Aerospace Projects Review v1 n6 (http://www.up-ship.com/eAPR/ev1n6.htm) has several different US proposals for aircraft on submarines from 1920 to the Cold War. The design most relevant is an Electric Boat pitch to the Navy in 1963.
The proposal lists about a dozen different variations of the idea. Electric Boat assumed that the Navy would have a VTOL or STOVL aircraft available. The reference design had one large hangar with airlock/lifts fore and aft at either end of a 500 foot flight deck. This was the Cold War, so the ship's mission would be either a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union (where "survival" takes on a different meaning) or conventional missions against some Third World country with the presumption of American aerial superiority or supremacy. Some of the other designs touched on in the article - 1920 designs for a "cruiser submarine" with 8 in guns carrying spotter/recon planes - the five US subs designed to carry the Regulus nuclear cruise missile. The Regulus was large enough that the deck canisters for storing it could fit a manned attack jet. Douglas Aircraft designed a seaplane fighter, while Boeing designed a "flying carpet" an unmanned jet powered booster that would let a conventional jet make a vertical take off, in this case a Grumman F11F. - a sketch of a submarine designed to carry 3 modified Sea Dart fighters - and a Boeing design for a sub carrying 8 mach-3 attack planes launched vertically by the flying carpet booster. _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
