Posted on 04/27/2023 8:12:32 PM PDT by texas booster
On September 7, 1955, the U.S. Navy’s first midget submarine – USS X-1 – was launched at Oyster Bay, Long Island. Archival footage of the launch, where the diminutive vessel can be seen cruising past the Balao class submarine USS Bergall (SS-320), may seem comical. Yet the development of the midget submarine – midget submarines meaning small displacement submarines with their own propulsion system that can be operated by a handful of crew – represented something of a novelty for the U.S. Navy at the time.
Inspired by existing (notably British) midget submarines, USS X-1 was designed to bolster U.S. coastal defense, particularly against adversary submarines, in the 1950s. In order to trace the development of USS X-1, we need to look back to the use of midget submarines in wartime.
During World War II, with its submarine patrols covering large areas of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, the U.S. Navy had little reason to explore midget submarine capabilities. Yet with the fall of the Axis powers, as naval analyst H. I. Sutton notes, examples of such ‘sneak craft’ fell into American hands.
German Biber and Seehund midget submarines, as well as Italian Maiale human torpedoes, became available to inspect and, following the success of British midget submarines of the period, the U.S. Navy began to look more closely at the idea of creating its own midget submarines.
The utility of midget submarines as reconnaissance and surveillance craft was not lost on the Navy during the war, it should be noted. Five Type A midget submarines, for example, were used by the Japanese Navy the night before the Pearl Harbor raid of December 7, 1941, in order to provide reconnaissance. At least one of the Japanese Navy's midget submarines successfully entered the harbor, before being sunk by USS Monaghan (DD-354).
(Excerpt) Read more at thedrive.com ...
We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine.
Suspected this was a new design with testing in a somewhat out of the way spot.
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