Invisible Themepark

Tag: Military Structures

Cutaway drawings of structures related to military use.

  • Atomic Submarine Engine Testing Sphere Cutaway, 1952

    Atomic Submarine Engine Sphere Cutaway 1952
    Atomic Submarine Engine Sphere Cutaway 1952

    This cutaway, drawn by Rolf Klep in 1952, is of a $2 million, 225 foot diameter steel hull built in Schenectady, NY.

    Essentially, it was a spherical proving ground for an atomic engine that would be installed in a submarine.  GE scientists would have:

    1. Built the engine.
    2. Encased that engine in a section of submarine hull.
    3. Submerged that hull section in a water tank.
    4. Built this giant steel hull, with its 1,364 X-ray-checked welds, around everything to contain potential leaks.

    Source: LIFE Dec 15, 1952

  • Titan Missile Underground Launch Complex Cutaway

    The Titan II Missile Underground Launch Complex (Large Image) is classic Cold War-era cutaway stuff.  At the Titan Missile Museum in Arizona, you can tour the entire facility.  As their brochure states:

    The Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) was the first liquid propellant missile that could be launched from underground. Equipped with a nine-megaton thermonuclear warhead, the Titan II was capable of reaching its target—more than half a world away—in less than thirty minutes. The preserved Titan II missile site, officially known as complex 571-7, was completed and turned over to the U.S. Air Force in 1963. Until 1987, when the last Titan II was deactivated, 54 Titan II
    missile complexes across the United States stood “on alert” 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

    A cutaway from Fortune Magazine (1960) is a bit more artful and fanciful, and looks more like the cover of a sci-fi paperback than a true cutaway:

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