Radio Antennas on Submarines

WB8AXI writes "In World War I and in the early part of World War II, undersea boats or submarines found it necessary to surface in order to expose their radio antennas to the atmosphere for communicating with their respective command centers in their homelands.





What type of antennas were used on these early submarines?

How were they constructed so as to prevent damage or the danger of being swept away while the submarine ran on the often storm swept surface of the ocean?


Radio operators in early submarines utilized a variety of band widths in their communications: What type of antenna tuner was used in order to resonate with the fixed length antennas rigged between the conning tower and the prow of the undersea boat?


Does anyone have references for accessing information relative to the aforementioned subject?
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This is just a guess, but you might want to look into Janes book of Submarines...

I can tell you a few things about the com eq. on a submarine... As far as I know, the antenna on a sub have always retracted into the fairwater (or conning tower) and I believe this is usually a metal antenna... However, most subs now use ULF to communicate and the transmitters and repeaters for the ULF systems run in the KILOWATTS instead of watts so that the radio signal can penitrate down below the waters surface. A good person to talk to about this subject would proboblly be someone in NAVY MARS, as they would have a small working knowledge of ship-to-shore communications.

73's
Doug,
KB3LCZ

 

You might wanna look at a couple of the antenna patents I have listed below... there are at least 2 early ones for submarines...

http://www.earth2.net/parts/?basics/ant-patent.php

Also, although I have no facts yet { I'm working on it] the Narwhal pics below show what I believe to be HF antennas strung from the conning tower to two stantions...
[I could be wrong about this and I am trying to do research on it]

http://www.earth2.net/usnavy/ss167/ss167_01.php

It's not much but I hope it helps or at least leads you in the right direction...