Back in the early '80's, I lived in southern California. A close friend and I loved to go fishing in Lake Powell. One day as we docked our rental boat, we noticed a couple of guys on shore fiddlin' with their radio transmitters. One of the boats was a paddlewheeler powered by a small steam engine that used propane to heat the water. But what fascinated me the most was the scale model of the gato class submarine. The man told me that he built it from scratch, ALL torpedo tubes were active and the torps were powered by freon. He put on a little demonstration for me. he went down to periscope depth and headed for a bunch of ducks that were just sitting on the water and then he cut loose with one of the torps. The torpedoes had a long range and scared the holy $%#$ out of the ducks. He had to dig 2 1/2 feet in the mud just to recover the torpedo. He said he really had to watch how many times he dove and surfaced because the tanks were filled with compressed air and had to be refililled periodically. He said he got the original plans and then scaled them down and went to work. Took him close to 2 years to accomplish.
