As soon as a USN player gets a Bridge Operator to SS1 Level, he piles into the O Class sub.  He heads to his first Great Battle room ready to sink enemy BB’s.   As soon as the first game starts, it like “What the Heck”???    The sub is slow.   Really  S…L…O…W.   Never mind, charge across No Mans Land and Sink BBs!!      Ooops….can’t……quite……get….there.     Not enough air and KABOOM, a hail of Hedgehogs, a basket of Depth Charges, followed by a rain of Shells and the first game ends with a trip to the bottom.    Repeat this a few times and it begins to dawn that this SS is not at all like one imagines.    Is this a turkey or what?

Not really.    Playing an O class SS takes a different mindset then Blitzroom charges.   The O class sub is an entirely different critter and it must be played differently.     How is it different and how do you play it different??     Let’s see what an O class SS really is.

HISTORY

The US, and for that matter, the world’s navies, thought little about submarines prior to the First World War.  Generally accepted naval thinking did not have any great roles for submarines except for harbor and costal defense.     In spring of 1912, a young officer by the name of Nimitz (Yes, it was Chester W. Nimitz) presented a paper at the Naval War college in Newport, Rhode Island on the subject of defensive and offensive tactics for submarines.    Nimitz foresaw the development of a “Fleet type” submarine capable of the same cruising range as a battleship.    However, this couldn’t be done with the present boats.   The present boats were gasoline powered and had very limited range.    A submerged boat would fill with crippling fumes that could result in a disastrous explosion.    Nimitz predicted that the future development of the submarine would make it a “most dangerous offensive weapon”.    Nimitz was also the Navy’s leading diesel engine expert and within a few years, the US was installing Diesel engines in submarines.    Even with diesel engines, tactical thinking still considered the submarine as a harbor and costal defense weapon.   One thought was to put a fifty foot tall radio mast on the boat so it could warn Battleships in harbor of an attack.  The mast could be taken down and the sub could dive in about five minutes.  A far cry from the crash drives of WWII.    It would not be until after World War I would the US Navy build the S class Submarine which was the first step towards the “Fleet type”  offensive submarine.  The S class boat would see action in WWII.   The O class was not a Fleet type submarine.

The O class boats were built from 1916 to 1918. A total of 16 boats entered service just before the end of WWI&