At 53 years old, Ben Rich he was far from a newcomer to the world of military technology. His service record preceded him. Training aside, he had it, and not a little, Rich was one of the star engineers of lockheed corporationhad played a key role in the development of the aircraft F-117 and was considered “father of the technology stealth” (aka furtive), with which the US aspired to evade the surveillance of enemy troops and which still today, in the middle of 2023, is something to talk about.
Rich no longer had anything to prove. He was respected. He was listening. At Lockheed they trusted him enough that in 1975 they had given him the reins of Skunk Works, its major classified R&D and development program. And yet, in 1978 he decided to gamble. She jumped into the pool following his intuition, a delusional idea that occurred to her almost by chance, while doing something as nondescript as watching a company photographer unsuccessfully photograph an F-117.
No matter how hard the good reporter worked, he couldn’t get decent photos. The F-117 was a blur. He, of course, blamed it on his Polaroid. Maybe one of the lenses, he thought. For Rich the key was another quite different…distinct and inspiring: It wasn’t the optics that were broken, but the “stealthy” shape and skin of the F-117 Nighthawk’s fuselage they produced that effect.
A sonar-proof submarine?
“They interfered with the camera device used to focus, making images appear blurry.” explained from Lockheed Martin. Rich’s next reasoning, his leap into the void, was: What if the stealth technology of the F-117 were applied to a submarine? Would he be able to get rid of the enemy sonars like that?
The subject matter was interesting enough to be worth a try, so Rich and his team of engineers bought a small model submarine, faired it, and put it to the test in a special chamber. The design may have been somewhat crude, but it worked, and in a big way: sonar return was reduced by three orders of magnitude, a more than promising data that encouraged the company to persevere with the idea of the stealth submarines.
Thanks to its design, the submersible —which according to Lockheed it resembled a flat-paneled cigar—bounced sonar signals and muffled engine roar and crew noises. When Rich considered that the idea was mature enough and they had done a decent number of studies, he took all the material from him and knocked on the door of the Pentagon.
The problem is that the Navy captain who attended him did not share his enthusiasm: a submersible like that might be silent, yes, but its design could detract from it. two or three knots of speed, which diminished his interest.
The meeting went badly enough that the stealth ship concept seemed touched and sunk. And perhaps it would have been if Rich hadn’t had a second unexpected insight, this time while he was chatting with a Skunk Works colleague who just got back from Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii.
There I had seen the Small Water Area Twin Hulla catamaran inspired by the ideas of the Canadian Frederick G. Creed which, the companion commented, stood out for its speed and stability. Rich saw something else in it, however: an ideal basis for revisiting the idea of the stealth ship. Maybe the submarine thing hadn’t turned out well, but… and a surface vessel who aspired to the same thing: equip himself with “stealthy” technology to circumvent the control of enemies?
Safe from prying eyes
These were the years of the Cold War, those of the continuous struggle between the US and the USSR, and one of the great headaches of the US Navy was the control of the Soviet RORS satellite. With this backdrop, he took advantage of a meeting with the Defense leadership that in theory was supposed to deal with the F-117 aircraft to drop his new proposal. Things went better on that occasion and the engineer won a contract for DARPA that allowed him to explore his idea.
The result was Sea Shadow, an angular ship with exotic shapes that still looks like something out of a science fiction movie. The “sneaky” thing was also applied in the broadest sense: in philosophy… and execution. To keep the project secret, the prototype was assembled inside a submersible barge located in Redwood City, California. The works lasted 27 months, with a total budget of around 200 million dollars. As explains Popular Sciencewhich revealed the project some time later, in 1993, “officially did not exist”.
Flashy yes; but not successful. The Sea Shadow did not fare too well.
The first tests, from 1981, were a disappointment. To the surprise of Lockheed’s Oceanic Division, which took over the project, and probably Rich himself, its wake was very noisy. A lot. So much so that that ship designed to go unnoticed could be detected with sonar and from the air. The reason they discovered it soon after: the motor’s propellers were turned upside down.
Once this setback was resolved, the ship was completed in 1984 and completed several tests in 1985 and 1986, but without its concept completely coming together. At least that’s what her story implies. The engineers took out some other valuable lesson for periscopes and other Navy ships, but the Sea Shadow did not make it past the testing phase, nor was it mass-produced.
Tired perhaps of that peculiar ship, of 50 meters in length by 21 m of beam, a draft of 4.4 m and capacity for a meager crew of only four people —a commander, a helmsman, a navigator and an engineer— in 2006 the Government decided to put it up for sale without much success. He had to wait a few years, until 2012, for Bay Ship to take him over in exchange for $2.5 million and a commitment: that I would not sail again.
The “shadow of the seas” ended up scrapped and reduced to scrap.
Poor end for a ship that aspired to be to the US naval force what the emblematic Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk represented for his aviation.
Photos: US Navy (Wikipedia) and lochkeed martin
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