An Improved Submarine

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 20, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 28.

An Improved Submarine

MR. W. B. VANDERLIP, an inventor, explorer, and member of the Institute of American Mining Engineers, has perfected plans for a new submarine, which is said to be engaging the attention of at least three leading nations at the present time.

What Mr. Vanderlip proposes is to build a submarine that would overtake and easily destroy any warship that floats. A contrast between the present submarine and what he proposes, so far as the main features are concerned, is the following:

The reserve buoyancy of present submarine, eight hundred pounds; the proposed Vanderlip submarine, thirty tons. Height of present periscope, fourteen feet; the new submarine, forty feet. Limit of submerged run of present vessel, five hundred miles; the proposed one, five thousand miles. The highest submarine speed at present, fourteen knots; the proposed new vessel, thirty to forty knots. The power of the present submarine while submerged is batteries only; the proposed power for the new submarine is the Diesel engine, with an ingenious device that will enable it to exhaust under water. The present submarine has to carry large tanks in order to dive; the new one will have no tanks. This latter feature is one of Mr. Vanderlip's principal secrets. The present vessel can carry six torpedoes; the proposed one, principally through doing away with the submerging tanks, will carry fifty torpedoes.

We used to consider such propositions as nothing more than the wild fancies of partially insane persons. But these proposed improvements in the submarine are no further in advance of present achievements than improvements that have been made during recent years in battleships, guns, and similar fighting paraphernalia. Indeed, the submarine itself was invented only a few years ago; and the “internal combustion engine,” of which the Diesel is one of the highest achievements in certain lines, is among the modern miracles of invention that make it possible to sail under the water and to fly through the air. Men still in middle life can well remember when we had no such thing as a gasoline engine, and it is a shame that this convenient means of developing power is used so much in the devices of destruction.

The instruments of wholesale slaughter and ruin that men are devising in these times are enough to strike terror into any heart; and many are earnestly asking the question, “What will be the end of it?” And as the magicians and astrologers of old Babylon were forced to acknowledge before King Nebuchadnezzar, “There is none other that can show it before the king, except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.”