SUBMARINE (Project 615-Quebec class)

grabcad

This was a small patrol submarine class of the Soviet navy. The type’s most unique feature was it’s propulsion system. The USSR had been working on a Kreislauf-type system since the mid-1940s, but the capture of German technology in 1945 was a windfall. The REDO engine was not technically “air-independent”; it was started with external air, whereafter a scrubber removed CO2 from the exhaust and dumped it overboard. Meanwhile it recycled the residual oxygen back into the engine; where it was replenished by liquid oxygen. LOX is volatile in it’s own right, much less around hot exhaust pipes and live electrical cables. Soviet sailors referred to this class as “the cigarette lighters”.