USS Shark (SS-8)
1903 Plunger-class submarine
USS Shark/A-7 (SS-8), also known as "Submarine Torpedo Boat No. 8", was one of seven Plunger-class submarines built for the United States Navy (USN) in the first decade of the 20th century. She was the third boat of the USN to be named for the shark. Used primarily for training, she was transported to the Philippines, in 1908. During WWI she served as harbor defense in Manila Bay.
Design
The Plunger-class submarines were enlarged and improved versions of the preceding Holland, the first submarine in the USN. They had a length of 63 ft 10 in (19.5 m) overall, a beam of 11 ft 11 in (3.6 m) and a mean draft of 10 ft 7 in (3.2 m). They displaced 107 long tons (109 t) on the surface and 123 long tons (125 t) submerged. The Plunger-class boats had a crew of one officer and six enlisted men. They had a diving depth of 150 feet (45.7 m).
For surface running, they were powered by one 180-brake-horsepower (134 kW) gasoline engine that drove the single propeller.
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This entry incorporates text from “USS Shark (SS-8)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.