Homemade Submarine = BAD IDEA

today's video was on the top five dangerous homemade submarines number five fangtooth in 2018 marine scientist che nice to Penske quit her job to join the community submersibles project a group of more than 300 people who were dedicated to building and maintaining underwater submersibles to be used in research their first submarine a yellow two-person vehicle called fangtooth that had a hatch painted like Captain America's shield costs them six thousand dollars but this was far from a seaworthy vehicle this became clear later in the year when the sub was stolen and subsequently abandoned despite the thieves having tried to turn on some of the valves in an attempt to operate it fangtooth was found half full of water with a broken hatch fully operations submarines are difficult enough to control but the story of fangtooth shows how temperamental homemade ones can be and while those that build them might just be able to make them work people who have had nothing to do with their construction have no chance at all [Music] number four the Nautilus in 2013 18-year old Justin Beckerman built his very own submersible called the Nautilus that he used to pilot around New Jersey's lake Hoboken what he created though was far distant from what you would expect from a submarine that it's a miracle that it even worked the main body of the vehicle was made from an 8 foot by 2 foot piece of corrugated plastic draining pipe ideal he said because it gave him room to sit upright with outstretched legs he added a quarter inch thick piece of acrylic to act as a porthole skylight used for 10 gallon plastic water containers as ballast tanks and salvaged an air compressor from a soda machine to feed air to each of those tanks his design was completed with a standard trolling motor which was attached to the rear and propelled the sub forward it's hardly the safest looking design but it worked out well in the end his first trial saw him descend seven feet beneath the surface and he was able to move around for 30 minutes before having to radio his father because he had run out of Oreos number three the narco submarine drug smugglers are always trying to find new ways of getting past the authorities so they have been designing their own submarines with the hope that they can cross borders undetected this doesn't always go as planned though and recent encounters have shown how dangerous the vehicles can be typically narco submarines don't fully submerge but have the majority underwater with the top part breaching the surface they are quite rare because they cost a lot of money to build but to keep them secret the cartels often construct them in the jungle so their seaworthiness is only truly known when they launch it's thought that about 11% of narco subs are intercepted before reaching their destinations because they're painted blue and blend in so effectively against their surroundings a recent bust found a sub that contained 17,000 pounds of cocaine in it but this is far from safe for those piloting the vehicles every vessel is specifically designed to be able to sink and destroy the evidence it contains within minutes the smugglers know that the Coast Guard won't let them drown but there's still a large risk involved considering the people on board the sub are quite low in the hierarchy of the cartels their comfort and safety isn't of the highest priority it's not known how many people die at sea with their cargo and submarines like this but some experts believe it's quite possible that subs like this go missing regularly with no trace of their crew or cargo number two the uc3 nautilus Danish inventor Peter Madsen used to be a famous visionary with dreams of sending astronauts into space from homemade rockets on floating platforms and building his own submarines one of them called the uc3 Nautilus was at the time of its launch the biggest homemade submarine in the world it took Madsen and his team more than three years and $200,000 to build was just over 58 feet long and had a gross tonnage of 40 the submarine had two diesel and one electric motor for propulsion and could reach speeds of up to six knots its maximum rated depth was around 1,300 feet although the deepest had ever went was 330 feet it could be crewed by eight people at the surface for people when diving and could even be controlled by a single person from a control room albeit requiring some manual adjustments before it was able to do so while the uc3 Nautilus was undoubtedly one of the most advanced and safest homemade submarines to ever be built it was its designer Peter Madsen that made this a place you wouldn't want to go due to events that took place in 2017 he's serving a life sentence and the submarine was destroyed at first it seemed like a tragic accident in August of that year the uc3 Nautilus sank and Madsen was rescued by a private boat there was no sign however of Kim Wahl a journalist who had also been on board and he was arrested on suspicion of negligent homicide he initially claims she died during an accident on board and that he had buried her at sea but authorities suspected he had scuttled the submarine to hide any evidence to the contrary eventually her remains washed ashore and it was determined that he had murdered her for reasons that remain unknown number one the Kraken the Kraken is a homemade submarine that was built by three American farmers from Kentucky who used their ingenious creativity to design a submarine like no other the initial trial saw it successfully submerged more than 32 feet and they plan to take it even further the main part of the vessel is made from two huge recycled liquid propane gas storage cylinders the larger of the two contains the main body of the craft and the smaller was welded on top to give Headroom to people inside steel beams were attached to give it a rigid structure and the whole thing is electrically powered with a hydraulic system that controls the propeller and the rudder one problem they faced was the Krakens buoyancy with the air inside the cylinders it wanted to float so they attached a concrete fields of steel tray to the keel which keeps it upright and allows it to sink when the ballast tanks are filled with water when it needs to float the water is removed for the ballast tanks by filling it from the compressed air cylinders that are stored below a system that's similar to even the largest of military submarines to view the surroundings the Kraken was built with six windows and has a hatch that opens upwards to save space on the inside twin diving planes that are attached to the front enable the sub to be maneuvered when in the water and give full control over its depth orientation diving and surfacing finally the farmers decided to give their creation a new coat of paint so went with a gray body throughout with blue on the ballast and control surfaces and black on the air cylinders it's a great example of what's possible when you set your mind to it but it's unlikely to be top of your list when thinking about how to spend your next vacation honorable mentions the drebbel submarines Cornelius drebbel was a Dutch inventor who moved to England in the 17th century and built the world's first operational submarine of course without the technology available today this was a very different kind of vessel he started with a rowing boat and raced its sides to meet at the top this was covered in greased leather had a watertight hatch inserted in the center had a rudder and four oars under the seat of each rower was a pig's bladder which was tied shut and connected by a pipe to the outside when the vessel needed to dive the rope was untied to let water in and when it needed to surface the rowers would squeeze the water out in total he built three of them each larger than the previous his final model had space for 16 passengers and had six oars and was tested on the Thames in London in front of the king and thousands of locals where it remained under water at a depth of 15 feet for three hours still to this day it's not clear how he managed to keep an air supply to those within the submarine as most of his designs have since been lost Questor one in 1956 the SS Andrea Doria sank in the waters of the North Atlantic near to Nantucket which inspired Gerry Bianco a shipyard worker from Brooklyn to embark on a quest to try and visit the wreckage and retrieve any treasures that remained to do so he built the Questor one a 40-foot 83 tonne yellow submarine his design was as simple as possible to complete the mission and he kept costs down wherever possible even the yellow paint was chosen because that was the cheapest he could find unfortunately though the submarine never made it to the Andrea Doria having passed the mandatory safety checks the sub was launched in to Coney Island Creek he had removed the ballast from one side of the vessel to keep the cost of the launch down and told the crane operator to only partly submerge it this message didn't get through though however and the submarine listed severely and couldn't launch despite his best efforts to salvage the situation he was never able to return to the project and the Questor one broke free from its moorings in 1981 now it can be seen depending on the tide sticking out from the water of Coney Island Creek where it now has a covering of orange rust [Music] I hope you all enjoyed today's video narrated by Zack this time be sure to subscribe for more and check out some of our recent uploads

Channel: Top Fives

Views: 21,136

Rating: 4.5256915 out of 5

Keywords: homemade submarines, home made submarine, submarines, home built submarine, custom submarines

Id: Mh2RaC9cUuU

Length: 10min 23sec (623 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 14 2019