USS Albacore and Submarine Development

The submarine USS Albacore prototyped the now-standard US tear drop shaped submarine hull and represented a major leap in technology.  During that same general time period, the US Navy made additional extensive improvements in submarine technology which saw the introduction of nuclear reactors, new hull shapes, new propeller systems, new diving/control plane systems, greatly enhanced quieting, deeper dive limits, new ‘flight’ control systems, and much more.

USS Albacore

So, what’s our interest in the Albacore, today?  It’s the lessons that Albacore offers about how to develop technology.  We’re so used to the incessant drum beat of developmental and acquisition - often, the two being concurrent! - failure that we’ve forgotten that we once completely understood how to engage in technological advancement and acquisition and, most stunning to us today, we’ve forgotten that we used to be able to execute large leaps in technology in very short time frames – times that, frankly, seem like fantasy to us and, if anyone proposed similar time frames and similar degrees of advancement today, we’d laugh them off as unrealistic dreamers.  So, let’s look at the Albacore and its lessons.

At the end of WWII, the Gato/Balao class subs represented the peak of US submarine technology but, even then, it was apparent to naval designers that there was so much more potential in submarines but that it would require some radically new technology.  Not even the evolutionary advancement of the Tang class, essentially an improved WWII sub, could realize the submarine potential.

Tang Class

The missing, necessary piece of the potential puzzle was a way to transform the submarine from a surface ship that could, on occasion, submerge to a true undersea vessel that was inherently more at home under the water than on the surface and would perform better underwater than on the surface.  Thus, in 1949, Navy designers began conducting extensive hydrodynamic research into new hull forms.  The Navy wanted to design and build a prototype new hull form and they embarked on that effort the right way, with extensive wind tunnel and water testing prior to construction of the actual sub.  By the time the prototype submarine, the Albacore, was built, the Navy already knew the new tear drop shape hull would work.  The purpose of the prototype Albacore, then, was to find the small problems and map out the performance envelope.

What you can’t do – and we didn’t – is leap straight into a production commitment of 55 ships (the LCS) before the conceptual design was even done and before research and development was even partially begun.

The Albacore lessons tell us exactly how to develop new technology:  theorize, research, test, develop, refine, test some more and when you have a solid concept, design and build a prototype – a single prototype, not an entire class based on unproven technology.  Albacore proved the validity of this approach.  Unbelievably to us, today, Albacore went from a theory in 1949 to a commissioned prototype in 1953 – just 4 years.  Today, it takes us 4 years just to line up all the component manufacturers in all 50 states that will supply parts for a new program!

Lest you think this was some kind of fluke occurrence, the Navy went from WWII style submarines in 1952 to true, modern, nuclear powered, attack submarines in 1959.  That’s right … in seven years the Navy developed a completely new submarine with all the features we now recognize in modern submarines and they did so using a series of developments and prototypes, as listed below.  Study the table below and contemplate the incredible advances, the unbelievably short time frames and the extensive use of one-off prototypes.

US Navy Submarine Development and Prototyping
Class	Commissioned	No.	Comments
Tang class	1951-1952	6	improved conventional WWII design
Albacore	1953	1	tear drop hull
Nautilus	1954	1	first operational nuke sub; S2W reactor; prototyped on land at the S1W facility by Argonne National Laboratory in the early 1950’s
Darter	1956	1	improved Tang; new acoustic sensors; new fire control; new maneuvering control
Seawolf	1957	1	tested liquid metal cooled reactor
Skate class	1957-1959	4	first production run of nuclear subs;  based on the conventional Tang class
Barbel class	1959	3	tear drop hull; combined control room, conning tower, attack center in one space, bow torpedo tubes;  diesel engines; hydraulic ballast controls
Skipjack class	1959 – 1961	6	nuclear power; single shaft; tear drop hull
Triton	1959	1	nuclear powered fast surface radar picket submarine
Halibut	1960	1	first guided missile submarine, carrying Regulus missiles

Note the speed of construction with many classes being entirely commissioned within a one or two year period.  In fact, in the 4-5 year period from 1957-1961 we commissioned 16 submarines including 3 prototypes which, today, we accept as an article of faith that they take many times longer to build.

Skate Class

Also, note the small size of the classes.  We didn’t commit to production runs of dozens of units while we were still developing the technology.  Small runs of 3-6 vessels was sufficient to populate the fleet while avoiding the inevitable obsolescence that accompanies rapid technological change.  We built small classes, comfortable that as the technology advanced we could feed the developments into the next small class.  Contrast that with today’s desire to build classes of up to 55 ships with unproven technology.  Even the new frigate represents a risk in that we’re locking into a design for a production run of 20 despite the pace of technological advancement.  One can easily predict that we’ll soon be trying to shoehorn new technology into frigates that weren’t designed to receive it.

Barbel Class

Note, too, the concurrent development of different technologies: nuclear and diesel, for example, and the use of multiple, different prototypes.  Contrast that with the LCS or Ford where we attempted to combine every new technology into a single ship – and were puzzled why the effort failed.

USS Halibut Guided Missile Submarine

Today, we’d take all those improvements and force them into a single new design which would be three decades overdue and cost a bajillion dollars.  In contrast, the Navy wisely broke the developments up into small chunks and built single prototypes or small runs to evaluate the improvements and then fed the lessons learned back into the development and production cycles.

History screams lessons at us but we steadfastly refuse to listen.  Albacore and the early developmental efforts that produced today’s modern submarine provide us the lessons and template for our own development efforts and yet we ignore the lessons.  We need to study our own history, learn the lessons, and readjust our expectations to much faster and more productive standards.  We cannot afford to keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over.

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Here’s a few more interesting tidbits about Alacore:

Albacore’s design was authorized in late 1950 and the submarine was commissioned in 1953.  By comparison, the first LCS required over 4 years to go from contract award to commission and the Zumwalt required 11 years!

Albacore used conventional diesel engines.

Not only did Albacore prove out the tear drop shape hull but the sub was used for other developmental advancements as her career progressed.  She was used to test various stern configurations and propellers including concentric contra-rotating propellers, various noise reduction measures, and various sonar equipment fits.  Albacore was decommissioned in Dec 1972 due to diesel engine obsolescence.