time browsing the USPTO files on early (pre-WWI) submarines from the 1900s and came across some really groovy maritime art, all worthy of gracing a pulp fiction novel of the age.
Check some of these out:
John Hays Hammond 1913 “long-range remote control torpedo” US1641165
Edward Lasius Peacock, Lake Submarine co, patent US1067371
Check out the torpedo tube arrangement on the Peacock design
Now that is a lot of torpedos
You have to admit that the Peacock design looks like a forerunner of Gene Rodenberry’s Enterprise.
Could you imagine the Peacock boat in service?
Sloan Danenhower, torpedo pilot boat, patent, 1912 US1111139 b
The Danenhower patent in turn looks very similar to the German Molch type midget sub of WWII.
Of course, none of them ever took to the water that I know of, but that doesn’t make them any less fantastic.
I can’t speak for the others, but John Hammond demonstrated his 25-knot radio torpedo in the summer of 1912 in Gloucester, Massachusetts’s harbor, aided significantly by Benjamin Franklin Miessner. The latter engineer documents his experiences making Hammond’s concept work in Radiodynamics: The Wireless Control of Torpedoes and Other Mechanisms (1916), with the money shot here: https://books.google.com/books?id=6ExrAAAAMAAJ&vq=Hammond&pg=PA122#v=snippet&q=Hammond&f=false. The USN investigated and incorporated some elements in other applications, like radio-controlled target ships after WWI, per H.R. Everett, Unmanned Systems of World Wars I and II, p. 119, and recorded here in action: https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-i/bb4-t.htm.