Submersible fort
Item
-
Title (Dublin Core)
-
Submersible fort
-
Article Title and/or Image Caption (Dublin Core)
-
Submersible Forts to Protect Our Costs. They are conceived as anchored, floating turrets, capable of discharging torpedoes at the enemy's ships
-
Caption: The turret-shaped submersible fort can be rotated upon a substructure anchored by means
of four mushroom anchors. Its only armament is represented by a single torpedo tube
-
extracted text (Extract Text)
-
IT is a short time before sunrise. The
sea is fairly calm and reflects in undu-
lating patches the gorgeous colors of
the sky already visible in the East. The
rhythmic sound of a whirling propeller is
faintly audible. It is still far away, but
approaching rapidly.
Fifteen minutes later the graceful yet
forbidding form of a warship emerges
from the light morning mist. It is an
enemy raider headed for the roadway to
one of America’s important Atlantic
ports.
On board the hostile ship the tension is
great. There may be mines and sub-
marines, coast batteries and other de-
fences. The deck watches have seen
nothing suspicious and cautiously the
raider continues its way toward the
roadway.
The hostile craft has just passed a few
hundred yards from a piece of wreckage,
a waterlogged barrel, when the watcher
notices a sharply defined line of bubbles
rapidly approaching the ship.
“Torpedo coming, look out!” he yells
with all his might. It is too late. Before
the course of the ship can be changed the
torpedo strikes amidships. A tremendous
explosion makes the water rise like a
fountain and descend again upon the
shattered and fast sinking hull of the ship.
A few moments later all is over.
The torpedo, which was lavached from
the tube of a submersible anchored fort,
the periscope of which was camouflaged
by the barrel, has done its work.
An episode like that pictured here, in
brief, would
be entirely
within the
range of pos-
sibility,
should the
government
adopt the
idea of a sub-
mersible fort
in accordance
with the in-
vention by J.
A. Steinmetz
of Philadel
phia, recently
patented.
The fort, in
‘the form ol a turret,
provided with a
conning tower, may
be submerged alto-
gether or only so
far that the con-
ning tower is visi-
ble. It is the plan
of the inventor to
anchor such forts
along the coast and
near harbor en-
trances as a pro-
tection against hostile ships. The mech-
anism for winding and unwinding the
anchor cables, for turning the turret upon
the ball-bearings of its anchored base and
for launching the torpedoes is controlled
from inside the turret and storage bat-
teries supply power for the airpumps, and
for lighting the crew's quarters. For
cases of emergency a supply of compressed
air is stored in a pressure tank in the
turret. The forts would be self-contained
and would carry sufficient supplies to
enable them to carry on between the
periodical visits of a supply ship.
-
Contributor (Dublin Core)
-
A. Steinmetz (inventor)
-
Language (Dublin Core)
-
eng
-
Date Issued (Dublin Core)
-
1918-04
-
pages (Bibliographic Ontology)
-
512-513
-
Rights (Dublin Core)
-
Public Domain (Google digitized)
-
Archived by (Dublin Core)
-
Filippo Valle
-
Alberto Bordignon (Supervisor)
Popular Science Monthly, v. 92, n. 4, 1918
