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Would-be Nautilus

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Some 105 years ago this week: USS H-2 (Submarine No. 29) partially submerged in the Hudson River, while on recruiting duty at New York City, on 6 October 1919, with the Manhattan skyline in the background. At about that time, while commanded by LCDR Clarke Withers, she performed the remarkable feat of sending a wireless message while submerged.

Note the submarine “fish flag” atop her periscope. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 45615

The second of her class of nine Electric Boat 26A/26R design subs, the 150-foot/467-ton H-1s were ordered by the U.S. Navy and the Tsarist fleet (hence the 26A and 26R designations) with the first three originally given then-traditional “fish” names: Seawolf, Nautilus, and Garfish. These were later changed before commissioning to a more homogenous H-1 through H-9 once the Tsar’s boats were acquired after the Russian Revolution and Civil War prevented delivery.

Constructed at Union Iron Works, San Francisco, H-2 would deploy with her H-1 sister to the Atlantic in October 1917, where they would spend the Great War on a series of patrols and tests of new equipment, coupled with training tasks.

Her wireless arrangement was novel for the time.

USS H-2 Description: (Submarine # 29) At the New London submarine base, Groton, Connecticut, in 1919. This photograph has been annotated to identify H-2’s radio antenna installation and features an associated diagram. This image was used in RADM R.S. Griffin’s History of the Bureau of Steam Engineering. NH 45618

Postwar, the class was soon withdrawn from service, with H-1 wrecked in 1920 and the remaining eight boats all decommissioned by 1922, later sold for scrap.

The Navy, however, would soon recycle the name “Nautilus” to two follow-on submarines, SS-168 and SSN-571, both of which set milestones of their own.


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