Not Far Down

Not as the airplane is master of the heights, is the submarine master of the depths. The lowest which a U. S. submarine has ever gone is 315 feet below surface--and that only by accident.* Last week off Portsmouth, N. H., Lieutenant Commander George A. Rood took the new V-2 down to 220 feet. To get there it took three different plunges--first to a depth of 50 feet, then a shifting of ballast, a plunge to 110 feet, another ballast-adjustment, and then a final plunge to 220 feet, at which level the underwater boat traveled successfully some seven miles. This test run constituted a record for official submarine navigation and was accounted as a feather in the V-2's periscope.

*When the L-4 was cruising in Irish waters in Wartime, something went wrong with the ballast and down she went. Lieutenant Commander Lewis Hancock brought her to the surface, lived a few years, died last fall with the Shenandoah.