Nordenfelt IV

Thorsten Nordenfelt

Drawing of Nordenfelt IV

Nordenfelt IV
Submarine Navigation: Past and Present by Alan Burgoyne


Length 125 feet 0 inches
Beam 12 feet 0 inches
Displacement 245 tons

The Story of the Submarine: from the Earliest Ages to the Present Day by Lieut.-Col. and Brevet-Col. Cyril Field, Royal Marine Light Infantry, J. B. Lippencott Company, Philadelphia, 1905. Pg. 126-130

"But Nordenfeldt made up his mind to build yet another and a still larger submarine. This one was built at Barrow-in-Furness and, fully equipped, had a displacement of 245 tons. She was quite a different shape from her predecessors. She was 125 feet long and 12 feet in diameter amidshipship. But her was the only portion of her that was round in section, as she got flatter and flatter forward and abaft till she ended in vertical knife-edges. Her deck and two conning-towers were covered with one-inch steel armour, which would have made her impervious to all machine guns of that period when running awash. Her horizontal propellers for immersion worked in recesses cut in the stem and stern. She had a crew of a captain, mate, two seamen, an engineer, his assistant, two fireman, and a cook. Her means of propulsion were similar to those employed in the other Nordenfeldt boats, but her engines were more powerful, being of 1000 i.h.p. giving her a surface speed of 15 knots under favourable conditions, and a speed of 5 knots when submerged. She, however, suffered from the same want of horizontal stability as her elder sisters, and her trials in the Solent were not at all encouraging. She had been built for the Russian Government, and despite the unsatisfactory nature of her performance she was despatched to St. Petersburg. But she never got there, as she was wrecked on the coast of Jutland on September 18, 1888.”

Ó2000, 2001, 2002 Gary McCue


Gary W. McCue
gwmccue@ct.metrocast.net
http://www.geocities.com/gwmccue

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