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Hi Forum.
I contacted the webmaster for the official Hunley
site with some questions about the Hunley.
Here is the website I contacted
http://www.thehunley.com/Engineering/Engineering%20Home.htm
The above link is actually to the engineering page
from that site that has a lot of articles on it about how the Hunley worked. I
have not read any of them yet.
I include my letter to the Hunley site webmaster
below and will let you know his response if and when he does.
Kindest Regards,
Bill Akins.
---- Original Message -----
From: Akins
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2005 11:21 AM
Subject: Hunley ambient? and ballast and
dive plane operation.
Dear Webmaster for the official Hunley submarine
site.
I am a personal submarine owner. I am also a member
of Psubs.org, a personal submarine owner web site and forum. We have been
discussing the Hunley and how she worked.
I am interested in how the Hunley's ballast tanks
worked as well as how she submerged.
Would you please tell me if my below description is
correct and if it is not, would you please explain to me how it is
wrong?
My information is that the Hunley had open top
(bathtub style) ballast tanks that were open to the hull interior. My
information is that the Hunley did not carry compressed air tanks.
From this I deduced that the Hunley had all her air
from the surface trapped within her when she dove and could never lose any of
that air.
This would make the Hunley like an upside down
glass trying to submerge without losing any air. The only way the Hunley
could submerge in my mind, would be for the Hunley to use her
forward motion and dive planes to force her
underwater, is this correct? Then once underwater the superior water
pressure would force water into the opened valve of the open top ballast tanks
and compress the atmosphere
in the Hunley. Wouldn't this make the Hunley an
ambient submarine as opposed to being a 1 atmosphere submarine?
Then when the Hunley wanted to accend the crew
would somehow utilize the compressed atmosphere (how did they do that?) and a
pump, to pump the water out of the ballast tanks and then the
atmosphere in the Hunley would decompress and
return to 1 atmosphere and she would accend. Is all the above of what I just
wrote correct? Also, has anyone done an analysis of how stable or unstable the
Hunley would be if she dropped
her keel weight to return to the surface, and were
there any indications of that trying to be done inside the Hunley
artifact?
I would appreciate if you could cover all the above
questions and correct or confirm what I wrote so I can share them with my fellow
personal submarine owners at Psubs.com
Thanks very much.
Sincerely,
Bill Akins. |