Author Description

From the turn of the century through the 1917 revolution, Russian submarine design and construction underwent its own revolution. This book captures that critical stage of submarine development in a series of extremely rare and historic photos, many never before published in the West. Straight from the Russian State Naval Archives, the Central Design Bureau for Marine Engineering Rubin, and private collections, these images take the reader to the shipyards, ports, and icy Baltic and Black Sea waters of tsarist Russia to reveal the world's largest submarine fleet prior to World War I. They show the submarines under construction, being launched, on trials, being armed and provisioned, and, later, being abandoned. Drawings of the boats' interiors and photos of their designers are also provided. The editors, I. D. Spassky and V. P. Semyonov, both veteran submarine designers, provide a fascinating historical profile of this pivotal period that saw sixty-nine submarines join the fleet in fifteen years. The book also includes detailed tables of specifications, propulsion, and armament, as well as operational highlights for each submarine - from the twenty-man Delfin of 1903, which made five knots submerged and carried two torpedoes, to the twenty-boat Bars class of 1915-17, which made eight and a half knots submerged and carried twelve torpedoes and a complement of thirty-three.