|
The ''Balao''-class was a successful design of United States Navy submarine used during World War II, and with 120〔Lenton, H.T. ''American Submarines'' (New York: Doubleday, 1973), p.5.〕 units completed, the largest class of submarines in the United States Navy. An improvement on the earlier ''Gato''-class, the boats had slight internal differences. The most significant improvement was the use of thicker, higher yield strength steel in the pressure hull skins and frames, which increased their test depth to . ''Tang'' actually achieved a depth of during a test dive, and exceeded that test depth when taking on water in the forward torpedo room while evading a destroyer. == Design == The ''Balao''s were similar to the ''Gato''s, except they were modified to increase test depth from to . In late 1941, two of the Navy's leading submarine designers, Captain Andrew McKee and Commander Armand Morgan, met to explore increasing diving depth in a redesigned ''Gato''. A switch to a new High-Tensile Steel (HTS) alloy, combined with an increase in hull thickness from to , would result in a test depth of and a collapse depth of . However, the limited capacity of the trim pump at deep depths, and lack of time to design a new pump, caused Rear Admiral E. L. Cochrane, Chief of the Bureau of Ships, to limit test depth to . Fortunately, in 1944 a redesigned Gould centrifugal pump replaced the noisy early-war pump, and effective diving depth was increased.〔Friedman through 1945, pp. 208-209〕 The ''Balaos'' incorporated the conning tower fairwater and periscope shears reduction efforts that were being retrofitted to the ''Gatos'' and the preceding classes in the original design, refining the reductions and reducing the fairwater to the smallest practical size. By the time the boats began to slide down the ways, lessons learned from patrol reports had been worked into the design and the bridge and fairwater proved to be efficiently laid out, well equipped, and well liked by the crews.〔(''A Visual Guide to the U.S. Fleet Submarines Part Three: Balao and Tench Classes 1942–1950'' ) pp. 2-3, Johnston, David (2012) Navsource Naval History website〕 For the masts and periscope shears, the original arrangement for both the Government and Electric Boat designs had (forward to aft) the two tapered cone shaped periscope support shears, followed by a thin mast for the SJ surface search radar, and then by a thin mast for the SD air search radar. There were minor differences in how the periscopes were braced against vibration, but both designs were nearly identical. About halfway through their production run, Electric Boat altered their design, moving the SJ radar mast forward of the periscopes, then altered it again a few boats later by enlarging the SD radar mast. Late in the war, many ''Balaos'' built with the original design had the SD air search radar moved slightly aft onto a thickened and taller mast. These mast arrangements, along with the tremendous variation in the gun layout as the war progressed account for the numerous exterior detail differences among the boats, to the point that at any given time no two ''Balaos'' looked exactly alike.〔Johnston, pp. 3-10〕 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「Balao-class submarine」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|