Submarines spend their entire careers trying not to be noticed, which may explain why their history is so under-celebrated. Time to surface the good stuff. Cover the answers, lock each one in, and keep score.
What was the first submarine ever used in combat?
The Turtle — a hand-cranked, one-man wooden craft that attacked a British warship in New York Harbor in 1776 (and missed).
What was the first submarine to sink an enemy ship?
The Confederate H.L. Hunley, which sank the USS Housatonic in 1864 — then vanished with all eight crewmen, and stayed lost until divers found it in 1995.
How many times did the Hunley sink in total?
Three — twice in training accidents (one of which killed Horace Hunley himself) before its one and only combat mission.
What was the first nuclear-powered submarine?
USS Nautilus, which signaled the historic message "Underway on nuclear power" in 1955.
What did the Nautilus do in 1958 that no vessel had ever done?
Crossed the North Pole — submerged, beneath the Arctic ice cap.
What actually limits how long a modern nuclear submarine can stay underwater?
Food — the boat makes its own oxygen and fresh water, so a patrol ends when the pantry does, typically after two to three months.
Why are submarines called "boats" rather than ships?
Tradition — the earliest submarines were small craft carried and tended by ships, and the nickname outlasted the size difference.
How does a submarine dive and surface?
Ballast tanks — flood them with seawater to sink, blast them empty with compressed air to rise.
What does SONAR stand for?
Sound Navigation and Ranging — sound travels for miles underwater, where light gives up within feet.
What is "hot racking"?
Bunk-sharing in shifts — space aboard is so tight that one bed may serve two or three sailors around the clock.
Who built the first navigable submarine?
Cornelis Drebbel, whose leather-covered, oar-powered craft plied the Thames in the 1620s — by some accounts with King James I aboard for a dip.
In Jules Verne's famous title, what do the "20,000 leagues" measure?
Distance traveled, not depth — 20,000 leagues is roughly twice around the Earth, while the ocean is barely two and a half leagues deep at its deepest.
Who first reached the bottom of the ocean's deepest point?
Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh, aboard the bathyscaphe Trieste in 1960 — a descent no human repeated for more than half a century.
What is the fastest submarine ever built?
The Soviet K-222, clocked at about 44 knots — over 50 mph underwater, a record that still stands.
What sank the German U-boat U-1206 in April 1945?
Its own toilet — a botched flush of the high-pressure system flooded the batteries, produced chlorine gas, and forced the boat to the surface off Scotland, where it was lost.
Navies spent four centuries perfecting the art of sinking each other's vessels — and U-1206 still managed to be defeated by its own plumbing. Lock that one in for your next dinner party.
