Dive! Dive! Dive!: The Submarines Quiz

Answer: Yellow

Altogether now:
"We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine..."

"Yellow Submarine" was largely the work of Paul McCartney, with lead vocals sung by Ringo Starr. "It's a fun song, a children's song..." McCartney later said. The song was on the album "Revolver" in 1966. Backed by "Eleanor Rigby", the record spent four weeks at the top of the UK singles charts. It reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100.

Answer: Nautilus

The book was written by Jules Verne and appeared in 1870. It became the basis of movies and television and radio shows and a musical.

The Nautilus was a futuristic submarine used to hunt sea monsters.

Answer: Alvin

The Deep Submergence Vessel Alvin was launched in 1965 for the purpose of carrying a manned crew to great sea depths.

Fast forward to 1985, while conducting top secret searches by the US Navy to find two sunken US submarines, Alvin came across the Titanic.

"...the Navy never expected me to find the Titanic, and so when that happened, they got really nervous because of the publicity," oceanographer Robert Ballard recalled. He had been aboard Alvin when the Titanic was found. [Source: "National Geographic".]

Answer: Operation Petticoat

While some of the episodes shown were based on reality, the travails of the USS Sea Tiger were largely fictional. It was set during the Battle of the Philippines, soon after the USA was brought into WW2.

The submarine was badly damaged in a Japanese air raid while tied up in dock. While most of the crew were taken off in other vessels, Cary Grant and Tony Curtis carried out repairs, including painting the sub pink. They set off for Darwin in Australia, somehow picking up a group of army nurses along the way.

Answer: Thunderbird 4

Filmed in 'supermarionation', "Thunderbirds" was a TV show aimed at children - although adults enjoyed it too - and was based on International Rescue, a family team that could go anywhere, anytime, on earth or in space when a disaster occurred.

The characters were marionettes, worked by strings. They had access to a range of weird and wonderful craft. Thunderbird 4 could travel under the sea, usually carried from its base on Tracey Island to where it was needed in the flying cargo craft Thunderbird 2.

Created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, initially the show ran for six seasons until 1966. An updated remake, "Thunderbirds Are Go" appeared in 2015.

"F-A-B" was a response used by the characters to indicated they understood instructions or orders.

Answer: Turtle

Although the concept of submarines had been around for about 150 years, it was not until 1776 that one was used in battle. In September 1776, the Turtle tried to sink a British warship in New York harbour.

The first successful attack by a submarine is believed to have been the sinking of the USS Housatonic by the confederate H L Hunley during the American civil war in February 1864. The sub had been named after the man who developed hand-powered submarines, Horace Lawson Hunley.

Answer: Wolf Packs

During World War 2, Germany built more than 1,000 U-Boats to attack allied shipping. Around 785 were destroyed. Of those, 632 were sunk at sea.

Many were used during the Battle of the Atlantic in a bid to cut Great Britain off from crucial supplies from the United States. Commentators believe that the Wolf Packs came perilously close to achieving their aim in March 1943. In all, almost 4,000 merchant and fighting ships were lost on the Allied side.

Early in the war, the U-Boats had operated singly, but as the number of ships crossing the Atlantic increased, they began to operate in coordinated groups, Wolf Packs

Answer: HMS Conqueror

Three hundred Argentinian sailors died on May 2, 1982 when HMS Conqueror fired three torpedoes. Two struck the Belgrano in the bow and machine room. She sank within 20 minutes.

Considerable controversy followed the sinking of the Belgrano, with some questioning just how much of a threat she posed to the British expedition to retake the Falkland Islands after the Argentinian invasion. From the British point of view, it ensured that the Argentinian navy played no further part in the conflict.

Days after the incident, the sensationalistic British newspaper "The Sun" carried a photograph of the Belgrano moments after she was struck, with the single word "Gotcha!" in a giant font size.

"The Belgrano" was a cruiser that had entered service with the US Navy as the USS Phoenix. She had survived the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Answer: USS Thresher

As the Phil Ochs song had it:

"In Portsmouth town on the eastern shore
Where many a fine ship was born.
The Thresher was built
And the Thresher was launched
And the crew of the Thresher was sworn.
She was shaped like a tear
She was built like a shark
She was made to run fast and free.
And the builders shook their hands
And the builders shared their wine,
And thought that they had mastered the sea.

Yes, she'll always run silent
And she'll always run deep
Though the ocean has no pity
Though the waves will never weep
They'll never weep...."

The Thresher was a nuclear-powered US attack submarine that was launched in July 1960. In April 1963 she was conducting deep dives in the Atlantic off Cape Cod. At a depth of about 1,300 feet, the crew sent a radio message to a support ship that they were experiencing "minor difficulties". She was never heard from again. All 129 on board died.

The Thresher was later found in six pieces on the seabed. The US Navy carried out a detailed inquiry, running to 1,300 pages, but refused to release any information voluntarily. In February 2020, a district court judge ordered the navy to start releasing unclassified documents. Those releases were delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Answer: Kursk

The Kursk was a nuclear-powered submarine that sank in the Barents Sea on August 12, 2000. It is now thought that 95 of the crew died instantly and the other 23 within a few hours.

Named after a famous WW2 tank battle, the Kursk was the most modern sub in the Russian fleet. An investigation was reported to have concluded that the disaster came after faulty peroxide torpedo exploded.

Despite efforts to get to the stricken submarine, it was several days before an international team managed to gain access. It is now thought that 23 of the crew survived the explosion and fire for up to eight hours in a rear section of the hull.