"Le Redoutable SSBN photo tour" Topic

Now that she's a museum in Cherbourg, here's a photo gallery of some of the tour. CNET's commentary aside, it's not too bad. There's obviously been a lot of sanitizing (the reactor spaces are completely gone), but there are some things I've never seen before – the spaces between the hulls!

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I have been doing a lot of reading on submarines lately, (Hunter Killer, Twenty Million Tones Under the Sea), and was surprised that many modern subs have a light weight outer hull, just for aquadynamics and noise control.

@PHGamer: depends on the maker. The US went with single hulls on all the nuke boats, while the Russians have mostly stayed with double hulls.

The problem with a double hull is that it's bigger (larger wetted area = more drag), so makes for a slower boat.

But having a double hull means that you have a lot more reserve buoyancy, and potentially are harder to damage.

The US WW2 fleet boats would use one ballast tank as an external fuel tank to extend their range, and the new AIP fuel cell boats like the Type 212 and Dolphin-class are mounting the hydrogen and oxygen tanks outside the pressure hull for safety.

Thanks, good to know. The book Hunter Killer was about British subs.