Down periscope! How well do you know submarines?

10 Quick Questions on submarines. Composite: Guardian Design/Allstar/Cinetext/ADF/Getty/Goodybe Kansas/Universal History Archive

It’s hard to fathom how far we’ve come since the first submarine, with greasy leather flaps, was rowed – yes, rowed! – under the murky water of the Thames. Now, hundreds of boats creep about in the ocean, armed with cruise missiles and nuclear warheads. Australia has six, ditched a plan to get 12 French ones, and now plans (well, plans to plan) to get “at least” eight from the US or the UK. These might be nuclear-powered motherships, home to fleets of drones. Or the entire idea could be sunk. Whether you’ve been adrift in Vigil or submersed in Australia’s political woes, it’s time to find out how much you know about these undersea boats.

1. One of the reasons Australia is hoping to get nuclear submarines is that they don’t have to come up for air. What is that manoeuvre called?

   1. Snorkelling

   2. Snortling

   3. Snorting

   4. Coming up for air

2. British submarines carry a “letter of last resort”, penned by the prime minister of the time, to be opened in the case of the total and utter devastation of Britain. What instructions are said to be in it?

   1. Go to Australia

   2. Join the United States

   3. Retaliate by firing a nuclear missile

   4. All of the above

3. On the stonkingly popular drama Vigil, a fishing trawler is dragged under the water. What could have done it?

   1. Jaws

   2. A megalodon

   3. A submarine

   4. A kraken

4. Who famously declared that submarines are the spaceships of the ocean?

   1. Star Trek’s Captain Kirk

   2. Marko Ramius (Sean Connery’s character in The Hunt for Red October)

   3. Late Democratic Labour Senator John Madigan

   4. Former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher

5. French submariners tell the story of a member of a Pacific royal family getting firmly stuck in the manhole (not a euphemism) of one of their submarines. It would be unseemly for them to prod her from below or pull her from above so they came up with the ingenious idea to increase the pressure inside the boat. Out she popped like a champagne cork! True or false?

   1. True

   2. False

6. What is the German word for a submarine?

   1. Das Boot

   2. U-boat

   3. Das Boat

   4. Unterseeboot

7. Who said: “I’ve been to the Titanic in a yellow submarine and the North Pole in a Russian nuclear icebreaker”?

   1. Clive Palmer

   2. Buzz Aldrin

   3. Bob Katter

   4. John Lennon

8. Where is Australia’s first submarine now?

   1. Australian National Maritime Museum

   2. Somewhere near Papua New Guinea

   3. Off the coast of Western Australia

   4. No one knows

9. How many Japanese submarines were involved in the WWII attack on Sydney Harbour?

   1. One

   2. Three

   3. Five

   4. Eight

10. What was UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s response to French fury over being dumped for the Aukus deal?

    1. “Donnez-moi un break”

    2. “Prenez un grip”

    3. “We love the French”

    4. All of the above

Solutions

1:C - Submarines snort. Diesel-electric submarines have to come up to run the diesel engines to recharge the batteries, and it’s called snorting. The Americans call it snorkelling - but that’s not nearly as cute., 2:D - Each prime minister has to write a letter with various options, and it gets stashed in the safe of one of Britain’s Trident submarines. It’s not clear if there’s a “read in case of emergency” sign., 3:C - Jaws isn’t real. Megalodons died out before fishing trawlers were invented. Krakens don’t exist - unless you consider giant squid to be Krakens (and it’s true a big old cephalopod might have tried to take down a ship or two). But the Vigil creators were likely inspired by the real-life story of a British submarine dragging a fishing trawler through the Irish Sea., 4:C - Madigan famously made this quip on the ABC’s Q&A, and promptly capitalised on its quirky popularity by putting it on a t-shirt., 5:A - Well, the story might not be, but it’s true that submariners tell it., 6:D - An undersea boat. You see? But it does get shortened to U-Boat., 7:B - Yep, the second man to set foot on the moon also visited the sunken wreck of the Titanic, and the North Pole. But it seems unlikely the Russian nuclear-powered submarine was yellow, somehow., 8:B - The AE1 was lost at sea on September 1914, with all hands on board. The wreck was finally found in 2017 in the water off the Duke of York Islands., 9:D - Five large Japanese I Class submarines sat 35 nautical miles off the entrance to the harbour, and they launched three midget submarines that made it into the harbour. Nineteen Australians and two Brits were killed, while four Japanese submariners chose a “warrior’s death”., 10:D - Johnson deployed some remarkable Franglish when told of the strong reaction from Paris.

Scores

1. 10 and above.

   Congratulations! You’ve been fully submersed.

2. 9 and above.

   Congratulations! You’ve been fully submersed.

3. 8 and above.

   Some serious ballast, here. You’re in the “pass” category. Subcategory: Could try harder.

4. 7 and above.

   Some serious ballast, here. You’re in the “pass” category. Subcategory: Could try harder.

5. 6 and above.

   Some serious ballast, here. You’re in the “pass” category. Subcategory: Could try harder.

6. 5 and above.

   Some serious ballast, here. You’re in the “pass” category. Subcategory: Could try harder.

7. 4 and above.

   Sorry, civvie. Suboptimal stuff.

8. 3 and above.

   Sorry, civvie. Suboptimal stuff.

9. 2 and above.

   Up periscope, mate! You need less time in the suburbs, more time learning stuff of substance. Substandard.

10. 0 and above.

    Up periscope, mate! You need less time in the suburbs, more time learning stuff of substance. Substandard.

11. 1 and above.

    Up periscope, mate! You need less time in the suburbs, more time learning stuff of substance. Substandard.