German Blueprint

The Treaty of Versailles forbids Germany to possess submarines or war planes. Herr Hitler has tacitly admitted possession of an air force (TIME, March 4). Last week the naval correspondent of London's carefully conservative Morning Post did not say that Germany has any actual submarines, but he did affirm that she has an excellent new type of undersea boat on drafting boards and in the brains of capable designers. Special advantage of this blueprint craft is that it needs no storage batteries for submerged propulsion.

Operation of this theoretical submarine depends on a fact familiar to high-school chemistry students--that water separates into its component gases when an electric current is passed through it, hydrogen collecting on the negative pole, oxygen on the positive. While under way on the surface the submarine's engines burn a mixture of oil and hydrogen, have enough reserve power to drive an electric generator. This generator furnishes current to an electrolyzer which turns water into hydrogen and oxygen under pressure. The excess hydrogen and all the oxygen are stored in steel tanks.

When the ship dives, the oil supply to the engines is cut off and they are fed from the tanks with oxygen and hydrogen. The explosive recombination of oxygen and hydrogen into water releases energy. Because of the engine temperature this exhaust water is in the form of superheated steam. All the steam is condensed inside the submarine. Hence no gases leave the ship to betray it by telltale bubbles on the surface.

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