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The American Armada:
The Fleet Boats of World War II |
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Sailing Beneath the Iron Curtain |
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The Navy recognizes the period from March 1946 to November 1989 as official Cold War service. Again submarines would extend the reach of the United States to its furthest reach behind enemy lines. Over time, their tried and true hulls would go through several transformations as they now patrolled two hostile oceans. |
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CUSK |
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German V-1 Rocket |
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USS CUSK, SSG-348 test firing Loon Missile System, 1951 |
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In 1947 a copy of a NAZI wonder weapon was test-fired from the deck of a WW II fleet submarine. The weapon that formed the basis for the first missile submarine was the V-1 buzz bomb, a winged missile with the ingenious ramjet engine developed by the Germans to terrorize the civilian population of London. Soon afterwards, submarines would carry the atomic weapons of United States around the globe. The cold war itself was moving beneath the waves.
The success of the fleet boats in WW II would give the cold war its ultimate charachter. The defeat of the Japanese Empire had shown us the way. The ultimate expression of technology in warfare for the 20th century would become nuclear power coupled with the submarine. A condition that in every respect has continued into the 21st century. |
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| CHOPPER |
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USS CHOPPER, SS-342, on Cold War Patrol. Time and place is classified. |
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The fleet boats of WW II would patrol the seaways of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact for over twenty years after VJ Day. Fleet submarines like the BALAO class USS CHOPPER would take refits and take on new technologies to extend their ranges. Improved electrical storage technologies, oxygen generators and carbon dioxide scrubbers would greatly extend their time underwater. Fleet boats became true submarines and not just submersible torpedo-boats.
When USS NAUTILUS slid down the ways the age of the nuclear submarine was born. Submarines would defy logic and cruise under the polar ice caps and spend entire seasons underwater. Single submarines would carry arsenals that were capable of ending life on continents. Science had not only reached beyond the grasp of humanity, but beyond the control of even gods.
On that fateful day when a u-boat sank the LUSITANIA, the submarine dragged humankind out of the short-lived and, in many ways, hypocritical age of chivalry, into an age of unparalleled barbarism. Hitler and Donitz bludgeoned the oceans red in an action that would establish the doctrine of total war forever.
The fleet boats of World War Two proved the submarine as the primary platform of man's ultimate destructive capabilty. Giant underwater juggernauts like the Soviet TYPHOONs and the OHIO class boomers became the ultimate expression of humanities penchant for self-destruction. They became the fulcrum between the seat of power and mans ultimate desire for freedom. |
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Return to The Great Lakes Wolfpack |
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