SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - View Single Post - What happens when the sub goes beyond test depth?

tigone · 08-11-08, 02:33 PM

This weekend my daughter interviewed a former submariner (served on U.S.S. Blenny, a Balao-Class boat, in the early 1950s) who said that while his boat had an official test depth of 300 feet, the actual crush depth was about three times that, or 900 feet.

O'Kane's analysis, as reported by Nisgeis, sure sounds right, that it's at the fittings, not so much the hull itself, where the problems generally occur. There are a surprising number of openings, large and small, required in the pressure hull for a submarine to function effectively. Any of these, it would seem, would be apt to fail before the hull itself.

08-11-08, 02:33 PM	#5
tigone Mate Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 56 Downloads: 33 Uploads: 0	This weekend my daughter interviewed a former submariner (served on U.S.S. Blenny, a Balao-Class boat, in the early 1950s) who said that while his boat had an official test depth of 300 feet, the actual crush depth was about three times that, or 900 feet. O'Kane's analysis, as reported by Nisgeis, sure sounds right, that it's at the fittings, not so much the hull itself, where the problems generally occur. There are a surprising number of openings, large and small, required in the pressure hull for a submarine to function effectively. Any of these, it would seem, would be apt to fail before the hull itself.