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A submarine snorkel is a device which allows a submarine to operate submerged while still taking in air from above the surface. British Navy personnel often refer to it as the snort. ==History== Until the advent of nuclear power, submarines were designed to operate on the surface most of the time and submerge only for evasion or for daylight attacks. In 1940, at night, a U-boat was safer on the surface than submerged because ASDIC sonar could detect boats underwater but was almost useless against a surface vessel. However, with continued improvement in methods of radar detection as the war progressed, the U-boat was forced to spend more time under water running on electric motors that gave speeds of only a few knots and with very limited range. An early submarine snorkel was designed by James Richardson, an Assistant Manager at Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Greenock, Scotland as early as 1916, during World War I. Although the company received a British Patent for the design,〔("GB 106330 (A) - Improvements in or relating to Submarine or Submersible Boats" ). Scott's Shipbuilding & Engineering Co., and Richardson, James. May 19, 1916.〕 no further use was made of it—the British Admiralty did not accept it for use in Royal Navy submarines.〔J F Robb, ''Scotts of Greenock: A Family Enterprise, 1820–1920'', p. 424〕 In November 1926 Capt. Pericle Ferretti of the technical corps of the Italian Navy ran tests with a ventilation pipe installed on the submarine ''H 3''. The tests were largely successful and a similar system was designed for the ''Sirena'' class, but was eventually scrapped; the following snorkel systems were not based on Ferretti's design.〔''U.S. Submarines through 1945'' by Norman Friedman, ISBN 1-55750-263-3, p. 336〕〔''Il sottomarino italiano: storia di un'evoluzione non conclusa, 1909–1958'' by Enrico Cernuschi (Italian), attached to "Rivista Marittima" April 1999, pp. 20–23.〕 Germany defeated the Netherlands in 1940; their capture of ''O-25'' and ''O-26'' was a stroke of luck for the ''Kriegsmarine'' (German navy). The Dutch ''O-21 series'' was operating a device named a ''snuiver'' (''sniffer''). The Dutch navy had been experimenting as early as 1938 with a simple pipe system on the submarines ''O-19'' and ''O-20'' that enabled them to travel at periscope depth operating on its diesels with almost unlimited underwater range while charging the propulsion batteries. The system was designed by the Dutchman Jan Jacob Wichers. The Kriegsmarine first viewed the snorkel as a means to take fresh air into the boats but saw no need to run the diesel engines under water. However, by 1943 more U-boats were being lost, so the snorkel was retrofitted to the VIIC and IXC classes and designed into the new XXI and XXIII types. The first Kriegsmarine boat to be fitted with a snorkel was ''U-58'' which experimented with the equipment in the Baltic Sea during the summer of 1943. Boats began to use it operationally in early 1944, and by June 1944 about half of the boats stationed in the French bases had snorkels fitted. On Type VII U-boats the snorkel folded forward and was stored in a recess on the port side of the hull, while on the IX Types the recess was on the starboard side. The XXI and XXIII types both had telescopic masts that rose vertically through the conning tower close to the periscope. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Submarine snorkel」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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