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The Turtle was the first combat submarine in history, built during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). The unit was built and put into service in 1776. Its displacement was about 2 tons with a beam of about 1.3 meters. The Turtle was armed with a gunpowder charge of up to 68 kilograms with a time fuse.

The Turtle was the work of the American self-taught inventor David Bushnell, who created a new unit to mount gunpowder charges on the sides of British sailing ships, i.e. mines with a time fuse. Turtle was mainly made of wood, with numerous iron elements. It housed a crew member, who in turn moved the two screws responsible for the draft and horizontal movement of the ship. The first attempt to use this avant-garde weapon at the time took place on the night of September 6 to 7, 1776, but it was not a success. Like the following two. That same month, in the fourth successful attack attempt, Turtle was sunk. The builders succeeded in bringing the wreck to the surface, but abandoned attempts to improve its structure.