Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/580

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����Detail of impact Contacbor

"Aluminum top

��Contact

��Flexible diaphraqm

��\

Carbide

contactor

/

���Battery Detonatori-I

��Wirej-Jeadinq to cable

��-Explosive

��Hallock parachute depth-bomb. Flexible diaphragm, upon striking water, closes a pair of contacts. Circuit through the electric cable leading to bomb is thus closed; bomb explodes. Length of cable determines depth of explosion. If the diaphragm contactor fails to work, carbide contactors set off the bomb

��violent compressive wave to go out, caving in the side of a submarine in the vicinity as if it were an eggshell.

According to Edward F. Chandler, a New York expert on underwater develop- ments, one type of effective depth-boml) depends solely on water pressure for explosion. The illustration on the right shows details.

The bomb may be of any convenient exterior shape, and is customarily ecjuipped with two eyes for the attach- ment of supporting chains at the stern of a destroyer, or other convenient point. The uivderwater jiressure acts simply. Push-

��ing in on the diaphragm shown, it causes a detonator to be fired and the explosive set oflf. The particular depth at which detonation occurs may previously be fixed by adjusting the bolt which projects through the diaphragm and outer shell of the bomb. A graduated scale reading in feet makes this easy. The bolt tightens up or slackens the coil-spring pushing on the underside of the diaphragm, thereby making a correspondingly greater or lesser water pressure necessary to com- press it and produce an explosion.

Evidently the type described by Mr. Chandler is the result of evolution, and it

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