"It was a class of midget torpedo submarine produced by Nazi Germany in 1944.
The Molch (German language: "newt" or "salamander") was an unsuccessful, one-man series of German midget submarines created during World War II. Built in 1944, it was the first mini-submarine of the Kriegsmarine, but was not successful in combat operations and suffered heavy losses.
The Molch was based on torpedo technology, and carried two G7e torpedoes attached externally on either side of the craft. It was fully electrical and was created for coastal operations, with a range of 64 km (40 mi) at 5 knots (9.26 km/h). The front section of the boat held a large battery. Behind the battery was the operator's position, which sat between two small trimming tanks. Behind the operator sat the electric motor. The complicated system of tanks made it difficult to control during combat operations. The first of 393 boats were delivered on June 12, 1944 and were built by AG Weser in Bremen.
The Molch were first used in the Mediterranean against the Allied Operation Dragoon in 1944. The submarines were a part of the K-Verband 411 flotilla. On the night of September 25 they attacked allied battleships, with the loss of ten out of the twelve Molch submarines in the flotilla. Shortly after, the remaining two were sunk by allied warship bombardment off of the Sanremo coast.
Other Molch flotillas were sent to Holland in December 1944, but were also unsuccessful. From January to April 1945, Molch and Biber submarines went out on 102 sorties, losing seven of their own and sunk only seven small ships. Due to the ineffectiveness of the Molch in combat operations, it was later used as a training vessel for more advanced midget submarines.
The Molch was the brainchild of Dr. Heinrich Drager.
Several sites confirm Heinrich Drager was the designer of the Molch, but none of them give any further info.
"We're going to have to tell somebody about this-the coast guard or the navy."
The roots of the Coast Guard lie in the United States Revenue Cutter Service established by Alexander Hamilton under the Department of the Treasury on 4 August 1790. The first Coast Guard station was in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Until the re-establishment of the United States Navy in 1798, the Revenue Cutter Service was the only naval force of the early United States. It was established to collect taxes from a brand new nation of patriot smugglers. When the officers were out at sea, they were told to crack down on piracy; while they were at it, they might as well rescue anyone in distress.[14]
"First Fleet" is a term occasionally used as an informal reference to the U.S. Coast Guard, although there is no indication that the United States has ever officially used this designation with reference either to the Coast Guard or any element of the U.S. Navy. The informal appellation honors the fact that between 1790 and 1798, there was no United States Navy and the cutters which were the predecessor of the U.S. Coast Guard were the only warships protecting the coast, trade, and maritime interests of the new republic.
The modern Coast Guard can be said to date to 1915, when the Revenue Cutter Service merged with the United States Life-Saving Service and Congress formalized the existence of the new organization. In 1939, the U.S. Lighthouse Service was brought under its purview. In 1942, the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation was transferred to the Coast Guard. In 1967, the Coast Guard moved from the Department of the Treasury to the newly formed Department of Transportation, an arrangement that lasted until it was placed under the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 as part of legislation designed to more efficiently protect American interests following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.
In times of war, the Coast Guard or individual components of it can operate as a service of the Department of the Navy. This arrangement has a broad historical basis, as the Guard has been involved in wars as diverse as the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and the American Civil War, in which the cutter Harriet Lane fired the first naval shots attempting to relieve besieged Fort Sumter. The last time the Coast Guard operated as a whole within the Navy was in World War II. More often, military and combat units within the Coast Guard will operate under Navy or joint operational control while other Coast Guard units will remain under the Department of Homeland Security.
he history of the United States Navy divides into two major periods: the "Old Navy", a small but respected force of sailing ships that was also notable for innovation in the use of ironclads during the American Civil War, and the "New Navy", the result of a modernization effort that began in the 1880s made it the largest in the world by the 1920s.
The United States Navy recognizes 13 October 1775 as the date of its official establishment, when the Continental Congress passed a resolution creating the Continental Navy. Soon after the end of the Revolutionary War the last ship was sold and the Continental Navy was disbanded. Eleven years later, conflicts between American merchant shipping and pirates in the Mediterranean Sea led to the Naval Act of 1794, which created the US Navy. The original six frigates were authorized as part of the Act. During the next 20 years the Navy fought the French Navy in the Quasi-War, Barbary states in the First and Second Barbary Wars, and the British in the War of 1812. After the War of 1812, the Navy was at peace until the Mexican-American war in 1846, and served to combat piracy in the Mediterranean and Caribbean seas, and the slave trade. During this period the Naval Academy was founded in 1845. In 1861, the American Civil War began and the US Navy fought the small Confederate Navy with both sailing ships and ironclad ships while forming a blockade on the confederacy. After the Civil war most of the ships were laid up in reserve and by 1878 the Navy only included 6,000 men.
In 1882, the US Navy consisted of many outdated ship designs. In the next decade Congress approved building multiple modern armored cruisers and battleships and by the turn of the century had moved from twelfth place in 1870 to fifth place in terms of numbers of ships. After winning two major battles during the Spanish–American in 1898, the Navy continued to build more ships and by the end of World War I had more men and women in uniform than the Royal Navy. The Washington Naval Conference recognized the Navy as equal in capital ship size to the Royal Navy, and during the 1920s and 1930s, the Navy built several aircraft carriers and modern battleships. The Navy was drawn into World War II after the Attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, and over the next 4 years fought many historic battles including the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway, multiple naval battles during the Guadalcanal Campaign, and the largest naval battle in history, the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Much of the Navy's activity was in support of landings, not only in the "island-hopping" campaign in the Pacific, but also in the landings in Europe. When the Japanese surrendered, a large flotilla entered Tokyo Bay to witness the ceremony conducted on the battleship Missouri. By the end of the war the Navy had over 1600 warships.
After World War II ended, the US Navy entered the Cold War and participated in the Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War and Iraq War. Nuclear power and ballistic missile technology led to new ship propulsion and weapon systems which were used in the Nimitz-class Aircraft carriers and Ohio-class submarines. By 1978 the number of ships had dwindled to less than 400, many of which were from World War II, and Ronald Reagan instituted a program for a modern 600-ship Navy. Today, the United States is the world's undisputed naval superpower, with the ability to engage in two simultaneous limited wars along separate fronts.
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