I actually wanted to take this opportunity to explain a bit about the structure of the submarine force during WW2. One thing that made the US exceptional was its logistical capabilities. Basically, each submarine squadron (comprised of two submarine divisions) gets its own tender or submarine base.
These dedicated tender ships or the submarine bases do basically everything that’s involved in making sure a submarine run properly. This means providing spare parts and doing repairwork (short of a complete overhaul almost everything can be fixed on base), providing office space for the officers and their staff, billet maintenance and repair personnel, and the supplying of all foods, fuel, clothing, parts, munitions, medical stores, and the like.
From what I’ve heard of submariner’s recollections, even something like changing a propeller can be done on base. That being said, however, typically a submarine is sent back to the US after five war patrols, so I would say that in general, US submarines (especially towards the later end of the war) are very well supplied and maintained.
As far as Pacific goes, though, dedicated submarine girl bases are not currently on STEC’s radar. Subgirls aren’t submarines. It makes more sense for the girls to fix and maintain their own equipment with the assistance of fairies, and the fairies tend to be more skillful when there are more of them around each other. Thus, while it is possible to take all of the submarine related fairies and house them separately, STEC found it more sensible to just leave them all at Avalon.
What is being created, however, is an intricate system designed to funnel materials out of the deep-sea and into Avalon and the continent proper. STEC’s came a long way from its early days where subgirls are sent out to collect resources from beneath the ocean floor. That job can now be passed around and shared with the entire organization thanks to technological breakthroughs.
In addition, there is thought about creating strategic caches accessible to subgirls where they can replenish their weapons mid-sortie. That discussion is on-going, however. For one thing, STEC is a bit leery when it comes to leaving shipgirl weapons hidden (and unguarded). It’s safe to say that humanity still doesn’t understand shipgirl weaponry very well, and leaving that stuff sitting around is probably a bad idea by anyone’s count. For the other, it runs against the general principles in which STEC wages war. If a subgirl is determined to have sortied with an optimized load, then it makes better sense for her to return for R&R rather than attempting to continue on in a haphazard fashion.
HIYA! I’M TAUTOG! TODAY I’D LIKE TO INTRODUCE YOU TO THE FIRST SUBGIRL OF OUR BOOK. IT’S AN OLD FRIEND THAT I’M SURE YOU’VE SEEN FOR A LONG WHILE –
HAHAHA! JUST WHO WERE YOU EXPECTING? IT’S TIME TO LEARN ABOUT SUBMARINES! HOT GIRLS IN BIKINIS CAN WAIT!
LISTEN UP, MAGGOTS, AND WELCOME TO DOLPHIN’S KICKASS SUB CORNER!
IT’S LIKE TAUTOG’S SUB CORNER BUT MORE BADASS AND FILLED WITH MORE FACTS!
YOU’VE ALL SEEN THIS POSTER BEFORE. OR YOU BETTER HAVE! THIS HERE’S THE REAL DEAL, A BONA-FIDE EXAMPLE OF A REAL WORLD WAR TWO SUBMARINE RECRUITMENT POSTER!
AND YOU WANNA KNOW WHAT ELSE?
THAT THERE’S A DOLPHIN. THE OFFICIAL EMBLEM OF THE SUBMARINE SERVICE! CAPTAIN KING CAME UP WITH THAT! YES, THAT ONE. I BETCHA YOU DIDN’T KNOW ADMIRAL ERNEST KING COULD DRAW, DID YOU? WELL HE DREW AND CAME UP WITH THE BASIC DESIGN! IT’S –
Dooooolphin, your capslock key is stuck.
HUH? WHAT? Oh.
…Whaddaya lookin’ at, depth perception? I’m not gonna distribute bikini pics for this update! It’s f[censored] April Fool’s Day, AND a FUC[censored] SATURDAY! THAT’S WORK. DO YOU KNOW WHO WORKS ON SATURDAYS?
You?
OF COURSE I DO, WHAT ELSE DO YA GOT?
Morgane?
THAT GIRL’S A WORKAHOLIC. SHE DOESN’T COUNT.
Zero’s doing stuff too.
YEAH WELL HE’S AT A CONVENTION. THAT’S HALF WORK HALF FUN.
K9’s writing on a Saturday morning too.
WELL GOOD ON HIM –
I mean, Sima drew you like an hour ago! Just for today!
…WHERE WAS I GOING WITH THIS AGAIN?
*sigh*
That’s a wrap, folks. We’ll figure out the site and she can teach you about subgirls in our next sub corner –
K9 here. WordPress is being stupid and locked me out, so Morgane’s doing the post for me. But of course, you’re not here to hear me rant about wordpress.
Tautog, you’re up!
Huh, wha? An introduction? I didn’t know it was time for an introduction. Give me a minute!
Hiya. I’m Tautog. Today I would like to introduce to you our newest book scheduled for release sometimes early Q2 of 2017. It’s the Silent Service! Focus: subgirls.
This book details the daily lives of the subgirls, and will feature twelve all new original subgirls along with the familiar faces you know from the other Pacific books. If you’ve ever wondered what life is like for us on Avalon, then this is your book!
Since a good number of us will be debuting in this book, we’ll be introducing ourselves, too! Something like this. Here’s a part of the text that’s part of the book.
How’s your day been?
How’s my day been? Fiiiiine.
This morning Tambor decided she wanted pancakes. Tambor then made too much batter and then proceeded to burn every single one. About half of them literally caught fire. Since Trout was off helping you, I ended up cooking for everyone.
