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USS ''Argonaut'' (V-4/SF-7/SM-1/A-1/APS-1/SS-166 (never formally held this classification)) was a submarine of the United States Navy, the first ship to carry the name. ''Argonaut'' was laid down as ''V-4'' on 1 May 1925 at Portsmouth Navy Yard. She was launched on 10 November 1927, sponsored by Mrs. Philip Mason Sears, the daughter of Rear Admiral William D. MacDougall, and commissioned on 2 April 1928, Lieutenant Commander W.M. Quigley in command. ==Design== ''V-4'' was the first of the second generation of V-boats commissioned in the late 1920s, which remain the largest non-nuclear submarines ever built by the United States. ''V-4'' was the behemoth of its class. These submarines were exempt by special agreement from the armament and tonnage limitations of the Washington Treaty. Her configuration, and that of the following ''V-5'' and ''V-6'', resulted from an evolving strategic concept that increasingly emphasized the possibility of a naval war with Japan in the far western Pacific. This factor, and the implications of the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, suggested the need for long-range submarine "cruisers", or "strategic scouts", as well as long-range minelayers, for which long endurance, not high speed, was most important. The design was possibly influenced by the German "U-cruisers" of the Type U-139 and Type U-151 U-boat classes, although ''V-4'', ''V-5'', and ''V-6'' were all larger than these. ''V-4'' and her near-sisters ''V-5'' () and ''V-6'' () were initially designed with larger and more powerful MAN-designed diesel engines than the Busch-Sulzer engines that propelled earlier V-boats, which were failures. Unfortunately, the specially built engines failed to produce their design power, and some developed dangerous crankcase explosions. ''V-4'' was ultimately completed with smaller MAN diesels of , compared with for ''V-5'' and ''V-6''. The smaller diesels were required to allow sufficient space for mine storage. The engine specifications as built were two BuEng-manufactured, MAN-designed direct-drive 6-cylinder 4-cycle main diesel engines, each.〔〔 A BuEng MAN 6-cylinder 4-cycle auxiliary diesel engine of , driving a Ridgway〔Alden, p.211.〕 〔 electrical generator,〔〔 was provided for charging batteries or for additional diesel-electric propulsion power. A more successful propulsion improvement in ''V-4'' was the replacement of earlier submarines' pairs of 60-cell batteries with a pair of 120-cell batteries, thus doubling the available voltage to the electric motors when submerged. This battery configuration would be standard until the GUPPY program following World War II. ''V-4'' and her sisters were slow in diving and, when submerged, were unwieldy and slower than designed. They also presented an excellent target for surface ship sonar and had a large turning radius. Designed primarily as a minelayer, and built at a cost of US$6,150,000,〔 ''V-4'' was the first and only such specialized type ever built by the United States. She had four torpedo tubes forward and two minelaying tubes aft. At the time of construction, ''V-4'' was the largest submarine ever built in the U.S., and was the largest in U.S. Navy service for 30 years.〔 Her minelaying arrangements were "highly ingenious, but extremely complicated",〔 filling two aft compartments.〔 A compensating tube ran down the center of the two spaces, to make up for the lost weight as mines were laid, as well as to store eight additional mines.〔 The other mines were racked in three groups around this tube, two in the fore compartment, one aft,〔 with a hydraulically driven rotating cage between them.〔 Mines were moved by hydraulic worm shafts, the aft racks connecting directly to the launch tubes,〔 which had vertically sliding hydraulic doors〔 (rather than the usual hinged ones of torpedo tubes). Each launch tube was normally loaded with four mines,〔 and a water 'round mines (WRM) tube flooded to compensate as they were laid, then pumped into the compensating tube.〔Alden, p.28-9.〕 Eight mines could be laid in 10 minutes.〔Alden, p.29.〕 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「USS Argonaut (SM-1)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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