35-015 TURTLE

The Turtle was the first combat submarine in history to be built during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). The unit was built and put into service in 1776. Its displacement was about 2 tons with a width of about 1.3 meters. The Turtle was armed with a powder charge weighing up to 68 kilograms with a time fuse. The Turtle was the work of the American self-taught inventor David Bushnell, who created a new unit in order to mount gunpowder loads on the sides of British sailing ships, i.e. mines with a time fuse. Turtle was made primarily of wood, with numerous iron elements. It housed one crewman, who in turn moved the two screws responsible for the draft and the horizontal movement of the ship. The first attempt to use this avant-garde weapon at that time took place on the night of September 6-7, 1776, but it turned out to be unsuccessful. Like the next two. That same month, in the fourth attempted successful attack, Turtle was sunk. Its creators managed to bring the wreck to the surface, but gave up trying to improve the structure.