My pancakes did not catch on fire. I wonder what’s Tambor’s special trick.
Lori and I went shooting after breakfast. She decided to try my springfield, saying something about how a scope could make her hit things.No guesses on how well she did.
(Lori didn’t hit a single thing. Big surprise, huh?)
I applaud her perseverance, but she’s going to need help. If she practices the wrong things all the time, the only thing she’s going to do really well are, well, wrong things. Anyways, I wanted to make sure she doesn’t shoot herself, so I had to skip lunch. It’s unfortunate.
I went looking to see if there are leftovers in the kitchen. I didn’t find any edibles. I did, however, end up in the middle of a Pennsy/Sanny fight. Neither one of those two would let you go until you’ve validated one of their beliefs, but I got away all the same. Yay.
After that… For the umpteenth time, Chester tried to convince me to brush aside my hair because I needed to “unleash the powers of the evil eye!” I’m not sure what the hell an “evil eye” is or how to get Chester to shut up about it, but I didn’t unleash said power today.
That’s been my day so far. So things are fine!! Just. Fiiiine. Thanks for asking.
So as you can see it’s kind of a cross between the whimsical nature of OCEAN, the matter-of-fact “reports” of Action Reports, and the profiles found in the Pacific books.
Tell me a bit about your namesake.
SS-199 was one of the most successful submarines in navy history. She was present from the attack on Pearl all the way to the end and sank a grand total of 26 ships. If I remember correctly, it may be one of the highest out of all US submarines. Whatever the numbers may be, she ended 11th in total tonnage sunk.
Hmm, if I was to give her a personality, I’d say she simply did her job and did it well. Not many can contest having scored the first kill during the war, but old Sieglaff always said that it was a torpedoman from Tautog that downed the first Japanese plane at Pearl. Then the ship just went out with her crew and did her thing. Thirteen war patrols. Thirteen missions, accomplished. I think it’s the fact that she was so consistent during the entire war that she ended up with her nickname, the “Terrible T.” Thanks to that, a lot of girls here expect me to work miracles where I think they’d be perfectly capable of doing things themselves. Except for maybe Tambor. Or Chester. Or Laffey. Or Lori when it comes to guns. Or Trout when it comes to taking it easy…
Correction – Most girls would be perfectly capable of doing things themselves.
Oh. You meant the fish?
…Tautogs are delicious. Very meaty fish if you’re crafty enough to catch one.
Right. I’ll also have my own little mini-show in this book. It’s called Tautog’s Sub Corner! It’s all about submarine stories, facts, trivia, and other fun tidbits. If that sounds fun to you then definitely keep a lookout for that!
Hiya folks, Tautog here. Today I’d like to talk about the two common types of military submarine: Diesel Electric, and Nuclear.
Most, if not all submarines in WWII were run using diesel electric power. These submarines had two engines, a diesel one and an electric one. The diesel engine was for running on the surface, and the electric motor was for going underwater.
One good thing about this set-up is that it’s really quiet when under water. Some modern submarines using this system can be almost impossible to detect using conventional detection methods! (They’re much cheaper to produce too.)
The disadvantage is that you have to run on the surface to charge the batteries, and that these submarines can’t go as far on one tank of gas. Of course, some later designs found ways around it – ask Lori to tell you about the XXI U-boats, for example, but it was a design limitation.
Nuclear submarines are powered (obviously!) using a nuclear reactor. All US submarines in the US navy currently are nuclear submarines. They’re a handful to work with, louder than the diesel powered ones and really, really, really expensive. It’s why you only see major world powers deploy nuclear subs in large quantities. They’re just really costly to maintain. They’re big too! A nuclear attack sub can be 3 to 4 times the size of a WWII era diesel boat, while the nuclear missile subs can be ten times as large!
The advantage to using nuclear is the underwater endurance. These boats can be submerged for months at a time, can go pretty fast, and don’t need refueling for years. You can see why this would be handy when performing missions. Modern diesel electrics have ways of emulating the underwater endurance of the nuclear boats, but they’re still just not as good.
Also, of course, the nuclear-powered submarines don’t have to surface to charge anything. In fact, the only time they’d need to come up would be to replenish their food supplies!
Something like this. We’re going to figure out just how in-depth we want to go, so expect to see everything from simple intros to why subs exist to how sonar works to even life on a submarine!
…Lastly, there’s a bikini calendar.
Dolphin! This is your stupid idea. I’m not explaining it!
WHADDAYATHINKWE’RE PUTTING INABIKINICALENDAR FOR, DEPTH PERCEPTION?
Nights like these where it’s actually super late I tend to post pictures that the team or our readers send in.
This is the deck gun on a certain submarine. I think you can see how these things are easier to convert into shipgirl weapons than say, the casemated guns.
(I always thought it was a bit strange that some of the DD girls in KanColle held literal cubes with turrets sticking out – the later arts adds handles and stuff, but I really can’t see how holding a box would actually work)
Now, this does bring up a question of size. Look at Narwhal’s art, for instance, and then something like this with one of the girls we’re doing for Silent Service…
The distinction here is personal weapon vs. gear rigging. Think of the latter as official and standardized equipment (and, by the way, not all shipgirls need to head out with all of their gear), and the former stuff generally made by the shipgirls themselves. Precedent for this king of thing include Phoenix, Sailfish, or the girl shown here.
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