Early Experiments in Submarine Wireless

• Main Author: Wolters, Timothy S.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Iowa State University Digital Repository 2011
• Subjects: Military History; narwhal*
• Online Access: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/history_pubs/124; https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1125&context=history_pubs

T hree articles recently appearing in THE SUBMARINE REVIEW discuss the history of submarine radio communi-. cations in the United States Navy.1 The first of these chronicles submarine radio developments through the· 1920s, devoting a majority of space to the First World War (1914-18) and after. The article's authors point out that by 1910 several U.S. submarines had been equipped with transmitters and receivers; they also describe a primitive antenna system installed on OCTOPUS (C-1) around the same time.2 Yet OCTOPUS appears not to have been one of the original test platforms for submarine radio communications. That honor belongs to several other boats, notably STINGRAY (C-2), NARWHAL (D-1), and GRAYLING (D-2), each of which conducted important wireless experiments in 1909-10.